Regular readers will know that I regard Christianity to be, in essence, Jesus's offer of resurrected eternal Heavenly life to those who follow him. Yet this is very far from being regarded as the core of Christianity. Indeed most Christians would disagree - both now and throughout the history of the Christian churches.
The idea that we might want/ need/ expect eternal life after mortal death - especially first-and-foremost - is something that the modern mind sees as a bad thing; selfish, childish, indeed ridiculous. To the typical modern atheist-stoic; a desire or demand for life everlasting is seen as irrational; and a product of psychological deficiencies such as wishful thinking and/or cowardice.
It is interesting to consider what CJ Jung - son of a Protestant Pastor; in late life probably a deist rather than theist, and not a Christian - had to say about life after death, writing in the middle 20th century and in old age.
It is not that I wish we had a life after death. In fact, I
would prefer not to foster such ideas.
Still, I must state, to give
reality its due, that, without my wishing and without my doing
anything about it, thoughts of this nature move about within me.
I
can't say whether these thoughts are true or false, but I do know they
are there, and can be given utterance, if I do not repress them out of
some prejudice. Prejudice cripples and injures the full phenomenon
of psychic life. And I know too little about psychic life to feel that I
can set it right out of superior knowledge...
I lend an attentive ear to the strange
myths of the psyche, and take a careful look at the varied events
that come my way, regardless of whether or not they fit in with my
theoretical postulates.
Unfortunately, the mythic side of man is given short shrift nowadays.
He can no longer create fables. As a result, a great deal escapes
him; for it is important and salutary to speak also of
incomprehensible things.
Such talk is like the telling of a good ghost
story, as we sit by the fireside and smoke a pipe.
What the myths or stories about a life after death really mean, or
what kind of reality lies behind them, we certainly do not know.
We
cannot tell whether they possess any validity beyond their
indubitable value as anthropomorphic projections. Rather, we must
hold clearly in mind that there is no possible way for us to attain
certainty concerning things which pass our understanding.
From Memories, Dreams, and Reflections by CG Jung
Jung seems confident that ideas concerning life after death are in the realm of anthropomorphic stories we tell-ourselves, and therefore cannot in principle be understood in terms of truth to reality.
Nonetheless Jung feels that there is a psychological reality to life after death - and he personally cannot-help but regard an afterlife as something that will happen to him.
Such a perspective seems only to have been a genuine possibility as a relatively brief transitional phase; possible only for those who were raised religious, became atheist in adolescence or young adulthood, then came to value psychological (or social) aspects of religion as helpful (or indeed necessary) for an integrated and fulfilling life.
In considering what is objectively real and knowable; Jung's perspective makes the same assumptions and exclusions as natural science - therefore its conclusions are inevitable: and Christianity becomes nothing more than a potentially therapeutic fairy-tale - something that it may make us feel better, if we believe it.
In a word: for Jung, as for many other modern people, religion is, at best, a palliative.
He would have said that (for many people) it is "good to believe" - and by "good" he meant good for our health and happiness, here-and-now.
This (I think) is what underlies the common assertion (something we heard a lot from Prince/ King Charles - for instance) that "faith" is a good thing; while atheism is (usually a mistake, because is makes many people ill, miserable, dysfunctional.
Jung may argue that life after death is important; but its importance is confined to how we are feeling in life before death.
Life after death exists as an idea, and its reality relates to the role that ideas have in human functioning.
(For Jung, this included a collective unconscious that was part of - and accessible to - all humans, and extended through many generations. Yet the nature and value of ideas in the collective unconscious ultimately and inevitably cashed-out in term of human mortal lives; human happiness or misery, health, social functionality and the like.)
Life after death therefore is excluded from any cosmic role; it cannot have anything to do about solving the fundamental problems of existence - the problem of evil, and the problems of entropy (disease, degeneration, death).
Life after death by Jung's account can affect what we think about such matters; it is a matter of adjustment to immoveable realities - it is a therapeutic understanding of religion.
As I said, Jung did not, apparently, seriously identify himself as a Christian; but here are plenty of people who do self-identify as Christian and who have a closely similar understanding of life after death.
At least he acknowledged some of the thoughts. Some people drive themselves mad, or insomniac*, or whatever, trying to avoid similar thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI think what we call daydreaming or noodling is part of creative problem-solving, serving to increase coherence in the mind and increase the range of consciousness.
Even more essential is dreaming itself. It gives us experiences which though fictional we absolutely *need* to have not only in order to streamline but also to re-program/re-condition our responses. The psyche is trying to heal itself. There's nothing strange about this. When awake if we pause to decide whether to turn left or right, we are doing something similar: simulating options until there's one we prefer. These waking simulations are merely directed rather than wandering.
(Perhaps this is why the wicked can't create. They can't allow their minds to wander *at all* in case they stumble upon God, which would be terrifying for them.)
>Unfortunately, the mythic side of man is given short shrift nowadays. He can no longer create fables. As a result, a great deal escapes him; for it is important and salutary to speak also of incomprehensible things.
Heh. He never met today's "Are we living in a simulation?" crowd. Not saying this is a fable, but it is a form of afterlife considered rational by atheists.
*I mean, and I'm pulling this out of a hat, that some cases of insomnia may be attempts to avoid dreaming or recalling dreams.
I always thought of Jung as the "man who could not make up his mind" in that he will go on and on about an idea and then reverse himself on the next page. I understand that life after death implies a continuity of existence with more to learn in the next life, not implying reincarnation. My experience tells me that the post Morten states may initially resemble earth life conditions but will move on to much more profound levels of being which we only. get a glimpse of now.
ReplyDelete@ag - I certainly agree about Jung.
ReplyDeleteAbout life after death: for about the past 15 years, I have believed that what we experience after death is (at least, since the time of Jesus) - in a broad sense, pretty much what we want and choose.
Which is why I find the current commonly expressed aversion to what Jesus offers us - and the preference for post-mortal annihilation - to be especially concerning.
For instance, the popularity of painless murder/ assisted suicide is among people who (it seems) positively desire complete and irrevocable destruction of body And Soul. In a sense annihilation of the self is impossible, since we just-are eternal beings; but that may well be exactly what is *experienced* by those who desire it.