Forever Jung Address by Bryan Carroll Sunday 7 Jan2007 |
FOREVER JUNG: the spiritual life of a humanist
I never met C. G. Jung in person. That's not surprising. Not only did he live in Switzerland, while I grew up in Canada, but he died when I was nine. Because he has walked with me through so much of my life as one of my oldest and best teachers, I've been curious about his life and have read several biographies as well as memoirs written by people who knew him and worked with him. I'm not sure that I would have gotten along with him very well. By all accounts, he worked very well with women, but not so well with other men.
I don't idolize Jung and I don't idealize him. I admire his thinking and the breadth of his knowledge. I'm often fascinated by his perceptions of life. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that everyone in this room has heard of him – Jung has influenced our thinking in more ways than most people realize. I also wouldn't be surprised to learn that I'm the only person in this room who has read more than a few excerpts of his writings or summaries of his ideas in other people's words. Over the years, I've read about three quarters of his published work. I don't always agree with his conclusions and I'm sure that he wouldn't always agree with mine. I also have a different perspective. Jung was a practising psychiatrist and a scholar. I'm more interested in the significance of Jung's insights in the everyday lives of people who are neither psychiatrists nor scholars.
What did I learn from Jung? First, he taught me that our conscious self is only part of our mind – our psyche, to use Jung's preferred term. Most people, when they say "I" or "me", are referring to their conscious self, their ego. Jung taught me that this is only part of our whole self. The larger part of us is unconscious. Part of this unconscious self is the personal unconscious or subconscious mind; that is, experiences and facts that have been forgotten, emotions and memories that have been suppressed, subliminal sense perceptions and intuitions that were never fully conscious. All of these are real, meaning that they can be shown experimentally to affect our perceptions, responses, and decisions. Most psychologists accept the existence of subconscious thinking. But there is a deeper level of unconscious thinking. I understand it as the mental equivalent to unconscious physical functions like our immune system, or the feedback systems that regulate body temperature and blood sugar, or the changing hormonal balances that determine growth rates in children, cause puberty, and regulate reproductive cycles. These are only a few examples of unconscious physiological functions. I don't think that anyone here would argue that they aren't real. What I learned from Jung is that there are unconscious psychological processes which are just as real. It won't surprise you when I say that I see nothing mystical in this – mysterious and wonderful, yes, but not mystical.
The evidence that supports this idea leads to the second insight that Jung gave me: that our minds, in both the conscious and unconscious aspects, have structure. This makes sense to me. Our brains are highly structured; all other animals are born with strong patterns of perception and thinking, how could our minds be born without any structure? This misconception probably started from two uniquely human characteristics. First, our brains and therefore our minds are more immature at birth than those of other placental mammals (for people who are fascinated by animals, I should point out that marsupials, which are also mammals, have a very different definition of birth). Because of the immaturity of our brains, the mental structure that is obvious at birth or soon after in other animals is still developing during the year after birth in humans. Second, the effect of learning on behaviour is greater in humans than in any other species. This means that we are highly variable in the different ways that we can develop. It doesn't mean that we have no mental structure or instinctive responses to build on. Many experiments have shown that babies pick out patterns of sound, colour, shape, and movement and show preferences for certain patterns. When they're older, people retain information better when it's presented in a story and when it's connected to what they already know. Most people would agree that they learn best by doing. These are illustrations of innate mental structure.
So what does all this have to do with spirituality and C.G. Jung? According to Jung, the unconscious mind is more active and its structure is more complex than is generally realized. He believed that this structure is expressed in mythological stories, religious symbolism, dreams, and artistic creation. He believed that the unconscious mind thinks in a language that is both verbal and non-verbal and is highly symbolic in nature. Only the structure of the unconscious mind is inherited, the content is personal, although in unconscious thinking, structure and content are more closely intermingled than in conscious thinking. Jung's term "collective unconscious" describes the concept that the basic thinking, feeling, evaluating, and information processing capabilities that we all have follow the same general pattern, just as the anatomy of our brains follows the same general pattern. Many people give this idea a mystical interpretation, but it can just as well be understood as the mind seen from the perspective of the brain's software rather than the neurophysiologist's study of the brain's hardware. Personally, I'd bet that they're studying the same thing from different angles. At first hearing, "unconscious thinking" may sound like an impossibility. But is it any less possible than unconscious breathing? We can be conscious of our breathing and control it to a degree; however, when we sleep, we don't stop breathing. Dreaming is a type of unconscious thinking, which happens every night whether or not we consciously remember our dreams.
Now Jung was a mystic as well as a scientist. He usually succeeded in keeping his scientifically supported theories separate from what I would call his mystical speculations, although I'm pretty sure that both were equally real to him. Since I don't claim to know ultimate realities, all that I ask of anyone is that they define which of their ideas are supported by independent evidence and which are based on personal experience and speculation without supporting evidence. Jung also stretched the boundaries of science in ways that many scientists reject. What he gave to me was a way of understanding religious experience without either denying its reality and importance or abandoning the possibility of understanding it scientifically. I'm not going to explore Jung's ideas in detail today – the theme of this service is "the spiritual life of a humanist", not "the intellectual life of a humanist". These concepts are connected, but not identical – that's why we use different words to describe them. In a few minutes, the part of me that analyses information and defines ideas is going to listen while the part of me that thinks in symbols, sounds, and emotions speaks to you. Before I begin, I want to take a few more minutes to explain what I mean by "humanist" and "spiritual".
The set of ideas that the word "humanist" represents isn't a perfect fit for my perception of life, but it's good enough to work with. If, like me, you are unable to believe that the universe was created and is guided by an all-knowing and all-powerful spirit being, or that the universe itself is a benevolent being, or that everything is connected by the spirit of love, or that all pain and suffering can be transcended or are part of a divine plan – if, as I say, none of these ideas are credible for you, then you find meaning in other ways. For me, meaning comes from my connections with other people, from an awareness and understanding of my existence as part of nature, and simply from being. You should understand that when I say people, I mean an interesting group of mammals descended from common ancestors, not divine souls temporarily inhabiting physical bodies, and by nature I mean all of life – the cruel, wasteful, and indifferent struggle for existence as well as the beauty, symbiosis, joy, and love. By humanism, I mean the belief that we are what we are – complex almost beyond imagining but always real – that we are part of nature as it is, not some imaginary nature where every being lives in perfect love and harmony with every other being or ever could – that how we experience ourselves and how we are with one another gives life its meaning. I realize that this is not an understanding of life that suits everyone, but it is the one that I can believe. Surprisingly, my pact with life is well described by a part of the traditional Anglican marriage vow that most of you will know: "for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part".
To many of you, what I'm describing may sound like a bleak view of life and you may ask, what is spiritual about it? Come with me a little further. As it happens, I believe that the spiritual needs, yearnings, and experiences of people are absolutely real. It's the religious explanations of spirituality that I don't accept. I value love and choose to live in peace with others when I can, but I don't believe that these are the fundamental principles of the universe. I can feel compassion and empathy without believing in God, and I find satisfaction in helping others without believing that I am fulfilling a divine purpose. I've come to the realization that my goal is to accept life and nature as they are. I don't mean passively – that's not how I perceive life or nature – what I mean is that I've stopped trying to pick out and believe the parts that I like and reject and refuse to believe the parts that make me uncomfortable. I have my preferences – there are things that I would like to believe. I also trust my intuition. But if all the evidence, including my own experience, points toward something being true or not true, then I accept it and move on.
As I've travelled my spiritual path, I've come to understand that the inner language of many people is what I would call religious, in the traditional meaning. Mine is not. For that reason, I used to think that I wasn't spiritual. Now I would say that "spiritual" needs a broader definition. If you think back to what I said earlier, you'll understand me when I say that for me spiritual means connecting the conscious and the unconscious, joining the inner and outer worlds, experiencing both human and non-human realities. There's nothing mystical about this for me. I believe that the universe that I inhabit and experience is real, not an illusion. I believe that the purpose of life is living, not preparing for an afterlife. Maybe when life ends, it's over, and the cycles go on forever. I don't know. I think about it sometimes, but I don't worry about it a lot. If there is a life after death, there are dozens of theories about what it's like and no evidence that is convincing to me to back any of them. If it turns out that everything is understandable as atoms and molecules, quarks and energy, that won't bother me. I won't be any more or less real for understanding the underlying structure of the universe. A kiss will still be a kiss; a sigh will still be a sigh.
This is our gathering place. I'm not here to persuade, but to share.
So let us begin.
If I Meditated - by Bryan Carroll
if I meditated daily,
we might share a knowing look
if I prayed for hours,
I might be praised – head held just so,
a certain light in your eyes
if every morning I danced a slow yogic dance,
you might hear an inner stillness
when we met
but my spirit is a restless spirit,
finding peace in movement,
believing that doing is being
understanding is my contemplation
learning is my prayer
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