Notes on Jung 01: Of Symbols Lost and Found

Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious

“What is true of primitive lore is true in even higher degree of the ruling world religions. They contain a revealed knowledge that was originally hidden, and they set forth the secrets of the soul in glorious images. Their temples and their sacred writings proclaim in image and word the doctrine hallowed form of old, making it accessible to every believing heart, every sensitive vision, every farthest range of thought. Indeed, we are compelled to say that the more beautiful, the more sublime, the more comprehensive the image that has evolved and been handed down by tradition, the further removed it is from individual experience.”

Besides being of interest to readers keen to study psychology, Jung’s works are also of special appeal to anyone who is curious about the process through which religion came into being and sustained its hold over humanity until dethroned by the advent of the sciences and objective thought. The first 50-60 pages (roughly) of this book make up an essay that traces the materialisation of images of the transcendent from the collective unconscious, how these images assumed more dramatic forms in religious mythologies, how they were reduced to no more than meaningless symbols of a lost past, and how the gods depopulated the cosmos and descended back into the collective unconscious from where they first sprung.

“Why have we not long since discovered the unconscious and raised up its treasure-house of eternal images? Simply because we had a religious formula for everything psychic—and one that is far more beautiful and comprehensive than immediate experience. Though the Christian view of the world has paled for many people, the symbolic treasure-rooms of the East are still full of marvels that can nourish for a long time to come the passion for show and new clothes. What is more, these images—be they Christian or Buddhist or what you will—are lovely, mysterious, richly intuitive. Naturally, the more familiar we are with them the more does constant usage polish them smooth, so that what remains is only banal superficiality and meaningless paradox.”

Jung talks about how psychology is the youngest of empirical sciences, and this is primarily because religion supplied its services, so the need for this science did not arise until religious faiths, regarded as superfluous and unjustifiable as per the newly anointed faculty of objective thought, lost its favour among the populace. While Jung speaks of this with reference to Christianity, something not too different, albeit to a much lesser degree, also took place among peoples of other faiths. 

“There are many Europeans who began by surrendering completely to the influence of the Christian symbol until they landed themselves in a Kierkegaardian neurosis, or whose relation to God, owing to the progressive impoverishment of symbolism, developed into an unbearably sophisticated I-You relationship—only to fall victims in their turn to the magic and novelty of Eastern symbols.”

When robbed of their own faith, the erstwhile believers of Christianity grabbed hungrily at the spiritually nourishing symbols in the faiths of the East. This only went on to indicate the depth of the spiritual void carved out by the extraction of religious symbols from the soul, and the receptiveness of the soul in grasping onto newer symbols that afforded similar succour to those bereft of divine images. It was a testament to man’s need to search for an ultimate value, especially one that carried cosmic significance and helped him determine his rightful place in a world made up of potential.

“That people should succumb to these eternal images is entirely normal, in fact it is what these images are for. They are meant to attract, to convince, to fascinate, and to overpower. They are created out of the primal stuff of revelation and reflect the ever-unique experience of divinity. That is why they always give man a premonition of the divine while at the same time safeguarding him from immediate experience of it. Thanks to the labours of the human spirit over the centuries, these images have become embedded in a comprehensive system of thought that ascribes an order to the world, and are at the same time represented by a mighty, far-spread, and venerable institution called the Church.”

The organisation of these symbols and dreamlike images into comprehensive frameworks of interpretation, and consequently into systems of thought, complete with laws and levels of analysis with which to view the world and find meaning, ensconced man and his little worlds such that he need not wake up everyday and justify existence all over again. He could simply wake up, sufficiently positioned in the macrocosm, and go about his business - making order out of chaos to make living slightly more comfortable, and dissolving order into chaos when systems became too tyrannical. Though modern education tempts us to believe that our lesser evolved forefathers were dimwitted brutes, they seem to have been wiser than we give them credit for. They told stories more carefully spun and more meaningful than the ones we developed when the greater part of our existence began to take place in the conscious realms of our minds. Today, we cast aside those stories with careless disdain, soporific with the newfound bliss of our reasoning faculties.