Something about religion and thinking

Carl Gustav Jung is my friend in my spiritual quest. One of the aspects that give me hope, is his conviction that there exists an autonomous spirit. He concludes this from many dozens of treatments of neurotic patients. (By the way, I believe that too many psycho-therapists base their way of treatment on Freudian or Jungian principles, but I think one needs their sharp vision and genius for comparable results, people are too quick in their confidence that they can do it that way, too) . When I read about it, I had to think of my dreams in which I met people telling me things or that I come into situations that I didn’t expect, yes, that I was learning in my dream. Where do these things come from? Apparently there is somebody inside me whom I’m not aware of. Many neurotic people experience this in a far stronger way, they hear voices telling them things to do. I noticed that Jung speaks about neurotics, not about psychotics. Jung interpreted correctly these voices as giving the patient orders to do things that would cure them, but they couldn’t interpret the voices that way, Jung used his archetype-theory for his interpretation. I’m still reading, I’m curious about if, and what he writes about the voices that are heard by e.g. schizophrenic patients, who tell them to be aggressive and defend themselves in their paranoia.

The “I” is a curious phenomenon. When you keep asking: “who am I” you come soon to the point you can’t give an answer anymore. You can describe your name, what you are doing, your “profile”, your CV etc. but you realize that all these things are like clothes around a body. Am I, then, my brains, am I my reflections and thoughts? Tell me.
I’m inclined to think that Nature or, call it God, looks through me to itself or Itself. I once heard somebody, and he wasn’t an atheist, say: “God is a human projection”. At that time I thought he told me and the others in his audience (it was a reading) that God was merely a human invention, but now I think I understand what he intended to say. “God is a human projection” means that God “uses” the human to let Himself know. As far as we can suspect, no animal has any idea about God.
Jung speaks also about the quaternity-symbol. He reasons on good grounds that the trinity-symbol represents indeed an almighty God, a mediator between Him and mankind, and a Spirit in Whom we can recognise the deepest motivating force of morality. All three are united in one God, in this view, in a mysterious way (mysterium fidei). Jung notices that in the omnipresent quaternity-archetype (symbolising the All) a fourth aspect is missing, and that’s the aspect of negation. “I am the great negator” is what Mephistopheles says to Faust in their first meeting. As such this aspect is inextricably connected to the trinity, and humans can fall victim to this force. Has man a choice, then?

Yes and no. Let’s start with the no. Every sound baby who is born, has the potentiality to grow both sides. It’s like a seed or a set and it depends how it’s fed and grown by people around him or her. If exactly the same person as Hitler would have grown up since, let’s say, 1982, then he would have become a much different personality than he was at his time. In this respect, man has no choice, especially not in his early childhood.

Now the “yes”. Everybody feels that he has choices. Everybody feels his conscience if it has had the opportunity to develop when he grew up and/or his mental capacities allowed him to. So man has a choice in that respect.

About thinking

Now writing this post I think I have come a little further on my quest, but I have to re-think many things over. Speaking about thinking: I have been thinking too much, and I feel that many excellent scientists think that thinking is the most important way to get hold of the truth. I think it’s not only thinking, but also surrender. That’s what the word “Islam” means, by the way. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing also wrote an uncompleted theatre play titled: “Faust”. He was a contemporary of Goethe, although both never met each other. In this play “thinking” is praised as the most precious gift from God to mankind. From other writings such as “The Education of Mankind” and “Nathan der Weise” it appears that Lessing had a lesson for us in the 21st century: you don’t help your own religion if you keep debating, struggling and fighting about defending it and/or trying it to spread it all over the world at the cost of other religions. That’s childish thinking, just as God of the Old Testament assisted His people in wars and committing murders, even mass-murders. He did so because (according to Lessing’s writing) people didn’t know better, they were like children, but now they are supposed to have grown up. Lessing wrote it as a literary work, not as an essay about historical truth, but in its symbolic value it contains more truth than any essay could contain. Surrender, by giving up your superior feelings, and in doing so you notice that you didn’t stop thinking, on the contrary, you kept thinking. That’s an aspect of Enlightenment that is too much overlooked when we call it the period of the raise of "scientific thinking" and freeing ourselves from the chains of religion.