Spirituality and Soul: Reflections on the Reality of the Psyche

Jung has been called a modern mystic who, through a lifetime of exploring the dynamics and contents of his own Psyche, found that it was calling to him asking to be heard and understood. In his work Modern Man in Search of a Soul, he realized the inexorable relationship between spirituality, mysticism, and psychology and understood that the cause for so much of modern illness stems from our alienation from Psyche and soul.

It was his lifelong work and discoveries regarding the reality of the Psyche that compelled Jung to plead for humanity to move beyond the complacency of our reliance on the limits of conscious understanding in our approach to the world, and instead seek to grasp the profundity of the psyche. He believed that this disconnection from our soul and the unconscious creates a division from our own most authentic nature, and soul. So too Jung understood that while our elders recognized the primacy of this “Antique Soul”, contemporary man and woman now lives with a deification of the ego and an illusionary ideal regarding the supremacy of conscious awareness.

The wisdom, which comes from the Self is not only evident in our ancient texts and stories of people who lived long before the Age of Reason which disconnected us from the unseen world of our dreams, and those moments of genuine experiences.

Looking again at these ancient texts and myths, we find that there still lies a mystery, a guidance which helps us to search for soul and to face  many of the ethical dilemmas which keep us estranged from Psyche and Soul.

In this series we will hear from Dr. Elaine Pagels, a world-renowned theologian, and Jungian Analyst Jacqueline Dürmüller on how modern man and woman may once again seek and find their soul by finding new meanings in old myths and by looking into the newly rediscovered sacred texts for truths deemed too dangerous in the nascent Christian world.

About the Presentations

Advances in our understanding of the Gnostic Gospels
Presented by Elaine Pagels
Saturday February 3rd, 2024 from 12pm to 1.30pm US Eastern Time

Elaine Pagels, Renowned Professor of History of Religion at Princeton University, will join us to speak about modern discoveries of the “gnostic gospels” - a cache of previously unknown ancient gospels and other sacred writings (c. 100-300 CE) discovered in Egypt in 1945, the same year that the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in Israel.

These texts, originally written in Greek, apparently were taken out of the sacred library of one of the oldest monasteries in Egypt, at Nag Hammadi, to protect them, after Catholic archbishop Athanasius wrote his own list of texts denouncing and censoring other secret gospels and other esoteric writings. Professor Pagels will speak about the profound wisdom found in these ancient texts, including the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, as well as Thunder, Perfect Mind, and the Treatise on Resurrection.

One of the most exciting discoveries is the Gospel of Thomas, which Professor Gilles Quispel smuggled out of Egypt, and presented to C.G. Jung on his eightieth birthday. Pagels first went to Egypt as a graduate student at Harvard, along with a group of other faculty and students, to return this text to Egypt, now in the Coptic Museum in Cairo

Santa Corona: In the Beginning was the Goddess
Presented by Jacqueline Dürmüller 
Saturday February 10th, 2024 from 12pm to 1.30pm US Eastern Time

In June 2023 I was in Assisi together with seeking people from over ten nations. “Modern man, still in search of the soul” was the theme of this conference. In a dream Santa Corona made herself known within me. There She stood - embodying pure soul; refusing obedience to the powerful to follow love; shamelessly wounded, and subsequently executed by torture! I asked myself: does the soul, so deeply wounded, seek modern man?

It seems that Santa Corona seeks to expand our ability to relate in all areas of life, to renew our values towards the outer as well as the inner nature, so that body and soul, indeed all life on this earth, can experience healing. Because we refuse to listen, because we are afraid to be touched, She shakes us awake; She awakens our emotions, She wants us to feel, and She wants to remind us that She is a living reality! A short time later I dreamt that Santa Corona was canonized by Rome for the second time! The CORONA virus that wants to become a holy, a healing event? What a paradox!