Religious attitude

religion lung’s statements about religion have been looked at from
many points of view and inquiries have been made about them from
the perspectives of medicine, psychology, metaphysics and theology.
He has been examined both for evidence of subjective bias in his
work and avoidance of acknowledging a credo. Within his own writings,
however, there is consistency. For him, religion was an attitude
of mind, a careful consideration and observation in relation to certain
‘powers’; spirits, demons, gods, laws, ideals – or, indeed, an attitude
toward whatever has impressed a person sufficiently so that he is
moved to worship, obedience, reverence and love. In lung’s own
words: ‘We might say, then, that the term “religion” designates the
attitude peculiar to a CONSCIOUSNESS which has been changed by
experience of the NUMINOSUM’ (CW 11, para. 9).
Yet critics, especially clergymen, continued to question because he
staunchly refused to say from whence the numinosum itself sprang
excepting that it corresponded to a GOD-IMAGE in the individual with
an archetypal propensity both to provoke expression and, when expressed,
to take a recognisable form. This form, lung observed, was
approximate to that which has characterised the relationship between
human beings and the so-called divine throughout the ages (see ARCHETYPE).
He felt man to be naturally religious, the religious function
being as powerful as the instinct for sex or aggression. Being a
natural form of psychic expression, religion was also, in his view, an
appropriate subject for psychological observation and ANALYSIS.
Affirming a psychological standpoint, lung was at pains to make
clear that by religion he did not mean code, creed or dogma. ‘God
is a mystery’, he said, ‘and everything we say about it is said and
believed by human beings. We make images and concepts, but when
I speak of God I always mean the IMAGE man has made of him. But
no one knows what he is like, or he would be a god himself’ (1957).
The psychological carrier of the God-image in a person lung called
the SELF. He saw it as something which acted as an ordering principle
of the personality, reflecting the potential wholeness of the individual,
prompting life enhancing encounters and verifying MEANING.
Almost anything that connects a person with these attributes can be
used as a SYMBOL of the self, he noted, but certain time-honoured
and basic forms such as the cross and the MANDALA are acknowledged
collective expressions of man’s highest religious value; i.e. the
cross symbolising the tension of the ultimate opposition of human
and divine and the mandala representing the resolution of that

opposition (see OPPOSITES). Psychologically, lung saw the TRANSCENDENT
FUNCTION as fulfilling the task of linking man and God, or a
person and his ultimate potential by way of symbol formation.
The idea of the EGO’S being enjoined to respond to the demands
of the self is central to lung’s concept of INDIVIDUATION, the process
of fulfilling oneself. Such fulfilment becomes of religious significance
inasmuch as it conveys meaning to individual endeavour. All lives,
lung felt, involve the bringing together and resolution of heterogeneous
and conflicting impulses. He saw a union between the individual
and the collective psyche as being possible only when an alive
and valid religious attitude exists.
Speaking of his personal religious views, lung wrote: ‘I don’t believe
but I do know of a power of a very personal nature and an
irresistible influence. I call it “God’” (1955). Speaking explicitly of
Christianity, he accounted himself as a Lutheran and a Protestant. In
his autobiography he conveyed that he not only wanted to leave the
door open for the Christian message but that he considered it of
central importance for Western man. He emphasised, however, that
it needed to be seen in a new light and in accordance with the
changes wrought in and by the contemporary spirit. Otherwise, he
felt, it would stand apart from the times and have no constructive
effect. He admitted that his view of religion was that it linked us to
an eternal MYTH but it was precisely this connection that gave it its
universality and its human validity.