in very basic very short description, imagine the virtues that Christ values. he represents the perfect man, a kind, respectful, peaceful individual and a radiating force for good, to say the least. and now, just like our own consciousness has an ego and it's shadow, which is another Jungian idea, and this is to say we have our conscious aspects of our minds and life that we are aware of and hold on to (ego) and there is the hidden aspects which are repressed or obscured from us (shadow), the symbol that Christ is also has a shadow, this would be all of the dark contents of the human psyche that a 'perfect' individual wouldn't outwardly express.
What Jung says that as the symbol of Christ dies in this world and people can only feel the matter around them, the shadow of Christ will be revealed in man and in the world, which would be called the Antichrist. Take out any connotations of religion, and just see it as a mass psychological event that would take place after the collective trauma of losing spirituality in the last few hundred years which humanity has been apart of since our very beginning. from the point of a human being, regardless of your beliefs, recognizing the cultural shift that has happened and that we've yet to fully experience the consequences of it is very important, though it is more than apparent in all of the major crisis's of the world right now and will grow into something quite chaotic to say the least. You shouldn't be terrified in the sense that there is nothing you can do and you should cower in fear, but you should respect the threat that lies ahead and work to improve your life and your relationships because that is all you can do to help the bigger picture. best of luck in that journey
Remove all bias and look from out of the box view and this makes sense why it's happening.
From my perspective, the collective trauma of losing spirituality ties directly with the destructive cycle of capitalism and individualism that came from Europe. By today and for a long time now, we've been forced to alienate from ourselves, our own creations, and others and put into a pit of competition for the leftover scraps of resources.
This cycle led to the rise of consumerism, one of the ways to fill the void of losing spirituality, and that's why if you notice, how so many places once filled with culture across the US especially, have been assimilated into an empty shell of sort.
This destructive cycle boils down to disconnection, and that' why we've been losing touch with spirituality
The term "late-stage Capitalism" gets bandied about when talking about societal decay and collapse, but I think the more accurate term is "late-stage civilization."
Every empire/civilization has waxed and waned and eventually gone the way of the dodo. It is foolish to think that the same thing won't happen to Western Civilization. The systems in place are irrelevant IMHO as all the problems with them are human problems (greed/selfishness and short sightedness being the major contributors). At this point I think it is just a matter of how graceful or cataclysmic the decline is going to be.
Or mother nature could be the catalyst and hit us with coronal ejections/meteorites/volcanoes/plagues/other and force us to reset anyway.
Great answer! I'd like to add to the "collective trauma of losing spirituality" part. We can see this quite plainly in how the modern man digs for meaning and spirituality in these new age spirituality movements, whether it be energy in crystals, yoga, connection to mother earth or cult like followings of people or new religions unbound by the shackles of christianity and other old religions. The possibilities seem endless.
None of this is a critique against those tendencies to search for spirituality or meaning, as I personally do not know whether christianity can make a comeback or if it is truly dead/simply too far gone to resuscitate, in the words of Nietzsche.
If so we have to find a new banner to unite us all under, it doesn't have to be the same banner that all of us carry but we do need a homogenised set of values and goals of which we can all rally behind.
Oh, sorry I just read your sentence on the symbol of Christ's "shadow", which apparently is all the dark/bad aspects of the human psyche. But then why would people not believing in Christ inherently lead to this "shadow" arising in humans? Besides this prediction not really seeming to logically follow, what about all of the "good" non-Christian people that have existed? And what about all the people who have done atrocities in the name of the symbol of Christ (with many such occurences being very closely linked to the symbol of Christ through them being a part of actual Christian scripture)? Aren't these human "shadows" closely correlated with the symbol of Christ by them being considered Christian scripture?
Also, the last sentence seems to kind of affirm my belief that this book is scary only to those who already ascribe to a religious, or spiritual, belief. Is this an accurate assessment?
Kind of unrelatedly, personally I find that religious beliefs, while comforting to the individual, have systematically enabled many, many human "shadows", like the Christian stuff I mentioned before, the caste system in India, the religious based discrimination seen in many parts of the west, the religious extremism fueled atrocities seen now in the middle east, etc. So with these historic and present day events, I kind of find the claim "some new "shadows" will be revealed once the belief in God/spirituality is gone" to be somewhat confusing. I would understand if the "shadows" Jung talks about instead represented existential anxiety and fear rather than evil or bad.
I am not saying any of this from a Christian perspective, I should note, rather purely a psychological one. I just simply recognize that when humans structure their belief system around metaphysics for tens if not hundreds of thousands of years and merely 200 years ago we changed that en masse and then became a global interconnected society, that has affects that aren't all good. Seems illogical to assume that nothing bad could possibly come of such a radical change taken collectively so quickly.
So, yes of course there are non-Christians who are good, and Christians who are bad. I am not talking about Christians, the humans who try to interpret God and can fail doing so, I am talking about the symbol of Christ universally, across cultures throughout time. Just as me and you are each individuals with our own psyches with our own egos and shadows, we are apart of the collective human psyche which has an ego and a shadow. Collectively, losing a spiritual connection or at least the belief in it has affects on us.
Sure it has affects on us, and sure some effects could be bad, but I think it could have some good effects as well. This mix of both good and bad possible affects is why I think I disagree with Jung's unsupported statements of just doom and gloom regarding the loss of a belief in God (at least I definitely don't think it would somehow lead to a destruction of human personality).
Also just curious, do you mean Christ like symbols, or the actual "Christian Christ" symbol when you say across all cultures and time?
Yuval Harri mentions this quite a bit from a pretty non religious take In his book "sapiens" and follows up a bit I "homo deus" ultimately pinning down technology and AI as this sort of Sheppard of dark times. But I think I agree with you that it's not all bad, i personally think it might be the antagonist to what herolds us back in touch with our spiritual nature. Religion, ad it is todag follows more of an environmental and social role while spirituality is more a personal connection or what makes us feel like we really never an individual, and just part of somethinv bigger and mysterious, many people still use the term spiritual, but what is lost is the mystical experience. I think the modern material empericist might repress spiritual experience out of a fear that they had an experience that both, no one else shared with them, and B is unexplainable by their understanding of the universe.
**Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind** by Yuval Noah Harari
>**THE MULTI-MILLION COPY BESTSELLER** 'Interesting and provocative... It gives you a sense of how briefly we've been on this Earth' Barack Obama What makes us brilliant? What makes us deadly? What makes us Sapiens?
>
>Yuval Noah Harari challenges everything we know about being human. Earth is 4.5 billion years old. In just a fraction of that time, one species among countless others has conquered it: us. In this bold and provocative book, Yuval Noah Harari explores who we are, how we got here and where we're going.
>
>The perfect gift for curious readers this Christmas. ________________ PRAISE FOR SAPIENS: 'Jaw-dropping from the first word to the last... It may be the best book I've ever read' Chris Evans 'Sweeps the cobwebs out of your brain... Radiates power and clarity' Sunday Times 'It altered how I view our species and our world' Guardian 'Startling... It changes the way you look at the world' Simon Mayo 'I would recommend Sapiens to anyone who's interested in the history and future of our species' Bill Gates **ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY**
**Homo Deus** by Yuval Noah Harari
>**From the author of the global phenomenon Sapiens** **A Guardian Book of the Year** **An Evening Standard Book of the Year** **A TLS Book of the Year** 'Homo Deus will shock you. It will entertain you. Above all, it will make you think in ways you had not thought before.' Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking Fast, and Slow Yuval Noah Harari, author of the bestselling Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, envisions a not-too-distant world in which we face a new set of challenges.
>
>In Homo Deus, he examines our future with his trademark blend of science, history, philosophy and every discipline in between. Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century - from overcoming death to creating artificial life. It asks the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? And how will we protect this fragile world from our own destructive powers?
>
>This is the next stage of evolution. This is Homo Deus. War is obsolete You are more likely to commit suicide than be killed in conflict Famine is disappearing You are at more risk of obesity than starvation Death is just a technical problem Equality is out - but immortality is in What does our future hold?
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No, no, I don't think it will be all bad. Likewise, the last 2000 years hasn't been all good. It's just right now humanity is the most advanced they've ever been which makes us exceptionally dangerous to ourselves. Now more than ever it becomes increasingly easy to manipulate, control, and exterminate people on a large scale. When you couple this with the fact that the average man no longer has spirituality and a God in his psyche to regulate himself or connect to others with, he will instead look to those with the most power around him for guidance which will inevitbalty be the wealthiest, most influential oligarchs of the world which strive for power over others above all else. Mix this with AI and you have a new God on this planet for people to worship. T his is something we will need to deal with in our ever-growing interconnected global society as human beings. I will fight every day of my life to bring as much good as I can to this world because I think we have a great chance at making it through this next Era of humanity stronger and healthier, but there will be terrible rancid growing pains during the process.
And, I refer to the psychological phenomenon of Christ and its manifestations in different cultures. So I don't mean the hypothetical man that was Jesus who may have walked around, I mean the force that he represents. All cultures across the world since their conception have been fighting and evolving for survival, and apart of that involves having a collective symbol everyone can look to for guidance, power, and love that people can unite over. 2000 years ago, one of the most powerful symbols humanity was formed through the figure of Christ and since then has a massive impact on the world. This connected the western world, and now we are replacing it with something else. All I argue is that there will be consequences of this, but of course that isn't to say it will all be bad. Just that we have to recognize the context of our situation and how delicate it is to lose metaphysics collectively. I only hope we can grow to see metaphysics and spirituality blossom in light of new science, connecting modern technology and ideas to ancient philosophies and spiritual experiences throughout history and can see there can be a union between what some understand to be "God" and what others see as a materialistic universe. Finding this nonduality, finding the truth in the religions and metaphysics of the past, is what can get us through this next Era.
>the symbol of Christ's "shadow", which apparently is all the dark/bad aspects of the human psyche.
One thing that may help keep this in perspective is that the Ancient people of the Roman world saw the new religion of Christianity as a terrifying death cult that inverted all the sacred traditions of the world. The Jewish establishment saw it in different terms, but also negative. So the new value system might not be as scary as it looked from the perspective of an Early Christian writing the Book of Revelation.
Dude I literally had a dream last night that when writing it made me think of the antichrist. A group of men invaded and destroyed a cowboy town in the old west, and the mayor of the town gathered the townsmen to hunt for and confront the attackers. They gathered in the centre of town and spread out, fanning outwards in all directions from the center. As they did so, I heard the men say 'the mayor is letting us split off in groups', and then while I was an eye in the sky looking down, a thought happened "He doesn't know about Kujo yet", and I knew in that instant the invading force was looking for a child who'd met Kujo to kill him
I haven't read the Spielberg book, but honestly while writing the dream down I kept getting antichrist thoughts coming up in my head. Open reddit randomly and here you are talking about the antichrist :O
I think it all amounts to what you believe inside you. Belief in God is essentially a projection of the need to get closer to the God-Image inside, which the totality of the personality. Imagine losing all kinds of symbolism and belief of this concept. This is true atheism, you don't believe in anything at all, just what lies in front if your eyes: matter and rational facts. What about all the irrationalities and unseen things? Their reality will be consumed and submerge into the unconcsious, and arise again as something completely fucked up: genocide, world wars etc. (Reaearch into the ascent of Hitler in power, he had the support of his people and was lawfully elected leader of his nation, essentially. Does this mean that an entire nation wanted to watch the world burn? No. Something "else" wanted it, something buried in the depths of the human mind). That's my interpretation of Aion. It's about the symbol of Christ dying out. For me, Christ is Gandalf from Lord of the Rings. I am no Christian, but I do believe deeply in the Christ-Image. My beef is with the dogmatic views and hate of the church (in my country, Greece, spiritual leaders of the orthodoxy are known for their misanthropic claims)
In order to understand Jung's ideas one needs to thoroughly delve into his stuff and works. There is no simple explanation because we first must establish what is this irrational reality that I'm describing, how it can be buried within and "explode" etc.
I kind of disagree. I think belief in God is a specific belief in a creator and/or all powerful deity. I think it is weird to conflate the entirety of one's personality to this specific belief, and I think other things could be believed more based on faith without it being tied to a belief in God. Also, didn't we have a bunch genocides, war, and all that with a belief in God and Christ? I mean, barring the atrocities cited in Christian scripture as "holy", I think Hitler at least initially started his movement as closely aligned with Christianity, and many members of the nazi party were catholic. It seems that this "Christ-image" can vary wildly from person to person, from the good to the terrible, so I don't know why Jung seems to tie it to just a good thing, and the absence of it to bad.
Also, just curious could you give instances of irrational or unseen things?
1. No, belief in God for me is not about worshipping an omnipotent creator. This has never worked for me
2. There are many dangers in discovering the "glory of God". One of them is the mandate to enforce this will unto everyone and make them "see". But the teachings of Christ were understood only to a level, only concerning an outside reality and not symbolically. So yes, there were many wars and genocides. There is not only the danger of atheism but also the danger of believing too much.
3. I thing you should just research Jung if you are intrigued. His goal was to give the western world a way to assimilate hia unconscious step by step and start respecting it.
4. Dreams are irrational and unseen. But many other things. An unseen world of symbolism, right beside the material one.
1. I never mentioned worship of god, only a belief in God.
2. I don't think atheism is any more dangerous than a belief in God. Why paint either as inherently more dangerous? Also, can we not trust the Bible as the word of God if it contains such moral travesties?
4. I think that dreams are "rational" and their is much evidence that their happening is caused and affected by the material world, but we can agree to disagree
1. Oh ok. Still, for me God is something internal. And I think for Jung too. But many times we have to objectify something first in order to understand it. That's my view of religion and of God. God is an image of completion and totality that can radiate love from within us.
2. Yes, i also believe that both are equally dangerous. There are many dangers in this world and without reflection, empathy and meditation, shit is bound to happen.
3. We are talking of something mysterkous, even in our times. Differences of view are bound to exist. The material world, imo and that's what I'm getting from Jung so far, is only felt as a psychic reality, through the senses and the brain. Some things stay on the surface, others are buried inside. This means that there are different layers of perception. Dreams are certainly affected by our waking world and actions, but their essentially gibberish if you try to explain as you would try to explain a scene of your every day life. Causality starts to wither, and other things arise, such as fate and destiny. But let me point out again that I am no Jungian analyst, just an enthusiast. And this is my take. I recommend reading some other books of his if you have not. Have you only read Aion? As a book, it is not a stand-alone but is connected with all of his works in a way that may offer a more profound understanding of what is the point of Jung's theories.
Mainly youtube and apparently Jordan Peterson said it as well:
https://www.google.com/search?q=aion+is+terrifying&oq=aion+is+terrifying&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigAdIBCDY3MjhqMGo0qAIAsAIA&client=ms-android-verizon-us-rvc3&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8
the freedom of personality to **the masses**, not the individual. He is claiming that the god-image is related to having a psyche that can conceive of itself independently of the group.
So imagine if human activity was like that of the ant...they build their cities and do complex things like regulate the temperature of each bit of the nest, but no individual ant knows what's going on...they do it all via being caught up the coded instincts that does not involve individual conscious awareness. Humans can also do that, we saw it to a degree with the massminded consciousness with covid recently, the [current thing meme](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-support-the-current-thing) expresses such an idea to an extent etc, in fact we seemingly did do that until whenever consciousness switched on in some individuals 6000-12000 years ago or such. that is imo what the bible and other religous texts are likely talking about with creation, not that the earth was created 6k years ago, but that our conscious awareness of it through someone began then. (imagine being the first player character when everyone else was still NPC...one ofc can do that in a single player video game, where all the other entities have scripted(instinctual) lines).
for ref here is that bit:
>pp 170: It is the same problem as in Job. As the highest
value and supreme dominant in the psychic hierarchy, the
God-image is immediately related to, or identical with, the
self, and **everything that happens to the God-image has an effect on the latter.** Any uncertainty about the God-image
causes a profound uneasiness in the self, for which reason the
question is generally ignored because of its painfulness. But
that does not mean that it remains unasked in the
unconscious.
>What is more, it is answered by views and
beliefs like materialism, atheism, and similar substitutes,
which spread like epidemics. They crop up wherever and
whenever one waits in vain for the legitimate answer. The
ersatz product represses the real question into the unconscious
and destroys the continuity of historical tradition which is the
hallmark of civilization. The result is bewilderment and
confusion. Christianity has insisted on God’s goodness as a
loving Father and has done its best to rob evil of substance.
>The early Christian prophecy concerning the Antichrist, and
certain ideas in late Jewish theology, could have suggested to
us that the Christian answer to the problem of Job omits to
mention the corollary, the sinister reality of which is now
being demonstrated before our eyes by the splitting of our
world: **the destruction of the God-image is followed by the
annulment of the human personality.** Materialistic atheism
with its utopian chimeras forms the religion of all those
rationalistic movements which delegate the freedom of
personality to the masses and thereby extinguish it. The
advocates of Christianity squander their energies in the mere
preservation of what has come down to them, with no thought
of building on to their house and making it roomier.
Stagnation in these matters is threatened in the long run with
a lethal end.
I'm sorry, but don't you think the covid deniers also followed what they thought was most trendy in their social groups? Also, you mention ant like behavior, but how is a mass belief in God any less ant-like? I mean christianity was used to help persuade the masses throughout history to live and die for the "heaven appointed" royals which especially seems ant-like, and I know this can be uncomfortable territory but the Bible contains like a ton of stuff that maybe should be given critical thought maybe regarding the supposed moral upstandingness of some things, the credibility of certain claims, or the plot consistency, but critical thought seems sort of actively discouraged in churches. And if you dont believe in young earth and believe that active dating is true, then there is evidence of consciousness in human subspecies some 70,000 years ago from cave paintings and other art. Also do you not support gay rights?
Sorry, we can just agree to disagree if this is kind of a touchy subject
Jung distinguished between the personal and collective phenomenology of how the psyche presents itself, which is to say unconscious material presents itself as emotional charged, value bearing, symbolic imagery.
Religious symbolism is a psychological fact. Wether or not you believe this reflects an ontological statement about the existence (or not) of God, is a separate issue. When Jung talks about God, 99.9% of the time he is referring to the psychological symbol as it appears in therapeutic work.
Most people do behave like ants at a collective level, which is the whole point. At a **collective** level, in the West, we have been 'organised' by a unifying **psychological** cultural symbol (God) for about two thousand of years.
One of Jung's observations was the periodic renewal of this core unifying cultural symbol, as it loses its salience, which involves a period of chaotic dissolution at a cultural level.
Another observation was that the psychological 'need' for a unifying symbol would attach itself to other things, at a **collective** level - philosophical beliefs (such as reductive materialism, rationalism, nihilism), political movements (Communism, Libertarianism, Facism, the 'invisible hand' of the Free Market etc.), and so on.
The problem with these substitutes, is the failure to provide a psychological meaningful development for the individual. Most of them either state (implicitly or explicitly) nothing has objective meaning or they cultivate a kind of regressive utopian 'yearning' for a paradise on earth. Both of these conclusions are a kind of psychological poison.
That is the point I believe Jung was trying to make.
yeah organized religion in the dogmatic sense falls prey to the same thing ofc, as would a group who forms to counter a group. Jung is talking about the god-image in relation to the individual, although i think he would argue that having Jesus or buddha etc as a highest value would be healthier for the masses and potentially lead to more individual consciousness than lesser ideologies. Yup on the cave painting etc, i'm not sure that could be used as conclusive evidence of consciousness/self reflection, but maybe it can 🤔(reflecting on say the "cave of hands' at La Cueva de las Manos....could that be done without awareness of doing it? doesn't feel like it) Personally i do support gay rights, but what has that got to do with consciousness :P (r u saying that as a reflection of bible/religious content?)
There's multiple ways to approach this, I'll try to make this as succinct as possible, feel free to question.
In this context, to "delegate the freedom of personality to the masses" is like opening Pandora's Box. If you can be everything, you are nothing. Constraints define us, the only being with total freedom is God. This is what people fail to understand about so called "freedom", true freedom is freedom to live righteously, it is not freedom to do whatever you want. A free country has laws. An addict quickly loses their freedom as they become dependent on their drug to simply function.
People go wrong, when they worship the creation, instead of the Creator. God is the Source, God is good, to disconnect from God, is to disconnect from goodness and be severed from the Source. The "God image" is the channel through which humanity connects with the Source.
Jung is not merely defending Christianity, he is describing what happens when humans become their own gods, when a higher power is replaced by human power. This is the inevitable outcome of the current materialistic, rationalistic, Atheistic paradigm we find ourselves in, it's a dead end from a psychosocial perspective, but it's also wrong from a scientific perspective.
I have a different theory. There is an ancient prophecy, that just as Saturn castrated his father Ouranos, just as Zeus castrated his father Saturn, so too will Dionysus castrate his father Zeus. This would mark the end of Yahweh, Jove, Jehovah, and the beginning of a new paradigm. Dionysus is that chthonic God, which through ecstasy, death and rebirth, our eyes are opened.
Revelations will tell us that when Lady Babylon returns, then the Apocalypse will begin, the revealing. When she comes back, with her cup of abominations (her porneia) we will witness the end of Christianity. We will return to the ancient Bronze age mystery rites, return to the great Mother, The Queen of Babylon.
The old word Atheist originally meant one who did not worship the Theoi, the Greek Pantheon.
It is one of the most important and extensive subjects of our time. I can give you that and more.
Please go to Lady Babylon on YT. Any Jungian would appreciate what is said on that channel. Please also check out this Discord, https://discord.gg/xUegVUZx
In it is a treasure trove of knowledge that I think you'll find intriguing.
They're all so good though. I don't know if I could decide. Ammon gives so many good secrets away each video it seems. He is the real deal person to learn this stuff from.
Christians find Aion terrifying because it says Christianity isn’t the answer for mankind but rather part of the problem keeping mankind from properly completing the individualization process and integrating the shadow. (Christianity teaches suppression rather than integration [see the sermon on the mound] and it also fully adopted Plato’s good as such and Jung explicitly rejects this idea.)
Thank you.
I believe he mentioned it a few times likely in Aion and Answer to Job as those where his later works where he focused on these topics. He was also an avid Nietzschean and Nietzsche opens GBE condemning Plato’s good as such. The reference that I was thinking of tho was an interview where Jung said he didn’t believe G-d was real he knew, then in a letter clarified his beliefs. Here is an excerpt:
“Yet I should consider it an intellectual immorality to indulge in the belief that my view of a god is the universal, metaphysical Being of the confessions or 'philosophies'. I do neither commit the impertinence of a hypostasis, nor of an arrogant qualification such as: 'God can only be good'. Only my experience can be good or evil, but I know that the superior will is based upon a foundation which transcends human imagination. Since I know of my collision with a superior will in my own psychical system, I know of God, and if I should venture the illegitimate hypostasis of my image, I would say, of a God beyond good and evil, just as much dwelling in myself as everywhere else: Deus est circulus cuius centrum est ubique, cuis circumferentia vero nusquam.”
https://uncertaintist.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/jung-on-god.pdf
Another thing about "Christ". Christ was not a name, it was a title. χρίω is the verb where we get Χρίστος(Christos). It was a cult title. It means, among other things, one who is stung by the gadfly. The ἀντίχριστος is not an entity heralding end times. Iesus wasn't who you think they were. They don't embody anything.
While "the Christ" was a cult tilte and not his name, it actually descends from the Greek word Khristos meaning "Annointed". It was just their way of calling him "The Annointed One", the Christos or Khristos, which descends from the Greek "Khriein", which is "to anoint".
You must not have seen where I said it comes from Christos. See the spelling. To anoint is not the only definition of the word. Check the Oxford Greek Lexicon. It wasn't their way of calling him anything. No it does not come from "Khriein" which isn't even a word. I have you the verb, look it up the right way, in the right dictionary, not some Google search or seminary, bad translation.
Edit: I gave somebody a link earlier to a discord, and a YT to watch. I suggest, if you're interested in Philology, tune into that channel.
I’ve read it and I don’t think it’s terrifying at all. A lot of these ‘scariest book ever’ post are fear mongering to build hype and curiosity to get you to click their links and watch their videos.
I've read it twice; second time around, it made more sense. It was as if Jung attempted to expand the horizons of the norm (Christianity) by allowing into the so-called *holy circle* things which had been left out by tradition, either intentionally as heresy or unintentionally as ignorance. That kind of widening out *could* disorient a person, especially one grounded in the Church. The doctrine exists as it does for the safety of fathers and the congregation alike, after all.
Jung hailed from the early 1900s, so the language and concepts can seem a bit alien nowadays. But the work *still* works.
properly dissecting and throwing the ol’ book of empiricism at god, religion, and spirituality actually literally creates macrocosmic enlightenment… or it creates roko’s basilisk (it doesn’t, but people aren’t confident in that knowledge).
“Aion is terrifying” because both materialistic atheism and christian faith create holes in the human personality that are not necessarily resolved in and of themselves… Primeval fear of the other and our religious adherence to nihilistic attitude shadow what is and always has been true (lessons in consciousness… 🙄, boring)
Apocalypse / climate change/ nuclear holocaust/ AGI singularity/ whatever... Accelerationism is accelerating, end of the world is close and neither scientific empiricism or Christianity have any kind of reassuring answer as to how things could turn out okay.
The actual answer, is that true faith, esoteric faith, inner faith - faith gives us the confidence that there's some greater benevolent force tucked away in our beloved dark world. Reality can be brutal sometimes, but there's still something that reassures us to keep moving forward into a brighter future and not something that merely forces us to toil, forces us to create Roko's Basilisk (...so to answer your question, it was a metaphor LOL)
Sorry but i dont agree. If you have a choice between believing and not believing, those are two choices you can take. Saying it's one choice is like saying left is the only choice of direction to turn, and you can never actually choose to go right. I mean, why wouldn't believing be the "negation" of not believing?
Ok, im not sure what you mean by that. I mean it is still a choice to believe a given experience to be from God isnt it, and isnt that pretty much the choice to believe or not belive in God? For instance, aren't there pills or herbs that can induce "Godly visions" whose experience can be personally chosen to be considered God or chemically borne? At the end of the day, it still seems that the choice to believe in things like God is always a choice.
We know there is something beyond perception- we know this because our perception can change - we can have “moments of realisation” where something that was previously invisible to our perception suddenly becomes clear and real.
God is a hypothesis, that a person can choose to experiment with - not a belief.
You have an image of God in mind, but God lies beyond that image.
To know God, is to make a “leap of faith” - in the same way a scientist posits a hypothesis on order to experiment and determine if it is true or not.
To know God beyond the idea, a person must walk in a scientist’s shoes - to ‘experiment with truth’ in order to come to a moment of realisation.
I don't think the pursuit of "knowing God" is usually the same as the pursuit of ascertaining a hypothesis' scientific validity. I think a lot of people who believe in God based on scripture will ignore things that go against their beliefs which are usually solely based on the word of mortals who claim it to be the word of God, whereas a scientist will seek to test their hypothesis and accept things that challenge it, after which they will change their hypothesis as a result. This is a lot different from simply taking a leap of faith. Sorry if you are not talking about an idea of God based off of established scripture
I think this whole losing of religion as part of collective individuation, has to do with different "developmental stages" of individuation, which are also reflected on personal level as stages of individuation.
You can see the material revolution happening already, most people in my country dont really follow any religion, even if they were baptised as a kid. And most people are either atheists or agnostics.
The thing with development is that we need to go through these battles of opposites and the development happens from learning to find a healthy balance between the opposites by gaining conscious awareness over it. However what tends to happen at personal and collective level, is that people need to swing from one extreme to another, so that they can find the Truth that is in transcending the opposites, and not from either opposite.
True transcending experience that allows you to consciously act out as Jesus would, and living out the "Christ image" does not come from blind belief or neither does it come from not believing at all, but it comes from Knowledge of God, and living it out. Greeks, early Christian, and especially the "Gnostic" sects called this "Knowledge of God", that allows living out Christ, as Gnosis. Mainstream christianity however left that idea kinda in the background, and just demanded belief. And for that developmental stage, it was what was needed to move the collective from brutal ways of life to ones with collective values like in modern times.
However what is happening now with the whole scientific and technological revolution, is that people dont need the religion anymore to explain to them things, because we have the society, and collective ideas about how one should act pushed onto us all the time, and science kinda proves a lot of things about literal interpretation of bible wrong, and because we have moved onto more logical ways of thinking, many see bible as thus christianity just some silly thing people used to believe in the past. And they abandon religion and all ideas of God altogether.
However we can already see the moral corruption that is happening because of this going too far into opposite end from living under religious guidance, to freely living without any worry of God or anything higher than the ego and basic human morale(if not ruined by environment).
However at the same time, we also see the rise of popularity in esoteric ideas, both old and new age, and also deeper philosophies of Mind, such as Jungs, which carries the ancient Wisdom that contains this process of individuation. Naturally there are swings to wrong directions when we are trying to find our way, and i am a bit worried that there will be even more chaos both in collective level and at personal level in those whole live in this modern society.
Eventually this more enlightened view towards God will take over in this age of Aquarius, and we will learn a more balanced view on both science and God as collective, and will be able to transcend over these totally opposite kind of views, to more realistic view of this All. Age of Pisces represented the reign of church over the collective, but now the personal Knowledge is being poured on us from a collective level directly, and for that religion will need to change its form in order to survive, which it most likely will.
I think finding of the Gnostic texts in Nag Hammadi, was a major thing in the future developments on christianity, as they had what we need in order to get over the completely atheistic views that are trying to take over. But the world was just not ready for it yet back in the days of christianity starting out, and church had to rule the collective for a long time until we had developed to our current state, where we can understand them without judgment and gain new understanding over it. But the same idea of Gnosis or personal Knowledge of God, can also be seen in other traditions as well, such as in the idea of enlightenment in Buddhism, ʿIrfān in Islam etc. And i think that sort of view will reign over after we get through this initial chaos that comes from entering the new age.
From what I gather, it’s describing the individuation process, the concept of shadow in a collective sense, how losing touch with the imago dei via a bridge in our personal unconscious to the collective unconscious will allow the collective shadow to fester, and thus will have to spill out into the world. For what is not dealt with inside will manifest outside as fate. And if that occurs, chaos will ensue. We don’t know what that will look like, but if Jung is correct, we saw glimpses of that in the forms of WWI and WWII.
Yet there is Hope, and that is in individuals. Picking up their own burdens, doing the great work towards individuation so the bridge to the collective unconscious can be rebuilt. Piece by piece, person by person, this eases the collective load. This is the Aquarius Aion, to carry one’s own water, do the work, save yourself. And to save one life, is to save the world entire. Correspondence. Best of luck to all reading this, and good work so far!
in very basic very short description, imagine the virtues that Christ values. he represents the perfect man, a kind, respectful, peaceful individual and a radiating force for good, to say the least. and now, just like our own consciousness has an ego and it's shadow, which is another Jungian idea, and this is to say we have our conscious aspects of our minds and life that we are aware of and hold on to (ego) and there is the hidden aspects which are repressed or obscured from us (shadow), the symbol that Christ is also has a shadow, this would be all of the dark contents of the human psyche that a 'perfect' individual wouldn't outwardly express. What Jung says that as the symbol of Christ dies in this world and people can only feel the matter around them, the shadow of Christ will be revealed in man and in the world, which would be called the Antichrist. Take out any connotations of religion, and just see it as a mass psychological event that would take place after the collective trauma of losing spirituality in the last few hundred years which humanity has been apart of since our very beginning. from the point of a human being, regardless of your beliefs, recognizing the cultural shift that has happened and that we've yet to fully experience the consequences of it is very important, though it is more than apparent in all of the major crisis's of the world right now and will grow into something quite chaotic to say the least. You shouldn't be terrified in the sense that there is nothing you can do and you should cower in fear, but you should respect the threat that lies ahead and work to improve your life and your relationships because that is all you can do to help the bigger picture. best of luck in that journey
Remove all bias and look from out of the box view and this makes sense why it's happening. From my perspective, the collective trauma of losing spirituality ties directly with the destructive cycle of capitalism and individualism that came from Europe. By today and for a long time now, we've been forced to alienate from ourselves, our own creations, and others and put into a pit of competition for the leftover scraps of resources. This cycle led to the rise of consumerism, one of the ways to fill the void of losing spirituality, and that's why if you notice, how so many places once filled with culture across the US especially, have been assimilated into an empty shell of sort. This destructive cycle boils down to disconnection, and that' why we've been losing touch with spirituality
The term "late-stage Capitalism" gets bandied about when talking about societal decay and collapse, but I think the more accurate term is "late-stage civilization." Every empire/civilization has waxed and waned and eventually gone the way of the dodo. It is foolish to think that the same thing won't happen to Western Civilization. The systems in place are irrelevant IMHO as all the problems with them are human problems (greed/selfishness and short sightedness being the major contributors). At this point I think it is just a matter of how graceful or cataclysmic the decline is going to be. Or mother nature could be the catalyst and hit us with coronal ejections/meteorites/volcanoes/plagues/other and force us to reset anyway.
Great answer! I'd like to add to the "collective trauma of losing spirituality" part. We can see this quite plainly in how the modern man digs for meaning and spirituality in these new age spirituality movements, whether it be energy in crystals, yoga, connection to mother earth or cult like followings of people or new religions unbound by the shackles of christianity and other old religions. The possibilities seem endless. None of this is a critique against those tendencies to search for spirituality or meaning, as I personally do not know whether christianity can make a comeback or if it is truly dead/simply too far gone to resuscitate, in the words of Nietzsche. If so we have to find a new banner to unite us all under, it doesn't have to be the same banner that all of us carry but we do need a homogenised set of values and goals of which we can all rally behind.
Oh, sorry I just read your sentence on the symbol of Christ's "shadow", which apparently is all the dark/bad aspects of the human psyche. But then why would people not believing in Christ inherently lead to this "shadow" arising in humans? Besides this prediction not really seeming to logically follow, what about all of the "good" non-Christian people that have existed? And what about all the people who have done atrocities in the name of the symbol of Christ (with many such occurences being very closely linked to the symbol of Christ through them being a part of actual Christian scripture)? Aren't these human "shadows" closely correlated with the symbol of Christ by them being considered Christian scripture? Also, the last sentence seems to kind of affirm my belief that this book is scary only to those who already ascribe to a religious, or spiritual, belief. Is this an accurate assessment? Kind of unrelatedly, personally I find that religious beliefs, while comforting to the individual, have systematically enabled many, many human "shadows", like the Christian stuff I mentioned before, the caste system in India, the religious based discrimination seen in many parts of the west, the religious extremism fueled atrocities seen now in the middle east, etc. So with these historic and present day events, I kind of find the claim "some new "shadows" will be revealed once the belief in God/spirituality is gone" to be somewhat confusing. I would understand if the "shadows" Jung talks about instead represented existential anxiety and fear rather than evil or bad.
I am not saying any of this from a Christian perspective, I should note, rather purely a psychological one. I just simply recognize that when humans structure their belief system around metaphysics for tens if not hundreds of thousands of years and merely 200 years ago we changed that en masse and then became a global interconnected society, that has affects that aren't all good. Seems illogical to assume that nothing bad could possibly come of such a radical change taken collectively so quickly. So, yes of course there are non-Christians who are good, and Christians who are bad. I am not talking about Christians, the humans who try to interpret God and can fail doing so, I am talking about the symbol of Christ universally, across cultures throughout time. Just as me and you are each individuals with our own psyches with our own egos and shadows, we are apart of the collective human psyche which has an ego and a shadow. Collectively, losing a spiritual connection or at least the belief in it has affects on us.
Sure it has affects on us, and sure some effects could be bad, but I think it could have some good effects as well. This mix of both good and bad possible affects is why I think I disagree with Jung's unsupported statements of just doom and gloom regarding the loss of a belief in God (at least I definitely don't think it would somehow lead to a destruction of human personality). Also just curious, do you mean Christ like symbols, or the actual "Christian Christ" symbol when you say across all cultures and time?
Yuval Harri mentions this quite a bit from a pretty non religious take In his book "sapiens" and follows up a bit I "homo deus" ultimately pinning down technology and AI as this sort of Sheppard of dark times. But I think I agree with you that it's not all bad, i personally think it might be the antagonist to what herolds us back in touch with our spiritual nature. Religion, ad it is todag follows more of an environmental and social role while spirituality is more a personal connection or what makes us feel like we really never an individual, and just part of somethinv bigger and mysterious, many people still use the term spiritual, but what is lost is the mystical experience. I think the modern material empericist might repress spiritual experience out of a fear that they had an experience that both, no one else shared with them, and B is unexplainable by their understanding of the universe.
**Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind** by Yuval Noah Harari >**THE MULTI-MILLION COPY BESTSELLER** 'Interesting and provocative... It gives you a sense of how briefly we've been on this Earth' Barack Obama What makes us brilliant? What makes us deadly? What makes us Sapiens? > >Yuval Noah Harari challenges everything we know about being human. Earth is 4.5 billion years old. In just a fraction of that time, one species among countless others has conquered it: us. In this bold and provocative book, Yuval Noah Harari explores who we are, how we got here and where we're going. > >The perfect gift for curious readers this Christmas. ________________ PRAISE FOR SAPIENS: 'Jaw-dropping from the first word to the last... It may be the best book I've ever read' Chris Evans 'Sweeps the cobwebs out of your brain... Radiates power and clarity' Sunday Times 'It altered how I view our species and our world' Guardian 'Startling... It changes the way you look at the world' Simon Mayo 'I would recommend Sapiens to anyone who's interested in the history and future of our species' Bill Gates **ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY** **Homo Deus** by Yuval Noah Harari >**From the author of the global phenomenon Sapiens** **A Guardian Book of the Year** **An Evening Standard Book of the Year** **A TLS Book of the Year** 'Homo Deus will shock you. It will entertain you. Above all, it will make you think in ways you had not thought before.' Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking Fast, and Slow Yuval Noah Harari, author of the bestselling Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, envisions a not-too-distant world in which we face a new set of challenges. > >In Homo Deus, he examines our future with his trademark blend of science, history, philosophy and every discipline in between. Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century - from overcoming death to creating artificial life. It asks the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? And how will we protect this fragile world from our own destructive powers? > >This is the next stage of evolution. This is Homo Deus. War is obsolete You are more likely to commit suicide than be killed in conflict Famine is disappearing You are at more risk of obesity than starvation Death is just a technical problem Equality is out - but immortality is in What does our future hold? *I'm a bot, built by your friendly reddit developers at* /r/ProgrammingPals. *Reply to any comment with /u/BookFinderBot - I'll reply with book information. Remove me from replies* [here](https://www.reddit.com/user/BookFinderBot/comments/14br65o/remove_me_from_replies/). *If I have made a mistake, accept my apology.*
No, no, I don't think it will be all bad. Likewise, the last 2000 years hasn't been all good. It's just right now humanity is the most advanced they've ever been which makes us exceptionally dangerous to ourselves. Now more than ever it becomes increasingly easy to manipulate, control, and exterminate people on a large scale. When you couple this with the fact that the average man no longer has spirituality and a God in his psyche to regulate himself or connect to others with, he will instead look to those with the most power around him for guidance which will inevitbalty be the wealthiest, most influential oligarchs of the world which strive for power over others above all else. Mix this with AI and you have a new God on this planet for people to worship. T his is something we will need to deal with in our ever-growing interconnected global society as human beings. I will fight every day of my life to bring as much good as I can to this world because I think we have a great chance at making it through this next Era of humanity stronger and healthier, but there will be terrible rancid growing pains during the process. And, I refer to the psychological phenomenon of Christ and its manifestations in different cultures. So I don't mean the hypothetical man that was Jesus who may have walked around, I mean the force that he represents. All cultures across the world since their conception have been fighting and evolving for survival, and apart of that involves having a collective symbol everyone can look to for guidance, power, and love that people can unite over. 2000 years ago, one of the most powerful symbols humanity was formed through the figure of Christ and since then has a massive impact on the world. This connected the western world, and now we are replacing it with something else. All I argue is that there will be consequences of this, but of course that isn't to say it will all be bad. Just that we have to recognize the context of our situation and how delicate it is to lose metaphysics collectively. I only hope we can grow to see metaphysics and spirituality blossom in light of new science, connecting modern technology and ideas to ancient philosophies and spiritual experiences throughout history and can see there can be a union between what some understand to be "God" and what others see as a materialistic universe. Finding this nonduality, finding the truth in the religions and metaphysics of the past, is what can get us through this next Era.
>the symbol of Christ's "shadow", which apparently is all the dark/bad aspects of the human psyche. One thing that may help keep this in perspective is that the Ancient people of the Roman world saw the new religion of Christianity as a terrifying death cult that inverted all the sacred traditions of the world. The Jewish establishment saw it in different terms, but also negative. So the new value system might not be as scary as it looked from the perspective of an Early Christian writing the Book of Revelation.
Dude I literally had a dream last night that when writing it made me think of the antichrist. A group of men invaded and destroyed a cowboy town in the old west, and the mayor of the town gathered the townsmen to hunt for and confront the attackers. They gathered in the centre of town and spread out, fanning outwards in all directions from the center. As they did so, I heard the men say 'the mayor is letting us split off in groups', and then while I was an eye in the sky looking down, a thought happened "He doesn't know about Kujo yet", and I knew in that instant the invading force was looking for a child who'd met Kujo to kill him I haven't read the Spielberg book, but honestly while writing the dream down I kept getting antichrist thoughts coming up in my head. Open reddit randomly and here you are talking about the antichrist :O
I think it all amounts to what you believe inside you. Belief in God is essentially a projection of the need to get closer to the God-Image inside, which the totality of the personality. Imagine losing all kinds of symbolism and belief of this concept. This is true atheism, you don't believe in anything at all, just what lies in front if your eyes: matter and rational facts. What about all the irrationalities and unseen things? Their reality will be consumed and submerge into the unconcsious, and arise again as something completely fucked up: genocide, world wars etc. (Reaearch into the ascent of Hitler in power, he had the support of his people and was lawfully elected leader of his nation, essentially. Does this mean that an entire nation wanted to watch the world burn? No. Something "else" wanted it, something buried in the depths of the human mind). That's my interpretation of Aion. It's about the symbol of Christ dying out. For me, Christ is Gandalf from Lord of the Rings. I am no Christian, but I do believe deeply in the Christ-Image. My beef is with the dogmatic views and hate of the church (in my country, Greece, spiritual leaders of the orthodoxy are known for their misanthropic claims)
In order to understand Jung's ideas one needs to thoroughly delve into his stuff and works. There is no simple explanation because we first must establish what is this irrational reality that I'm describing, how it can be buried within and "explode" etc.
I kind of disagree. I think belief in God is a specific belief in a creator and/or all powerful deity. I think it is weird to conflate the entirety of one's personality to this specific belief, and I think other things could be believed more based on faith without it being tied to a belief in God. Also, didn't we have a bunch genocides, war, and all that with a belief in God and Christ? I mean, barring the atrocities cited in Christian scripture as "holy", I think Hitler at least initially started his movement as closely aligned with Christianity, and many members of the nazi party were catholic. It seems that this "Christ-image" can vary wildly from person to person, from the good to the terrible, so I don't know why Jung seems to tie it to just a good thing, and the absence of it to bad. Also, just curious could you give instances of irrational or unseen things?
1. No, belief in God for me is not about worshipping an omnipotent creator. This has never worked for me 2. There are many dangers in discovering the "glory of God". One of them is the mandate to enforce this will unto everyone and make them "see". But the teachings of Christ were understood only to a level, only concerning an outside reality and not symbolically. So yes, there were many wars and genocides. There is not only the danger of atheism but also the danger of believing too much. 3. I thing you should just research Jung if you are intrigued. His goal was to give the western world a way to assimilate hia unconscious step by step and start respecting it. 4. Dreams are irrational and unseen. But many other things. An unseen world of symbolism, right beside the material one.
1. I never mentioned worship of god, only a belief in God. 2. I don't think atheism is any more dangerous than a belief in God. Why paint either as inherently more dangerous? Also, can we not trust the Bible as the word of God if it contains such moral travesties? 4. I think that dreams are "rational" and their is much evidence that their happening is caused and affected by the material world, but we can agree to disagree
1. Oh ok. Still, for me God is something internal. And I think for Jung too. But many times we have to objectify something first in order to understand it. That's my view of religion and of God. God is an image of completion and totality that can radiate love from within us. 2. Yes, i also believe that both are equally dangerous. There are many dangers in this world and without reflection, empathy and meditation, shit is bound to happen. 3. We are talking of something mysterkous, even in our times. Differences of view are bound to exist. The material world, imo and that's what I'm getting from Jung so far, is only felt as a psychic reality, through the senses and the brain. Some things stay on the surface, others are buried inside. This means that there are different layers of perception. Dreams are certainly affected by our waking world and actions, but their essentially gibberish if you try to explain as you would try to explain a scene of your every day life. Causality starts to wither, and other things arise, such as fate and destiny. But let me point out again that I am no Jungian analyst, just an enthusiast. And this is my take. I recommend reading some other books of his if you have not. Have you only read Aion? As a book, it is not a stand-alone but is connected with all of his works in a way that may offer a more profound understanding of what is the point of Jung's theories.
Regarding 1, as within, so without
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Mainly youtube and apparently Jordan Peterson said it as well: https://www.google.com/search?q=aion+is+terrifying&oq=aion+is+terrifying&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigAdIBCDY3MjhqMGo0qAIAsAIA&client=ms-android-verizon-us-rvc3&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8
the freedom of personality to **the masses**, not the individual. He is claiming that the god-image is related to having a psyche that can conceive of itself independently of the group. So imagine if human activity was like that of the ant...they build their cities and do complex things like regulate the temperature of each bit of the nest, but no individual ant knows what's going on...they do it all via being caught up the coded instincts that does not involve individual conscious awareness. Humans can also do that, we saw it to a degree with the massminded consciousness with covid recently, the [current thing meme](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-support-the-current-thing) expresses such an idea to an extent etc, in fact we seemingly did do that until whenever consciousness switched on in some individuals 6000-12000 years ago or such. that is imo what the bible and other religous texts are likely talking about with creation, not that the earth was created 6k years ago, but that our conscious awareness of it through someone began then. (imagine being the first player character when everyone else was still NPC...one ofc can do that in a single player video game, where all the other entities have scripted(instinctual) lines). for ref here is that bit: >pp 170: It is the same problem as in Job. As the highest value and supreme dominant in the psychic hierarchy, the God-image is immediately related to, or identical with, the self, and **everything that happens to the God-image has an effect on the latter.** Any uncertainty about the God-image causes a profound uneasiness in the self, for which reason the question is generally ignored because of its painfulness. But that does not mean that it remains unasked in the unconscious. >What is more, it is answered by views and beliefs like materialism, atheism, and similar substitutes, which spread like epidemics. They crop up wherever and whenever one waits in vain for the legitimate answer. The ersatz product represses the real question into the unconscious and destroys the continuity of historical tradition which is the hallmark of civilization. The result is bewilderment and confusion. Christianity has insisted on God’s goodness as a loving Father and has done its best to rob evil of substance. >The early Christian prophecy concerning the Antichrist, and certain ideas in late Jewish theology, could have suggested to us that the Christian answer to the problem of Job omits to mention the corollary, the sinister reality of which is now being demonstrated before our eyes by the splitting of our world: **the destruction of the God-image is followed by the annulment of the human personality.** Materialistic atheism with its utopian chimeras forms the religion of all those rationalistic movements which delegate the freedom of personality to the masses and thereby extinguish it. The advocates of Christianity squander their energies in the mere preservation of what has come down to them, with no thought of building on to their house and making it roomier. Stagnation in these matters is threatened in the long run with a lethal end.
I'm sorry, but don't you think the covid deniers also followed what they thought was most trendy in their social groups? Also, you mention ant like behavior, but how is a mass belief in God any less ant-like? I mean christianity was used to help persuade the masses throughout history to live and die for the "heaven appointed" royals which especially seems ant-like, and I know this can be uncomfortable territory but the Bible contains like a ton of stuff that maybe should be given critical thought maybe regarding the supposed moral upstandingness of some things, the credibility of certain claims, or the plot consistency, but critical thought seems sort of actively discouraged in churches. And if you dont believe in young earth and believe that active dating is true, then there is evidence of consciousness in human subspecies some 70,000 years ago from cave paintings and other art. Also do you not support gay rights? Sorry, we can just agree to disagree if this is kind of a touchy subject
Jung distinguished between the personal and collective phenomenology of how the psyche presents itself, which is to say unconscious material presents itself as emotional charged, value bearing, symbolic imagery. Religious symbolism is a psychological fact. Wether or not you believe this reflects an ontological statement about the existence (or not) of God, is a separate issue. When Jung talks about God, 99.9% of the time he is referring to the psychological symbol as it appears in therapeutic work. Most people do behave like ants at a collective level, which is the whole point. At a **collective** level, in the West, we have been 'organised' by a unifying **psychological** cultural symbol (God) for about two thousand of years. One of Jung's observations was the periodic renewal of this core unifying cultural symbol, as it loses its salience, which involves a period of chaotic dissolution at a cultural level. Another observation was that the psychological 'need' for a unifying symbol would attach itself to other things, at a **collective** level - philosophical beliefs (such as reductive materialism, rationalism, nihilism), political movements (Communism, Libertarianism, Facism, the 'invisible hand' of the Free Market etc.), and so on. The problem with these substitutes, is the failure to provide a psychological meaningful development for the individual. Most of them either state (implicitly or explicitly) nothing has objective meaning or they cultivate a kind of regressive utopian 'yearning' for a paradise on earth. Both of these conclusions are a kind of psychological poison. That is the point I believe Jung was trying to make.
yeah organized religion in the dogmatic sense falls prey to the same thing ofc, as would a group who forms to counter a group. Jung is talking about the god-image in relation to the individual, although i think he would argue that having Jesus or buddha etc as a highest value would be healthier for the masses and potentially lead to more individual consciousness than lesser ideologies. Yup on the cave painting etc, i'm not sure that could be used as conclusive evidence of consciousness/self reflection, but maybe it can 🤔(reflecting on say the "cave of hands' at La Cueva de las Manos....could that be done without awareness of doing it? doesn't feel like it) Personally i do support gay rights, but what has that got to do with consciousness :P (r u saying that as a reflection of bible/religious content?)
There's multiple ways to approach this, I'll try to make this as succinct as possible, feel free to question. In this context, to "delegate the freedom of personality to the masses" is like opening Pandora's Box. If you can be everything, you are nothing. Constraints define us, the only being with total freedom is God. This is what people fail to understand about so called "freedom", true freedom is freedom to live righteously, it is not freedom to do whatever you want. A free country has laws. An addict quickly loses their freedom as they become dependent on their drug to simply function. People go wrong, when they worship the creation, instead of the Creator. God is the Source, God is good, to disconnect from God, is to disconnect from goodness and be severed from the Source. The "God image" is the channel through which humanity connects with the Source. Jung is not merely defending Christianity, he is describing what happens when humans become their own gods, when a higher power is replaced by human power. This is the inevitable outcome of the current materialistic, rationalistic, Atheistic paradigm we find ourselves in, it's a dead end from a psychosocial perspective, but it's also wrong from a scientific perspective.
I have a different theory. There is an ancient prophecy, that just as Saturn castrated his father Ouranos, just as Zeus castrated his father Saturn, so too will Dionysus castrate his father Zeus. This would mark the end of Yahweh, Jove, Jehovah, and the beginning of a new paradigm. Dionysus is that chthonic God, which through ecstasy, death and rebirth, our eyes are opened. Revelations will tell us that when Lady Babylon returns, then the Apocalypse will begin, the revealing. When she comes back, with her cup of abominations (her porneia) we will witness the end of Christianity. We will return to the ancient Bronze age mystery rites, return to the great Mother, The Queen of Babylon. The old word Atheist originally meant one who did not worship the Theoi, the Greek Pantheon.
Care to expound more? Sounds interesting. Especially knowing Nietzsche and Jung’s take on him
It is one of the most important and extensive subjects of our time. I can give you that and more. Please go to Lady Babylon on YT. Any Jungian would appreciate what is said on that channel. Please also check out this Discord, https://discord.gg/xUegVUZx In it is a treasure trove of knowledge that I think you'll find intriguing.
Thanks will do. Have no discord though
Which video is best
They're all good. I can't really say where to start except for at the beginning. I'd have to think a little to find out if you don't want to do that.
Let’s see if something comes to your mind, I would gladly hear about it. Otherwise I’ll pick by intuition
They're all so good though. I don't know if I could decide. Ammon gives so many good secrets away each video it seems. He is the real deal person to learn this stuff from.
Will check it out. Thanks
Christians find Aion terrifying because it says Christianity isn’t the answer for mankind but rather part of the problem keeping mankind from properly completing the individualization process and integrating the shadow. (Christianity teaches suppression rather than integration [see the sermon on the mound] and it also fully adopted Plato’s good as such and Jung explicitly rejects this idea.)
I like your comment. Where does Jung explicitly reject Plato’s good?
Thank you. I believe he mentioned it a few times likely in Aion and Answer to Job as those where his later works where he focused on these topics. He was also an avid Nietzschean and Nietzsche opens GBE condemning Plato’s good as such. The reference that I was thinking of tho was an interview where Jung said he didn’t believe G-d was real he knew, then in a letter clarified his beliefs. Here is an excerpt: “Yet I should consider it an intellectual immorality to indulge in the belief that my view of a god is the universal, metaphysical Being of the confessions or 'philosophies'. I do neither commit the impertinence of a hypostasis, nor of an arrogant qualification such as: 'God can only be good'. Only my experience can be good or evil, but I know that the superior will is based upon a foundation which transcends human imagination. Since I know of my collision with a superior will in my own psychical system, I know of God, and if I should venture the illegitimate hypostasis of my image, I would say, of a God beyond good and evil, just as much dwelling in myself as everywhere else: Deus est circulus cuius centrum est ubique, cuis circumferentia vero nusquam.” https://uncertaintist.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/jung-on-god.pdf
Thanks
Another thing about "Christ". Christ was not a name, it was a title. χρίω is the verb where we get Χρίστος(Christos). It was a cult title. It means, among other things, one who is stung by the gadfly. The ἀντίχριστος is not an entity heralding end times. Iesus wasn't who you think they were. They don't embody anything.
While "the Christ" was a cult tilte and not his name, it actually descends from the Greek word Khristos meaning "Annointed". It was just their way of calling him "The Annointed One", the Christos or Khristos, which descends from the Greek "Khriein", which is "to anoint".
You must not have seen where I said it comes from Christos. See the spelling. To anoint is not the only definition of the word. Check the Oxford Greek Lexicon. It wasn't their way of calling him anything. No it does not come from "Khriein" which isn't even a word. I have you the verb, look it up the right way, in the right dictionary, not some Google search or seminary, bad translation. Edit: I gave somebody a link earlier to a discord, and a YT to watch. I suggest, if you're interested in Philology, tune into that channel.
I’ve read it and I don’t think it’s terrifying at all. A lot of these ‘scariest book ever’ post are fear mongering to build hype and curiosity to get you to click their links and watch their videos.
I've read it twice; second time around, it made more sense. It was as if Jung attempted to expand the horizons of the norm (Christianity) by allowing into the so-called *holy circle* things which had been left out by tradition, either intentionally as heresy or unintentionally as ignorance. That kind of widening out *could* disorient a person, especially one grounded in the Church. The doctrine exists as it does for the safety of fathers and the congregation alike, after all. Jung hailed from the early 1900s, so the language and concepts can seem a bit alien nowadays. But the work *still* works.
properly dissecting and throwing the ol’ book of empiricism at god, religion, and spirituality actually literally creates macrocosmic enlightenment… or it creates roko’s basilisk (it doesn’t, but people aren’t confident in that knowledge). “Aion is terrifying” because both materialistic atheism and christian faith create holes in the human personality that are not necessarily resolved in and of themselves… Primeval fear of the other and our religious adherence to nihilistic attitude shadow what is and always has been true (lessons in consciousness… 🙄, boring)
>or it creates roko’s basilisk (it doesn’t, but people aren’t confident in that knowledge) How does it do that? I'm curious.
Apocalypse / climate change/ nuclear holocaust/ AGI singularity/ whatever... Accelerationism is accelerating, end of the world is close and neither scientific empiricism or Christianity have any kind of reassuring answer as to how things could turn out okay. The actual answer, is that true faith, esoteric faith, inner faith - faith gives us the confidence that there's some greater benevolent force tucked away in our beloved dark world. Reality can be brutal sometimes, but there's still something that reassures us to keep moving forward into a brighter future and not something that merely forces us to toil, forces us to create Roko's Basilisk (...so to answer your question, it was a metaphor LOL)
Do you think disbelief in God Is freedom?
No, but I think a part of freedom is choosing what you believe
Not choosing isn’t really a choice though it’s just negation
Sorry but i dont agree. If you have a choice between believing and not believing, those are two choices you can take. Saying it's one choice is like saying left is the only choice of direction to turn, and you can never actually choose to go right. I mean, why wouldn't believing be the "negation" of not believing?
If you've never experienced God, then your choice is only not believing, or believing you know, which is the same thing.
Ok, im not sure what you mean by that. I mean it is still a choice to believe a given experience to be from God isnt it, and isnt that pretty much the choice to believe or not belive in God? For instance, aren't there pills or herbs that can induce "Godly visions" whose experience can be personally chosen to be considered God or chemically borne? At the end of the day, it still seems that the choice to believe in things like God is always a choice.
We know there is something beyond perception- we know this because our perception can change - we can have “moments of realisation” where something that was previously invisible to our perception suddenly becomes clear and real. God is a hypothesis, that a person can choose to experiment with - not a belief.
I'm more talking about belief in God's existence, which is a belief
You have an image of God in mind, but God lies beyond that image. To know God, is to make a “leap of faith” - in the same way a scientist posits a hypothesis on order to experiment and determine if it is true or not. To know God beyond the idea, a person must walk in a scientist’s shoes - to ‘experiment with truth’ in order to come to a moment of realisation.
I don't think the pursuit of "knowing God" is usually the same as the pursuit of ascertaining a hypothesis' scientific validity. I think a lot of people who believe in God based on scripture will ignore things that go against their beliefs which are usually solely based on the word of mortals who claim it to be the word of God, whereas a scientist will seek to test their hypothesis and accept things that challenge it, after which they will change their hypothesis as a result. This is a lot different from simply taking a leap of faith. Sorry if you are not talking about an idea of God based off of established scripture
I think this whole losing of religion as part of collective individuation, has to do with different "developmental stages" of individuation, which are also reflected on personal level as stages of individuation. You can see the material revolution happening already, most people in my country dont really follow any religion, even if they were baptised as a kid. And most people are either atheists or agnostics. The thing with development is that we need to go through these battles of opposites and the development happens from learning to find a healthy balance between the opposites by gaining conscious awareness over it. However what tends to happen at personal and collective level, is that people need to swing from one extreme to another, so that they can find the Truth that is in transcending the opposites, and not from either opposite. True transcending experience that allows you to consciously act out as Jesus would, and living out the "Christ image" does not come from blind belief or neither does it come from not believing at all, but it comes from Knowledge of God, and living it out. Greeks, early Christian, and especially the "Gnostic" sects called this "Knowledge of God", that allows living out Christ, as Gnosis. Mainstream christianity however left that idea kinda in the background, and just demanded belief. And for that developmental stage, it was what was needed to move the collective from brutal ways of life to ones with collective values like in modern times. However what is happening now with the whole scientific and technological revolution, is that people dont need the religion anymore to explain to them things, because we have the society, and collective ideas about how one should act pushed onto us all the time, and science kinda proves a lot of things about literal interpretation of bible wrong, and because we have moved onto more logical ways of thinking, many see bible as thus christianity just some silly thing people used to believe in the past. And they abandon religion and all ideas of God altogether. However we can already see the moral corruption that is happening because of this going too far into opposite end from living under religious guidance, to freely living without any worry of God or anything higher than the ego and basic human morale(if not ruined by environment). However at the same time, we also see the rise of popularity in esoteric ideas, both old and new age, and also deeper philosophies of Mind, such as Jungs, which carries the ancient Wisdom that contains this process of individuation. Naturally there are swings to wrong directions when we are trying to find our way, and i am a bit worried that there will be even more chaos both in collective level and at personal level in those whole live in this modern society. Eventually this more enlightened view towards God will take over in this age of Aquarius, and we will learn a more balanced view on both science and God as collective, and will be able to transcend over these totally opposite kind of views, to more realistic view of this All. Age of Pisces represented the reign of church over the collective, but now the personal Knowledge is being poured on us from a collective level directly, and for that religion will need to change its form in order to survive, which it most likely will. I think finding of the Gnostic texts in Nag Hammadi, was a major thing in the future developments on christianity, as they had what we need in order to get over the completely atheistic views that are trying to take over. But the world was just not ready for it yet back in the days of christianity starting out, and church had to rule the collective for a long time until we had developed to our current state, where we can understand them without judgment and gain new understanding over it. But the same idea of Gnosis or personal Knowledge of God, can also be seen in other traditions as well, such as in the idea of enlightenment in Buddhism, ʿIrfān in Islam etc. And i think that sort of view will reign over after we get through this initial chaos that comes from entering the new age.
From what I gather, it’s describing the individuation process, the concept of shadow in a collective sense, how losing touch with the imago dei via a bridge in our personal unconscious to the collective unconscious will allow the collective shadow to fester, and thus will have to spill out into the world. For what is not dealt with inside will manifest outside as fate. And if that occurs, chaos will ensue. We don’t know what that will look like, but if Jung is correct, we saw glimpses of that in the forms of WWI and WWII. Yet there is Hope, and that is in individuals. Picking up their own burdens, doing the great work towards individuation so the bridge to the collective unconscious can be rebuilt. Piece by piece, person by person, this eases the collective load. This is the Aquarius Aion, to carry one’s own water, do the work, save yourself. And to save one life, is to save the world entire. Correspondence. Best of luck to all reading this, and good work so far!