Jung: "I Don"t Believe in God - I Know"
I had a very interesting conversation with my friend John.
We were discussing the enigmatic answer Jung gave in the BBC network program "Face to Face".
How to interpret it? John told me: "Jung had a father and many uncles that were ministers, but he was never able to accept his family's dogmatic religion.
He would see his father suffering, searching for faith at any cost, with no success, as faith is a gift of God.
"You can't purchase faith in the supermarket.
" I mentioned.
The fact is that Jung, just like any child, had visions.
However, contrary to others who let the visions fade away, Jung continued to pay attention to them during his adult life.
"That is not so uncommon," Said John, "the Bible accounts many visions prophets had.
However, society in our time, with its aggravated materialism, doesn't accept that things can happen.
They think visions are affairs of crazy people.
" "Was that Jung's feared to be considered a mad man?" "When a child, yes.
Without understanding what was happening to him at the time, Jung was afraid of searching for answers with his father, or with anyone else, and he kept his visions to himself.
He tells his drama in his book: "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", where he mentions his conviction of having two people living inside his head.
One lived in the material world, what people considered to be the only real world.
The other had visions and dreams.
Later in life, Jung recognized these visions and dreams as messages of the unconscious, and that they should be valued so that human beings could have a vigorous mental health.
" A bird landed on the branch of a tree in front of the window.
It started singing.
John continued: "Jung refused to believe in the dogmatic Judeo-Christian religion that had made his father suffer so much.
He felt that the human being should search for a direct contact with the divine.
This contact could occur through sudden experiences - Saint Paul on the road to Damascus, Moses and the burning bush, - or in a persistent and conscious work of paying attention to the messages of the unconscious - dreams and visions - in a slow growth process of gaining consciousness, culminating in an advanced stage called individuation.
" I agreed: "According to Jung, the objective of human life is to follow a journey of individuation, His psychology, which he called Analytical Psychology - to distinguish it from Freudian Psychoanalysis - has the objective to guide a person in their process of individuation.
" John continued: "The first step to this process is to realize that the material is not the only real world.
On the contrary, the search of greater consciousness being the objective of human life, It is very important to pay attention to the interior world.
It is through it that we talk to God.
" Jung always tried to avoid a confrontation with the established religions.
His objective was to influence the Catholic Church to open up to the unconscious.
He used to say he was not a theologian, but simply an empirical psychologist trying to interpret the images that were produced in his psyche and of his patients and friends.
He thought that Christianity could avoid the wear that its' powerful images suffered through two thousand years, and become a more attractive path, free from some dogmas.
" John said: "It is understandable that Christianity, in its first centuries, when still trying to stand as a religion of the masses, defined dogmas and pursued who rebelled against them.
The Gnostics, who preached the direct contact with God, had to be fought.
The Church needed the monopoly over dialogue with God to stand on its own two feet.
" It is worth remembering that one of the points that put Jung in confrontation with the Roman Church was the concept of good.
The Idea that all good is in God, and all evil in men/women wasn't accepted by Jung.
Yahweh from the Old Testament wasn't only good, but complete.
And so, he was feared.
We can't forget the passages in the Bible where he ordered the killings of enemies, men, women and children.
With the advent of Christ, the exclusively good God, the evil was projected on the human being.
Satan appears four times in the Old Testament and sixty-six times in the New.
In duality, characteristic of our earthly life, there cannot be good without evil.
"We started our conversation with the answer that Jung gave in his interview with BBC," I said.
"We drifted to other matter and didn't get to it.
" John said: "In my opinion, Jung meant that, having lived intensely with the images that he received from his unconscious, having learned from them, having travelled the journey of individuation, he didn't need simply believe in God; he knew God.
"
We were discussing the enigmatic answer Jung gave in the BBC network program "Face to Face".
How to interpret it? John told me: "Jung had a father and many uncles that were ministers, but he was never able to accept his family's dogmatic religion.
He would see his father suffering, searching for faith at any cost, with no success, as faith is a gift of God.
"You can't purchase faith in the supermarket.
" I mentioned.
The fact is that Jung, just like any child, had visions.
However, contrary to others who let the visions fade away, Jung continued to pay attention to them during his adult life.
"That is not so uncommon," Said John, "the Bible accounts many visions prophets had.
However, society in our time, with its aggravated materialism, doesn't accept that things can happen.
They think visions are affairs of crazy people.
" "Was that Jung's feared to be considered a mad man?" "When a child, yes.
Without understanding what was happening to him at the time, Jung was afraid of searching for answers with his father, or with anyone else, and he kept his visions to himself.
He tells his drama in his book: "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", where he mentions his conviction of having two people living inside his head.
One lived in the material world, what people considered to be the only real world.
The other had visions and dreams.
Later in life, Jung recognized these visions and dreams as messages of the unconscious, and that they should be valued so that human beings could have a vigorous mental health.
" A bird landed on the branch of a tree in front of the window.
It started singing.
John continued: "Jung refused to believe in the dogmatic Judeo-Christian religion that had made his father suffer so much.
He felt that the human being should search for a direct contact with the divine.
This contact could occur through sudden experiences - Saint Paul on the road to Damascus, Moses and the burning bush, - or in a persistent and conscious work of paying attention to the messages of the unconscious - dreams and visions - in a slow growth process of gaining consciousness, culminating in an advanced stage called individuation.
" I agreed: "According to Jung, the objective of human life is to follow a journey of individuation, His psychology, which he called Analytical Psychology - to distinguish it from Freudian Psychoanalysis - has the objective to guide a person in their process of individuation.
" John continued: "The first step to this process is to realize that the material is not the only real world.
On the contrary, the search of greater consciousness being the objective of human life, It is very important to pay attention to the interior world.
It is through it that we talk to God.
" Jung always tried to avoid a confrontation with the established religions.
His objective was to influence the Catholic Church to open up to the unconscious.
He used to say he was not a theologian, but simply an empirical psychologist trying to interpret the images that were produced in his psyche and of his patients and friends.
He thought that Christianity could avoid the wear that its' powerful images suffered through two thousand years, and become a more attractive path, free from some dogmas.
" John said: "It is understandable that Christianity, in its first centuries, when still trying to stand as a religion of the masses, defined dogmas and pursued who rebelled against them.
The Gnostics, who preached the direct contact with God, had to be fought.
The Church needed the monopoly over dialogue with God to stand on its own two feet.
" It is worth remembering that one of the points that put Jung in confrontation with the Roman Church was the concept of good.
The Idea that all good is in God, and all evil in men/women wasn't accepted by Jung.
Yahweh from the Old Testament wasn't only good, but complete.
And so, he was feared.
We can't forget the passages in the Bible where he ordered the killings of enemies, men, women and children.
With the advent of Christ, the exclusively good God, the evil was projected on the human being.
Satan appears four times in the Old Testament and sixty-six times in the New.
In duality, characteristic of our earthly life, there cannot be good without evil.
"We started our conversation with the answer that Jung gave in his interview with BBC," I said.
"We drifted to other matter and didn't get to it.
" John said: "In my opinion, Jung meant that, having lived intensely with the images that he received from his unconscious, having learned from them, having travelled the journey of individuation, he didn't need simply believe in God; he knew God.
"
