A Subjective Study of Science, Religion, and Consciousness
(This post and the following two posts will comprise the preface to my book of the same title. )
Preface
More and more people today feel a lack of meaning in traditional religious values. Thousands of years of devotion which once found us praying for salvation are distant relics to the priorities of modern thought. The old metaphysical view has little in common with an increasingly scientific outlook fastened onto the material world.
The swing toward natural reality from earlier preoccupations with the spiritual realm has produced a body of facts so opposed to religious faith that the moral and ethical principles of just a generation ago are now recognizable in name only. As new clashes with old, the quest for knowledge obscures the need for wisdom.
Centuries of spiritual idealism which sought to develop the soul have instead convinced us that we have only to believe in it to achieve it – for those who can still believe. For those who can’t, a new ideal of material progress now discards the too-taxing task of looking inward as not worth the effort.
Media-driven thing-obsession and near compulsive consumption divert vital energies. Ever more advanced technologies draw us further outside ourselves and into devices. Instant access and constant exposure to the subliminal effects of marketing and advertising cultivate unconscious emotions so paradoxical that what is meant to emancipate and connect also finds us dependent and alienated — our most personal and intimate needs indistinguishable from carefully instilled, pre-packed desires.
A struggling clergy, unable to translate the older values into contemporary terms, cannot defend its views in the face of rational argument. Literally interpreted, religious symbols not only don’t make sense to a science based on observable facts, they appear ridiculous and even silly. Worn half-truths and a declining relevance find modern mega-churches resorting to the same impersonal strategies driving business and political interests: mass commercial appeal. Science and religion have become adversaries competing for consumers; the individual, an insignificant statistic buried under the anonymity of target groups, market niches, and sales pitches.
I first perceived these anxieties as personal problems. I felt that something was missing in my life, sensed only as vague needs somehow opposed to my intentions. Seeking clarity, I turned to the psychological studies of C.G. Jung and his colleague, Erich Neumann. With the aid of Jung’s model, I began to understand that my feelings also reflected deeper conflicts beneath our assumptions of who we are and how we see our place in the natural world. As the religious view fades and the scientific one replaces it, an uneasy apprehension steals behind a facade of certainty.
A major shift in perspective accompanies today’s fast-paced super-highways of information. Jung’s and Neumann’s comparative studies of consciousness revealed patterns — evolutionary swings in its focus throughout history. They saw such shifts as reflections of unconscious organizing and centering functions. Their purpose is to re-orient us at certain critical stages to the more diffuse aims of spiritual and psychological development. Until recently, those aims were the province of religion and philosophy. That has changed. The beginning of the new stage is marked by a revolutionary discovery in the trend toward objective inquiry: the old metaphysical images proved to be the symbolic language of an unconscious psyche.
The discovery and its implications are largely ignored. The dark past of our moral history then opened to deeper scrutiny instead sees modern sensibilities rejecting the new knowledge. The grounds for its denial are not far to seek: this latest swing toward technology bodes a frightening new confrontation with our destructive tendencies. The repressed anxiety sensed by ego at an in-depth inspection of itself finds the old fear of God still alive beneath our diversions – and with good reason.
In The Origins and History of Consciousness, Erich Neumann described this shift in values: “Typical and symptomatic of this transitional phenomenon is the state of affairs in America, though the same holds good for practically the whole Western hemisphere… The grotesque fact that murderers, brigands, thieves, forgers, tyrants, and swindlers, in a guise that deceives nobody, have seized control of collective life is characteristic of our time. Their unscrupulousness and double-dealing are recognized — and admired. Their ruthless energy they obtain at best from some stray archetypal content that has got them in its power. The dynamism of a possessed personality is accordingly very great, because in its one-track primitivity, it suffers none of the differentiations which make men human.”
“Worship of the “beast” is not confined to Germany; it prevails wherever one-sidedness, push, and moral blindness are applauded, i.e., wherever the aggravating complexities of civilized behavior are swept away by bestial rapacity. One has only to look at the educative ideals current in the West. The possessed character of our financial and industrial magnates… is psychologically evident from the very fact that they are at the mercy of a suprapersonal factor – “work,” “power,” “money,” or whatever they like to call it – which in the telling phrase “consumes” them and leaves little or no room as private persons. Coupled with a nihilistic attitude toward civilization there goes a puffing up of the ego-sphere which expresses itself with brutish egotism in a total disregard for the common good…”
Neumann outlined the social effects of this transition: “Not only power, money, and lust, but religion, art, and politics as exclusive determinants in the form of parties, sects, movements, and “isms” of every description take possession of the masses and destroy the individual.”
The emotional confusion generated by such a major shift in values is only enhanced today by a profound lack of introspection. The “suprapersonal factors” embodied in religious images are intended to orient us inwardly; to center and protect us from being swept away by mass contagion. Our ideas of religion are changing, and there is no return to the old ways. Deep in the throes of unseen psychic forces, consciousness is being pushed in a new direction. The possibilities for further development hidden in the older ideas require a re-interpretation of the peculiar language of the depth from which they spring and the symbols it produces.
An important distinction must be made between sign and symbol: Jung defined a symbol as an image of the unknown. A sign stands for something known; it contains only the information we have put into it. Symbols evoke unconscious complexes of ideas which draw us to their many possible meanings and our relation to them. Just as science is concerned primarily with a concrete world of objects, religious images, too, are viewed as “things” containing only the beliefs that have been put into them, interpreting them more literally as signs than symbols.
Self-awareness means to perceive the inner world as well as the outer one. The one-sidedness of our current rational trend, a reaction to the religious view, has resulted in a new extreme in focus. To think logically, intellect must repress emotion; to the degree that we identify with it, we are at odds with ourselves. The over-reliance on one function to the exclusion of others is a threat to our psychic balance. The unconscious attempts to restore equilibrium by creating circumstances through unintended and “accidental” consequences which form an inner counter-pole to conscious direction: the basis of the tension of opposites, their relativity, and the swings produced by changes from within.
Because a limited will only partially creates our conditions, the deeper effects of our actions are shrouded by the veil of conscious intent. We also react to inner circumstances which are just as real as the outer ones, unseen by the fascination with the sensual and concrete. What we see and what we can’t see are determined by the concepts which shape our perceptions. A different conceptual view is required to grasp the effects of the psychic reality we can’t see: a symbolic one.
These ideas are the general concerns of this book. They describe the analogical thinking needed to bridge the divide between the scientific and religious views – the two ends of a psychic spectrum which determine how we see ourselves and the world. Their comparison is an important step in understanding the diversions and obsessions which have us in their hold; to reduce the severity in the swings of the pendulum between our dual natures. As cultural institutions, these viewpoints are obstinate to change, and nature seeks development through the creative responses of the individual. Group conflicts originate in the individual, and the opposed forces defining them can only be confronted and resolved there.
The text describes this confrontation in terms of the individuation process as conceived by Jung. His research confirms the mid-life process as the emergence of a more personal, inward call to self than the social orientation of the first half. Its purpose is to deepen relations with the spiritual functions which have always guided us. They are synonymous with development, and coming to terms with them today is an individual problem. Once the herd instinct takes over and fixes onto an ideal, it remains static; only individuals are capable of introducing new perceptions of it.
Though the book revolves around the mid-life experience, the continuity of development prepares it long before its intrusion into consciousness. In the first half, as we adapt to social conditions, a relatively dormant individuality is repressed in favor of cultural demands. The repressions accumulate over the initial stages, gaining energy until they form a complex of problems. We are then confronted with what the earlier view was not conditioned to see: the psychic reality behind appearances. This process creates an expanding spiral of evolution, and it follows the same guiding pattern in the individual, in condensed form, as in the history of the species.
See Amazon.