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Creative Spirits
The notion of creative
spirits which guide the manifestation of physical reality has long been
out of favour in the West. The dominance of rationalism has led to even
the churches shying away from a belief that the spirit which fires all
material life is at large in the world uninhibited by attachment to the
incarnate form or that the world itself along with its creatures has a
soul or psychic aspect. But for more and more people now, the words of
the songwriters and poets are ringing true again and, in the words of
Leonard Cohen, "God is alive, magic is afoot!!"
As C G Jung put it:
"Life is the touchstone for the truth of spirit.
Spirit
that drags man away from life, seeking fulfillment only in itself, is a
false spirit - though man is to blame, since he can choose whether he
will give himself up to this spirit or not.
Life and Spirit are two great powers or necessities between
which man is placed.
Spirit gives meaning to his life, and the possibility of its greatest
development. But life is essential to spirit, since its truth is
nothing if it cannot live."
C G Jung "The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934)
The Practice of Psychotherapy pg. 647
Once again a passion for life is awakening in humanity which knows the
Love which enfolds us all and which can sing in celebration:
"Voice of the nova
Smile of the dew
All of our yearning
Only comes home to you
O Love that fires the sun
Keep me burning."
Bruce Cockburn/Golden Mountain Music/BMI
This presence of a creative spirit in the world, or a life
force, is
not just an amorphous `anima mundi' or `spiritus mundi' as some call
it, a sort of undefined energy which animates the world. It is again
being spoken that the creative force which gives rise to phyisical
reality has the character of actual entities, such as the Dreamtime
beings of the Australian aborigines. Gaia, or `Mother Earth', is no
anonymous principle, she is a being with a will and intention which is
celebrated in every expression of life which makes up this wondrous
creation which we earthlings inhabit. And she is not alone. She is
served and assisted by many other beings of all sorts who guide and
assist all life forms, from the rocks and rivers and trees to
creatures, and yes, even we humans. Though many of us have and still do
deny this blessed guidance. We too are in her service.
Angels and Extra-terrestrials
The church once offered people a belief in guardian angels and
the
bible abounds with stories of encounters with such beings, but that
time is long past. Even with the new upsurge in so called 'angel
awareness' official sanction from the churches is not in sight, though
many wonder and secretly believe. Although the connection may not be
obvious the upsurge in belief in alien abductions and in salvation
through the intervention of extra-terrestrial beings are related to the
resurgence in interest and belief in angels. We may rightly question
what this new 'awareness' is all about but we would do well to hold
back from rationalistic dismissal.
The New Myth
Psychologically speaking such an upsurge, however apparently
irrational, reflects an up-welling of material from the collective
psyche relating to the need to re-establish a balance between the Yang
and penetrating rational spirit which has dominated our age and the Yin
and receptive orientation of more indigenous cultures. This represents
the emergence of powerful mythic material in a somewhat inchoate form.
At this time people attach this newly emergent material to all sorts of
unexpected and even inappropriate systems of thought in order to give
it form and find comfort with it. Thus it takes the form of "angels" or
"extra-terrestrials", and occasionally faeries and other 'mythic'
beings, because these are forms which enable people to find a
relationship to it. That they are not necessarily 'true' in any
provable physical or rational sense is not entirely the point, for as
Jung says:
"Why should we deprive ourselves
of views that prove helpful in crises and give a meaning to our
existence? And how do we know that such ideas are not true? Many people
would agree with me if I stated flatly that such ideas are illusions.
What they fail to realise is that this denial amounts to a `belief' and
is just as impossible to prove as a religious assertion.....It is the
purpose and endeavour of religious symbols to give a meaning to the
life of man."
CW
vol 18 p247 para 566-7
These experiences of something out of the ordinary, numinous
and beyond
rational comprehension are all too real, hence the need of people with
little or no framework within which to contain such experiences to
reach for something, anything, to make their experiences meaningful.
The belief in angelic and fairy beings reaches back into our past to
find forms with which to contain these experiences in order to make
sense of them. And the pseudo-scientific expression of these
experiences via the images of extra-terrestrial abduction, space craft
and salvation via the intervention of visitors from other star systems
are part of this process too. Here making meaning of the breakthrough
of these powerful psychic forces involves the attempt to couch them
within the framework of the dominant 'mythos' of modern life,
scientific rationalism.
None of what is said here is meant to dismiss the experiences
themselves only to suggest that they may be looked at more
psychologically in order to render their meaning more fully and
cogently.
Science as the Dominant Myth
The new church of science has been a great denier of the
'hidden
reality' behind these experiences, hidden not by anything but our
denial of sight. Many scientists are in fact religious people but
mostly they keep their religious and scientific convictions as if in
two separate compartments of themselves, although there are some who
have dared to wonder aloud. This is the way we have been taught to deal
with the "irrational". It must not be allowed to bring into question
the hegemony of rationalism in defining the values of every day life.
If it exists at all in the scientific mind it is as a factor beyond or
outside the obvious material world and not immanent as a factor in the
ongoing processes of change and development. Such a marginalised spirit
is comfortably outside, not playing a part that might upset the
applecart of belief in the ability of rational materialism to
manipulate and control existence, sooner or later. Here-in we see how
science at once marginalises the transcendent factor and then
associates its powers to itself.
Science and the New Revelation
"No
science will ever replace myth, and a myth cannot be made out of
any science. For it is not that `God' is a myth but that myth is the
revelation of a divine life in 'man'"
C G Jung, "Memories Dreams Reflections"
"I don't
doubt that someday all our present cosmological notions will be
recognised as myths. What we now think is science will in the future
very likely be seen as myth - in other words as psychogical
projection."
Edward F Edinger "The Mysterium Lectures"
Science has for a long time seen itself as the new revelation which has
swept aside fear, superstition and mystery. And science seems
uncomfortable with its new competition for popular belief and so works
harder than ever at debunking things or providing ever more fantastic
scenarios to capture our attention. It may not be accidental that there
has been an upsurge in science borrowing the language of religion and
mysticism to describe and popularise its newest theories. All this
contains much denial of the reality of Spirit but does not make Spirit
go away. It just forces many people to hide their experiences for fear
of being labelled and dismissed, or to try to couch them in
pseudo-scientific language. But more and more are coming out of the
closet of denial which rationalist materialism has forced them into,
claiming the knowledge their souls have never lost. Once asked what
happens if we stop believing in the gods Jung said they become symptoms
in our bodies. Indigenous cultures all have their versions of the
presence of spirit beings both in the creation and continuance of the
physical world. Some of these may be hedged around with fear, but
nonetheless they have preserved the knowledge that we are never alone;
that called or uncalled our guiding spirits accompany us ever ready to
offer what guidance they can if we only ask and be open to it. Further
to this, they preserve a deep understanding of the fact that we humans
too have a vital role to play in creation, one which raises us out of
the mundane and imbues our lives with meaning. In this our lives become
part of what C G Jung called the 'Symbolic Life'.
Amongst the greatest scientific minds the place of mystery is often
still known. Albert Einstein said:
"There is
no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only
the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying
behind appearances."
Albert Einstein
and:
"The most beautiful and profound
emotion we can experience is the
sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to
whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand
rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to
us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most
radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their
primitive forms, this knowledge, this feeling, is at the centre of true
religiousness."
Albert Einstein
It is the attitude of fear long
associated with the irrational that needs to change, the fear of God
and superstition that science rightly sought to challenge. But this
need not be attained by the attitude that all mystery engenders fear,
which seems to unconsciously underlie much of the scientific attitude.
Unfortunately in this science seems to have thrown the baby out with
the bath water.
Psychology and The New Revelation?
So a wave of new interest and what some are claiming as
revelation is
sweeping the globe but how can we know the truth of what is being
revealed. There are some who claim to speak for what they call "Spirit"
but who fall into traps of fear and negativity and a new superstition.
One need only look at all the predictions of the end of the world which
have failed but none the less lead countless thousands to live fear or
its reverse, the rapture of awaiting salvation.
Fear is undoubtedly part of our experience of following the
spiritual
or religious path, or individuation as C G Jung called it, but that is
because we do not want to let go and give up our attachments to wilful
attitudes and egotistical control in life. Fear and destructive
criticism are not engendered by a true relationship to "Spirit", God or
Goddess, or what C G Jung calls the Self. The emotive reaction of fear
invariably arises from psychological complexes which prevent our deeper
alignment to the our inner lives or the spirit we serve. Our fear is
because of our own attachment to being in control and the sense that a
greater spirit at work in our lives would demand that we give that up,
and it would!
As C G Jung puts it:
True personality is always a
vocation....But vocation acts like a law
of God from which there is no escape...He must obey his own law, as if
it were a daemon whispering to him of new and wonderful paths. Anyone with a vocation hears the
voice of the inner person: he/she is called."
C G Jung, CW vol 17 paras 299
The consistent avoidance of psychological approach by many who
seek to
follow the new "Spirit" always interests us. It is rather like the way
many artistic people also seem to fear psychology. Such people seem to
believe that a psychlogical approach seeks to explain away their
experiences in order to dismiss them as aberrations of unhealthy minds.
If one means mainstream psychology which would categorise and label,
thus dismissing the experiences that is understandable. But the
psychology of C G Jung does not dismiss the psyche but rather places it
as central to human experience.
This Jungian approach suggests that it is always healthy to
subject
one's "inner voices" to a little psychological scrutiny, for their are
many 'spirits.' that speak to us and we would do well to know from whom
our advice is coming. If you go to a financial adviser, or an
architect, or even a doctor these days, you may be well advised to
check out her/his credentials, who may have influence with him/her that
you don't know about and even seek a second opinion. Such scrutiny
would only seem to be common sense. For many to subject the voice of
"spirit" to such scrutiny is seen as scepticism and lack of faith but
maybe it is just applying a little spiritual or psychological common
sense. All the great spiritual traditions have systems of guidance and
scrutiny for testing one's spiritual processes and this is not without
good reason.
Psychologically this is equivalent to the understanding that
one must
be aware of one's personal and subjective factors, one's complexes as
it were, in order to trust that what one sees as inner guidance is free
of contamination from unresolved personal issues. Unfortunately many
alternative or "New Age" people eschew all psychology as reducing the
spiritual or psychic to personal psychological factors. This is of
course a valid criticism of much of psychology but not all. We
recommend here the views outlined in our Metaphysical
Jung
pages and the quote below about Jung's relationship to Philemon. We
also especially recommend the book "Daimonic Reality" by Patrick Harpur
(Viking).
Psychology which brings the source of "inner guidance" under
some
scrutiny is essential to psychic health and allows one to guard against
bad advice as surely as it helps one to do the same when seeking
worldly advice. Many a person caught in a 'get rich quick scheme might
have avoided much anguish if she/he had been aware of the unconscious
greed which drove him/her into it. Likewise some psychological insight
might help many people to get their psychic yearnings into perspective
and prevent them becoming caught up in misleading or inflated psychic
scenarios which lead to manipulation by ohters. self delusion and
ultimate disappointment.
The New Age and Commercialism
Unfortunately the populist commercialism of our culture all
too often
gets on the bandwagon of spirituality because of course the one
rational value that can be found in the "irrational" is its
marketability.
Hence the "New Age" has become a very marketable product and
the
rationality of commercial interest does not prevent it from beating up
and selling the irrational, usually in its most banal and supersticious
form, however well disguised. This of course, to use the psychological
term, is the shadow of spirituality, a sort of base materialism which
is justified by all sorts of clever rhetoric whilst remaining just what
it is, rank commercialism.
To begin here we offer a quote from C G Jung who we see as one of the
path-finding spiritual explorers of the twentieth century. The modern
offshoots of Jung's psychology, the so called Post Jungian movement,
have strayed far from what that statement suggests in their reductive
and anti-metaphysical approaches. However, the words of Jung himself
ever ring with the depth of his striving to express the fullness of the
human experience which always include the dimensions of spirit and
soul. Jung's own experience with his guide Philemon and his coming to a
deeper understanding of it are in part expressed in the following quote:
The Guru as `Spirit Guide'
"...a
highly educated Indian visited me....and we talked about Indian
education, in particular about the relationship between guru and chela.
I hesitantly asked him whether he could tell me anything about the
person and character of his own guru whereupon he replied in a matter
of fact tone, "Oh yes, he was Shankaracharya.
"You don't mean the commentator on the vedas who died centuries ago?" I
asked.
"Yes, I mean him," he said to my amazement.
"Then you are referring to a spirit?" I asked.
"Of course it was his spirit," he agreed.
At that moment I thought of Philemon.
"There
are ghostly gurus too," he added. "Most people have living gurus. But
there are always some who have a spirit for a teacher."
This
information was both illuminating and reassuring to me. Evidently,
then, I had not plummeted right out of the human world but had only
experienced the sort of thing that could happen to others who made
similar efforts." (emphasis added)
C G Jung "Memories Dreams Reflections" p184.
A spirit guide is a mentor or guru if you like those terms but
it
could also be something more. For those of us who accept a reality
beyond the physical and psychological in its limited sense of arising
purely from within the individual "mind" there are further
possibilities. May be a spirit guide is a disincarnate
entity which has chosen to guide and assist you in your life, like the
early Christian idea of a guardian angel. These entities do not judge
you and that is one of the ways you can tell whether its them or some
negative inner voice which is talking to you. Your guides never speak
with a destructive or negative tone even if they are suggesting ways
you might do something better. They are always loving and accepting of
you.
In the final analysis it does not matter whether we choose
to believe one or the other of these explanations, our guides speak to
us in many and sometimes surprising ways and if they aid us in living a
more meaningful life they serve our wholeness and spiritual growth.
They appear in our dreams, speak directly to us in meditation or in
quiet moments during the day. The more quiet spaces we make the more
likely we are to hear them. They are often behind positive intuitions
which urge us to do this or that which turns out to be `just the right
decision'. We all know those times when without knowing why we chose a
certain path or did something we wouldn't normally do and it turned out
well; that's no accident! We are guided in such matters, urged,
encouraged and even sometimes pushed.
And sometimes with
hindsight we even realise they were behind us not getting something we
wanted but later realise would not have been best for us.
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