Five of us met up today to understand what might seem heavy going philosophy.
IN THE SERVICE OF DIVINITY where Rachel Hillel dealt with a variety of ways of achieving self-understanding which she equated with living life in all its fullness and thus learning to know God. These ways include the psychological expressions of C. G. Jung, sayings of the ancient Chinese book of changes, and teachings to be found in Hasidism, the Apocrypha, and the Gnostic gospels.
In speaking of the search for one's soul as an essential part of the human tradition, she referred to a legendary "Golden Chain" of wise men, who have passed a central message down through all ages. Jung, whom she sees as a part of this chain, said, "Anyone who has insight should concern himself with his soul. Our destiny lies in the unconscious, for the unconscious is the source of everything… The word, unconscious, does not count. What counts is the true idea behind it."
Jung had an "ability to give new terms to the very mysteries which emanate from the eternal traditions of man … (enabling man) to penetrate his own being and to look for God … The archetypal idea of the Divinity within assumes in Jung's writing a modern, psychological terminology, but it remains a fundamentally religious concern." He is honoring a "living psychic reality … whose nature is bound to transcend human understanding forever. This has always been the essence of the religious experience."
"Helping people recognize their religious potentialities by providing a method for relating to numinous experiences" sums up Jung's view of the aims of analytical psychology. As Rachel Hillel put it, "Ultimately the individuation process is a religious process … To be healed is to become whole, and there is no wholeness without asking God into one's life as guide and partner." Jung concluded that "in order to gain an understanding in religious matters, all that is left us today is the psychological approach."
Rachel described a young man's dream, which clearly indicated that an institution, such as a church or a dogma can be an obstacle or hindrance to a direct experience of God. "Psychic contents break into life with a living force. (They) seem to come from another realm… a living manifestation of the transpersonal. The encounter (with them) … becomes a religious experience… The experience of God is a psychic reality because it comes from beyond one's self." Jung said, "God is the name by which I designate things which cross my willful path, which upset my plans, my intentions, and change the course of my life … Religious and spiritual events … cannot be made; they happen to us." She illustrated the point with poetry and dream material provided by her analysands and brought out the paradox that though God is perceived as an objective, transcendent reality, we know him through our own subjective experiences.
The Jungian goal of individuation "is essentially concerned with personal religious experiences. Yet experience of the numinous is a reciprocal process between man and God, since the contents which are revealed … have a gradual transformative effect on the unconscious and thus on God. In this way we have become active participants in the divine drama."
Rachel went on to relate these conclusions of Jung to Jewish Hasidism and Christian Gnosticism, which despite their differing origins had in common a search for the inner way to God. The central idea of Hasidic philosophy is "the reciprocity between man and God. God needs man in order to enter reality. Man is destined to be redeemed through the meeting of divine and human need." Also in the Jewish lore it was believed that there are humble, insignificant people whose saintliness holds the world together.
Jesus is revealed in a Gnostic papyrus excavated in the 19th century where (going beyond the familiar biblical quotation) he is quoted as saying," Whenever there are two, they are not without God, and whenever there is one alone, I say I am with him; raise the stone and there thou shalt find me; cleave the wood, and there I am."
As with Jung's reliance on myth, the Gnostics interpreted events symbolically rather than literally. For example, they perceived the resurrection as symbolic, "a spiritual movement of enlightenment, from death to awakening." Jesus, in these gospels, is treated as a model of the spiritual potential in every person. Every person can become a child of God—as Jesus was—and, at a deep level, identical with Jesus.
"it is the unknown power of the Divine within, which guides (us) toward realization and demands loyalty to inner laws. Self-knowledge … the most difficult and challenging religious obligation … directs one to become what (one) was born to be."
