Reflections ~ Paul Bishop
Well, first of all, I'd like to congratulate Jakob Lusensky on being brave enough, in a way, to tackle this very difficult theme of young face to face, as the title of his book quotes, with Christianity. And I'd also like to thank Jakob for inviting me onto his podcast, which this book arose on more than one occasion.
And I'm grateful too for the opportunity just to share a few further thoughts about what I see as the core of Jakob's book, that is to say the relation between Jung and the sacred and the divine. And the starting point, it seems to me, of this big adventure in Jung's own life is the remarkable account which he gives.
in Memories, Dreams, Reflections of his First Communion, and over several paragraphs, in fact, Jung gives us this very rich description of the utter sense of disappointment that is attendant upon his First Communion. He can see that the bread comes from the baker, a local baker, whose products aren't particularly good.
He can see that the wine, poured into a pewter jug, he knows the tavern or pub that it comes from. And he sees his father, and he sees the other old men, as he calls them, of the congregation, in turn, drinking the wine and eating the bread. And then Jung says that it was suddenly his turn, and he ate the bread, and it tasted, and he took a small sip of the wine, and it was thin and rather sour.
And then it was a concluding prayer, and everybody left the church, not depressed, not illumined with joy either, he says, but with faces that said, so that's that. And it seems to me that this is Jung's encounter with institutional religion, which only takes one so far. It has got the ritual. But it lacks the vitality, we might say in Jungian terms, that it lacks the myth.
And it's important, I think, to reflect on how often Jung relates this experience that he has in the church with that of his father, who is a Protestant minister. And he describes on several occasions in Memories, Change, Reflections, The state of mind into which his father has become, the difficult relations between his father and and his mother and Jung tells us that from the number of hints that his father makes, Jung is convinced that he suffered from religious doubt, and that there is something very dark and depressing about his father's faith.
And Jung is very concerned about it. He tries to engage his father with theological discussions, but he says they proved to be fruitless. They exasperated his father. They exasperated Jung too. And in the end they abandoned them. And Jung says that he has this sense that God has abandoned his church.
What are these men, says Jung. They are born dumb and blind as puppies and like all God creatures. are furnished with dimmer's light, never enough to illuminate the darkness in which they grow. But he also, interestingly, has this phrase, and I'll come back to it. He says, None of the theologians I knew had ever seen the light that shineth in the darkness.
I want to come back to this. But I'd also like to note that further on, much later on, from his discussion of his childhood and student years in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung again returns to his father and his lack of faith, or perceived lack of faith, When he is describing his work on Aeon, and Jung says here in the chapter called The Work, he says, My memory of my father is of a sufferer stricken with an amphortis wound, a fisher king whose wound would not heal, that Christian suffering for which the alchemists sought the panacea.
Jung goes on to say, I, as a dumb pacifier, was the witness of this sickness. During the years of my boyhood, and like Parsifal, speech failed me. I think here we have a very revealing instance of Jung's use of The myth of the grail, the myth of the story of Pratzifal, alluding to Wagner, but also of course alluding to Wolfram von Eschenbach's great canonical treatment of the work in his epic, verse epic Pratzifal.
And Jung describes himself as being like Pratzifal. He's unable to ask the question of his father, what ails thee? But he's also unable to answer the question, as he paraphrases it later. Do you or do you not have a relationship to the infinite? And I want to pop back now to looking at what Jung says about his father in the chapter on the student years and relate it to a dream that he has in this period, not the famous dream about the roof of Basel Cathedral, but a very different dream, which he describes It's both frightening and encouraging.
Jung describes how in this dream it was night in some unknown place. He was making slow and painful headway against the mighty wind. And Jung goes on to say, Dense fog was flying along everywhere. I had my hands cupped around a tiny light, which threatened to go out at any moment. Everything depended on my keeping this little light.
Suddenly I had the feeling that something was coming up behind me. I looked back and saw a gigantic black figure following me. But at the same moment I was conscious, in spite of my terror, That I must keep my little light going through night and wind, regardless of all dangers. When I awoke, says Jung, I realized at once that the figure was a spectre of the broken.
My own shadow on the swirling mists brought into being by the little light I was carrying. I knew too, he adds, that this little light was my consciousness. The only light I had. My own understanding is the sole treasure I possess, and the greatest. They're infinitely small and fragile in comparison with the powers of darkness.
It is still a light, my only light, and I think we can relate this idea of this tiny little light which is consciousness, that this is, for Jung, the light that shineth in the darkness. Just to bring this short reflection to a conclusion, Jung, I think, moves from this sense of disappointment to a deeper and richer engagement with the question of the sacred and the divine, and he realizes that he is doing it.
because nobody else does. In the chapter called Late Thoughts, Jung says, this is the psychological situation in the world today. Some call themselves Christian and imagine they can trample so called evil underfoot by merely willing to. Others have succumbed to it and no longer see the good. Evil today, It says Jung has become a visible great power.
One half of humanity fattens and grows strong on a doctrine fabricated by human ratiocination I think he's thinking there of the politics of the left and Marxism the other half sickens from the lack of a myth commensurate with the situation. The Christian nations, says Jung, we might reflect, is this still the case today?
have come to a sorry part. Their Christianity slumbers and has neglected to develop its myths further in the course of the century. And of course the subtitle of Jacob's book is that its conversations are on how we can dream the myth onward. Those who have, those who gave expression to the dark stirrings of growth in mythic ideas, says Jung, were refused a hearing.
And he goes on to list some of these people who gave expression to the dark stirrings of growth. Joachim of Fiore, Meister Eckhart, Jacob Boehmer, and many others, he says, have remained obscurantists for the majority. He goes on to say that the only small ray of light, again this imagery of light, is Pius XII and his dogma.
This is, of course, the dogma pronounced of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. But people don't even know what I'm referring to when I say this. They don't realise that a myth is dead if it no longer lives. And so that's why it seems to me that Jung's struggle with Christianity emerges finally into an attempt to rescue it.
And that's why he says we have to bring about the return of myth. In Late Thoughts he says, the myth must ultimately take monotheism seriously and put aside its dualism, which, however much reputed officially, has persisted until now and infirmed an internal dark antagonist alongside the omnipotent. Room must be made, says Jung, within the system for the philosophical complexe repositorum of Nicholas of Cusa and the moral ambivalence of Kant.
And I think that's one of the contexts to understanding what Jung is doing in Answer to Job, a book which he once described to Anthony Storr as being, as being pure poison. And yet, for all the biblical critique that Jung gives us in Answer to Job, he at the end comes to this figure. And in the final paragraph of Answer to Job, Jung tells us that even the enlightened person remains what they are, and is never more than their own limited ego, but for the one who dwells within them, whose form has no knowable boundaries, who encompasses him on all sides, fathomless as the abysms of the earth and vast as the sky.
And it seems to me that In that concluding paragraph of Answer to Job, and in those lines, we have something like Jung's credo, something like Jung's statement of faith.
