psychology

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A few random thoughts about the 'religious experience' from a loosely psychological perspective.

The non-mystic Jung	May (1991)	g980526f.doc
An un-common sense of peace	Clark	941001b.doc
The reactions to discontent	Clark	941002.doc

The non-mystic Jung

May(1991), having scrutinised the various writings of Jung, concluded that Jung had no mystical experience himself and that he did not believe in it.

	He denies the reality of ‘superconsciousness’
	He calls mystical at-one-ment a ‘withdrawal from the world of consciousness’
	He calls the Zen state of satori, ‘a state of unconsciousness’
	He calls cosmic consciousness the ‘lowest level of consciousness’
	He says that it is a ‘delusion’ to believe in ‘anything like a higher level of consciousness’
	He says that the mystic (Gnostic or alchemical) experience is ‘the experience of the unconscious’
	He dismisses the mystic experiences reported by James as ‘so-called mystical experiences’

May T M (1991) Cosmic Consciousness Revisited

Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) Swiss Psychiatrist, who founded the analytical school of psychology. Jung broadened Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical approach, interpreting mental and emotional disturbances as an attempt to find personal and spiritual wholeness

Swami Akhilananda states, concerning Jung’s psychology, for which he otherwise has deep respect:

Professor Jung seems to conclude that the superconscious experiences are ‘vast but dim’ without any understanding of them. Any man who has had these realisations will laugh at such conclusions. Patanjali, Swami Vivekananda, and Swami Brahmandada give just the opposite point of view. They make it clear that samadhi, or the superconscious state, is vivid and definite … so the superconscious is not unconscious; it is full of awareness; nay it is Consciousness Itself.

Any one who studies the teachings and records of the experiences of Westerm and Eastern mystics will never make such unscientific statements as Professor Jung. The superconscious experiences of the mystics in the West are identical with those mystics of the East

Akhilananda S (1946) Hindu Psychology; Branden Press, Boston

Later Jungians appreciate the point which Jesus made that "The Kingdom of God is within you".

The road to the kingdom will be an inner road, a way of the soul, in which a man becomes increasingly connected to his inner world. Nothing can be excluded which belongs to man’s wholeness. The final entrance into the kingdom subordinates consciousness to a greater reality within.

Sandford J (1987) The Kingdom Within; Harper and Row

An un-common sense of peace

One thought follows another. You are the thinker of those thoughts. Between thoughts, a pause with peace of mind. If you are the thinker of those thoughts, where are you during peace of mind?

There is a flightly impermanence to normal thoughts. Common sense moves quickly like the scenes in a TV Soap (the modern equivalent of Plato's shadows). By suspending disbelief you will-fully forget that Soaps are contructed by scriptwriters, directors and actors. By suspending disbelief you will-fully forget that common sense is constructed by specific histories, directed by tradition and acted out by knee-jerk puppets; the emotional kick is to be had by refusing to see through the illusion.

Common sense is not absolute truth. It has a historical and geographical location. It is environmentally and culturally conditioned. The individual's world view is determined by language, by sub-cultural and socio-economic location, and by genetic constitution.

People are puppets on strings so long as they suspend disbelief, so long as they equate conditioned common sense with ultimate reality. There is no devilish personality behind the illusion - the shepherds are as much part of the Soap as are the sheep. It is a self regulating system which we ourselves reproduce. But there is freedom to choose, there is the option of unsuspended disbelief, of will-fully remembering, of waking up from the dream.

The unexamined life is not worth living. The first commandment is to know yourself. An authentic being knows the source of intentionality, realizes the essence upon which the thinker of thoughts stands, develops un-common sense and has perpetual peace of mind.

Note: Peace of mind is found in the Plenun Void of the Mahayana tradition but not in the secular, nihilistic emptiness of Existentialism.

The Reactions to Discontent

Freud's essay, Civilisation and its Discontants is acknowledged as a source of inspiration but the thrust of the story owes more to the post-Freudianism of Marcuse, Adorno and Fromm.

When people react to discontent they do so in different ways. Those operating one way find it difficult to communicate with those operating in another - this is largely because of a failure to appreciate the essential difference between their major focuses of concern. The following framework enables people to map out patterns of failing communication. The three fold typology is similar to that first proposed in the Bhagavad Gita!

There are good times and bad times for individuals and for nations. The bad times express themselves in the individual as a sense of dissatisfaction with life, the universe and/or everything.	The strength, direction and popularity of the hermeneutic quest is culturally conditioned and is conducted, promoted and coloured by individual intentionalities.
Political - Action
Those who see oppression and injustice are prompted to political action so as to curb the evil tendencies of the elite.	For those whose quest leads to action, the answer lies in the redistributive and decentralized politics of the left: the half hearted go for socialism, the whole hearted aim for anarchy.
Philosophical - Intellection
Those who note a lack of internal consistency in prevalent patterns of thought turn to philosophy for appropriate intellectual responses to the cultural stupidity.	For those whose quest leads to intellection, the answer lies in the philosophies of existentialism and phenomenology which have led to the present deconstructed, post-modern world.
Spiritual - Devotion
Those of a religious and devotional bent will have known peace of mind and will thus view the enemy as spiritual blindness.	For those whose quest leads to meditation/prayer, the answer lies in some revitalized form of western gnosticism or in esoteric, eastern modes of thought.