Jesus and other "historical" figures

[Bertrand]

@Tallmo

Jung talks about that, where Jesus is both a symbol of unification in a cultural manifestation, he also inevitably provokes a counter stroke in the form of the anti christ, because as you said there is one sided-ness to everything as a product of human projection. Thus God, Jesus, etc are both metaphysical ideals but also "real" types inasmuch as there are humans perceiving them and thus loaded with projections from both the collective unconscious and the individual unconscious. This is sort of how dogma took over as primary vs secondary as time went on and Christianity became more a set of laws and "facts." Ultimately the counter stroke seems to have been the present age of scientism, where that dogma and all dogma like it are rejected. Meanwhile the underlying "meaning" of the unification aspect of Christ (the metaphysical principle) was worn down and lost, precisely by the people that wanted to "enforce" it. Now "non-believers" aren't exactly the one's responsible for the downfall of the ideal, even though they are its most vocal opponents--rather they are just perceiving the failure of Christ to live up to his promises in the psychological sphere [1] and are reacting accordingly. In the same way Christ's underlying message is still true, its just that his "personality" dominated for too long; but the underlying message needs to be rescued or transformed into something "living" in the hearts of new generations for humanity to progress and not fall into a neurotic state. Jung says things like the major conflicts of the 20th century were a product of, as Nietzsche said, the "death of God" in this sense

for what it's worth I've seen Jesus in the sense we're talking about been typed EII

[1] a criticism I and most people have is something like "if God is real why don't we see it in the lives of those who profess him?"--this is fundamentally the awareness that he exists as a symbol of unification (much like a mandala) and nowadays "christians" are some of the most one-sided and differentiated points of view out there--the complete opposite of what they should be. From my current point of view then "true" Christians are those who walk in the "spirit of Christ" which is the superordinate concept of unity, not the concrete second order assumptions of dogma. This is completely backwards from what you'll get in a mordern church, which also means some of the truest Christians in my mind reject the church and all its dogma for precisely this reason (I'm not saying they have to, but rather it is a way to conceptualize "good people" making it to "heaven" without participating in literal church-going). These are also the people best suited to reach those who unconsciously reject the implicit falsehood in contemporary Christianity, but also who throw out much of the baby with the bathwater (ENTps, and other types for whom the focus tends to be on constructing a "correct dogma" and they smell a rat in "christian" instantiations, but who also lack the ethics to devise a true alternative, instead they fall into relatively naive theories about ethics--those good hearted but fatally unsophisticated forms of paganism would be like Carl Sagan et all). the idea of these types being that if we do away with religion suddenly everyone will behave, which seems to really be saying something like if we can do away with the "anti-christ" which has essentially consumed the world (anti christ as anti logos--truth), in other words if we can do away with spirit of untruth in all its forms, one of which is contemporary dogmatic christianity, we will be better off, which is absolutely true; but they fail to see that while scientism may react appropriately against one form of untruth (this is the merit of the logical positivist position done correctly) it is itself subsumed by the same pernicious untruth on another level, which is to say untruth will manifest on every available occasion thus religion is not the enemy but merely an opportunity for untruth to arise, just like science is.

What is really needed then is an ethical breakthrough on the level of Jesus in the 1st century, to symbolize the unification of these opposites in order to stop the shallow infighting and focus on the real problem. Jung's genius was to set the stage for this. The philosopher Heidegger also seems to have realized his own preparatory role in things by describing the issue in a different yet likewise productive way. the philosopher Sam Harris is the pseudo philosophical equivalent to Heidegger who describes things in the exact opposite way: a shallow reductive restatement of untruth, a statement of dogma that thinks it cant be guilty of what it accuses others of by virtue of the fact its aware of the fault in others. Sam Harris hasn't even learned the lesson of Christ "spec in your neighbor's eye" yet he misinterprets his running behind as lapping the field. in this way Sam and many others are neo pagans not post christians [2]. but i consider the hope of western civilization to be in Christ

[2] in a psychological sense, not a historical one, as they are both historically speaking "post-christian." another good contrast is Gabriel Marcel (Christian) v Albert Camus (Pagan, albeit a sophisticated one)

[Pallas]

...Jung's genius was to set the stage for this. The philosopher Heidegger also seems to have realized his own preparatory role in things by describing the issue in a different yet likewise productive way. the philosopher Sam Harris is the pseudo philosophical equivalent to Heidegger who describes things in the exact opposite way: a shallow reductive restatement of untruth, a statement of dogma that thinks it cant be guilty of what it accuses others of by virtue of the fact its aware of the fault in others. Sam Harris hasn't even learned the lesson of Christ "spec in your neighbor's eye" yet he misinterprets his running behind as lapping the field. in this way Sam and many others are neo pagans not post christians [2]. but i consider the hope of western civilization to be in Christ

[2] in a psychological sense, not a historical one, as they are both historically speaking "post-christian." another good contrast is Gabriel Marcel (Christian) v Albert Camus (Pagan, albeit a sophisticated one)

Bertrand: hates Beta Quadra, loves actual Nazis

[Tallmo]

Ok, thanks for this post. Now, I've had time to chew on this.

I am familiar with Jungs criticism of Christianity, and I basically agree on what you say: The living myth is dead and has been repalced with dogma. The real myth is misunderstood both by "Christians" and Atheists.

Some comments:

I am kindof ok with dogma nowadays, because I take it as immidiate psychological truth. In the town where I live some religious people were out in the streets with loudspeaker preaching about how humans haven't evolved "from monkeys", instead we are "created by God and are all his children". Makes totally sense to me if I take it as an immidiate symbolic truth. I don't even have to take it as an "idea" or anything "intellectual". But yes, they probably take it too literally.

I read somewhere that Jung identified Anti-Christ as "ideology". I thought that was a great analysis, really a great contrast to the "way, life, truth". And how hard it can be to find. Because many people follow Anti-Christ and live by ideology, instead of fulfilling their unique destiny. Ideology is seductive, especially ideologies that preach good values, humanism, the wellfare state etc (in my country). That really shows how hard it is to recognize AntiChrist when he appears.

The problem with Christianity seems to be that it was introduced to pagan peoples in Europe and elsewhere. People who didn't have the level of spiritual maturity needed. And also that the myth itself is incomplete because it doesn't deal with the dark side. We never got to know what Christ did when he was dead for 3 days. Other myths go through this stage in detail though, for example folk tales.

Individuation has been suggested as a myth for modern man. Of course its not just a myth but a psychological process, but it seem like it can be a myth also.

But what is the true mythology for the individual? It depends on his level of maturity. For young people it is heros, they need it to manifest consciousness. For many older people too.

But yeah, as I probably said earlier, my point was that on the level of the myth everything is symbolic, even the possbile type that we assign. So it's perfectly ok that types are one-sided. The type that we choose for Jesus (based on the myth) can still symbolize unification.

@Tallmo

Jung talks about that, where Jesus is both a symbol of unification in a cultural manifestation, he also inevitably provokes a counter stroke in the form of the anti christ, because as you said there is one sided-ness to everything as a product of human projection. Thus God, Jesus, etc are both metaphysical ideals but also "real" types inasmuch as there are humans perceiving them and thus loaded with projections from both the collective unconscious and the individual unconscious. This is sort of how dogma took over as primary vs secondary as time went on and Christianity became more a set of laws and "facts." Ultimately the counter stroke seems to have been the present age of scientism, where that dogma and all dogma like it are rejected. Meanwhile the underlying "meaning" of the unification aspect of Christ (the metaphysical principle) was worn down and lost, precisely by the people that wanted to "enforce" it. Now "non-believers" aren't exactly the one's responsible for the downfall of the ideal, even though they are its most vocal opponents--rather they are just perceiving the failure of Christ to live up to his promises in the psychological sphere [1] and are reacting accordingly. In the same way Christ's underlying message is still true, its just that his "personality" dominated for too long; but the underlying message needs to be rescued or transformed into something "living" in the hearts of new generations for humanity to progress and not fall into a neurotic state. Jung says things like the major conflicts of the 20th century were a product of, as Nietzsche said, the "death of God" in this sense

for what it's worth I've seen Jesus in the sense we're talking about been typed EII

[1] a criticism I and most people have is something like "if God is real why don't we see it in the lives of those who profess him?"--this is fundamentally the awareness that he exists as a symbol of unification (much like a mandala) and nowadays "christians" are some of the most one-sided and differentiated points of view out there--the complete opposite of what they should be. From my current point of view then "true" Christians are those who walk in the "spirit of Christ" which is the superordinate concept of unity, not the concrete second order assumptions of dogma. This is completely backwards from what you'll get in a mordern church, which also means some of the truest Christians in my mind reject the church and all its dogma for precisely this reason (I'm not saying they have to, but rather it is a way to conceptualize "good people" making it to "heaven" without participating in literal church-going). These are also the people best suited to reach those who unconsciously reject the implicit falsehood in contemporary Christianity, but also who throw out much of the baby with the bathwater (ENTps, and other types for whom the focus tends to be on constructing a "correct dogma" and they smell a rat in "christian" instantiations, but who also lack the ethics to devise a true alternative, instead they fall into relatively naive theories about ethics--those good hearted but fatally unsophisticated forms of paganism would be like Carl Sagan et all). the idea of these types being that if we do away with religion suddenly everyone will behave, which seems to really be saying something like if we can do away with the "anti-christ" which has essentially consumed the world (anti christ as anti logos--truth), in other words if we can do away with spirit of untruth in all its forms, one of which is contemporary dogmatic christianity, we will be better off, which is absolutely true; but they fail to see that while scientism may react appropriately against one form of untruth (this is the merit of the logical positivist position done correctly) it is itself subsumed by the same pernicious untruth on another level, which is to say untruth will manifest on every available occasion thus religion is not the enemy but merely an opportunity for untruth to arise, just like science is.

What is really needed then is an ethical breakthrough on the level of Jesus in the 1st century, to symbolize the unification of these opposites in order to stop the shallow infighting and focus on the real problem. Jung's genius was to set the stage for this. The philosopher Heidegger also seems to have realized his own preparatory role in things by describing the issue in a different yet likewise productive way. the philosopher Sam Harris is the pseudo philosophical equivalent to Heidegger who describes things in the exact opposite way: a shallow reductive restatement of untruth, a statement of dogma that thinks it cant be guilty of what it accuses others of by virtue of the fact its aware of the fault in others. Sam Harris hasn't even learned the lesson of Christ "spec in your neighbor's eye" yet he misinterprets his running behind as lapping the field. in this way Sam and many others are neo pagans not post christians [2]. but i consider the hope of western civilization to be in Christ

[2] in a psychological sense, not a historical one, as they are both historically speaking "post-christian." another good contrast is Gabriel Marcel (Christian) v Albert Camus (Pagan, albeit a sophisticated one)