Category Archives: Meaning

Jung’s Red Book 2: The God of experience

Books, Great Thinkers, Jung, Meaning, Myth, Religion, spirituality,

Though in many ways Jung’s Red Book is a unique text, the closest thing it reminds me of is the texts of Christian mystics who wrestled with God in their own inner experience: people like Julian of Norwich, Richard Rolle, or the anonymous author of ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’. These mystics, writing in the late Middle Ages, could not distance themselves explicitly from orthodox Christian theology in the way Jung could, but it nevertheless seems obvious to me that metaphysical beliefs really didn’t matter much to them. What really mattered was the living God they encountered within. One thing that disturbs me about the language of naturalists and so-called ‘skeptics’ is that they tend to use ‘mystic’ as a pejorative word. But if you genuinely value experience over dogma, mystics are worthy of the highest respect, and Jung is perhaps the most recent and the most striking of them: a man who tried to take scientific method and the experiential God seriously at the same time, whilst being critical of dogma, including the dogmas about God that atheists are rightly critical of. I find the same spirit of objectivity in the mystical Jung of the Red Book as I do in his psychological works.Mandala_from_Jung's_Red_Book_Joanna Penn CCA2-0

The apparent contradiction for the mystic is that God remains supremely powerful whilst being inner. It might be assumed that those who treat God as something within one’s own mind (remaining at least practically agnostic about claims of God beyond the mind) thus reduce God to a kind of powerless abstraction, and indeed some post-modern theology can apparently end up doing this. But this misunderstanding of the implications of an inner focus confuses wider inner experience with mere intellectualisation.   God does not become a mere abstraction when we treat him as an experience, because experience is recognised through the right hemisphere of the brain, and it is the over-dominant left hemisphere that creates mere abstractions unconnected to experience. Jung is very obviously not just engaged in an intellectual reduction of God to left-hemisphere terms. One of the indications of this the power of God as Jung encounters him. We’re talking about a full-blooded God here, not some sort of ‘mitigated’ God. A God who is, indeed, terrifying, in the spirit of the holy awe felt by the ancient Israelites.

Jung’s accounts of his visions bring this tension vividly to life. In the section headed ‘First Day’, Jung encounters God on a mountain path. He is terrified, but oddly enough the God himself also seems to be terrified.

As I approach the top, a mighty booming resounds from the other side of the mountain like ore being pounded. The sound gradually swells, and echoes thunderously in the mountain. As I reach the pass, I see an enormous man approach from the other side.

Two bull horns rise from his great head, and a rattling suit of armour covers his chest. His black beard is ruffled and decked with exquisite stones. The giant is carrying a sparkling double axe in his hand, like those used to strike bulls. Before I can recover from my amazed fright, the giant is standing before me. I look at his face: it is faint and pale and deeply wrinkled. HIs almond-shaped eyes look at me astonished. Horror takes hold of me: this is Izdubar, the mighty bull-man. He stands and looks at me: his face speaks of consuming inner fear, and his hands and knees tremble. Izdubar, the powerful bull trembling? Is he frightened? (p.277-8)

Jung then has a conversation with Izdubar, in which he tells him he comes from ‘the West’, with its science and rationality. On learning this, Izdubar is dismayed. He flings away his useless weapon and falls ill. This seems to reflect the initial impact of the modern outlook on God, which at first looks likely to kill him: the function of God undermined in the human psyche by the left-brain dominant explanation of the ‘natural’ world.

In ‘Second Day’ Jung finds himself on a mountain ridge with a sick Izdubar, whom he realises he loves and wants to save. But Izdubar cannot move, and is too heavy to be carried to safety. Then Jung has an idea.

I: My prince, Powerful One, listen: a thought came to me that might save us. I think that you are not at all real, only a fantasy.

Izdubar: I am terrified by this thought. It is murderous. Do you mean to declare me unreal – now that you have lamed me so pitifully?

I: Perhaps I have not made myself clear enough, and have spoken too much in the language of Western lands. I do not mean to say that you are not real at all, of course, but only as real as a fantasy. If you could accept this, much could be gained. (p.293)

Eventually he persuades Izdubar to accept that he is only as real as a fantasy “if it helps”, and Jung is then able to pick up Izdubar, who becomes “lighter than air” and carry him home. This is an extraordinary recognition, not just that God remains valuable when recognised as a human construction, but of the incrementality of the ‘reality’ involved: it is not just a question of being real or unreal, but rather of having more or less of the qualities we associate with ‘reality’, such as tangibility, extension in space, causal effectiveness, and so on.

When he gets home, despite being light, Izdubar will not fit through the door. So Jung squashes him into the size of an egg (p.295). Yet, despite being squashed into the size of an egg, God has lost none of his meaning and importance. Jung sings moving ‘Incantations’ over the egg containing God.

Oh

light of the middle way

enclosed in the egg

embryonic,

full of ardour, oppressed…. (p.300)

Come to us, we who are willing from our own will.

Come to us, we who understand you from our own spirit.

Come to us, we who will warm you at our own fire.

Come to us, we who will heal you with our own art.

Come to us, we who will produce you out of our own body.

Come, child, to father and mother. (p.303)

Jung conveys a wonderfully integrated experience here, at one and the same time recognising that we create God, that God is not something threatening us from without, and that God is nevertheless a matter of overwhelming yearning. But nevertheless, such an encapsulated God, without power, cannot fulfil all the functions of God, and Jung wishes to restore him to his former splendour. In ‘The Opening of the Egg’, Izdubar bursts out of the egg.

I: “Oh Izdubar! Divine One! How wonderful! You are healed!”

“Healed? Was I ever sick? Who speaks of sickness? I was sun, completely sun. I am the sun”.

An inexpressible light breaks from his body, a light that my eyes cannot grasp. I must cover my face and cast my gaze to the ground.

I: “You are the sun, the eternal light – most powerful one, forgive me for carrying you.” (p.307-8)

This to me conveys a powerful message about God as meaning. A meaningful God is not an inch less impressive and powerful than a real God. He remains perfect, omnipotent, omniscient and eternal in meaning. But such a God and his infinite qualities should not be an object of belief – for that would fix the nature and qualities of God in relation to everything else. Since God has the archetypal function of projecting forward a complete integration of the psyche, the form taken can vary with each person or each group sharing ideas about that supreme meaningfulness, it being only his function that creates universal consistency.

Elsewhere, Jung describes God as the supreme meaning.

But the supreme meaning is the path, the way and the bridge to what is to come. That is the God yet to come. It is not the coming God himself, but his image which appears in the supreme meaning. God is an image, and those who worship him must worship him in the image of the supreme meaning. (p.120)

This meaningfulness becomes all the more intelligible if we interpret it in the light of embodied meaning. The meaning of God does not have to be tied to beliefs about the circumstances in which propositions about him would be true, as analytic philosophers would have it. It is this representationalist assumption that makes most philosophy of religion a waste of time. Instead, the meaning of God, like the meanings of all other words and symbols, consists in synaptic links formed by associations with our active experience, and built up through inter-related metaphors that connect different areas of that experience. God does indeed reside in our bodies, but no one metaphor is solely adequate to describe him: rather it would require the synthesis of all metaphors into the widest possible meaningful experience. To ‘worship’ God should surely be to try to connect with that supreme meaning – not to reify it, but to get as far as we can in experiencing it.

Personally I find this portrayal of God in the Red Book both liberating and inspiring. One thing I have in common with Jung is a Christian background, indeed being like him the son of a pastor. In earlier life I have tried to evade God and think of him as irrelevant, but, as Jung writes:

God is unavoidable. The more you flee from the God, the more surely you fall into his hand. (p.164)

God is unavoidable, not just for those of us who have an image of God etched into our childhood experience, but even in a sense for others, since the God archetype is a dimension of human experience that may manifest in other ways using other labels, but nevertheless have the same function.

Reading the Red Book has reminded me of how important that function is to me, but it leaves me nevertheless in a continuing indecision about my practical relationship to Christianity that becomes, if anything, more loaded than it was before. Churches are rich sources of archetypal experience, but overwhelmingly still filled with people who externalise and absolutise that experience. Sometimes I encounter the wish to worship God, but any such worship seems destined to be solitary. Perhaps one day there will be a Jungian church led by people who explicitly acknowledge the archetypal  nature of God at every turn: but until that day, it is only churches empty of people that I, perversely, find attractive, and where it seems possible to explore Jungian interpretations of what one encounters in solitude.

 

Link to the first blog in this series: The Jungian Middle Way

Picture: Mandala from Jung’s Red Book: Joanna Penn CCA2.0

What’s wrong with cliché?

Meaning, The Arts

I used to have colleague who could never use a straightforward phrase about the start or beginning of anything: instead, he’d say “Your starter for ten is…”. I’m not even quite sure where this particular catch phrase comes from (I suspect some past TV quiz game). He had a great many other similar verbal mannerisms, which I would sometimes find irritating. Similar feelings assail me when I look at a rack of popular greetings cards like that pictured below. However, both then and now, I find it difficult to justify my irritation. What is, after all, wrong with cliché? Why shouldn’t people talk (and write) in whatever ways they like? Is it just a kind of cultural snobbery to decry it?Cliche cards

I put my own instinctive responses to cliché down largely to early literary study, as the first subject I studied at university was English Literature (before later changing courses), and one of my earliest aspirations was to be a poet. In both literary and creative writing circles (especially poetic ones) cliché is the ultimate social no-no: the basis on which unsatisfactory texts are dismissed and the prime way we tell good poems from bad ones. One of the prime values we were looking for in culture was freshness in the use of metaphor. But, looking back, nobody in those circles ever gave me a reason why this was such an important aesthetic  imperative. It seemed to be simply a matter of social agreement. Sometimes I would disagree, fro example when I found that a text that might be otherwise described as ‘littered with clichés’ did also have something interesting to say. The content did seem to me more important than the form, and too much focus on the avoidance of cliché can make one focus disproportionately on the form.

But now, looking back at these issues from the standpoint of Middle Way Philosophy, I do think that there are some good reasons for generally trying to avoid cliché in one’s own writing and speech (or, to put this more positively, trying to use fresh metaphors to convey our experience). It comes down to trying not to entrench over-used synaptic tracks. If we rely over-much on one particular kind of language, this will tend on the whole to propel our thoughts down certain well-accustomed routes. Our judgements and thus our beliefs may then more easily become rigid, and ill-adapted to new circumstances. Even philosophers and scientists, who deal primarily with the assessment of beliefs, may thus benefit from some attention to the words they are using to express their beliefs. The arts, with their emphasis on developing new metaphors and new symbols, can help to constantly expand the resources we have to draw on to develop more adequate ideas about things. Our concern with such things does matter, because we are modelling our brains and their capacities as we choose one word or another.

But at the same time it also seems important not to absolutise this general rule. There may often be an asymmetry between the originality of our language and the originality of our ideas, and some people may be better at making full use of limited linguistic resources whilst others squander the immense linguistic resources on developing inconsequential ideas. The relative importance of avoiding cliché also depends very much on where you start. For some people expressing their thoughts in any kind of language, however hackneyed, may be a big step forward. What may be a cliché to us may also not be to them, because of differences in culture and experience.

The variability of what people consider to be a cliché can be judged from an interesting Wikipedia list of words that have been ‘banished’ by bodies such as the BBC and New York Times because they are considered clichéd. Some of these words seem to be in widespread general use (“conversation”), but perhaps become clichés when used in a particular way. Some are probably clichés  in particular contexts unfamiliar to me, such as ‘walk it back’. There’s no mention of the ones that irritate me most, which tend to be the language of an exclusive group (obviously not one I belong to) that is unthinkingly assumed to be universal (e.g. ‘lolcats’ or ‘man flu’).

My suggestion for the general avoidance of cliché is just not to try too hard. Sometimes an original metaphor may come to you, but generally straightforward, moderately formal language does the job best. Instead of ‘Your starter for ten’, you could just boringly say ‘We’ll start with…’. Instead of ‘lol’ you could just say ‘that’s funny’. The more straightforward the language, the wider the range of people it will communicate with. An association between clichés and in-groups may thus be avoided, and any tendency you have to assume a certain limited audience for what you want to say also challenged.

 

Empowering words

Linguistics, Meaning, Middle Way Philosophy

The limits of our thinking are often the limits of our conventional language, but it does not have to be so. Words are ours to command, and the meanings of words are ours to change as the need arises. If we want our language to be empowering rather than habitual and limiting, we need to exercise our creativity with regard to the language we use.

When I first started researching and writing philosophy for my Ph.D., I remember the recognition of this point as one of the most liberating moments. “You’re always entitled to a stipulation” my supervisor said, and him saying that probably marked the point when I started to realise just how creative philosophy could potentially be (even though much of this creativity is not often used by those trying to climb the academic career ladder). What that means is that when the need arises, we can make up and modify words and phrases – provided of course that you make it clear what you mean. This is exactly what great thinkers of the past have done: think of the Buddha’s Middle Way, Plato’s Eidola (‘Forms’), Jung’s archetypes, Heidegger’s Dasein and Sartre’s Existentialism. All of these terms, that have shaped people’s capacity to have new kinds of thoughts, are coinages, or at least radical modifications of previous terms. Rather than revering and petrifying these past coinages, we need to emulate these thinkers’ creativity. By having a wider variety of word meanings, we then have the tools to potentially develop new and more adequate beliefs.Compass_rose_Cantino Alvesgaspar CCSA3-0

But after my initial period of studying philosophy , I began to realise how relatively unusual this perspective was, and how conservative most people are when it comes to words and their usages. This unnecessary conservatism can take a variety of forms. Perhaps the most basic one is the conviction that a word “really means” what we have been used to it meaning, so that someone using it in a different way becomes offensive in some way. For example, I have been told that religion “really means” supernatural belief, and that Christianity “really means” the belief that Jesus is the Son of God. These are, indeed, meanings that can be adopted for these terms, but they are far from the only ones in a complex field of traditional usages. Those who insist that a word “really means” this or that seem to be avoiding taking responsibility for the fact that they are themselves choosing to interpret it in one way or another. This is a form of repression – of the failure to recognise alternatives as options.

The appeal to a dictionary is another form that this appeal to what a word “really means” can take. Now dictionaries are extremely useful things, but what they tell us is the established conventions of word meaning and usage, not the limits of how we, in our practical situations, may choose to use words. But all too often people use dictionary meanings as prescriptive devices to curtail thought heading in new directions. Anybody who uses a word differently from what it says in the dictionary is assumed to be just wrong.

Another pair of fallacies that may attend the appeal to dictionaries are the etymological fallacy and the original language fallacy . In the etymological fallacy, it is assumed that what a word “really means” is determined by its origins: so, for example, rationality must mean proportionality because it comes from the Latin “ratio”, which involves the idea of proportion. Of course, etymologies can help us appreciate some of the past associations of a word, but not much more than that. In the original language fallacy (beloved of Religious Studies scholars) it is assumed that the true or correct meaning of a term originally derived from another language must be what it meant in that language – and indeed that we must be able to find the truths of a particular religion more directly if we study them in the original language. This takes an extreme form in Islam, where nearly every Muslim boy learns Arabic by rote, and translations of the Qur’an are not even recognised as ‘true’ Qur’ans.

But if we ignore the constraining influences of these kinds of traditional attitudes, as I urge, and dare to use our linguistic creativity, there are also, of course, certain responsibilities that come with that freedom. Though what we do with language is our own business, when we are using it to communicate with others it obviously needs to be transparent to them. Creative use of language, as in Shakespeare, demands a little more of the reader or auditor, and may require glosses or explanations – but with the possibility of greater rewards in return for that effort at comprehension.

One key responsibility seems to me to be that only a helpful purpose should motivate coinages: which means, for example, avoiding mere exclusive language. In my own work I have heard various complaints about ‘jargon’, and ‘jargon’ is normally a term for unhelpful language used by a group to mark ‘in’ status and exclude outsiders. If terms like incrementality, justification, objectivity or archetype are not familiar to you in the sense I use them, then I can only assure you that the normal reason I use new or modified meanings is to try to capture helpful senses and get away from less helpful ones, not to exclude people by confusing them (even if that is sometimes an unfortunate side-effect). For example, the use of ‘objectivity’ to mean ‘God’s eye view’ seems to me comparatively unhelpful because none of us has, or could possibly have, any experience of a God’s eye view – and the use of the same word to mean the gaining of a wider and more adequate perspective, already also in use, is much more helpful. So I use the word in the latter sense and avoid the former, particularly as I see the former sense leading people in some very unhelpful habitual directions. Challenging this use is one way of challenging the basis of the assumption that God’s eye views are possible.

Another responsibility that seems to come with stipulative creativity is that of continuity. People need some sort of hook to hang their meanings on, and generally there is some connection, an association of some sort, between past meanings and new ones. That’s why gradually modifying meanings seems preferable to making up new words from scratch. Continuity can give people the opportunity to start relating to old words in new ways, but it also carries the danger that they will just relapse into the old ways – after all these are reinforced by the context in which they have become usual, and the way that everyone else uses them. Thus a balance needs to be struck – on the one hand insisting on a new sense in order to open up new veins of thought, but on the other maintaining some continuity. That’s what I’ve generally tried to do in Middle Way Philosophy, but that doesn’t prevent the continuing danger of both types of reaction: either bafflement or complacency.

New uses of language often take the form either of distinctions (e.g. ‘joy’ distinguished from ‘happiness’ in Carl H’s recent comment on my previous blog) or of syntheses (e.g. objectivity has the same reference as integration). Either of these can be helpful as long as they’re not presented as the “real meaning” of the term, but rather just as a way of enriching the meanings available to us. The vice of analytic philosophers seems to be to make constant distinctions, with the accompanying assumption that these distinctions tell us final truths that we were previously missing (the ultimate sin for an analytic philosopher is ‘conflation’). But in my experience, people are more likely to use words in different contexts without realising their relationship – for example, scientists often seem to assume that their ‘objectivity’ is completely different from that of artists. Syntheses generally need a lot more attention, but of course they are not final either. There are also differences between the way scientists can be objective and the way artists can be, and the context will determine whether appreciation of these differences needs more attention than the similarities.

But I don’t just want to defend my own freedom to use language creatively. I would like to see other people doing it much more than I generally experience them as doing, and scuttling to their dictionaries and scholarly certainties much less. Perhaps the place where most verbal freedom is actually exercised is poetry (though even here there can be resistance to innovation). If you want a (relatively) safe place to experiment, I can highly recommend that you play with language in the context of poetry. That’s indeed where I started – I wanted to be a poet, in my early twenties, long before I even got interested in philosophy. A blank page can be daunting, but also liberating. You can put anything you like on that page, and it can mean whatever you want it to mean. To quote one great poet of the past “Oh brave new world, that hath such people in it!”

 

Picture: Compass Rose from the Cantino Planisphere, replica by Alvesgaspar CCSA3.0

The MWS Podcast 58: Philip Kitcher on Life after Faith: The case for Secular Humanism

Ethics, Meaning, Philosophy, Podcast, Religion, ,

Philip Kitcher is the John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at the University of Columbia. He’s the first recipient of the American Philosophical Association’s Prometheus Prize for his work to expand the frontiers of science and philosophy. He’s written many books including ‘Philosophy of Science: A new introduction’, ‘Preludes to Pragmatism’ and ‘The Ethical Project’. His latest book is ‘Life after Faith: The Case for Secular Humanism’ and that will be the topic of the conversation today.


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The MWS Podcast 49: Elizabeth English on Focusing

Health, Meaning, Meditation, Psychology,

Elizabeth English (Locana) is the founder Life at Work, a professional and personal development organisation. She has a  Masters and Doctorate from Oxford University in Buddhology. She’s a certified Nonviolent Communication trainer and, a teacher in Focusing with the British Focusing Teachers’ Association and the Focusing Institute. She’s going to talk to us today about Focusing, what it is, how you practice it, what are its benefits and how it might relate to the Middle Way.


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