“No matter what the world thinks about religious experience, the one who has it possesses a great treasure, a thing that has become for him a source of life, meaning, and beauty, and that has given a new splendor to the world and to mankind. He has πιστισ and peace….. the symbols produced by the unconscious…. are the one thing that is capable of convincing the critical mind of modern man. And they are convincing for a very old-fashioned reason: They are overwhelming, which is precisely what the Latin word convincere means….”
Jung (1937)[1]
“… we must confess in all humility that religious experience is extra ecclesiam, subjective, and liable to boundless error. Yet, if the spiritual adventure of our time is the exposure of human consciousness to the undefined and indefinable, there would seem to be good reasons for thinking that even the Boundless is pervaded by psychic laws, which no man invented, but of which he has ‘gnosis’ …”
Jung (1937)[2]
“… by the term ‘religion’ I do not mean a creed. It is, however, true that every creed is originally based on the one hand upon the experience of the numinosum and on the other hand upon πιστισ, that is to say, trust or loyalty, faith and confidence in a certain experience of a numinous nature and in the change of consciousness that ensues….”
Jung (1937)[3]
“… fortunately, the man had religio, that is, he ‘carefully took account of’ his experience and he had enough πιστισ, or loyalty to his experience, to enable him to hang on to it and continue it….”
Jung (1937)[4]
“For the word ‘fidelity’ I should prefer,… the Greek word used in the New Testament, πιστισ, which is erroneously translated ‘faith.’ It really means ‘trust,’ ‘trustful loyalty.’ Fidelity to the law of one’s own being is a trust in this law, a loyal perseverance and confident hope; in short, an attitude such as a religious man should have towards God. …”
Jung (1932)[5]
As I noted in earlier essays posted on this blog site,[6] Jung was not a fan of organized religion, and he made a sharp distinction between religion and spirituality. When we hear the word “religion,” most of us are likely to think of specific buildings, creeds, rituals, practices, maybe even these days, conflicts or violence, as multiple religious groups take to war or pogroms against other sects or religions.[7] Jung would have none of this: He regarded organized religions as artifacts of earlier ages,[8] and as
antithetical to the spiritual life,[9] which he defined as “… the exposure of human consciousness to the undefined and indefinable,…”.[10] Just what Jung meant by this phrase, and what such an exposure entails are the subjects of this essay.
Jung’s Sense of Spirituality
In formulating his sense of spirituality Jung drew on many sources: the Gospels (especially the Gospel of John),[11] Joachim of Flores,[12] Meister Eckhart,[13] and Paracelsus,[14] to name only a few. Being the son of a Protestant pastor,[15] Jung grew up hearing, reading and studying the Bible, and he was familiar with the 40+ verses that address believers’ need to have faith.[16] With his knowledge of Greek, Jung knew these verses are mistranslated: the Greek πιστισ and πιστειν do not mean “faith,” but “trust,” “confidence” or “loyalty.”[17] Drawing on his personal experience, Jung felt that spirituality implied a loyalty to one’s own experience of “the undefined and indefinable.”[18]
What did Jung mean by “the undefined and indefinable”? That which our puny ego minds cannot grasp, that which is beyond our capacity to nail down or define, that which, in its very nature, is undefined, or what the Lakota Sioux term Waka Tanka, or the “Great Mysterious.”[19] The undefined and indefinable is beyond labels. I like to think of it as the Source of gravity, which is still a mystery that science cannot explain,[20] and as the Source of gravity it affects all people everywhere, regardless of denomination.
Jung drew upon Joachim of Flores’ concept of the 3 ages of religion.[21] The first was the Age of the Father, as depicted in the Old Testament. The second was the Age of the Son, which was the subject of the New Testatment, and the age in which Joachim was living, as a 12th century monk. Anticipating a distant future evolution of God, Joachim predicted a third age, the Age of the Holy Spirit, when people would no longer need organized religion, since each person would be guided by the Holy Spirit. Jung melded this idea with his notion of the Platonic months: the era of the Old Testament/God as Father suited the Age of Aries; the era of the New Testament/God as Son suited the Age of Pisces; and the coming era of the Holy Spirit would reflect the quality of the Age of Aquarius (“water-bearer” in Latin),[22] when each individual would bear the “living water”[23] of the Holy Spirit. Jung’s spirituality is infused with the Gnostic idea of the indwelling “spark” that can guide or inspire.[24]
The 14th century German mystic Meister Eckhart exemplified this inspiration. Typical of the mystic, Eckhart had numerous personal encounters with the Divine (which may be why, like Joachim, he was declared a heretic by the church).[25] His sermons are full of references to how individuals can have personal experience of Spirit,[26] and his accounts confirmed Jung’s own experiences. Like Eckhart, Jung did not believe in God, as he had come to know God.[27]
Another source for Jung’s concept of spirituality was the 16th century alchemist Paracelsus. Jung had high regard for this fellow Swiss student of esoterica. In particular Jung appreciated Paracelsus’ empiricism, i.e. his rejection of the medieval adulation of authority in favor of what he himself witnessed.[28] Jung noted: “The authenticity of one’s own experience of nature against the authority of tradition is a basic theme of Paracelsan thinking.”[29] This was also a basic theme of Jung’s thinking, and of his spirituality: To set forth on the spiritual path was to look to one’s own inner guidance, to have loyalty to one’s own experiences, and, in particular, to experiences of the numinous.
Mention of the numinous brings us to the second part of this essay.
What Exposure to the Undefined/Indefinable Entails
In various of his works[30] Jung notes ten features or qualities of the spiritual adventure of our time. The experience of the numinous is one of these. In other essays archived on this blog site I have defined and discussed the numinous.[31] It derives from the Latin numen, meaning a “god,” and the numinous is Jung’s term for the archetype at the root of our concept of divinity. The undefined/indefinable possesses “numinosity,” i.e. the power to arouse in us feelings of awe, fear, fascination, and/or overwhelment, as we confront the mysterium tremendum: the mystery that induces trembling.[32] If you have ever awakened from a dream that felt very special, highly charged with powerful energies, or that made you feel as if you were swept up in something much larger than yourself, you experienced the numinous. These are the dreams we remember for the rest of our lives.
Such dreams, and any experience of the numinous, are subjective,[33] and this is another feature of the spiritual adventure of our time. Given the hold that scientism has over our culture, we put a premium on objectivity, but Jung recognized that the spiritual life is essentially subjective, unique to each individual. While it has common elements (hence I am able to write about it) just how you might experience spirituality will differ from someone else’s experience. There is no “right” or “wrong” here, no guilt or shame, no external judge criticizing or condemning, no dogmas or creeds to which one must adhere to belong. There is no “belong:” the spiritual life exists extra ecclesiam.[34]
This is a third feature: “outside the church.” Jung was explicit on this point: “… we must confess in all humility that religious experience is extra ecclesiam,…”[35] In this Jung was challenging the longstanding dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, which still insists that “extra ecclesiam nulla salus:”[36] Outside of the church there is no salvation. Such a claim might have worked in the Middle Ages, but the Reformation threw a jigger in that millworks, and subsequent cultural evolution has left large numbers of “modern” people estranged from the old religious tenets. Jung noted that the “modern” person
“… is not a religious person,… She has forgotten the religion she was once taught, she knows nothing of those moments when the gods intervene, or rather she does not know that there are age-old situations whose nature it is to stir us to the depths…”[37]
Being “stirred to the depths” is characteristic of an experience of the numinous, and is another feature of the spiritual adventure of our time. In its subjectivity, just how you might feel this “stirring” will differ from another person’s. Jesus seemed to find it in contacts with little children.[38] My students living here in beautiful Vermont speak of being swept up in the numinous when they are out in Nature. For others this might occur in the beauty of an art museum.
Nature and art are two realms of life that are full of symbols, and symbols are another feature of the spiritual life.[39] Jung notes that
“… the symbols produced by the unconscious… are the one thing that is capable of convincing the critical mind of modern man. And they are convincing for a very old-fashioned reason: They are overwhelming, which is precisely what the Latin word convincere means…”.[40]
Jung could make this statement based on his experience working with hundreds of patients: He saw how a confrontation with a numinous symbol could break the stranglehold of rationality that a patient was stuck in, thus enabling the inner work to begin.[41]
Being subjective, such inner work is “liable to error.”[42] Humility is essential for the spiritual adventure. This is no place for “cosmic vanity,”[43] the all-too-common “ontological arrogance”[44] that claims to be the only right way. Jung proceeded in his work by making careful hypotheses, testing these repeatedly, and slowly evolving his psychology based on his experiences with hundreds of patients. If an idea proved useful over and over, with many different people, in different contexts, Jung took it up as valid.
This process required religio, which Jung defined as taking “careful account”[45] of one’s personal experience, and such careful accounting implies pistis, “… or loyalty to [one’s] experience, to enable [one] to hang on to it and continue it.”[46] Religio and pistis are two other features of the spiritual adventure. Jung never associated religio with a creed or organized religion, nor did he define pistis as “faith.” He took exception to how the word is usually translated in the New Testament:
“… the Greek word used in the New Testament, πιστισ, … is erroneously translated ‘faith.’ It really means ‘trust,’ ‘trustful loyalty.’ Fidelity to the law of one’s own being is a trust in this law, a loyal perseverance and confident hope; in short, an attitude such as a religious man should have towards God. …”[47]
The spiritual journey calls the sojourner to trust in his/her inner guidance so as to formulate a life, and make choices that align with his/her unique personality and life purpose.
Making choices is another feature of the spiritual adventure,[48] but not just any choices: Jung was clear that the spiritual adventure of our time requires choices that often will challenge convention:
“… personality can never develop unless the individual chooses his own way, consciously and with moral deliberation. Not only the causal motive—necessity—but conscious moral decision must lend its strength to the process of building the personality….. But a man can make a moral decision to go his own way only if he holds that way to be the best. If any other way were held to be better, then he would live and develop that other personality instead of his own. The other ways are conventionalities of a moral, social, political, philosophical, or religious nature. The fact that the conventions always flourish in one form or another only proves that the vast majority of mankind do not choose their own way, but convention, and consequently develop not themselves but a method and a collective mode of life at the cost of their own wholeness.”[49]
In this, Jung truly walked his talk: He violated the moral, social and religious conventions of his Swiss culture in having extra-marital affairs,[50] taking a “second wife” and parading her around in public alongside his legal wife,[51] and hardly ever setting foot in a church.[52] No one could charge Jung with failing to choose his own way!
In marching to his own inner drummer, Jung attained individuation, which is another feature of the spiritual life well lived.[53] Components of individuation include wholeness and meaning. Being true to one’s unique personality means understanding the teleological nature of human existence: According to Jung (who borrowed this idea from Aristotle), each person has a telos, an innate end or goal that his/her soul strives to achieve.[54] If we act in alignment with our soul, we work toward completeness, not perfection,[55] but a form of wholeness that is aligned with our unique being. In this work, this striving, we experience a metanoia, a change of consciousness.[56] We become more self-aware, and more Self aware, and this makes life meaningful and rich.
Conclusion
Becoming aware of the Self, the reality of our inner divinity, is what Jung meant by “the exposure of human consciousness to the undefined and undefinable,…”[57] and it was his hope that more and more people would undertake to expose their egos to the Self, so as to create more consciousness, to become co-creators with the Divine, to savor the adventure—with all the risks, challenges, exhilarations, and numinous moments that this adventure implies.
Sue Mehrtens is the author of this essay.
Bibliography
Bair, Deirdre (2003), Jung: A Biography. New York: Little, Brown & Co.
Davis, Charles (1973), Temptations of Religion. New York: Harper & Row.
Deloria, Vine Jr. (1994), God Is Red: A Native View of Religion. Golden CO: Fulcrum Publishing.
Eckhart, Meister (1980), Breakthrough: Meister Eckhart’s Creation Spirituality in New Translation, ed. Matthew Fox. Garden City: Doubleday & Co.
Edinger, Edward (1995), The Mysterium Lectures. Toronto: Inner City Books.
________ (1996), The Aion Lectures. Toronto: Inner City Books.
Jung, C.G. (1971), “Psychological Types,” Collected Works, 6. Princeton: Princeton University Press
________ (1966), “Two Essays on Analytical Psychology,” CW 7. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1960), ”The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche,” CW 8. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1959), “Aion,” Collected Works, 9ii. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1969), “Psychology and Religion: West and East,” CW 11. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1953), “Psychology and Alchemy,” CW 12. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1967), “Alchemical Studies,” CW 13. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1963), “Mysterium Coniunctionis,” CW 14. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1966), “The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature,” CW 15. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1954), “The Development of Personality,” CW 17. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1976), ”The Symbolic Life,” CW 18. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1979), General Index to the Collected Works of C.G. Jung, compiled by Barbara Forryan & Janet Glover. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1977), C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, ed. William McGuire & R.F.C. Hull. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kerr, John (1993), A Dangerous Method. New York: Random House.
Kofman, Fred (2006), Conscious Business: How to Build Value through Values. Boulder CO: Sounds True.
Lewis, Charlton & Charles Short (1969), A Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Liddell, H.G. & Scott (1978), An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon. New York: Oxford University Press.
Otto, Rudolf (1958), The Idea of the Holy. New York: Oxford University Press.
von Franz, Marie-Louise (1998), C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time. Toronto: Inner City Books.
[1] Collected Works 11, ¶167. Hereafter Collected Works will be abbreviated CW.
[2] Ibid., ¶168.
[3] Ibid., ¶9.
[4] Ibid., ¶74.
[5] CW 17, ¶296.
[6] Cf. “Jung and the Numinosum,” “Jung and the ‘New Dispensation’,” “The Religious Impulse in the Human Being: Jung on Religion, Spirituality and the Life Worth Living,” “The Healing Power of the Numinosum,” “Jung on Belief, Doubt and Trust,” “The Ego’s Living Relation to the Self,” “Jung on Psychotherapy, Spirituality and Sources of Healing: A Commentary on Passages in Collected Works 11.”
[7] E.g. ISIS/ISIL/Daesh in its war against “infidels,” which they define as any non-Sunni Muslim; the Buddhists in Myanmar persecuting the Muslim Rohingyas.
[8] By “ages” Jung referred to the astrological ages timed by the precession of the equinox; in historical time, the ages of Taurus, Aries, Pisces, and, in our own day, the ongoing shift from the Piscean to the Aquarian age. For more on this, see the blog essay “Jung’s Platonic Month and the Age of Aquarius,” archived on this blog site.
[9] “Antithetical” because the dogma in organized religions acts as a defense against the experience of God; CW 11, ¶81.
[10] Ibid., ¶168.
[11] CW 20, pp. 116-118; see note 16 infra for specific New Testament verses related to spirituality.
[12] Cf. CW 9ii, ¶s137-140,142,144,232,233,397note,399; CW 14, ¶22; CW 18, ¶1530,1552 & note.
[13] Jung cites Eckhart 87 times in his CW, mostly in CW 6.
[14] Citations to Paracelsus run to 7 full columns in the Index to Jung’s Collected Works (CW 20, pp. 506-510). As one would expect, these are most frequent in Jung’s alchemical works, CW 12,13, 14 and 15.
[15] Bair (2003), 14,18.
[16] Matt. 9:22, 13:58, 17:20, 18:6, 21:32, 27:42; Mark 1:15, 5:36, 6:6, 9:23-24, 11:22-24, 15:32, 16:14, 16:17; Luke 8:12-13, 24:25; John 1:7, 1:12, 3:12, 4:21, 4:42, 5:44, 5:47, 6:29, 7:5, 7:39, 9:35-36, 10:38, 11:15, 12:36, 12:39, 14:12, 14:29, 16:30-31, 17:26, 19:35; Heb. 3:19.
[17] Liddell & Scott (1978), 641.
[18] CW 11, ¶168.
[19] Deloria (1994), 95, note 1.
[20] Science has lots to say about how and why gravity works but on where it comes from—its source—science is silent.
[21] CW 9ii, ¶s 137-139.
[22] Lewis & Short (1969), 148.
[23] John 4:10.
[24] CW 9ii, ¶344 & note; CW 12, ¶s 138-139, 410note, 472; and CW 14, ¶42 & note. For more on the Gnostic influences on Jung, see Edinger (1995), Edinger (1996) and von Franz (1998).
[25] Meister Eckhart (1980), 1.
[26] E.g. ibid., 75082,102-113,126-150,313-324,338-353,363-379 and 510-530.
[27] Jung’s BBC Interview with John Freeman; Jung (1977), 428.
[28] CW 13, ¶149.
[29] Ibid.
[30] Cf. CW 7, ¶164; CW 11, ¶s 9,74,167,168; CW 13, ¶149; and CW 17, ¶296.
[31] See “Jung and the Numinosum” and “The Healing Power of the Numinosum,” archived on this blog site.
[32] Many of the qualities of numinosity are described in Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy (Otto, 1958), which Jung drew upon in formulating his own thoughts.
[33] CW 11, ¶168.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Ibid.
[36] CW 18, ¶s 632 and 669.
[37] CW 7, ¶164.
[38] Matt. 19:14.
[39] CW 11, ¶167-168.
[40] CW 11, ¶167; cf. Lewis & Short (1969), 465.
[41] E.g. Jung’s story of dealing with a woman patient whose hyperrationality was shattered by the appearance in Jung’s consulting room of a scarab better like the one she had just dreamt about the night before; CW 8, ¶843.
[42] CW 11, ¶168.
[43] I found this term in Davis (1973), 28-47.
[44] This is Fred Kofman’s term; Kofman (2006), 100-101.
[45] CW 11, ¶74.
[46] Ibid.
[47] CW 17, ¶296.
[48] Ibid. For more on making choices, see the blog essay “Jung and Buridan’s Ass: A Jungian Approach to Choosing,” archived on this blog site.
[49] CW 17, ¶296.
[50] E.g. with Sabina Spielrein; Kerr (1993), 196-198.
[51] Bair (2003), 248.
[52] Ibid., 126 and 321.
[53] CW 17, ¶296.
[54] CW 8, ¶798.
[55] CW 9ii, ¶s 123, 171; CW 12, ¶208.
[56] CW 11, ¶9.
[57] Ibid., ¶168.
