Religion and Symbols
A warm welcome to this lecture on C.G. Jung and the notions of religion
and symbols. I am a theologian and Jungian psychoanalyst working with
the psycho-spiritual development of clients individually and in groups.
In my practice I work with clients who feel a need to take a step, to
transform some parts of their lives. Perhaps they are determined as to
what needs change: maybe they want a new career, or, to end a
relationship that they have grown out of. But sometimes they only feel
that something has to change and they do not know yet what. It is
normally a feeling that one cannot quite put one’s finger on, it
cannot be defined. Interestingly enough, once that feeling does present
itself, the person immediately knows, ‘ahh, that is it’. In
working with these clients I have found that it helps to go beyond the
rational, that what we know already, and to change from daily
consciousness into another state of mind. Meditation is a simple way of
altering the state of mind for a moment and most clients find it
effective as a tool for achieving a better balance within. I would now
like to start by inviting you to engage in a few minutes’
meditation. I invite you to direct your attention towards any inner
image that may occur. I will then talk about symbols and what they can
mean in the Jungian practice.
Guided meditation follows.
Introduction
Religion originates from the inner being of man. It is an expression of
a state of being or a way of orienting attention, an expression of an
attitude or a mindset. Jung describes man’s religious attitude as
follows:
…a peculiar attitude of mind which could be formulated in
accordance with the original use of the word religio, which means a
careful consideration and observation of certain dynamic factors that
are conceived as “powers”: spirits, daemons, gods, laws,
ideas, ideals, or whatever name man has given to such factors in his
world as he has found powerful, dangerous, or helpful enough to be
taken into careful consideration, or grand, beautiful, and meaningful
enough to be devoutly worshipped and loved. (Jung, C.G.1969. Psychology
and Religion: West and East, page 8)
Jung came to the conclusion that man possesses what he describes as a
natural religious function. And that his psychic health and stability
depends on the proper expression of this, just as much as on the
expression of the instincts. Expression of the religious function is
the forming of symbols and the building up of a religion.
Religion
With the term “religion”, Jung does not only mean creed.
Dogma, creed, and ritual are crystallised forms of original religious
experience, worked over and refined, sometimes for centuries, until
they reach the forms in which we know them. Religion, is therefore, in
his view, the attitude of consciousness that has been affected by and
devoted to an experience of the numinous. Religion thus, is
fundamentally an experience, and as such, difficult to convey and share
with other people. Yet, at times we need to share the experience, we
want it to be understood by others, and wish to know if there is
someone out there who has felt something similar. We try to express
that feeling in poetry, music, images, metaphors or myths that point in
the direction of the experience, that once it is passed may remain as a
memory, but not as the experience itself.
Symbol
A symbol works two ways – it reveals something from the inner
world to the outside and it reminds us of that place within, when we
are not in contact with it.
A symbol cannot be defined exactly because it points beyond the natural
world and its meaning covers more than meets the eye. As often is the
case when discussing experiences and their expressions, these are
defined by what they are not. A symbol is not a sign. A sign –
let us say a traffic light – is unambiguous and its message is
also clear. You can be expected to read the sign and act accordingly
and you can be held responsible for mis-reading the sign. This is
because there is only one legitimate interpretation and only one right
response and it is readily available to everyone.
A symbol on the other hand stops being a symbol as soon as it is
interpreted as a sign, when there is certainty about its meaning.
Symbolic terms and images represent concepts that we cannot completely
define or fully comprehend. Symbols always have connotations that are
unclear or hidden.
Jung is concerned with two kinds of symbols: individual and collective.
By individual symbols Jung means "natural" symbols that are spontaneous
productions of the individual psyche, representing the individual's
situation at a given moment in time. In addition to the personal
symbols found in an individual's dreams or fantasies, there are
important collective symbols. Religious images such as the wheel of
life, the six-pointed Star and the cross are symbols for the spiritual
impulse that laid ground for the development of Buddhism, Judaism and
Christianity respectively.
As we all know, religious symbols run the risk of acquiring
sign-status. This happens when an organisation, for instance a church,
feels the need to safeguard its creed from ambiguity and individual
variety. When the expression of the mystical dimension becomes limited
to well-known forms.
Today, my accent will be on individual symbols and their role in
personal psycho-spiritual development, rather than on the mythology and
icons of the collective symbols, which give fundamental expression to
human nature in the creative urge that a myth represents, and the
feelings it expresses and evokes.
Archetype
A symbol is a manifestation of something that can be perceived in the
here and now. That “something” is an archetype. Jung says
about archetypes that they are the structural elements of the psyche.
An archetypal image is the form by which an archetype is represented in
consciousness.
The relationship between the archetype and an archetypal image is
expressed in this quote from The Archetypes and the Collective
Unconscious:
An archetypal content expresses itself, first and foremost, in
metaphors. If such a content should speak of the sun and identify with
it the lion, the king, the hoard of gold guarded by the dragon, or the
power that makes for the life and health of man, it is neither the one
thing nor the other, but the unknown third thing that finds more or
less adequate expression in all these similes, yet-to the perpetual
vexation of the intellect-remains unknown and not to be fitted into a
formula. (Jung, C.G. 1969. The Archetypes and the Collective
Unconscious, page 157).
Jung also says that “archetypes are, by definition, factors and
motifs that arrange the psychic elements into certain images,
characterized as archetypal, but in such a way that they can be
recognized only from the effects they produce.” (Jung, C.G.1969.
Psychology and Religion: West and East, page 149).The archetype is thus
psychic energy that cannot be accessed directly but is mediated and
manifested in the archetypal image, the symbol. The closer a symbol
conforms to the unconscious material organized around an archetype, the
more it evokes a strong, emotionally charged response.
Working with symbols
It is when the outer form and symbol no longer render meaning to a
person that he or she will be looking for new symbols in order to
re-experience meaning and access the energy, emotional charge, that is
needed to live with a sense of fulfilment.
In different stages of life, meaning making symbols and the way that
these reflect a sense of identity are challenged and often transformed.
We see this for instance in puberty and in mid-life. In puberty, when
seeking to formulate personal identity and independence is so
important, symbols - such as clothes, location (where you hang out),
haircut, music, literature, become markers of the “new”
personality. It is not that these attributes define the person, clothes
for instance, but the symbolic value - which makes it impossible to
wear certain things and necessary to wear certain other things - helps
to cross the water between child and grown-up. Much meaning is
discovered and revealed in this way.
As for the midlife crises, Jung believed that a neurosis in the second
half of life is seldom cured without the development of a religious
attitude, the cure can be prompted by a spontaneous revelation of the
spirit. He says that, “This spirit is an autonomous psychic
happening, a hush that follows the storm, a reconciling light in the
darkness of man's mind, secretly bringing order into the chaos of his
soul.” (Jung, C.G. 1969. Ibid. page 176).
A midlife crises is a sort of neurosis. It is a signal to the person,
and sometimes to his or her environment, that the person in question no
longer lives in accordance with what he or she intuitively knows is
possible. The psyche creates a new situation through the crises,
one that more and better, than the former situation, balances the
relationship between who one feels to be and what one lives. A symbol
can help a person (in such a crises) to establish a connection between
consciousness and the unconscious, resulting in the renewed direction
of energy. A connection between conscious and unconscious is created by
the symbol that can come spontaneously from within a person, for
instance in the form of a dream or a vision.
Jung says that psychic development cannot be accomplished by intention
and will alone; it needs the attraction of the symbol, whose value
quantum exceeds that of the cause. But the formation of a symbol cannot
take place until the mind has dwelt long enough on the elementary
facts, that is to say until the inner or outer necessities of the
life-process have brought about a transformation of energy. ( Jung, C.
G. 1969. The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, page 25).
Jung’s primary interest in symbols lay in their ability to
transform and redirect instinctive energy. The aim is to make
instinctive energy available for meaningful work and a productive life.
A symbol thus has a dynamic quality. It mediates between the
unconscious and the conscious, between here and now and the imminent.
The symbol has a future and nothing we know already is sufficient to
explain it. It is a living thing.
Working with symbols is a way of talking to your own inner potential
and to realise what you know but do not yet know that you know.
Connecting with the larger self through symbols
The larger self is the most important personality archetype and also
the most difficult to understand. Jung has called the self the central
archetype, the archetype of psychological order and the totality of the
personality. The self is the archetype of centeredness. It is the union
of the conscious and the unconscious that embodies the harmony and
balance of the various opposing elements of the psyche. The self
directs the functioning of the whole psyche in an integrated way.
According to Jung, conscious and unconscious are not necessarily in
opposition to one another, but complement one another to form a
totality, which is the self. Jung discovered the self archetype only
after his investigations of the other structures of the personality.
Ego and self
The self is a deep, inner, guiding factor, which can seem to be quite
different, even alien, from well known structures of the psyche such as
the ego and consciousness. "The self is not only the centre, but also
the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious;
it is the centre of this totality, just as the ego is the centre of
consciousness.” Jung, C.G. 1969. Psychology and Alchemy,
page 41). It may first appear in dreams as a tiny, insignificant
image, because the self is so unfamiliar or undeveloped in most of us.
The development of the self does not mean that the ego is dissolved.
The ego remains the centre of consciousness, an important structure
within the psyche. It becomes linked to the self as the result of the
long, hard work of understanding and accepting unconscious processes.
The self is depicted in dreams or images impersonally for instance as a
circle, mandala, crystal, or stone, or, personally, as a royal couple,
a divine child, or some other symbol of divinity. Great spiritual
teachers, such as Christ, Mohammed, and Buddha, are also symbols for
the self. These are all symbols of wholeness, unification,
reconciliation of polarities, and dynamic equilibrium - the goals of
the individuation process. Jung explains the function of the self. Jung
holds that the ego receives the light from the self. He says that if
the self could be wholly experienced, it would be a limited experience,
whereas in reality its experience is unlimited and endless.
Jung observed a movement in his patients, which he saw as a seeking of
a goal. It eventually defined itself as the quest for wholeness –
that mysterious entity ‘the whole man’. The whole man
necessitates the forging of a link between the conscious and the
unconscious aspects of the psyche. The experience could be formulated
as the finding of the God within or the full experience of the
archetype of the self.
Also here in the Netherlands, today, clients engage in this same
process. They seek to bridge inner conflicts and come to a new
understanding of their lives meaning, a deeper or higher one, one which
encompasses more factors of reality and feels more true, more
satisfying than any previous comprehension.
In Sufism, which has been my field of study for more than 15 years, it
is common knowledge that the expansion of a person’s view on life
is prompted by a personal crisis. This is a crisis that deepens
relative to the nature of the developmental step that is about to be
made, sometimes leading into utter emptiness and despair, a state that
in the Christian tradition has been talked about as the dark night of
the soul. In Sufism, such states are linked to stations.
Psycho-spiritual development is accordingly regarded as following a
given set of stations. Just as Erikson and Piaget described
developmental stages for children and young adults, so Sufism describes
adult development among disciples on the path, that is, people who, by
initiation, have submitted to following training within this particular
tradition. Through experiences of opening the heart, a person may
develop towards Insan Kamil, Perfect Man, a station defined
particularly and beautifully by Ibn al-Arabi, the twelfth century
Andalusian and Arab Sufi. (Ibn al-Arabi. 1980. Fusus al-hikam (Bezels
of Wisdom, translated by R.W.J Austin, preface by Titus
Burckhardt).This station is signified by a state of Rida, contentment.
It is what Hazrat Inayat Khan in The Sufi Message refers to as
at-one-ment, or unity.
The one who is happy is he who is ready to be friends with all. His
outlook on life is friendly. He is not only friendly to persons, but
also to objects and conditions. It is by this attitude of friendship
that man expands and breaks down those walls which keep him in prison.
And by breaking down those walls he experiences at-one-ment with the
Absolute. This at-one-ment with the Absolute manifests as the music of
the spheres, and this he experiences on all sides: beauties of nature,
color of flowers, everything he sees, everyone he meets. In the hours
of contemplation and solitude, and in the hours when he is in the midst
of the world, always the music is there, always he is enjoying the
harmony. (Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Mysticism of Sound and Music. The
Music of the Spheres, page 84).
Such communion with the moment shatters the rational mind. It defies
all rationalities and all manifest physical and psychological laws. It
can be awesome and frightening. At the same time, communion with the
moment has liberating possibilities. It can liberate a person from the
grip of duality and tensions of opposites. As pointed out, also by
Jung, it is an experience that leads to the goal of integration and
unity.
In the individual analytical work, a symbol of unity may arise when
there is a great tension of opposites. This tension occurs when
development of the personality is one-sided, so when one aspect of the
personality is favoured and seen as the only way of being and behaving,
whereas its opposite is denied and repressed from consciousness.
One client of mine, a woman aged 48 at the time, was struggling with
the tension between holding on to patterns of control that she
experienced as safe and letting go and trust in life. She made a
drawing illustrating the situation: at the centre was a heart-shape
encircling a square, within the square was a flower like symbol,
resembling a rose. Studying her spontaneous drawing it seemed to
illustrate a situation in which all that was precious to her was locked
away. It seemed that the core, the mandala, was not only unavailable to
her, but also safeguarded by the box. It was, as such, an illustration
of her struggle. For her to access the core, concentrating on the
flower, listening to it, asking its opinion and so on, became an
important exercise. This was made possible by the fact that the rose
had come to her whilst drawing, that it had manifested as a symbol of
herself.
Mandala
Experiences cannot be captured directly but can be pointed at by a
symbol. Symbolic expression of the whole man can be found in religious
mystical traditions as well as in analysis. These are represented by
symbols of unity.
Jung suggested many forms that a symbol of unity could take. In dreams
and fairytales roundness contains this symbol, as in a ring or gold
ball. In his autobiography, he describes the mandala, which was for him
personally the most powerful symbol of the self. He says,
“I had to abandon the idea of the superordinate position of the
ego. ... I saw that everything, all paths I had been following, all
steps I had taken, were leading back to a single point -- namely, to
the mid-point. It became increasingly plain to me that the mandala is
the centre. It is the exponent of all paths. It is the path to the
centre, to individuation. ... I knew that in finding the mandala as an
expression of the self I had attained what was for me the
ultimate.” (Jung, C.G. 1989. Memories, Dreams and Reflections,
page 196).We can see this demonstrated in the recently published Red
Book.
Working with mandalas can help when a client is stuck in the
one-sidedness of a certain attitude and in rationality. When you can no
longer think yourself out of a situation, the drawing of a mandala can
be most revealing. At the same time it activates the connection with
the life-force and is therefore energising.
Active imagination is a meditation technique developed by Jung. It is a
way of allowing inner figures to communicate. Often in the form of
visualisation, images of these inner figures occur and introduce new
notions and make unexpected connections. Key is to “allow
for” these manifestations to reveal their message autonomously,
with minimal direction from the ego-consciousness.
Such images can then be further explored in the drawing of a mandala.
The process of drawing can better be conducted in the same manner as
the active imagination, that is, allowing for it to take its own route
and later to observe and reflect on its meaning.
Let us now go back to where we started and take a moment of relaxing
the mind. If you had an image coming to you in the previous meditation,
gently return to that image and wait patiently for it to speak to you
some how. If there was no image, perhaps an inner sound or a memory
come to you. Receive what is offered in thankfulness and quietly allow
your attention to rest with whatever presents itself.
Reflect on what it means to you right now?
When contacting the self, we are all keepers of faith.
References
Hazrat Inayat Khan (1988) The Mysticism of Music, Sound and Word. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Ibn al-Arabi. (1980) Fusus al-hikam (Bezels of Wisdom, transled by
R.W.J Austin, preface by Titus Burckhardt). New Jersey: Paulist Press.
Jung, C.G. (1969) The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. Bollingen Series XX: Princeton University Press.
Jung, C.G. (1969) The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Bollingen Series XX: Princeton University Press.
Jung, C.G. (1969) Psychology and Religion: West and East, Bollingen Series XX: Princeton University Press.
Jung, C.G. (1969) Psychology and Alchemy. Bollingen Series XX: Princeton University Press.
Jung, C.G. (1989) Memories, Dreams and Reflections. New York: Vintage Books.
Jung, C.G. (2009) The Red Book: Liber Novus. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Jung, C.G. (1989). Memories, Dreams and Reflections. New York: Vintage Books.
Jung, C.G. (2009). The Red Book: Liber Novus. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
References
Hazrat Inayat Khan (1988) The Mysticism of Music, Sound and Word. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Ibn al-Arabi. (1980) Fusus al-hikam (Bezels of Wisdom, transled by
R.W.J Austin, preface by Titus Burckhardt). New Jersey: Paulist Press.
Jung, C.G. (1969) The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. Bollingen Series XX: Princeton University Press.
Jung, C.G. (1969) The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Bollingen Series XX: Princeton University Press.
Jung, C.G. (1969) Psychology and Religion: West and East, Bollingen Series XX: Princeton University Press.
Jung, C.G. (1969) Psychology and Alchemy. Bollingen Series XX: Princeton University Press.
Jung, C.G. (1989) Memories, Dreams and Reflections. New York: Vintage Books.
Jung, C.G. (2009) The Red Book: Liber Novus. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.