Jung and God

[Moonwood the Hare]

Richard Dawkins gives Carl Jung as an example of a person claiming to know there is a God. I have suggested several times recently that Dawkins misunderstood Jung. Having taken several people like Einstein and Newton and Mendel who clearly did have religious beliefs, (Einstien is a pantheist following Spinoza so Dawkins is correct in thinking he is not a theist wrong in thinking he has no religious beliefs, Newton is an Arian Christian who kept his true beliefs hidden, Mendal according to all the evidence we have did not become a monk solely to fund his experiments) and said that being scientists they did not really have religious or at least conventionally theist beliefs he then takes Jung and concludes that because he also believed in Poltergeist phenomena Jung must have been referring to God in some literal metaphysical sense. Well here is a quote from Jung after he made this claim on TV explaining what he meant:

Sir - So many letters I have received have emphasized my statement about 'knowing' (of God) [in Face to Face, The Listener, October 29]. My opinion about knowledge of God is an unconventional way of thinking, and I quite understand if it should be suggested that I am no Christian. Yet I think of myself as a Christian since I am entirely based upon Christian concepts. I only try to escape their internal contradictions by introducing a more modest attitude, which takes into consideration the immense darkness of the human mind. The Christian idea proves its vitality by a continuous evolution, just like Buddhism. Our time certainly demands some new thought in this respect, as we cannot continue to think in an antique or medieval way, when we enter the sphere of religious experience.
I did not say in the broadcast, "There is a God." I said "I do not need to believe in God; I know." Which does not mean: I do know a certain God (Zeus, Jahwe, Allah, the Trinitarian God, etc.) but rather: I do know that I am obviously confronted with a factor unknown in itself, which I call 'God' in consensu omnium [consent of everyone] "'quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditur"). ["What has been believed always, everywhere, and by all"] I remember Him, I evoke Him, whenever I use His name overcome by anger or by fear, whenever I involuntarily say: "Oh God!"
That happens when I meet somebody or something stronger than myself. It is an apt name given to all overpowering emotions in my own psychical system subduing my conscious will and usurping control over myself. This is the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans, and intentions and change the course of my life for better or worse. I accordance with tradition I call the power of fate in this positive as well as negative aspect, and inasmuch as its origin is beyond my control, 'god', a 'personal god', since my fate means very much myself, particularly when it approaches me in the form of conscience as a vox Dei, with which I can even converse and argue. (We do and, at the same time, we know that we do. One is subject as well as object.)
Yet I should consider it an intellectual immorality to indulge in the belief that my view of a god is the universal, metaphysical Being of the confessions or 'philosophies'. I do neither commit the impertinence of a hypostasis, nor of an arrogant qualification such as: 'God can only be good.' Only my experience can be good or evil, but I know that the superior will is based upon a foundation which transcends human imagination. Since I know of my collision with a superior will in my own psychical system, I know of God, and if I should venture the illegitimate hypostasis of my image, I would say, of a God beyond good and evil, just as much dwelling in myself as everywhere else: Deus est circulus cuius centrum est ubique, cuis circumferentia vero nusquam. [God is a circle whose center is everywhere, but whose circumference is nowhere]

I thought given we know have another contributor who is interested in Jung (Yuri) this might be a discussion starter. For one thing Jung like Mitch is talking very much in terms of the irreducibly subjective.

[Yuri]

My cognitive powers are inadequate to fathom more than 20% of Jung's explanation. The Latin parts were just as meaningful to me as some of the English. However, I think Jung says that he knows of the existence of God from his experiences of self-examination, during which he has encountered a "presence" or "component" in his own mind that he considers more powerful than him. Jung was a psychoanalyst so must have judged this "presence" to be real, not imaginary.

I get the sense that Jung does not consider his God to be like the God of Abraham or any other religious God. Jung's God is personal to him. By God, Jung means something that exists, but not something that is necessarily real. By that I mean something like Santa Claus. We all know Santa exists because he is a powerful idea, but he does not exist in the realm of reality, but the realm of individual experience.

Does that sound about right?

[mitchellmckain]

For one thing Jung like Mitch is talking very much in terms of the irreducibly subjective.

From what I have been reading of Jung, I think this is essentially correct and that Yuri, as usual, is imposing his own premises and mental categories on Jung to create a simple minded picture of Jung's thinking that isn't in the least bit accurate. I think it likely that Jung would very much refute Yuri's presumption that to be in "the realm of individual experience" means that it "does not exist in the realm of reality". I suspect that he would associate this kind of thinking to the erosion of human spirituality that he thinks threatens the destruction of human civilization. Overall, I think that Jung has a deep suspicion of and aversion to ideology and thus avoids any structure of systematic thought that might partake of the the sin of ideology which is the oversimplification of reality. This makes his thinking very hard to pin down in any kind of summarization.

[Moonwood the Hare]

My cognitive powers are inadequate to fathom more than 20% of Jung's explanation. The Latin parts were just as meaningful to me as some of the English. However, I think Jung says that he knows of the existence of God from his experiences of self-examination, during which he has encountered a "presence" or "component" in his own mind that he considers more powerful than him. Jung was a psychoanalyst so must have judged this "presence" to be real, not imaginary.

I get the sense that Jung does not consider his God to be like the God of Abraham or any other religious God. Jung's God is personal to him. By God, Jung means something that exists, but not something that is necessarily real. By that I mean something like Santa Claus. We all know Santa exists because he is a powerful idea, but he does not exist in the realm of reality, but the realm of individual experience.

Does that sound about right?

Well Santa Claus would be a socially constructed archetype where God according to Jung is an archetype in the collective unconscious so no Jung does not see God as personal to him. And the God he speaks of very plainly is the God of Abraham as you would know if you had read his book 'Answers to Job' which is a kind of psychological history of the person of God in the Old Testament. In some ways Jung's God like Pascal's is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and not the God of the philosophers. I am not sure what you mean by religious God, are you equating religion with metaphysical realism?

Mitch I think you are on the right lines with this. Jung's approach to God is more like that of Karen Armstrong who may even have been influenced by him but there are certain affinities here with the thought of John Calvin who unlike medieval Catholic thinkers says we cannot know God's essence, what he is in himself, but only that nature in which he chooses to reveal himself, that is what he is to us. Although Jung says that he does not commit the impertinence of a hypostasis (hypostasis is a word originally meaning being later used in the Eastern Church in place of the Latin persona or person to describe the trinity) he does posit a fourfold presentation of God's being where either Satan or Mary (as an embodiment of Sophia, the feminine aspect of God) are held to act alongside Father, Son and Spirit. Jung does not posit these as metaphysical realities but as part of our experiences of an energic reality within our collective psyche.

[Yuri]

Jung does not see God as personal to him. And the God he speaks of very plainly is the God of Abraham as you would know if you had read his book 'Answers to Job' which is a kind of psychological history of the person of God in the Old Testament. In some ways Jung's God like Pascal's is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and not the God of the philosophers. I am not sure what you mean by religious God, are you equating religion with metaphysical realism?

Hmmm... That doesn't really marry with what Jung said in his quote on your opening post:

"I did not say in the broadcast, "There is a God." I said "I do not need to believe in God; I know." Which does not mean: I do know a certain God (Zeus, Jahwe, Allah, the Trinitarian God, etc.) but rather: I do know that I am obviously confronted with a factor unknown in itself, which I call 'God' in consensu omnium [consent of everyone] "'quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditur"). ["What has been believed always, everywhere, and by all"] I remember Him, I evoke Him, whenever I use His name overcome by anger or by fear, whenever I involuntarily say: "Oh God!""

Here, he specifically states that he does not mean he knows a "certain God" and lists various Gods, including Jaweh, the God of Abraham, as an example of the gods he is specifically stating he doesn't know. He qualifies his statement by explaining that he calls god "god" because that's what everybody calls this idea of a supernatural father figure.

He goes on to say,
"...inasmuch as its origin is beyond my control, 'god', a 'personal god', since my fate means very much myself, particularly when it approaches me in the form of conscience as a vox Dei, with which I can even converse and argue." If I may attempt a translation, he explains here that his god is personal to him and amounts to a voice in his head with which he can converse.

The more I think about his words, the clearer it becomes that to Jung, God was a figment of his imagination which he accepted as real in the same way that any figment of anyone's imagination is real.

[mitchellmckain]

Having experienced it firsthand myself I know that Yuri likes to replace what you believe with what he decides that he wants to think that you believe, only in this case, Jung isn't here to tell him where stuff it.

[Moonwood the Hare]

Jung is saying that the reality underlying different experiences of the divine is the same hence he does not identify what he has encountered as the God of any particular religion. But that does not mean that he does not believe that he and Abraham did not encounter the same reality and the reality of the divine as encountered is not the God of the philosophers which is the product of abstract reasoning but one we encounter as thou in Buber's sense. But this is no figment of the imagination and the reason you fail to see this is that you are only beginning to understand Jungian ideas. There is a philosophical issue here which we need to clear up. In philosophy we differentiate between conceptualisation and instantiation. So we can say we have the concept of a unicorn but that concept is never instantiated. That is not what Jung is saying about God. Jung does not mean some individual or group of individuals have a concept of God and only the concept is real. Jung believes that as well as the personal unconscious there is a collective unconscious underlying and linking all minds and it is in this collective unconscious that what he calls archetypes exist. These cannot be known directly but shape our thinking, for example there is an archetype of the feminine which can take different forms such as the virgin, the hag, the mother and it as as one of these archetypes that God is known to exist. I pointed nout recently in one of my posts on the other thread that Jung likes Rogers thinks our conscious ego needs to move into line with the self which includes the irrational forces in the unconscious mind, well he would also say that unconscious mind needs to be in line with the archetypal forces or you might say we need to submit to God's will but God so conceived does not need to be a metaphysical or hypostatic reality.

So my warning here would be: try to encounter the other as other not reinterpret him in your own framework. If you are an INTP and if your secondary N preference is at all developed as I think it must be in order for you to succeed in the work you do then this should be quite easy for you - though Jung is difficult because his thought is so deep. At any rate we are in agreement that Richard Dawkins simply misunderstood what Jung meant when he said that he knew there was a God.

[JustJim]

Jung is saying that the reality underlying different experiences of the divine is the same hence he does not identify what he has encountered as the God of any particular religion. But that does not mean that he does not believe that he and Abraham did not encounter the same reality and the reality of the divine as encountered is not the God of the philosophers which is the product of abstract reasoning but one we encounter as thou in Buber's sense.

I agree with your assessment of Jung here, MW, but I don't think it supports a contention that he believed in the God of Abraham as described in the Bible, or in any way similar to traditional Judeo-Christian concepts of God. Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you, but I think Jung is intentionally distancing himself from that Judeo-Christian 'understanding' of God (as well as others). IOW, I think Jung contends he and Abraham (and other believers in god(s)) encounter the same reality (a kind of pervasive and collective unconscious 'mind'), but individuals and groups of people who have such experiences describe and define that 'reality' in many varied ways. His own understanding of God as a collective consciousness does not fit the Judeo-Christian, Islamic, or other 'formalized' understandings of God (except, in many ways, Hindu concepts of God). In an overly simplistic sense, Jung seems to acknowledge one "God" (a term he uses for lack of a better one) with many, many different 'names' and descriptions.

EDIT: I just realized, after re-reading your posts, you're NOT saying Jung believed in the Judeo-Christian, Abrahamic concept of God, and probably not even implying that. My bad... I'm sorry for misunderstanding you....

But this is no figment of the imagination and the reason you fail to see this is that you are only beginning to understand Jungian ideas. There is a philosophical issue here which we need to clear up. In philosophy we differentiate between conceptualisation and instantiation. So we can say we have the concept of a unicorn but that concept is never instantiated. That is not what Jung is saying about God. Jung does not mean some individual or group of individuals have a concept of God and only the concept is real. Jung believes that as well as the personal unconscious there is a collective unconscious underlying and linking all minds and it is in this collective unconscious that what he calls archetypes exist. These cannot be known directly but shape our thinking, for example there is an archetype of the feminine which can take different forms such as the virgin, the hag, the mother and it as as one of these archetypes that God is known to exist. I pointed nout recently in one of my posts on the other thread that Jung likes Rogers thinks our conscious ego needs to move into line with the self which includes the irrational forces in the unconscious mind, well he would also say that unconscious mind needs to be in line with the archetypal forces or you might say we need to submit to God's will but God so conceived does not need to be a metaphysical or hypostatic reality.

Perfectly stated! But how does that rebut a contention that the concept of God is a figment of the imagination? The 'imagination' of such a God could well include all of the qualifications you (and Jung) posit, could it not?

So my warning here would be: try to encounter the other as other not reinterpret him in your own framework.

How does one do that? How do you ignore your own "framework" (the entirety of your life experience and genetic makeup)? How do you interpret God outside of your own subjectivity?

Jim

[Moonwood the Hare]

Jung is saying that the reality underlying different experiences of the divine is the same hence he does not identify what he has encountered as the God of any particular religion. But that does not mean that he does not believe that he and Abraham did not encounter the same reality and the reality of the divine as encountered is not the God of the philosophers which is the product of abstract reasoning but one we encounter as thou in Buber's sense.

I agree with your assessment of Jung here, MW, but I don't think it supports a contention that he believed in the God of Abraham as described in the Bible, or in any way similar to traditional Judeo-Christian concepts of God. Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you, but I think Jung is intentionally distancing himself from that Judeo-Christian 'understanding' of God (as well as others). IOW, I think Jung contends he and Abraham (and other believers in god(s)) encounter the same reality (a kind of pervasive and collective unconscious 'mind'), but individuals and groups of people who have such experiences describe and define that 'reality' in many varied ways. His own understanding of God as a collective consciousness does not fit the Judeo-Christian, Islamic, or other 'formalized' understandings of God (except, in many ways, Hindu concepts of God). In an overly simplistic sense, Jung seems to acknowledge one "God" (a term he uses for lack of a better one) with many, many different 'names' and descriptions.

EDIT: I just realized, after re-reading your posts, you're NOT saying Jung believed in the Judeo-Christian, Abrahamic concept of God, and probably not even implying that. My bad... I'm sorry for misunderstanding you.....

I think Jung is taking a phenomenelogical rather than an antirealist approach. He is saying psychologically there is this thing that people encounter which comes through the collective unconcious. He is open to this being a product of their really being a metaphysically existent God but he is not committed to either that view or its opposite. I would compare it to something I put in the science thread about Newton. Newton described how gravity works and people said but what is it. Newton said I don't have a hypothesis about that. So the medieval idea was that things fall because they are trying to get to their natural place at the centre of the universe and people ask Newton what hypothesis he has to replace that one and he says nothing, I don't need that. Jung says I don't need a hypothesis about what the metaphysical cause of this God experience is in order to identify it as a psychological reality. In a similar way John Calvin refuses to say what God is. Where a medieval like Anselm would define God as that than which no greater can be conceived Calvin sees God in himself as unknwable and thinks what we can know is God manifest in creation, not just psychologically as with Jung but in other aspects but never the thing initself, the noumenon.

But this is no figment of the imagination and the reason you fail to see this is that you are only beginning to understand Jungian ideas. There is a philosophical issue here which we need to clear up. In philosophy we differentiate between conceptualisation and instantiation. So we can say we have the concept of a unicorn but that concept is never instantiated. That is not what Jung is saying about God. Jung does not mean some individual or group of individuals have a concept of God and only the concept is real. Jung believes that as well as the personal unconscious there is a collective unconscious underlying and linking all minds and it is in this collective unconscious that what he calls archetypes exist. These cannot be known directly but shape our thinking, for example there is an archetype of the feminine which can take different forms such as the virgin, the hag, the mother and it as as one of these archetypes that God is known to exist. I pointed nout recently in one of my posts on the other thread that Jung likes Rogers thinks our conscious ego needs to move into line with the self which includes the irrational forces in the unconscious mind, well he would also say that unconscious mind needs to be in line with the archetypal forces or you might say we need to submit to God's will but God so conceived does not need to be a metaphysical or hypostatic reality.

Perfectly stated! But how does that rebut a contention that the concept of God is a figment of the imagination? The 'imagination' of such a God could well include all of the qualifications you (and Jung) posit, could it not?

It doesn't rebut it because Jung is open to both interpretations but it is more real than a mere figment for Jung. An atheist could still be feeling the psychic entity Jung calls God.

So my warning here would be: try to encounter the other as other not reinterpret him in your own framework.

How does one do that? How do you ignore your own "framework" (the entirety of your life experience and genetic makeup)? How do you interpret God outside of your own subjectivity?

Jim

Well you've read Rogers. The thing is not to ignore your own framework (Rogers term) but to be aware of it. To know as far as you can where your ideas end and someone else's begin. If you think Jung is only saying the concept of God can influence those who are aware of that concept you have misunderstood him and forced him into an alien (to him) framework.

[mitchellmckain]

So my warning here would be: try to encounter the other as other not reinterpret him in your own framework.

How does one do that? How do you ignore your own "framework" (the entirety of your life experience and genetic makeup)? How do you interpret God outside of your own subjectivity?

Gosh, I guess it just takes practice maybe? I think you get a lot of practice in academia. Not only within physics (going from one inertial frame and coordinate system to another), going from one science to another, going from one language to another (in human language or computer science), studying things in completely differnt areas like philosophy and art, all of which involves going from one framework of thought to a completely different one. I guess it should be not surprising that this is difficult for some people, for after all, not everyone does well in academia or goes outside of their very narrow specialization.

I can well imagine that being raised in a absolutist fundamentalist religious family where everything only has one right answer probably isn't helpful, not that an atheist family need necessarily be any better (its certainly lesser social institutionalization makes this much more unlikely but with people like Yuri looking for absolute categories and definitions it seems quite possible to me that it can happen).

Perhaps, to some degree, it involves being ready and willing to build a larger and more flexible framework for oneself.

[JustJim]

I think Jung is .... saying psychologically there is this thing that people encounter which comes through the collective unconcious. He is open to this being a product of their really being a metaphysically existent God but he is not committed to either that view or its opposite.

I agree that is what he is saying, even though I don't believe there is a collective unconscious through which people encounter things.

So my warning here would be: try to encounter the other as other not reinterpret him in your own framework.

How does one do that? How do you ignore your own "framework" (the entirety of your life experience and genetic makeup)? How do you interpret God outside of your own subjectivity?

Well you've read Rogers. The thing is not to ignore your own framework (Rogers term) but to be aware of it. To know as far as you can where your ideas end and someone else's begin. If you think Jung is only saying the concept of God can influence those who are aware of that concept you have misunderstood him and forced him into an alien (to him) framework.

I don't think that's what Jung is saying. In fact, I'm still not entirely sure what he is saying, but your explanations in your post helped to clarify it a lot for me. Thanks!

So my warning here would be: try to encounter the other as other not reinterpret him in your own framework.

How does one do that? How do you ignore your own "framework" (the entirety of your life experience and genetic makeup)? How do you interpret God outside of your own subjectivity?

Gosh, I guess it just takes practice maybe? I think you get a lot of practice in academia. Not only within physics (going from one inertial frame and coordinate system to another), going from one science to another, going from one language to another (in human language or computer science), studying things in completely differnt areas like philosophy and art, all of which involves going from one framework of thought to a completely different one. I guess it should be not surprising that this is difficult for some people, for after all, not everyone does well in academia or goes outside of their very narrow specialization.

It appears you didn't understand my thinking behind my question(s), either because I asked them poorly or didn't explain them, so let me expand a little. I think we've always agreed on these things.

I don't think it's possible to perceive or understand things that lie outside the boundaries of our own "framework" of experience (which includes our genetic make up and the sum of all our life experiences). If you're blind, how do you practice seeing colors? If you're deaf, how do you practice hearing music? If you don't speak French, how do you practice understanding people who speak French? If you somehow learned ways to accurately detect colors or identify musical sounds and harmonies, then those abilities would become a part of your framework. You could learn French, and it then would be a part of your framework, so then you could understand what a French speaker says. But not until you had learned French (i.e., incorporated it into your framework of experience).

That's all I meant when I asked how one could ignore one's own framework or perceive things other than subjectively, filtered through our own experiences and abilities.

Jim

[mitchellmckain]

That's all I meant when I asked how one could ignore one's own framework or perceive things other than subjectively, filtered through our own experiences and abilities.

That was the question I was answering. I was just pointing out some of the things that I think help to develop the kind of mental flexibility that you need. Whether you can understand or imagine it or not, seeing something in a different framework than ones own IS something that some people can do. It just means following the logic that leads from a set of premises that are different than what one actually believes is the case and seeing through different eyes. BUT that isn't the same thing as percieving things other than subjectively, its just employing the process of perception through a different filter of beliefs. Sure its not easy and some people are better at it than others, but it is not a complete impossibility.

[JustJim]

That's all I meant when I asked how one could ignore one's own framework or perceive things other than subjectively, filtered through our own experiences and abilities.

That was the question I was answering. I was just pointing out some of the things that I think help to develop the kind of mental flexibility that you need. Whether you can understand or imagine it or not, seeing something in a different framework than ones own IS something that some people can do. It just means following the logic that leads from a set of premises that are different than what one actually believes is the case and seeing through different eyes. BUT that isn't the same thing as percieving things other than subjectively, its just employing the process of perception through a different filter of beliefs. Sure its not easy and some people are better at it than others, but it is not a complete impossibility.

Yeah, I think I get what you're saying. I agree, but I think I'd lean more toward a kind of empathetic understanding of the frameworks of others, in that we can come pretty close to accurately imagining or seeing things from their viewpoints, but probably never completely.

I used to work with a guy who was TOTALLY color blind. All he saw was black and white and all the shades of grey in between. An extremely rare malady, for sure. The Air Force, in its sometimes questionable wisdom, made the guy an aircraft track plotter, using many different colors of grease pencils to plot the movements of enemy aircraft on one of those huge see-through plexiglass wall maps in the battle control center where we worked. He was, by far, the fastest plotter we had! He explained that he just put the name of the color (as printed on the grease pencil) he used for each aircraft in the legend, and plotted by color names, rather than by the colors themselves. Amazingly creative!

I would speculate that all of the rest of us who worked with him could pretty easily imagine what it might be like to live in his colorless world, since we'd all grown up with black-and-white TV's, movies, and photographs, but I doubt we could really imagine it perfectly from his perspective of never having seen colors. And the reverse, for him to be able to imagine what it was like for us in our vividly colorful world, would be close to impossible. He had no concept of color, and no way to accurately even guess what we were seeing.

This is why I don't totally rule out "personal experience" as a valid basis of belief in God. I might doubt those experiences, question their origins, dispute the interpretations of them, and so on. But your experiences are yours, and yours alone. I cannot deny them just because I haven't had them or don't understand them, or even because I find them delusional, ridiculous, or insane (which I don't, btw, so please don't think I'm accusing you of that). All I can do is reject your experiences as sufficient evidence for me to believe. I have to believe based on my own experiences, or lack thereof, and whatever other criteria I happen to find convincing.

Jim

[Moonwood the Hare]

I agree that is what he is saying, even though I don't believe there is a collective unconscious through which people encounter things.

Well I'm agnostic on that one myself.

If you think Jung is only saying the concept of God can influence those who are aware of that concept you have misunderstood him and forced him into an alien (to him) framework.

I don't think that's what Jung is saying. In fact, I'm still not entirely sure what he is saying, but your explanations in your post helped to clarify it a lot for me. Thanks!

I meant you as in one. It was Yuri who seemed to be thinking that

It appears you didn't understand my thinking behind my question(s), either because I asked them poorly or didn't explain them, so let me expand a little. I think we've always agreed on these things.

I don't think it's possible to perceive or understand things that lie outside the boundaries of our own "framework" of experience (which includes our genetic make up and the sum of all our life experiences). If you're blind, how do you practice seeing colors? If you're deaf, how do you practice hearing music? If you don't speak French, how do you practice understanding people who speak French? If you somehow learned ways to accurately detect colors or identify musical sounds and harmonies, then those abilities would become a part of your framework. You could learn French, and it then would be a part of your framework, so then you could understand what a French speaker says. But not until you had learned French (i.e., incorporated it into your framework of experience).

That's all I meant when I asked how one could ignore one's own framework or perceive things other than subjectively, filtered through our own experiences and abilities.

Jim

As I said I don't think we do this by ignoring our framework but being aware of it. A blind man may not be able to imagine seeing colours but if he talks to sighted people he can come to understand something of what it is like to be sighted. There are certain places where language can make a difference and one person can be saying something another does not understand because of that. For example a therapist once congratulated me on not being a Luddite. To her to be a luddite was soemthing negative to me the luddites were heroic forerunners of the trade union movement who did what they had to do when fighting for their jobs. But that did not make empathy impossible for her nor did it ultimately prevent me from feeling received. But in part that is because I am aware of the popular conception of a luddite as a thug who is against progress. When people are not aware of each others assumptions that can really cause problems because as in the case above a person can offer what they think is a compliment and be insulting a person.

But in the case of Jung you can see what he means by a collective unconcious so you are stepping into his framework and can see what he means by knowing there is a God. You also know that you do not share this idea of Jung's so you know where your ideas ends and Jung's begin. Richard Dawkins and Yuri have both failed to step into his framework, Dawkins because he assumes that when Jung says he knows there is a God he is talking about an objective transcendent being and Yuri because he thinks Jung just means a concept in people's minds.

Jim, did you ever see the video I linked to a while back about the way some African's see colour differently to Europeans and Americans. If not I'll try to find the link again. My daughter has no stereo vision and I only become aware of that from time to time for example when she got a headache trying to watch a 3D movie.

[JustJim]

Jim, did you ever see the video I linked to a while back about the way some African's see colour differently to Europeans and Americans. If not I'll try to find the link again. My daughter has no stereo vision and I only become aware of that from time to time for example when she got a headache trying to watch a 3D movie.

Yes, I did see it. And loved it. I'm very much interested in the effects of language on perception, which was the main point of the video. Once we begin to assign words to our perceptions, they change. Oh, to perceive without words! Without thinking!

When we stop thinking in words, we rediscover pure thought - and experience the very source of thought. I try to do that as often as I can, through different kinds of meditations. I think we need desperately to learn to turn off our language-infested "thought voices" and re-experience thinking without language... the way we thought in our mothers' wombs... or, perhaps, the way we thought before we were conceived... even before the universe was.... Wow....



Jim