Here is a great and nearly still unnoticed paradox of human evolution in our 'Christian' world. Jung , like few, saw a century ago that the Christ Story lost its central benefit and wisdom to humankind with the necessary coming of modern science beginning 400 years ago.
The original impact of the Christian teaching promised and quite well provided a moral transforming power in the ancient Mediterranian world. A lifting up of the human spirit and culture.
C.G. Jung said, "As at the beginning of the Christian Era, so again today we are faced with the problem of the moral backwardness which has failed to keep pace with our scientific, technical and social developments.
So much is at stake and so much depends on the psychological constitution of modern man.
Is he capable of resisting the temptation to use his power for the purpose of staging a world conflagration?
Is he conscious of the path he is treading, and what the conclusions are that must be drawn from the present world situation and his own psychic situation?
Does he know that he is on the point of losing the life-preserving myth of the inner man which Christianity has treasured up for him?
Does he realize what lies in store should this catastrophe ever befall him?
Is he even capable at all of realizing that this would be a catastrophe?
And finally, does the individual know that he is the makeweight that tips the scales? "~Carl Jung; The Undiscovered Self; Page 78.
So the Christ story was both the nurse maid of modern science but also lost most of its relevance to morally transform persons and cultures with the growth of that science. In this psychological sense science is an 'Anti Christ' and has already been this long with us. It had to be this way. We now are psychologically and spiritually the result of this paradoxical mutual gain and loss. This is a central evolving process for us right now.
We gained materially by leaps from science's basic hypothesis that the only reality is the material world. With that came the grand rush of knowledge of all things material and external, and the ever streaming technology. World-wide humans were rightly dazzled by it. Some benefitted from this far more than others. Science alone lacks any moral or ethical foundation or judgment as a branch of human learning. It generates physical facts and correlating principles and is coldly amoral.
Some Christian well wishers may have wanted to give God the credit for science. But actually it was accomplished by purposely removing the anthropromorphic traditional God from the hypothesis of science. That is how science does it wonders. Adding an interfering God being factor would destroy its objectivity. Paradoxes never cease in this world. And these science wonders are limited precisely to half of human experience, the material.
But many also now deeply sense in recent decades that humanity has lost its inner self, it's own soul. At the heart of the Christ Story is that there is a non material factor which is where the Human and Divine actually connect. It is this irrational half of human life that science disconnected us from. The part of life that in ancient times was the world of the living spirits and Gods. It is what gave and still gives life its spiritual zest and exhilaration.
This other half of human reality reality is also heard in Paul's teaching about the 'inner man', the truer fuller man who is both material and spiritual. It is heard in Jesus' reference to a 'kingdom not of this world' that is 'within the human' and the paradoxical irrational nature of a 'new birth.'
Science, which is so much in all of us now, necessarily abhors including such a non material factor for it threatens the high ground of the materialistic hypothesis of science that has so rightly captured our confidence.
The hypothesis of Paul and Jesus adds to the kind of knowledge science achieves by reminding humans that we are also a spiritual phenomenon. And that the Christ story has always promised it is natural for our inner person, as adults, to potentially be ' transformed' and to usher in a far more loving, responsible and caring world. A world that places a far higher value on cooperation among humans than 'science /technology only' whose primary motivator becomes greed and competition for the Earth's finite resources.
And so the several hundred years of war and tension between science and religion, Christ and its opposite 'Anti Christ' goes incompleted and won by neither side alone. For the reality must be there is both the physical outward reality and the inner non physical spiritual one. And these still contending opposites now seek an evolutionized hope based harmony with each other. A grand union of opposites to a transcendent 'third ' reality. This describes a 'new world' coming into view perhaps in some of our youths' life times.
None of this means anything has ultimately gone wrong. It is a grand example of how the paradoxical mind of evolution has done its work in bringing humans to the present state of consciousness. A state where we might see how centrally important this new consciousness of ours is to be in helping shape the evolution of the world's future.
Again, the Christ Story after remarkably transforming the ancient Western world to a higher plane of consciousness and culture, paradoxically gave birth to its opposite: Science which strengthened the human capacity to explore and take much control of the physical world. And now materialistic science, absent the Spirit that birthed it, has brought us to a sterile technological world with very little sustaining joy, harmony, deep fascination or soul.
What's next? Humans need to keep what science has taught us and somehow reclaim what was lost from ourselves, our soul life, to make that monumental achievement possible. Now required by evolution is a return to a trust in the reality of the 'inner person' which as the Christ Story claimed can be transformed to a fuller expression of the meaning of being human. This requires the courage to return to a place in the collective mind that most of us have never been, but that our ancient forebears, before science , experienced in their own way.
Such confidence in the inner spiritual reality along with affirmation of our physicality makes possible a ' new kind of person' , a fuller more complete human. Or as Jung suggests here a more *four dimensional human. The human who is not only of this world via science but is also in fuller union with the cosmos and with the Divine.
The new discovery now waiting as a 'pearl of great price' is that humans now need a broader more inclusive hypothesis of reality. That humans are both a physical and spiriual phenomenon, both mind and living soul. We are only half if either is ignored by our own bias.
This I think is the kind of hope that can still be resurrected to humanity from the Christ Story with no attack or invalidation, but inclusion of and cooperation with, the other major world religions.
*Note by Jung on human transformation. "Rebirth, you receive the immortal soul you at first did not possess, you are a twice-born. Like Jesus you are now no longer a simple personality, but a non-personality or symbolic personality, you now belong to the entire world, which is somewhat more important than the role of being the son of Joseph and Marie!
Manipura is the center of identification with God, where one is part of the divine substance. You are now already part of timelessness, no longer merely 3-dimensional, but now belonging to a fourth-dimensional order of things where space does not exist and time is not – but only eternity exists. We see a new image of ourselves." Carl Jung
The original impact of the Christian teaching promised and quite well provided a moral transforming power in the ancient Mediterranian world. A lifting up of the human spirit and culture.
C.G. Jung said, "As at the beginning of the Christian Era, so again today we are faced with the problem of the moral backwardness which has failed to keep pace with our scientific, technical and social developments.
So much is at stake and so much depends on the psychological constitution of modern man.
Is he capable of resisting the temptation to use his power for the purpose of staging a world conflagration?
Is he conscious of the path he is treading, and what the conclusions are that must be drawn from the present world situation and his own psychic situation?
Does he know that he is on the point of losing the life-preserving myth of the inner man which Christianity has treasured up for him?
Does he realize what lies in store should this catastrophe ever befall him?
Is he even capable at all of realizing that this would be a catastrophe?
And finally, does the individual know that he is the makeweight that tips the scales? "~Carl Jung; The Undiscovered Self; Page 78.
So the Christ story was both the nurse maid of modern science but also lost most of its relevance to morally transform persons and cultures with the growth of that science. In this psychological sense science is an 'Anti Christ' and has already been this long with us. It had to be this way. We now are psychologically and spiritually the result of this paradoxical mutual gain and loss. This is a central evolving process for us right now.
We gained materially by leaps from science's basic hypothesis that the only reality is the material world. With that came the grand rush of knowledge of all things material and external, and the ever streaming technology. World-wide humans were rightly dazzled by it. Some benefitted from this far more than others. Science alone lacks any moral or ethical foundation or judgment as a branch of human learning. It generates physical facts and correlating principles and is coldly amoral.
Some Christian well wishers may have wanted to give God the credit for science. But actually it was accomplished by purposely removing the anthropromorphic traditional God from the hypothesis of science. That is how science does it wonders. Adding an interfering God being factor would destroy its objectivity. Paradoxes never cease in this world. And these science wonders are limited precisely to half of human experience, the material.
But many also now deeply sense in recent decades that humanity has lost its inner self, it's own soul. At the heart of the Christ Story is that there is a non material factor which is where the Human and Divine actually connect. It is this irrational half of human life that science disconnected us from. The part of life that in ancient times was the world of the living spirits and Gods. It is what gave and still gives life its spiritual zest and exhilaration.
This other half of human reality reality is also heard in Paul's teaching about the 'inner man', the truer fuller man who is both material and spiritual. It is heard in Jesus' reference to a 'kingdom not of this world' that is 'within the human' and the paradoxical irrational nature of a 'new birth.'
Science, which is so much in all of us now, necessarily abhors including such a non material factor for it threatens the high ground of the materialistic hypothesis of science that has so rightly captured our confidence.
The hypothesis of Paul and Jesus adds to the kind of knowledge science achieves by reminding humans that we are also a spiritual phenomenon. And that the Christ story has always promised it is natural for our inner person, as adults, to potentially be ' transformed' and to usher in a far more loving, responsible and caring world. A world that places a far higher value on cooperation among humans than 'science /technology only' whose primary motivator becomes greed and competition for the Earth's finite resources.
And so the several hundred years of war and tension between science and religion, Christ and its opposite 'Anti Christ' goes incompleted and won by neither side alone. For the reality must be there is both the physical outward reality and the inner non physical spiritual one. And these still contending opposites now seek an evolutionized hope based harmony with each other. A grand union of opposites to a transcendent 'third ' reality. This describes a 'new world' coming into view perhaps in some of our youths' life times.
None of this means anything has ultimately gone wrong. It is a grand example of how the paradoxical mind of evolution has done its work in bringing humans to the present state of consciousness. A state where we might see how centrally important this new consciousness of ours is to be in helping shape the evolution of the world's future.
Again, the Christ Story after remarkably transforming the ancient Western world to a higher plane of consciousness and culture, paradoxically gave birth to its opposite: Science which strengthened the human capacity to explore and take much control of the physical world. And now materialistic science, absent the Spirit that birthed it, has brought us to a sterile technological world with very little sustaining joy, harmony, deep fascination or soul.
What's next? Humans need to keep what science has taught us and somehow reclaim what was lost from ourselves, our soul life, to make that monumental achievement possible. Now required by evolution is a return to a trust in the reality of the 'inner person' which as the Christ Story claimed can be transformed to a fuller expression of the meaning of being human. This requires the courage to return to a place in the collective mind that most of us have never been, but that our ancient forebears, before science , experienced in their own way.
Such confidence in the inner spiritual reality along with affirmation of our physicality makes possible a ' new kind of person' , a fuller more complete human. Or as Jung suggests here a more *four dimensional human. The human who is not only of this world via science but is also in fuller union with the cosmos and with the Divine.
The new discovery now waiting as a 'pearl of great price' is that humans now need a broader more inclusive hypothesis of reality. That humans are both a physical and spiriual phenomenon, both mind and living soul. We are only half if either is ignored by our own bias.
This I think is the kind of hope that can still be resurrected to humanity from the Christ Story with no attack or invalidation, but inclusion of and cooperation with, the other major world religions.
*Note by Jung on human transformation. "Rebirth, you receive the immortal soul you at first did not possess, you are a twice-born. Like Jesus you are now no longer a simple personality, but a non-personality or symbolic personality, you now belong to the entire world, which is somewhat more important than the role of being the son of Joseph and Marie!
Manipura is the center of identification with God, where one is part of the divine substance. You are now already part of timelessness, no longer merely 3-dimensional, but now belonging to a fourth-dimensional order of things where space does not exist and time is not – but only eternity exists. We see a new image of ourselves." Carl Jung
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