For numerous reasons, and not the least being what must be an 'unconscious draw' to depth content, I have been very interested in exploring 'Christianity' in many different manifestations. One level is the 'doctrinal' which also concerns what might be labeled 'conservative' and also 'fundamentalistic'. This is the ethical and the moral level with all the challenges it presents, but also the 'downsides' in so far as I view 'fundamentalism' in any field as problematical. But this is a conflicted and contended territory since, in my view, and even under the influence to some extent of 'alternative approaches' to the religious questions ('Jungianism' being one!), it seems to me clear that 'we' ('the world') is losing a solid connection to defined values and moves toward a form of postmodern relativism.
At another extreme, the other extreme I suppose one would say, is the 'depth relationship': the symbolical, the dream, the relationship to archetypal 'self' symbols and the work entailed in this. One has an inner relationship to *something* but this is not quite the same as the outer relationship to doctrine, to dogma (as Jung writes about in Aion) and to the conscious work of defining and living values.
One notable issue is about Jung the man: it would be hard to imagine a man more familiar with the actual doctrines of Christianity and I mean this more exoterically: the specificity of moral and ethical doctrines. But it has seemed to me that 'the Jungians', some of them, not having such a strong base in substantial doctrines, drift toward a form of relativism, or in any sense something non-doctrinal; loose, open, non-specific. I note that this is one element of the (fundamentalist) Christian critique of Jung's Christianity.
Well, these are some of the things I have been thinking about. Since this is my first post I will not extend this more. I will be curious to see how such a conversation as this might unfold in this medium.
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What is your talent? What are you good at?
I too have been sipping at strange cups. I think it came in with mother's milk actually... :-)
No hurry about responding. If you can, you will.
I find reading Jung both elevating and also maddening. I like it when he 'preaches' the Gospel of preservation of 'Christianity', and laments the loss of connection to the invisible orb of a bizarre, hard to locate or even describe, transcendent something-or-other (*include here an unending stream of symbolic mishmash that corresponds to psychological psycho-babble*).
For example, I was just going over the part where he describes 'Mater Alchimia' as
Perhaps in a similar way that you react to a notion of aqua doctrinae, I discover I am not exactly sure how Jung proposes to incorporate the 'supralunary' into the modern frame of the world, and by that I mean everything above the 'dark' physical world into which we have sunk. It is not at all that I do not understand this material in a personal sense, in a symbolical or psychological or 'spiritual' sense, but that I am not sure exactly what Jung is referring to. He seeks the platform of science but is nothing less than ultra-mystical. His use of symbolic language is akin to poetry and after 5 pages of it I find that my eyes gloss over and I struggle to stay with it all.
But then he emerges a few pages later, in gloriously convincing summation, with more preaching of the 'psycho-spiritual gospel of salvation' and recaptures my attention. I want to serve in the celestial mission to help humankind find the path of the True and the Beautiful and would myself jump head first into the alchemical cauldron to swim like a prodigal fish in those mercurial fluids and then come out of it glowing like Melquiades in A Hundred Years of Solitude ... but I just don't quite get what it entails. I am waiting I suppose to be contacted by some beings of light who peer down at me from a skylight in the roof of this dark chthonia where I live like a troll, feeding on leadcakes and porn, slithering into my den like the snake Adam...
;-)
But in all seriousness I could come up with my definition of 'aqua doctrinae'. In the simplest terms the highest and the best in the human world is a creation of the 'psyche', which to me undoubtedly has a transcendent element, but it is only evident through its activity or its creations. It is in some sense as I said before: an imposition on this 'dark chthonic world' where we are all mired. When we lose a ways and means to be in communion with 'higher dimensions' we really do lose a great deal. But the difficulty is in using this dark-drenched language of the lower-world to describe the Source, which is 'incomprehensible'.
I think at the very least I should earn a Jungian Cupcake for some of the above! Or some sort of Jungian Boy Scout badge to sew on my shirt!
Since we obviously don’t know what will be happening hundred or thousand years from now and whether there will still be any human being alive, we can’t really talk about a purpose waiting for us to be revealed. I would exist without World War Two. I wouldn’t be in Serbia where I’ve perhaps experienced some interesting events. But I don’t see it as something necessary. It was just there, a series of events that have as a consequence me being here.
You’ve mentioned synchronicity. If synchronicity existed, I would prefer it for causing order rather than “necessary” chaos. The last part of Aion is about synchronicity on the global scale. I want to believe that the circular movement described there, if there is such a thing in reality, has one chaotic phase that doesn’t have any real purpose for triggering the next phase (and is driven by randomness and inertia) and the next phase of rebirth. Both of these phases are controversial to me: the first one that Jung claimed there is some purpose for it and the second one because we collectively never really reach wisdom and understanding. Also, tragedy and family violence (or war) can cause either more maturity or aggression in some children, but it can’t be a purpose (at least this is what I want to believe) of anything – it’s more like stupidity that just doesn’t want to go away.
Regardless of all that, people will in our Aion deal with different problems: How to make the right thing at the right time? We have more information, connections, and knowledge than ever, but how to use them for good long-term outcomes?
Perhaps I’m leaving this discussion for good, at least as a writer. I’ll need a really good reason to write something else.
It seems to me a more viable statement regarding the unknowns of causation would be to say that we can only speculate about the possible effect if a given event were not to have occurred. The reason is obvious: we live ONLY in the reality that is a product of each and every previous event and, obviously, we can never know how different reality might have been in the absence of even the most tiny contributant (excuse the neologism). So, at least in this speculative sense, it is quite possible to say that in the absence of any specific event of history, however small and irrelevant, neither you nor I would have shown up on this scene. The chain of causation being in some sense inconceivable.
But even more to the point: No matter how you or I organize our ideas, intuitions, perceptions or our 'impositions' (in the sense of imposition of a cherished notion which may not in fact be 'true' on our surrounding reality) about either evil or good, the necessary and the avoidable, the fact seems to remain that terribly ambiguous events seem constantly to occur in our human world, and they are not 'necessary' in a random sense, in a natural sense, but arise in our human world out of that strange and conflicted source we describe as 'the human psyche'.
To quote from Aion:
As I previously stated, more or less, I am quite aware of what it means to evoke inner, psychic forces and to begin to interact with them. I understand this as a means by which 'synchronicity' can be invoked. I understand it as 'psychic' but also as having elements which I don't quite understand, but 'magical' is one that I have been forced to use at times. But in my own case I have come to see this sort of relationship to 'God' or the 'unconscious' (the inner, invisible reality) as being a very personal process. I do not connect my own spiritual life to the terrible political events surrounding me. And it is also true that I have not been forced to function psychically within an overt war zone and that, myself, have no involvement in history as would a Serbian in either the first or the second world war. In regard to any of that I am completely unable to offer opinions and yet I find myself drawn to understand what your 'psychic' relationship is to 'all of that' and why you are drawn, as you seem to be, to Jung's ideas.
The only comment I could make in respect to the polarity between 'synchronicity' and 'necessary chaos' would be again speculative as I have absolutely no way at all to understand the reality we find ourselves in. I do not understand it. Yet it does occur to me, though it is not a 'pretty' thought, that even the terrible and the 'diabolic' in the human psyche, that which arises in the psyche and comes onto the scene and into this reality, always has a dual aspect. Some horrible nuclear invention, designed to annihilate, turns out to be useful in some advanced medical application. Or even the Internet as an outcome of communication systems between war offices.
But with these speculations I am forced into an uncomfortable territory: that of theologizing and philosophizing on 'evil'. It is indeed germane to my interests insofar as I think that we live in a 'complicit reality' and to actually live in this plane of existence and not to live in some abstracted relationship to it we have to become aware of the collusion between evil and good, of the dual nature of any and all aspects of the manifestation of life. So, it rings particularly true but also 'psychically' and 'existentially' true to understand 'Christ' in the Jungian sense: man's awareness of the terrible and unavoidable duality of human existence, strung up within suffering consciousness on a cross as 'increasing conflict', with two 'thieves' on each side: one who seems to acquiesce to the lie about this reality and desires to 'float up to heaven', and the other who remains true to himself and to his collusive relationship to life!
Totally beyond my limited scope. I can only focus on the immediately present. And that present only has to do with being responsible to the people in my immediate vicinity, which only has to do with the education of two youngsters. But in that sense I am very interested in the notion of aqua doctrinae: a 'mercurial' and divine water. Which is essentially why I started this discussion (and hope others will participate in it). What I am noticing is that with the right 'aqua' and the right 'doctrina' and the right combination of intelligence and concern and planning that a given life can and does flourish. In the absence of this concentration, if you will, of 'plant food', the entity still seems to get by but it does not approach its potential! But you see I live in a place that is coming out of a 'civil war lite' and almost any conscious and intelligent 'feeding' (of persons) produces 'healthy growth'.
All that I can say about this, personally, is that we seem to have a dual road: on one hand our conscious world of information and history (our traditions, our philosophy and religion, our ethics and morality), and our personal and interior relationship to 'God' or 'the unconscious'. At the very least when humans are not tearing down things they seem to come together to build them up again.
I feel strange when I reread that aqua part. It seems like I've been drinking a sip every day for years. I'll write at least one more comment in this topic, but I don't know when.
Sorry: Should have written 'Aleksandar'.
I am aware by looking around this site of your comments on another thread: "I'm disgusted by humans. On the other hands, everyone who seriously and actively (outside of just folklore) thinks about religion and spirituality can't hate another person's efforts in that field."
I am reminded by something Aldous Huxley wrote: That if one really internalized how terrible humans are we would likely insist on their destruction. Without having lived specifically in a war-zone, I have spent years in a low-level war zone: Colombia. When I lived in Cali, Colombia (a synchronistic name, perhaps?) I felt that everyday I saw some evidence of human terribleness. Medieval scenes and situations. It is hard to reconcile with it. Is it systematic or an outcome of 'personal choice'? I am still up in the air on the question but I place much greater emphasis on the personal and personal responsibility now. And this is why I am quite interested in the question of vital and strong ethics.
One advantage of living in such proximity to 'evil' (or cruelty or stupidity) (darkness=ignorance) is that it does put unique emphasis on one's own internal sense of the good and the desirable. I have remodeled my understanding of human possibilities through these strange 'visions' of the darker side of the human reality. No more airy-fairy belief in 'human goodness'! But huge appreciation for those who manage still to do good, be good.
I gained a great deal of appreciation---and admiration---for people who get out and go to Mass every day... ;-)
Hello there. I read The Secret of the Golden Flower long ago and am now rereading Aion. The essence of Jung's approach to ideas about 'spirituality' and psychology hinge upon seeking and having experience: engagement with what he calls 'the unconscious' and someone else might call God (or Satan depending on their orientation) (!) After many years, now rereading Aion, it has much more to say to me.
I interpret 'darkness' in the sense you seem to imply as ignorance (in a spiritual sense) and also danger: forces that can overwhelm and do harm. How do you interpret it?
I wonder to what degree Jung would have encouraged 'moral and ethical training' in that Christian-monastic sense? It seems to me that one can rather easily 'live mythically' or symbolically. Anyone can begin to pay attention to their dreams and even to begin to 'evoke synchronicity'. Engaging this way, things do indeed begin to happen. But what if it should happen that a person does not have a 'solid ethical and moral' (doctrinal) base in all that is part-and-parcel of Western Christianity? Would then become, more or less, a 'worshipper of psychological phenomena'?
Ethics and morals are linked to the ego, to attainment, to what can be achieved through discipline and also what may come to one after living lots of different mistakes, in short to sagacity. I think this is what I am getting at: How could one be a 'good Christian' (I say this with a touch of irony) in the sense proposed in Aion but be remiss in specific moral and ethical training? Jung describes Christianity as our matrix and our 'fate', a fate that cannot be swapped out for another (cultural or religious) fate. But would this not mean a deeply rigorous understanding and practice of those moral and ethical standards that are part of occidental (Christian) doctrine and dogma? If people become weak or lack knowledge in those areas, how could they progress in ('true') depth psychology? Jung CAME from such a rigorous background and so it was all natural for him. But in our modern environment it is the rare soul who has a rigorous background in 'strict ethics' or may even invent ethics as he goes along. It would seem to me that this is an area where Jungianism is 'weak'. And I am curious what other people have to say about this.
When I talk about things similar to those that I share here, sooner or later my collocutor (this is how my dictionary calls the other person in a conversation) will ask me if I have ever tried marijuana/LSD/something weirder. I’m totally straight and I’ll be straight and without any thought and reason to try drugs. What’s the point, considering one is not decadent and bored, of seeing other galaxies in your mind (especially if that’s not how they look like) or feeling like a sexually aroused turtle (female and male turtles alike are very far from my understanding of attractive and sexy)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drawing_Hands - I participate in the world and the world (first and foremost my tiny little part of the world) participates in me. The world is made of things and interactions, but we are learned to ignore interactions (networks). It’s nice to see things from different angles, but most of the time it’s where it stops: in watching the fireworks. I’ve read a few times about “wisdom” of living in the present moment. What does that actually mean? There is a difference between learning not to be emotionally attached to something that either isn’t important or you can’t change and a stoner with a joint in his mouth saying: “Maaaan, just relax and watch the sunset.” Perhaps there is something one can actually learn from the past or from future expectations. What is the other hand (the outside world and my own unconscious mind (perhaps it can tell me more interesting things and not just what makes a turtle sexy)) drawing at this moment and place? What am I drawing and why? We should have many different words for “why” (just like Eskimos have many words for “snow”) depending on the angle of observation.
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