Supplemental Essay: Religion

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In the main essay I said that in early societies, mastery of rites and ritual eventually turns into the practice of religion, presumably with an adult Si Redeemer leading the way...

 

Introjection

In The Origins and History of Consciousness Erich Neumann says that the power of prayer doesn't reside primarily in projecting a wish outward in order to influence the objective world. He says that the ancients knew the crops would grow with or without prayers and sacrifices, just as the prayers of modern believers aren't generally about rewriting reality. He says that the real power of magic or religion lies in identifying with a Founding Father and God and generating narratives to be used by the believer as guidance to increase the odds of success in endeavors. In other words, narratives from the Cultural canon are studied, learned, and thus "introjected" and stored for future use. Neumann says, "The magical rite, like all magic and indeed every higher intention, including those of religion, acts upon the subject who practices the magic or the religion, by altering and enhancing his own ability to act."[1]

 

A good example of this is the practice of finding guidance by asking "What would Jesus do?" Ignatius of Loyola was the founder of the Jesuit order; in 1548 he wrote his Spiritual Exercises for the order, containing rules for meditation and discipline. In the book From Dawn to Decadence Jacques Barzun says, "The rules called for the user to picture the topic of his thought or prayer, to see the incidents of Christ's life, and at times to form an image of the self at these tasks. This 'application of the senses' formed a group of missionaries at once spiritualized and in touch with the imaginings of common folk."[2] (See Footnote 1 at the end of this essay for a tangent)

 

"Introjection" of narratives isn't solely a religious practice; it shows up in such exercises as "role-playing." Introverts play out scenarios in their heads to figure out which works best; extraverts bounce ideas off of friends and co-workers. In 12 Rules for Life Jordan B. Peterson provides a couple examples:

• Introverts: "We make little avatars of ourselves. We place those avatars in fictional worlds. Then we watch what happens. If our avatar thrives, then we act like he does, in the real world. Then we thrive (we hope). If our avatar fails, we don't go there, if we have any sense. We let him die in the fictional world, so that we don't have to really die in the present."[3]

• Extraverts: Peterson says that we talk to others and then pay attention to the reactions of our listeners. "A listening person is a representative of common humanity. He stands for the crowd. Now the crowd is by no means always right, but it's commonly right. It's typically right. If you say something that takes everyone aback, therefore, you should reconsider what you said. [...] You need good, even great, reasons to ignore or defy general, public opinion."[4] Peterson says that we use conversation to "organize our brains." "Much of what we consider healthy mental function is the result of our ability to use the reactions of others to keep our complex selves functional. We outsource the problem of our sanity." And the listener plays his role by responding and indicating whether individual ideas or opinions are acceptable or not.[5]

 

It's the practice of "What would Jesus do?" but on a more personal level: "What should I personally do in this situation?" We develop narratives for future action and introject them. Another version of this is the therapeutic practice of revisiting an old childhood trauma and rewriting the event: Come up with a new narrative embodying what you should have done to address that situation. You can't change the past, but introjection of a new narrative can help keep you from freezing up in fear when similar events arise in the future.

 

Similarly, early societies reinforced such practices with rite and ritual as a way of reenacting the lives and experiences of Founding Fathers and effecting a symbolic merging with them. Neumann says that the Cultural canon of the tribe represents a type of "safety net" for the members of the tribe. "Whenever a critical situation arises, be it individual or collective, an appeal is instantly made to the transmitters of the canon. […] In every case the psychological effect of the appeal will be one of balance, bringing about a reorientation to the prevailing canon and a reunion with the collective, thus overcoming the crisis. […] In other words, the existing values and the existing symbols of the collective unconscious are sufficient to guarantee psychic equilibrium."[6]

 

Difficult decisions and important events represent times when it is useful to identify oneself with the Founding Father and the Cultural canon for guidance. Rites and rituals form a narrative surrounding religion. Carl Jung says, "The performance of a 'magical' action gives the person concerned a feeling of security which is absolutely essential for carrying out a decision, because a decision is inevitably somewhat one-sided and is therefore rightly felt to be a risk. [...] For this reason he has always taken care that any difficult decision likely to have consequences for himself and others shall be rendered safe by suitable measures of a religious nature. Offerings are made to the invisible powers, formidable blessings are pronounced, and all kinds of solemn rites are performed." Jung goes on to suggest that the pomp and ceremony surrounding important government proclamations has much the same effect; it engenders "a collective feeling of security."[7]

 

Neumann says that rites and rituals begin as sacred events and are "celebrated as a collective phenomenon by the group." From there, over time they turn into art. Art started as a sacred event, and "it preserved its collective sacramental character even in later times, as we can see from Greek tragedy, medieval mystery plays, church music, etc." It's only in later times that art becomes a more individualized form of entertainment.[8]

 

Prestige via temenos

I said in the main essay that initiation ceremonies provide a growing child with a sense of rebirth as a divine being: He becomes a "child of god." The Si Redeemer creates a narrative and a sense of identity from this feeling. In The Origins and History of Consciousness Erich Neumann says, "He is a human being like the others, mortal and collective like them, yet at the same time he feels himself a stranger to the community."[9] His sense of separation from the collective gives him a sense of being exalted and inspired, the son of a deity.

 

The Si Redeemer distances himself from the collective, and in this respect he shows his kinship with the Ni Struggler or Wanderer back at the Intuition level. But whereas the Ni Struggler simply aspired to distance himself from a burdensome or painful immersion in the Great Mother, the Si Redeemer's flight from the collective becomes a flight toward the Great Father. Rites and rituals allow the child to renew the connection with the Founding Father and ultimately God. Thus the goal is to identify with and merge with God.

 

For the Si Redeemer, the tendency to distance himself from the rest of the tribe results in his creating some private space for meditation or prayer in order to contemplate and introject the example of the Founding Father. The ancient Greeks had a practice of establishing a "temenos," which was described as a holy precinct, an area reserved for worship of the gods. It could be a quiet retreat, or it could be an altar on a stage, where a priest stood alone and performed holy rites with an audience looking on from a safe distance. 

 

Setting himself off in similar fashion, the Si Redeemer may be able to use contemplation and meditation to achieve periods of centroversion and communion with his unconscious. In the chapter on Intuition, in the supplemental essay entitled "Centroversion," I said that Modern religions are a dialog between you as an individual charting your own course between temptation and redemption, on one side, and your deity as a social construct (basically serving as another version of "cultural canon") on the other. Contemplation of the example of the Founding Father as Cultural canon can result in feelings of solace, resolution, and even inspiration and elation.

 

The Si Redeemer may experience such moments as a feeling of unity with the Founding Father. In an essay entitled "The Undiscovered Self," Carl Jung pointed out that the religious man "is accustomed to the thought of not being sole master in his own house. He believes that God, and not he himself, decides in the end. […] The religious person, so far as one can judge, is directly influenced by the reaction of the unconscious. As a rule, he calls this the operation of conscience."[10]

 

The effect can be quite powerful. A worshiper or penitent may believe himself to be a sinner of the worst order. But meditation and prayer may result in a new perspective or revelation, propelling him in the opposite direction: Shame and guilt are replaced by a sense of grace bestowed, an expression of the will of god. The individual is no longer responsible for what came before; all that's left is to carry forward the word of god as revealed through divine revelation.

 

Centroversion versus empty dogma

Prestige is enhanced via uniforms, badges of honor, trappings of rank and office, and other marks of distinction and segregation from the rest of the tribe. In his essay The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious Carl Jung talks about how a tribal medicine man or chief distinguishes himself from the rest of the tribe in order to build prestige: The chief segregates himself from the rest of the tribe via ornaments and a separate mode of life, "and the segregation is still further enhanced by the possession of special ritual secrets. By these and similar means the primitive creates around him a shell, which might be called a persona (mask). Masks, as we know, are actually used among primitives in totem ceremonies—for instance as a means of enhancing or changing the personality. In this way the outstanding individual is apparently removed from the sphere of the collective psyche, and to the degree that he succeeds in identifying himself with his persona, he actually is removed. This removal means magical prestige."[11]

 

Religion works best as a type of centroversion, resulting in a sense of wholeness or integration. In The Essential Jung Anthony Storr defines this as "a condition in which all the different elements of the psyche, both conscious and unconscious, are welded together. The person who achieves this goal possesses 'an attitude that is beyond the reach of emotional entanglements and violent shocks - a consciousness detached from the world.'"[12]

 

Ideally, rites and ritual pull the introverted Redeemer out of himself and help him contemplate the collective values of the tribe via the example of the Founding Father and tribal Cultural canon. In turn the Si Redeemer uses the prestige gained from his practices to benefit the tribe that has accorded him honors and positions of power.

 

But when an individual comes to believe that he himself is a god, meditation and prayer run the risk of turning into introspection and even narcissistic navel-gazing. Such an individual focuses his efforts on proficiency at rites and rituals and enjoying the privileges of power while in the process losing the connection to the unconscious. Rightness and wrongness are simply measured by correct performance of procedures, without thought of what the procedures originally meant.

 

Carl Jung says that, in similar manner, a religion can turn into empty dogma and superficiality. In The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious he says that over time the original meanings of religious ceremonies tend to bleed out of the religion, because they were the product of personal revelation, embraced paradoxes and opposites, and were often ungraspable by intellect alone. "They are created out of the primal stuff of revelation and reflect the ever-unique experience of divinity." But as the meaning bleeds out, what is left is empty ritual, trappings, and ceremony: "Indeed, we are compelled to say that the more beautiful, the more sublime, the more comprehensive the image that has evolved and been handed down by tradition, the further removed it is from individual experience. We can just feel our way into it and sense something of it, but the original experience has been lost. [...] Naturally, the more familiar we are with them the more does constant usage polish them smooth, so that what remains is only banal superficiality and meaningless paradox. [...] They have stiffened into mere objects of belief."[13]

 

In other words, rites and rituals should be a means to an end, not an end in themselves.

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​​Footnote

[1] As a tangent: Compare the idea of introjection of the narrative of a Founding Father via meditation and prayer with the idea of ingestion of the Founding Father himself via the graphic symbolism of cannibalism in the Lord's Supper; the latter is a throwback to N-level fertility religions with their emphasis on food and digestion, as I mentioned briefly in the section "Son-Lover versus Struggler" in the Intuition chapter.

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Link: Return to Sensing (S)

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~Posted July 7, 2024