“… I do know of a power of a very personal nature and an irresistible influence. I call it ‘God’.”[1]
“God is a universal experience which is obfuscated only by silly rationalism and an equally silly theology.”[2]
“God is an immediate experience of a very primordial nature, one of the most natural products of our mental life,…”[3]
God is “… an inner experience, not discussable as such but impressive.”[4]
“I only know Him as a personal, subjective experience…”[5]
“Modern man abhors faith and the religions based upon it. He holds them valid only so far as their knowledge-content seems to accord with his own experience of the psychic background. He wants to know—to experience for himself.”[6]
In 1959 Jung appeared on BBC television’s “Face to Face” program, where he was interviewed by John Freeman. At one point Freeman asked Jung if he now believed in God. Jung paused, then replied “Difficult to answer. I know. I don’t need to believe. I know.”[7] Once the show aired Jung was deluged with inquiries about what he meant, how he could claim he knew God. Such was the tenor of the times (and even more our time, 60 years later) that modern people so abhor faith-based religions[8] that they had no idea what Jung meant by “experiencing God.” In this essay, I will explain what this means, give some examples from Jung’s life and my own, and set the whole notion in the larger context of the evolution of our culture.
What It Means to Experience God
We “experience” something when we meet, live through or feel it.[9] When something happens to us we say we have experienced it. When I stuck my foot in something I could not see while walking through the forest at night (a very stupid thing to do, by the way), I experienced a trimalleolar fracture. When outdoors in a storm if we see a flash of lightning and an instantaneous clap of thunder, we might experience a fright. Every time the tech companies release an upgrade of a program I rely on, I experience annoyance: why can’t they leave well enough alone?
We can also use “experience” in interpersonal contexts. I experienced my father’s criticism when he saw any erasures on my math homework. The students experienced enjoyment in our Reading Jung course. A person anticipates a variety of pleasant experiences when s/he is attracted to another person. If we meet this person often enough and have shared multiple experiences in his/her company, we might say we have come to know the person.
Implied in these examples is a dual orientation: a situation, an instance or encounter in outer life calls up sensory, emotional and/or mental assessments in our inner life. A temporal factor also figures here: assessments become expectations if the experience repeatedly produces the same feeling or result. In dealing with individuals, we may come to feel like we know the person after numerous experiences with him/her over time.
But what if the “person” is God?? For most modern people, there is a major mis-match between “experience” and “God,” given how our culture’s materialism is so pervasive. We have to resort to an analogy here: the wind is intangible, i.e. we don’t see the wind; we only see the effects of the wind (which, in “tornado alley” can be quite devastating). Likewise, we don’t see God, but we can see the effects of the Divine working in our lives, if we have “eyes to see and ears to hear.”[10] Jung had such eyes and ears, and so have I.
Some Examples of Experiencing God
Jung had had 73 years’ worth of Divine experiences when he told John Freeman that he knew God.[11] Beginning at age 11 with his vision of the turd falling on Basel cathedral,[12] Jung repeatedly experienced God in his work with patients,[13] in the dreams offered up by the psyche (his own and those of patients),[14] in intuitions he had for how the analyses should develop,[15] in synchronicities that supported the work.[16] He also experienced God when he listened to Bach; Jung told Frederick Sands, in a 1955 interview, that “Bach talks to God. I am gripped by Bach.”[17]
Bach is not the only composer able to grip people deeply. Music in general, rhythmic activities like drumming[18]and movements like dancing[19] can also bring us into contact with the Divine.
During his “fallow years” after his break with Freud, Jung spent hours over many evenings confronting his inner figures, including Philemon, Salome and others–all of them aspects of his unconscious, divine in their numinosity.[20]His discovery of Gnostic texts–full of accounts of others’ experiences of God[21]–corroborated Jung’s own impressions of how God worked in people’s lives, and his research and writing were supported by the “daimon” who lived within him.[22] More than once Jung complained about being “in the grip of the daimon,”[23] when he found himself feeling forced to apply himself to a task (like writing Answer to Job)[24] that he really did not want to do.
All of these experiences were subjective,[25] irresistible, impressive, helpful (supporting his goal of alleviating others’ suffering), and, at times, overpowering his own willfulness.[26] Jung also knew these were “universal,”[27]because all humans have the capacity for intuitive guidance and creativity as the Self (aka “the God within”)[28] lives in all of us. We all may have “big dreams”[29] at times in our lives, or a momentary flash of insight, or an intuition that solves a problem. Synchronicities are common, if we pay attention, and Jung was always watching out for these “meaningful coincidences.”[30]
Jung’s habit of watching his dreams and outer-life synchronicities was similar to that of indigenous people. In her essay for Jung’s Man and His Symbols,[31] Marie Louise von Franz noted how the Naskapi Indians relied on “Mista’peo,” their inner friend, for dream guidance on where to hunt and what game to take.[32] Each morning the hunters would gather and share their dreams of the previous night before setting out for the locations to which they had been guided.[33]Soon after I discovered Jung I encountered von Franz’s essay and I resonated to the idea of having an inner source I could rely on to help me live. Inspired by the Naskapi, I decided to call the source of my “voice-over” dreams my own Inner Friend.
I also began to watch for synchronicities as Jung did, and since 1983, when my “voice-over” dreams began, I have had numerous experiences of God, some spectacular, others ineffable, all memorable. The first was on November 23, 1983–the first “voice-over” which warned me explicitly of what was coming–that I would give up everything in my life and find it transformed. I did not want this at all, but all of it–the deaths, the divorce, the career change, the many relocations–happened over four painful years. Fortunately, toward the end of that interval, I had linked up with a Jungian analyst who urged me to “be more open to the unconscious,”[34] which I now realize was literally the “voice of God.” I was called to become a Jung scholar.[35]
The “voices” continued, giving me more opportunities to practice surrender–“not my will but Thine be done”[36]–and to learn to ask for guidance when confronted with yet another directive that felt overwhelming. I came to learn that I can ask for help, but then must watch for how/when it will appear. Some help has come in amazing forms, e.g. when I tried to move a large refrigerator, and cried out for help as it was about to fall on me, and a huge man appeared, grabbed it, put it on the county line and then disappeared. Another time, when I was feeling utter despair after the sudden death of my fiancée, a small man with a huge white dog came up to me on the rec path, and told me “Sue, it will all be okay,” and then he and dog vanished before my eyes.
Some “angels” show up in synchronicities, e.g. when my van caught fire and I stood on the side of the road wondering how I would get home, I thought to myself “I could use an angel now,” and just then my friend Amy drove by, saw me and gave me the ride home; or when 35 people showed up to help me when I was laid up with my fracture, after I had been told in a dream to “be open to receiving.” It really is true that each of us can be “angels” for others at times.
An experience of the Divine can be a life-saver. This was true for me in 1989. I was living then in Redwood City, in the South Bay, when, on October 17th I awoke feeling terrible–headache, nausea–and I thought I was coming down with the flu.[37] But I had a deadline for a report for a client, so I slogged through my work at my desk. Behind me were 12 feet of floor-to-ceiling bookcases full of books. The Giants were playing the Oakland A’s in game 3 of the World Series that afternoon, and I wanted to finish my report before it began, so as to catch the game. Nature, however, had other ideas.
Shortly after 5PM, still toiling away, I heard a voice, very clear and so loud that I thought someone had come into my house. I looked up. Nobody there. I returned to my writing. The voice again told me “Go over to the closet.” So I did, wondering if there was some material relevant to my report in the pile of papers I had on the floor there. As I knelt on the floor looking through the papers I heard a huge crash and thought it must be a big truck accident, but then the whole house began to shake, and the noises–crashings, rumblings–grew louder and constant. I realized it was an earthquake, and remembered we were to try to get to a place, like a doorway, that might provide structural support. The house, however, was rocking like a ship in a typhoon, so it was hard to stand. Then, just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped, and when I looked around I was astonished to find my desk buried in books and bookcases. Had I not heard and obeyed that voice, I would have been killed or badly injured.
Less dramatic Divine experiences are common in my work at the Jungian Center, e.g. when the Path of Individuation class asked for a sequel, I wrote in my dream journal, asking for guidance if this was something I should create. By this point (more than 20 years since my first “voice-over” dream) I knew that my question would be answered in kairos time (the “right moment”),[38] so I waited and watched. Four days later I had finished the research for a blog essay and was at my desk, expecting to write a draft when I found my fingers were glued to the keyboard and the entire Path II course flowed out over 5 hours! Truly I was, as Jung said, caught “in the grip of the daimon”[39] that time! When I was finally able to lift my hands, I knew I had experienced a divine inspiration and that course was definitely meant to run!
Over time, like the Naskapi, I developed the habit of having an ongoing conversation with my inner guides, incorporating the Self’s presence in daily life, aware that any aspect of living can be improved or enriched with divine input. But this is true only if I ask, as God respects our free will. By asking, we are implying that we are open to being guided and willing to surrender the ego’s will to the Divine will.[40]
There’s the rub: Modern people like to feel in control, with the ego running the show. It is hard, seemingly contra naturam–against our natural instincts–as Jung said,[41] to cede control to God, especially when God has no presence in daily life. But the zeitgeist is nudging us toward recognizing this presence, which brings us to the third part of this essay.
Jung’s Description of the Larger Cultural Context
Jung was highly intuitive,[42] able to see the big picture with an eye toward what the future might hold, while also being a student of history. These personality traits led Jung to recognize two key features of our current culture: the aeonic transition and the increasingly pervasive influence of the Holy Ghost movement.
The shift of the aeon. Jung’s efforts to date and describe the transition from the age of Pisces to the age of Aquarius earned Jung the epithet “Father of the New Age.”[43] In this Jung was not being original: he traced the concept of aeons back to the “world periods of the Parsees, the yugas and avatars of Hinduism,…”[44]
The ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome had developed under the influence of Aries (hence all the wars and martial nature of the Roman Empire). Over some 500 years Aries slowly gave way to the new aeon of Pisces, the sign of the two fishes, and it was not a coincidence that this aeon came along with a new form of religion, whose founder drew on fishermen for followers and whose secret sign became the fish.[45]
The interval from c. 100 BCE to 400 CE was, in Jung’s description, a “melancholic” time, as times of aeonic change seem to be.[46] There were good reasons for the melancholy: a major climate change forced primitive tribes to migrate south into the lands of the Roman Empire, leading to vandalizing by the Vandals, sacking and destruction by the Goths, the seizure of the Imperial throne in the Western half of the Empire in 476 CE by Odovacar, an Ostrogothic chief (the conventional dating of the “fall” of the Roman Empire),[47] and a severe decline in living standards and educational levels.
Dating of aeons is approximate, but the first half of Pisces ran from roughly the birth of Christ (c. 1 CE) to c. 1000 CE–the thousand years when Western culture had a vertical orientation,[48] focused more on things of the spirit than on things of this world. Some historians label this interval the “Age of Faith.”[49]
An early sign that this orientation was changing was the challenge to the Church’s authority by Emperor Henry IV, in what became known as the Investiture Controversy (1046-1122).[50] We might date the start of the second half of Pisces from this lengthy battle between church and state, and it included an enantiodromia: where Christ had been representative of the first fish, his “brother” Satan would be the key influence in the interval of the second. The orientation became horizontal,[51] people turning away from a focus on their souls to an exploration of the world around them, growing deeper into materialism, egotism, and an array of the deadly sins[52] as the centuries passed.
We are living in the waning years of this second fish, with evidence of satanic energies all around us, while simultaneously we can spot signs of Aquarius, e.g. in the invention and spread of all things electrical and electronic, in the rise of humanitarian organizations and concerns, and in the premium put on logic and reason, reflecting the airy nature of Uranus, the planet ruling the sign of Aquarius.[53]
What does this have to do with experiencing God? Jung knew that the old forms of religion developed under Pisces would hold little appeal as the new era becomes the norm, and he noted the prophetic declaration of Friedrich Nietzsche, who proclaimed that “God is dead.”[54]
Jung knew that God, as a major archetype in both personal and collective reality, can never “die,” but it does express in different forms consistent with the energies and qualities of different aeons.[55] In the era of Pisces, “creeds”[56] developed, with their different styles of buildings, different rituals, different dogmas, and claims of exclusivity in terms of the Truth. Jung felt this “cosmic vanity”[57] was nonsense, and he had no use for these creeds, their labels, and their persecutions of adherents of other sects. Instead, Jung drew on another key historical feature that is becoming more pervasive in the 21st century: the “Holy Ghost movement.”[58]
The Age of the Holy Spirit. In the previous essay, I noted how Jung drew on the insight of Joachim of Flora, a 12thcentury Italian monk, who envisioned the evolution of Western religion from the earlier Age of the Father (as reflected in the Old Testament, and the centuries of the ancient Jewish tribes), to the Age of the Son (ushered in by the life of Jesus as described in the New Testament) to, at some point beyond the age of Pisces, an age of the Holy Spirit.[59] This third age would be a time when people would no longer externalize God as “out there,” but would recognize the presence of the Spirit living within. In place of an outer building, the human body would be the temple of the Holy Ghost, and for guidance, an individual would rely on his/her own deepening relationship with and daily experiences of God.
Jung knew Joachim’s prophesy was coming true. He saw the trends decades before they became obvious in what he called the “forlorn situation”[60] of empty pews, closing parishes, fewer priests, and more people being “unchurched.” All these are signs of how “modern man abhors faith and the religions based upon it.”[61] Rather than faith, people these days seek experience, spiritual experiences that speak to their own unique needs, hopes and desires.
Now, as we move into the middle of the second decade of the 21st century, it is not only understandable but necessary for people to have such experiences, as we are living in increasingly tumultuous times–times when the only viable source of security is going to be our personal trust in the Self, its wisdom, guidance and ability to transcend the limitations of time and space. The “creeds”–organized religions–are not going to help us navigate the years ahead; they are stuck in their dogmas and rituals, appropriate to earlier centuries. We need to look within, establish a firm, ongoing relationship with “the god within,”[62] develop the habit of daily conversation and reliance on the Self, to create the trustthat Jung knew can be rock-solid reliable and stable, regardless of whatever types of earthquakes come our way.
Bibliography
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Brand, Renée (1955), “Four Contacts with Jung,” Jung Speaking, eds. McGuire & Hull. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Brinton, Crane, John Christopher & Robert Lee Wolff (1960), A History of Civilization, 2 vols., 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Davis, Charles (1973), Temptations of Religion. New York: Harper & Row.
Durant, Will (1950), The Age of Faith. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Guttman, Ariel & Kenneth Johnson (2004), Mythic Astrology. St. Paul MN: Llewellyn Publications.
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[1] “Letter to Palmer A. Hilty,” (25 October 1955), 274.
[2] “Letter to Heinrich Boltze,” (13 February 1951), Letters, II, 4.
[3] “Letter to B.A. Snowdon,” (7 May 1955), Letters, II, 253.
[4] Jung, “Letter to Heinrich Boltze,” (13 February 1951), Letters, II, 4.
[5] “Letter to Palmer A. Hilty,” (25 October 1955), 275.
[6] CW 10, ¶171.
[7] The transcript of this interview is in Jung Speaking, edited by McGuire & Hall (1977), 424-439; this reply of Jung’s is found on page 428.
[8] CW 10 ¶171.
[9] World Book Encyclopedia Dictionary, I, 693.
[10] Matt 13:43.
[11] At the time of the BBC interview (October , 1959) Jung was 84.
[12] Jung relates this experience in his memoir; Jung (1965), 36-40.
[13] CW 8 ¶841 & 846.
[14] Ibid., ¶s299-300.
[15] CW 8 ¶845.
[16] E.g. the appearance of a scarab beetle at the window of Jung’s office just as a patient had related a dream of a scarab beetle. Jung heard a noise at the window, turned around, opened the window and handed the woman the beetle. This synchronicity proved a major turning point in that analysis. CW 8 ¶s843-845.
[17] Sands (1955), 249. In his assessment of the spiritual problem of modern man, Jung noted his knowledge of the intimate psychic life of “many hundreds of educated persons, …from every quarter of the world,” and he added that “we can no more feel psychic problems lurking… behind the music of Bach.” CW 10 ¶158.
[18] Personal communication with David Brizendine.
[19] Hall (1983, 13-14.
[20] CW 5 ¶223.
[21] CW 18 ¶1501.
[22] Jung (1965), 356.
[23] Ibid.
[24] CW 11 ¶553. Intuitive as he was, Jung knew that essay would result in a deluge of mail. For the full list of the many dozens of letters Jung got about Answer to Job, see Letters II, 675-676.
[25] I.e. they were Jung’s own experiences and the impressions they made in him.
[26] CW 6 ¶425.
[27] “Letter to Heinrich Boltze,” (13 February 1951), Letters, II, 4.
[28] CW 7 ¶399.
[29] Jung defines the “big dream”–its special features and archetypal contents–in CW 8 ¶554.
[30] CW 10 ¶593.
[31] “The Process of Individuation,” Jung (1964), 157-254.
[32] von Franz (1964), 162.
[33] von Franz cites her source on p. 391: Frank Speck’s ethnographic study, Naskapi: The Savage Hunter of the Labrdor Peninsula (University of Oklahoma Press, 1935). Some time later I found this book in Harvard’s library and read more about how the Naskapi relied on their daily conversations with Mista’peo.
[34] My first analyst said this to me after I related a whole series of problems I was having, my life clearly not going well. Through such painful experiences I learned that it is much easier to go along with the will of my higher Self.
[35] “Vocation” comes from the Latin voco-are, meaning to call or use one’s voice; with all the voices I heard, clearly I was being called to the work I do now.
[36] Matt. 6:10.
[37] It was only years later that I learned both humans and animals can sense energetic emanations from the ground in the hours preceding an earthquake. Once the quake occurred, I felt instantly better–all the flu-like symptoms were gone–leaving me to feel the stress of the mess my house had become.
[38] Jung defines kairos in CW 10 ¶585.
[39] Jung (1965), 356.
[40] I think this is what Jesus meant when he suggested we take “his yoke” upon us; Matt. 11:29. He tells us that his yoke is “easy,” and I have come to agree: it is SO much easier to live aligned with our soul’s intention for us.
[41] CW 8 ¶66.
[42] Jung was so intuitive it led some, like Renée Brand, to feel he was a mind-reader; Brand, in Jung Speaking (1977), 162.
[43] Boynton (2003), 8.
[44] CW 9i ¶551.
[45] The Greek word for “fish”–ichthys–was code, as the Greek letters were the first letters of the Greek for “Jesus Christ Son of God,” and the symbol of the fish was put on the wall of a house where worship was held, in the days of persecution of Christians.
[46] “Letter to Adolf Keller,” 25 February 1955; Letters, II, 229.
[47] Brinton et. al (1960), 178.
[48] CW 9ii ¶150.
[49] E.g. Will Durant (1950).
[50] Brinton et al. (1960), I, 288-290.
[51] CW 9ii ¶150
[52] These include pride, greed, envy, lust, wrath, sloth, and gluttony.
[53] Guttman & Johnson (2004), 349.
[54] CW 13 ¶163.
[55] CW9i ¶155.
[56] Jung does not equate “religion” with “creed;” CW 11 ¶9,
[57] This term is not Jung’s; it is Charles Davis’, to refer to the ontological arrogance of the various organized religions each claiming their version being the only truth; Davis (1973), 28-48.
[58] CW 9ii ¶137-144.
[59] Ibid.
[60] CW 9i ¶393.
[61] CW 10 ¶171.
[62] CW 7 ¶399.
