.G. Jung Concerning The Role Of Religion In Human Life

Abstract

The article reveals the fundamental interest of the Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher, the founder of analytical psychology, one of the areas of deep psychology, K. G. Jung (1875–1961) to religion. The authors of the article attempted to consider the issue of religion in light of Jung's theory. In his works, Jung relies on the numinous experience and religious symbols of the soul. The feature of his philosophy is revealing the transcendental aspects of religion. The article considers religion through the main components of Jung's theory: consciousness, religious consciousness, the collective unconscious, archetype, the archetype of God, self, the process of individuation. The authors reveal the peculiarity of Jung's concept of the soul through the religious component. They analyzed Jung's understanding of the psychological roots and foundations of religious consciousness. The article studies Jung's interpretation of God `s image and the consideration of God from the evolution of mankind. It represents the role of archetypes of shadow and person in the manifestation of a person’s religiosity. The authors found interesting Jung's characterization of the bloodshed of religious wars, especially within the framework of Christianity. Jung gives distinction and shows the need to distinguish between the Self and the image of God. The article considers evaluations of Jung's views by his followers which reveal the significance of Jung's ideas for understanding the essence of religion and human religiosity. As a result, we understand both the positive and negative role of religion in human life of the era of globalism.

Keywords: Religionconsciousnesscollective unconsciousarchetypesselfindividuation

Introduction

In modern globalism, the religious factor plays a significant role in human life. It becomes a factor in human self-identification. Religion helps a person to preserve and ensure the spirituality of life. Besides, the political life of society strengthens the religious factor. The religious orientation of a person is used for extremism and is a fertile ground for terrorism. In this regard, Jung's studies on religion are of interest.

It is important to note that Jung analyzed the role of religion in human life throughout his creative life. This was due to both his biography and his interest. Jung analyzed not only Christianity but also studied other religious movements. He investigated the religious factor in human life follows the study of the collective unconscious which allowed him to more deeply and thoroughly comprehend this issue.

In their works, modern researchers note that the psychology of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung is a psychology of religion in its essence (Fuller, 2008; Walborn, 2014).

Bat-Erdeneyn (2016) believes that today we have a real opportunity to turn to Jung's philosophical concepts, which are important for educating and establishing a rational approach to religion.

Sboychikova (2011) indicates the uniqueness of the works of C. Jung in their content of empirical evidence of the existence of God as a transpersonal psychic substance. They deeply analyzed the sources of religious and mythological consciousness, which makes it possible to justify all existing religious communities and bring a single basis for them.

Walborn (2014) points out that religious experience, the mysticism of religions, and identity are critical to Jung’s work. An interesting statement by Walborn (2014) is that Jung’s reading maybe like reading the Bible in the sense that a person can find evidence for any side of the faith.

Problem Statement

How religion is included in human life and affects it?

Research Questions

In today's conditions of globalism, in modern public life, the role of religious doctrines is strengthened. Why? How to counter this? A study of the conditions and reasons why religion gains power over a person.

Purpose of the Study

How does Jung’s psychology help to highlight the role of the religious factor in human life?

Research Methods

The authors use the method of analysis and synthesis to identify the position of Jung and his followers and assess their significance for the study of religion. The comparison reveals similarities and differences in the works of the authors. Comparative studies contribute to understanding the views of Jung and his followers in texts translated by the authors.

Findings

Exploring the nature and essence of religion, Jung concluded that religion is numinous, and its foundation is rooted in the depths of the collective unconscious. In his work, the Swiss psychiatrist Ellenberger (2018) noted that one of his favourite statements of Jung is "a person is religious in nature". Jung says that religious function in a person is as strong as an instinct for gender or aggression (as cited in Ellenberger, 2018).

Jung (2015) approach to the definition of religion and spirituality is interesting. The dictionary of analytical psychology states that Jung’s religion is a certain position of the mind, a careful study and observation of certain forces: spirits, demons, gods, commandments, ideals. Religion is an attitude towards something that tremendously astonished a person and led to worship, obedience, reverence, and love. In Jung’s phrase, it looks like this: We could say that the term religion means an attitude inherent in consciousness, changed by the experience of the numinous (Collected Works Vol. 11. § 9) (Samuels et al., 2016). For Jung (2015), the unification of the individual psyche and the collective psyche is characteristic because otherwise the primitive is inevitably suppressed. However, where there is a legitimate and therefore vital religion which expresses the primitive person through richly developed symbolism quite satisfactorily, this is possible. This religion should possess in its dogmas and rituals how to imagine something and how to act, which goes back to the most ancient times (Jung, 2015).

Sboychikova (2011), referring to the work of Edinger (2001) "Creation of consciousness. Young's myth for modern man " writes "... we take the liberty to rephrase: a religious feeling or religion is a product of the unconscious psyche". In the theory of C.G. Jung, we can find an explanation of why this happens. The essence of this theory can be stated in one phrase: The collective unconscious can be called the word God (Edinger, 2001; Sboychikova, 2011).

Jung’s idea is important that at critical moments in life a person is forced to turn inward to find support. Since the globalism deprives a person of the national range of existence, and multiculturalism deprives an original culture, the person’s consciousness is immersed in an environment alien to him. As a result, the collective unconscious fulfils its compensatory role to preserve its identity through the religion. We observe this in the formation of religious communities, in the propaganda of the traditions and dogmas of our religion. Jung repeatedly emphasized that the prophet, as his disciple, is a type of the collective unconscious. And access to the collective psyche opens up a perspective for a person in his development, transforms his life. Meanwhile, Jung highlights that the collective unconscious acts as the medium from which religious experience follows.

When a person rejects the role of religion for himself, this leads to negative consequences for him. Jung referred directly to Freud when he wrote about two reasons why people reject the role of religion/spirituality in their lives. Initially, people believe in totems in which they consider the gods to live as physical beings. In this way, people outgrow the need for concrete evidence of God. The second inevitable mistake is psychologism: If God is something, he must be an illusion stemming from certain motives, for example, from fear, from the will to power or because of repressing sexuality (Jung, 1966; Walborn, 2014).

Jung was looking for ways to overcome this problem and suggested to look at the world of religion from human life. For him, religion is a world that relies on how different human subjects became involved in each other, creating them over time. Without a human subject, we cannot think of the world of religion. The world of religion can exist only through the mediation of human subjects and what human subjects have done in their history of mankind (Kim, 2016).

A feature of Jung’s approach is the consideration of God in terms of evolution. God is developing along with humanity. The aspect of theology, known as the process of theology, suggests that God lies with people, and his nature and form change as people develop. He believes that people become witnesses and participate in every evolutionary phase of the concept of God (Walborn, 2014). The development of God and humanity is interconnected. Walborn (2014) writes that for Jung, the human definition of God and the development of God's power reflects the evolution of mankind. The gods first lived in superhuman strength and beauty on top of snowy mountains or in the darkness of caves, forests and the sea. 4). Later they were united into one God, and then this God became a human (Jung, 1966; Walborn, 2014). Jung traditionally draws attention to the great role of consciousness: Jung once said that God became more conscious because people became more conscious. He argued that when people release their demons into daylight, they become the reason that light falls on the dark side of God (Pinkola, 2015).

Jung has a special approach to the definition and understanding of the image of God. In his understanding, the image of God is the image of the collective unconscious. In the explanatory dictionary on Analytical Psychology, the God-image is defined as a concept coming from the Church Fathers, which states that the divine essence is embodied in the human soul. Unlike theologians and many Christians, Jung does not speak about God but the image of God, and, thereby, he wants to clarify that everything that is said on behalf of God is a kind of human speech and psychological utterances. "The image of God that we have, or that we create for ourselves, can never be separated from man", he replies to the criticism of Martin Buber. Pursuing the image of God in the field of deep psychology, we are faced not with God but with the images, ideas and projections of man (Zelensky, 2000). Jung (as cited in Jung & Freud, 2014) himself wrote that this image has nothing that could be called personal. It is a fully collective image with the long been known ethnic origin. According to Jung, the image of God is the basis of the soul and a fully collective image. The splitting of this image has political implications. Religious symbols act as a means of reuniting a person with the depths of the collective unconscious, dictating a person’s ideas and actions. When the collective unconscious becomes the leading side of the psyche, the phenomenon of obsession manifests itself. This leads to intolerance of the views of others and the desire to impose their ideas. Hence, the recruitment of adherents, the desire to convert to their faith, as well as selfless devotion to the symbols of their faith.

But this is not enough to understand extremism and terrorism. Jung discloses that the human psyche split the image of God into the light (God, angels) and dark (Devil, Satan) sides. The denial by the Church of a shadow or dark side leads to bitterness. Hence, according to Jung, the great fierceness of the wars waged by Christians. This is what terrorists demonstrate today. For Jung, the God-image is an obvious basis and spiritual beginning, a deep dichotomy that defines it as political reality (Jung, 2013a) and the manifestation of the soul’s foundation, and the humanity understand the splitting of this image as a deep dichotomy, penetrating even in the field of politics (Jung, 2013b).

Jung believes that the interaction of two components, the archetypes of the collective unconscious: shadow and person, plays a particularly important role in the manifestation of religiosity. If the shadow dominates, then a person does evil without realizing it. This is the psychological basis of extremism and terrorism. If the person who is responsible for the person’s communication dominates, and the person puts on a mask to be liked by others and gain recognition in society, then the energies accumulated by the shadow create constant pressure and this is fraught with a psychological breakdown for the person. Jung believes that all people have a dark side, a shadow archetype. This is the side of wild animals. People also have the archetype of the persona. This is the social mask they wear to get along with other people. Shadow and person are in conflict. If the wild side, the shadow is too strong compared to the mask, people become selfish monsters and pride in their honesty, but they cannot understand why they have no friends. However, if the persona is too strong, they choke on shadow turning into a very pleasant but boring powder keg waiting for an explosion. Jung believed that a similar phenomenon occurred with Christianity because Christians deny their dark side, the evil side of God: this is, undoubtedly, the reason why no religion is defiled by such a shed of innocent blood as Christianity, and why the world has never seen a more bloody war than the war of Christian peoples (Hall & Nordby, 1973). When a person denies his shadow, he runs the risk of becoming a beast (Walborn, 2014).

Jung specifically addresses the role of religion in the process of individuation and interaction with the self. Individuation, which ensures the development of human integrity, has the realization of one's self as its goal. Jung sees the goal of individuation in the liberation of the human and the unconscious from the power of persona. Individuation leads to the incarnation of God in man. In the process of individuation, the archetypes of the collective unconscious connect to other aspects of the personality, God and personality will link together. Analyzing Jung’s work, Walborn (2014) writes that Jung suggested that as people progress toward individuation and experience these blissful moments of luminosity, oceanic feelings or religious experiences, there will be a manifestation of the God`s archetype. The archetype of God is closely associated with individuation, personal growth and becoming which most people can become.

An important component of Jung's theory is the self: One of the archetypes most closely associated with religion is the archetype of the self. Sometimes, Jung seems to consider this archetype as an intermediate link to the religious experience of God, even to the extent that he calls it the archetype of God. However, Jung always emphasized that he is an empiricist: the fact that a person is religious innately does not necessarily confirm the truth of religion, just as the existence of the God’s archetype does not prove the existence of God himself (Ellenberger, 2018). It is difficult to distinguish between the self and the image of God, but it is better not to mix theirs. The self is the psychological vehicle of the image of God in human (Samuels et al., 2016). Jung believed that the self acts as the guiding principle of the personality reflecting the potential integrity of the individual and prompting life to become more competitive and confirm the meaning. Jung noted that almost everything that links a person with these attributes can be used as a symbol of the self (as cited in Samuels et al., 2016).

The above shows the important role of communication with God in the development of personality.

Conclusion

Exploring the role of religion in human life, Jung showed its importance for human spirituality, its development and improvement. Meanwhile, he pointed out the danger of its use for political purposes since the sources of religious consciousness are the collective unconscious acting spontaneously and even destructively. Evaluating the positive role of religion, Jung (2013b) wrote:

I emphasize this because in our time there are millions of people who have lost faith in any religion. These people no longer understand their religion. As long as life goes smoothly and without religion, the loss goes unnoticed. But when suffering comes, things change. Then people begin to look for a way out and talk about the meaning of life and its terrible and painful experience. (p. 64)

K. G. Jung revealed that religion helps humanity to be humane. The phrase: “religion is a system of psychotherapy” is the main key in Jung’s theory. <...> The ideological basis of the philosophical concept of Jung has several sources, such as religion, traditional psychoanalysis, the theory of culture, positivism, etc. (as cited in Bat-Erdeneyn, 2016).

Jung revealed the essential role of religion in the self-improvement of man, the disclosure of his integrity in the individuation.

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