The myths of the West reveal an original state of innocence (Eden), a painful fall into experience (Exile), and a need to move beyond to a new, third state (Redemption). These stages are central to the creation mythology of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Jung reads this mythology as a psychological process. First we have innocent unconsciousness, a condition which is idealized in most traditions. Then we have the state in which we are cast out of Eden, and suffer the many problems that beset us when a heavenly Creator no longer protects us. For Jung, the fall from Eden is necessary. Although unconsciousness is idealized as paradise, we are not free to experiment with nature or ourselves. The serpent promises that if we eat from the forbidden fruit, our eyes will be opened and we will be like gods, knowing good and evil. That is, we will acquire the gift of consciousness and be free to know more about the world, but this will come at the cost of our unity with nature.
How to Read Jung
So when we speak of Eros here, let us see him as our predecessors did, as a god. When we use the phrase a god here we are not making metaphysical or theological declarations at all. Rather the metaphors of the gods are useful constructs, ways of valuing, dramatic embodiments of the elemental energies of the universe, energies that have animated and driven life from the beginning and drive us all still today. They are the force fields that energize and move us toward their sundry ends beyonds the powers of conscious comprehension, mythstreams in which we swim all the time. Why call them gods? Such a construct, such an expression risks confusion with metaphysical reality, but herein the metaphor of the gods is simply meant to suggest immensity, endurance, significance, and our respectful acknowledgment of these large, transcendent energies that course through our histories.
What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life
The gap that separates ancient cosmology from materialistic science is enormous. On one hand, we may interpret reality exclusively with mechanical causality, where everything is devoid of Meaning and higher purpose. On the other hand, we may interpret reality exclusively through a cosmic language, where facts and events are the hosts of spiritual meaning. Neither of these worldviews is complete without the other. A purely material perspective knows how the universe works but perceives no higher reason for its existence, while a purely spiritual perspective knows the meaning of the universe without understanding how it technically works. Ideally, we should be able to adopt both perspectives without having to sacrifice one or the other.
The Language of Creation: Cosmic Symbolism in Genesis
Love and the work of soul are inextricably entwined. The Other is not here to take care of our soul, but rather to enlarge our experience of it.
The Eden project: In Search of the Magical Other
All men suffer from neurosis. […] neurosis simply signifies the deep split between socialisation and soul, between collective culture and individual psyche. When outer roles do not fit the shape of one’s soul, a terrible one sidedness occurs. It is the suffering of this imbalance that impels men to war on themselves and on each other.
Under Saturn's Shadow
Writing about the coming of the American Civil War, a great historian named David Potter agreed that, with hindsight, the causes of the Civil War seem obvious. Yet Potter pointed out that at the time, in 1861, few people had seen the war coming. They did not anticipate its character or its consequences. The ‟supreme tasks of the historian,” Potter said, the only way to combat the ‟fallacy of reading history backward,” was ‟to see the past through the imperfect eyes of those who lived it.” Another great historian of the coming of the Civil War, Ed Ayers, makes a similar point. The war ‟did not approach… like a slowly building storm.” Instead ‟it came like an earthquake, with uneven and unpredictable periods of quiet between abrupt seismic shifts that shook the entire landscape. It came by sudden realignments, its tremors giving no indication of the scale of violence that would soon follow. People changed their minds overnight, reversing what they had sais and done for years.” In this book, we too are recalling an earthquake, with sudden realignments and changes of course. It is hard to reimagine roads not taken. Such roads disappear. They dissolve along with the fading memories of what might have been.
To Build a Better World: Choices to End the Cold War and Create a Global Commonwealth
The solid meaning of life is always the same eternal thing, the marriage, namely, of some unhabitual ideal, however special, with some fidelity, courage, and endurance; with some man's or woman's pains. And, whatever or wherever life may be, there will always be the chance for that marriage to take place.
What Makes a Life Significant