Christian Psychology
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difference between a real illusion and a healing religious
experience? It is merely a difference of words” (Jung,
1967c, p. 105). Here, Jung lapses into a curious and
rather simplistic pragmatism. “No one can know what
the ultimate things are. We must therefore take them as
we experience them. And if such experience helps make
life healthier, more beautiful … you may safely say:
‘This was by the grace of God’” (Jung, 1967c, p. 105).
When God is internal and psychological the playing
field is flatter; it is difficult to discern God from what is
simply a product of the imagination.
Then there is Jung’s repeated annoyance at those
who struggled with the concept of “psychic truth.” “I
am always coming up against the misunderstanding that
a psychological treatment or explanation reduces God
to ‘nothing but psychology.’ It is not a question of God
at all, but of man’s idea of God” (Jung, 1967b, p. 163).
His frustration seems defensive, as if he knew that he
was repeatedly asked the question because something
was lacking in his answer. Can you really believe in
something that is not real, but just “psychically real?”
Does a psychological formulation of a religious experi-
ence necessarily reduce and trivialize it? Jung would say
no, but did he really mean it?
Philip Rieff (1987), in
The Triumph of the Thera-
peutic,
describes the reductionistic and antireligious
elements of Jung’s “psychological religiosity.” In Rieff’s
words, Jung in fact creates a meta-religion, revealed
privately to himself alone, which he translates into a
psychotherapy. “It is a meta-religion aiming at some-
thing beyond the criteria of true and false, or even
good and evil. The ideal character type produced by it
is neither mystic nor ascetic, but therapeutic - a person
assessing even his own myth in terms of how much it
contributes to his personal sense of well-being” (Reiff,
1987, pp. 113-114). Religious experience is internal,
creeds are irrelevant, God speaks to each of us as he will.
“Truth is a highly personal matter; better, then, name it
more accurately: ‘psychic truth’” (Reiff, 1987, p. 137).
In
Symbols of Transformation
, Jung parenthetically
offers the interesting story of the pious Abbé Oegger,
borrowed from Anatole France (Jung, 1956, p. 30).
Abbé Oegger obsessively mused on the story of Judas,
wondering if Judas could truly be damned if he was a
necessary instrument of God’s salvation. He prayed for
a sign, and one night during prayer felt a tap on his
shoulder that he took as a sign that Judas was saved.
He was resolved to preach a Gospel of God’s unending
mercy. But his conversion was short-lived and trivial; he
soon left the Church to become a Swedenborgian. He
was Judas, the fantasy was important to him to reassure
himself of forgiveness of his own incipient desire to
betray the Church. By extension, the religious experi-
ence (the tap on the shoulder) was trivial and personal,
exculpatory. Abbé Oegger shows that his doubts and his
hopes are only apparently concerned with the historical
person of Judas, but in reality revolve around his own
psychological conflicts and personal growth. Does Jung,
despite all his protests to the contrary, reveal in this
parenthetic story his true feeling about religious experi-
ences? God is interesting and important, but nothing
more, never really “real.”
But this reading leaves out a crucial issue – Jung
himself. If we believe, with Camus, that a philosopher’s
life and actions are a more important guide to his ideas
than his written words, then Jung’s life may reveal his
true thoughts more effectively than his work. And
Jung was called in a manner not too unlike Mother
Teresa. He had an extended period of life-transforming
visionary experiences. Beginning in 1916, he began to
have a series of increasingly powerful visionary experi-
ences. They started with an experience of the return of
his ancestors, and extended conversations that he had
with the dead. These experiences changed his life, and
caused him to devote his life to the understanding of
the psyche (Jung, 1965).
Unlike Mother Teresa he understood these psycho-
logically, but like Mother Teresa and unlike the Abbé
Oegger, their source was external. For Jung “external”
had a different sense; they came from outside the ego
but from the greater Self. As evidenced by his actions
and the effect of the visions on his life they were real;
he clearly believed in them, though he saw them as
“psychically real” as opposed to Mother Teresa, who saw
her experiences with God as real in the everyday sense.
The experiences changed Jung’s life. Responding to the
inner call, he left his post at the university. For three
years he could not read or do any academic work. This
visionary period concluded with a dream about a tree in
the center of great light. Through this dream he came to
understand that the self is the principle and archetype of
orientation and meaning. Jung in his own life answers
our questions about whether something that is viewed
psychologically can remain powerful and numinous
with a resounding ‘yes’. Like the woman at the well, he
encounters a living stream, but a fiery one, “I hit upon
this stream of lava, and the heart of its fires reshaped my
life” (Jung, 1965, p.199).
Though for both the calls were very real, the an-
swers were very different. Mother Teresa answers in the
world, carries out God’s instructions to the letter in the
face of lengthy delays and obstacles, builds an influ-
ential religious order and changes many lives through
her acts of charity. Jung’s answer is inward, “Therefore
my first response was to probe the depths of my own
psyche” (Jung, 1965, p. 176).
The inwardness of Jung’s response can be trou-
bling to the truly religious; it carries dangers, as Jung
acknowledges, of inflation of the self. Mother Teresa’s
response is of pure faith, “I will refuse him nothing.”
Or, as in the example cited above, when the priest
experienced God telling him to give Mother Teresa a
message, she did not ask the many questions we might
if looking inward, like why, why now, why you, what
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