Author Topic: Spirituality for Skeptics?  (Read 8691 times)

Matt Koeske

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Spirituality for Skeptics?
« on: June 15, 2007, 11:40:34 AM »

What follows is part confession, part argument.

First, the confession.  I am not a believer.  I hold no religious or spiritual or philosophical beliefs.  I don't value belief.  I would not prescribe beliefs to others searching for "meaning".  My nature is skeptical.  When it comes to the spiritualistic world or the paranormal, spirit manifestation, faith-healing*, astral projection, telekinesis, ESP, channeling of "ascended masters", Kundalini risings (taken literally), alien abductions, etc. I approach these things rationally and scientifically.  That is, to the degree that they hold any interest for me at all (which, I admit, is minimal), I do not take accounts of such things on faith.  For every believer's account of one of these paranormal phenomena, I search out a skeptics view.  When I feel inclined to investigate something paranormal, I try to gather all the information I can to make up my mind about its validity.  I don't just listen to true believers and advocates.  I find that listening only to advocates is generally a very poor way of learning about something.

I value the shadow, seeing something or someone from the other side.  Or, to "see through" (as Hillman says) is to see both the thing as it appears and the shadow/reflection or foundation of the thing.

I want to make it clear to anyone who might take offense at my supposed rationalism or skepticism that as far as the above and other paranormal phenomena go, I simply have never experienced them.  Since I have no personal experience of them, I do not feel their existence . . . and since I am not a believer in things I do not feel or experience or know, I have no way of substantiating their existence.  In order to assess the claims of other people, I have to make admittedly inadequate judgments based on the people's rhetoric and manifest psychology.  I.e., do they seem delusional?  Do they show any skepticism about anything or is their attitude generally credulous?  What do they stand to gain individually by such beliefs (money, love, disciples, meaning, comfort), and what would they stand to lose by the invalidation of these beliefs?  What are they afraid of; what can't they face?  How do they deal with contradiction or disproof?  Can they elaborate their beliefs/ideas in an intelligible language, or can they only express themselves with obfuscation, power words, and ethereal abstractions (i.e., can they actually communicate or only pontificate)?

In my experience, most believers don't pass this kind of "psych test".  But some do.  Including some people I've met through the online Jungian community.  That is, it seems to me that one can be generally credulous without being delusional.  But I've found two strikes against such people in general: 1.) they can never demonstrate their claims (to non-believers, or under scientific conditions, or at least to me personally), and 2.) they often don't differentiate well between other credulous but non-delusion people like themselves and truly delusional believers who hold to the same belief system.

* I want to return to the issue of faith-healing briefly.  As I wrote in the Shamanism topic, I do feel it is possible for attitude and transference to have some kind of healing effect.  In essence, this is "faith-healing".  This can indeed be profound, but it seems to depend on the transference between the patient and the healer.  This happens all the time in psychotherapies.  I would even go so far as to say that without a transference, psychological healing (and its psychosomatic dimension) are probably not possible (other than by personal or self-analytical methods).  That is, one cannot give a neurotic person a "word of advice" and send them on their merry way, perfectly healed.  Healing requires a process of transformation contained in the alchemical vessel of the transference.

What I don't believe in is a literal calling down or putting forth of "spiritual energies" by the healer that mystically transfuse the patient, healing his/her wound . . . any wound.  That is, I see this as a metaphor for transference, not as a literal description.


What I would like to further confess is that I feel conflicted about much of this skepticism . . . especially because it's clear that the online Jungian community in which I express myself is a very spiritual, very credulous community.  My skepticism and atheism stand out like sore thumbs.  And it bothers me, because I realize that believers feel judged by my lack of belief.  They feel judged because I do not treat beliefs as sacred.  Believers (to varying degrees) identify with their beliefs, and so, to criticize a belief is to criticize the person him or herself (from the believer's perspective, that is).

This is, of course, not my intention.  When I interact with believers in the Jungian community, I see the individual as separate from the belief system . . . and it is the individual I value.  Due to my non-belief, I am probably more likely to make this differentiation than the believer him or herself is.  Such a differentiation, although done in Good Faith, cuts like a sword.  I recall the fantasy novel The Golden Compass (which is being made into a movie now) written by Philip Pullman (first part of the "His Dark Materials" trilogy).  The evil Church organization was performing a "spiritual surgery" on children, basically separating them from their souls (daemons, or spirit animals) with a magical blade.  This is no doubt something like how it feels for a believer to be related to as something separate from his or her beliefs.

I do recognize this problem, and it troubles me.  It really does.  But as the alternative to doing this is to stifle my own quest for knowledge, my own soul, I feel I have little choice.  I can merely forewarn, apologize, and hope for the best.

As far as the paranormal goes, I try to remain open-minded.  Just because I haven't had any paranormal experiences doesn't mean that such things must not exist.  Obviously, I am more likely to err on the side of skepticism in assessing any phenomenon.  This is heightened, because I have had a number of psychic experiences that many believers would chalk up to God or spirit or some paranormal phenomenon.  But I see these experiences as psychological or imaginal . . . non-material (although I didn't see many of them this way initially).  These would include ecstasies, visions, profound dreams, "mediumship", feelings of "presence" and "Otherness", and a great deal of "spiritual" experience of interacting with the Self and the archetypal, instinctual unconscious.  The latter is admittedly a form of mysticism . . . and I have always found alchemical symbolism and philosophy very compelling and personally meaningful.

I have pursued the alchemists' magnum opus diligently for my entire late adolescent and adult life.  I even feel that I have moved through many of the psychological or spiritual stages of being that the alchemists symbolically described.  And, of course, I can speak about each of these stages in great detail and with (I think) clarity.  I can explain what was happening psychologically and emotionally in each stage, what it took to get through the typical obstacles of each stage, and I can provide personal examples from my life to illustrate these things.

But in spite of this "mystical" pursuit, I have only become less a believer, less credulous.  As I am of the mystical cadre that feels there are "two opera" (as opposed to Jung's condensation of the individuation process into one opus based on The emblems from the Rosarium Philosophorum), I am inclined to see the first opus as the "extraction of spirit from matter" . . . or, in more rational language, the recognition and valuation of the psyche and its contents as absolutely real and valid and capable of affecting our bodies, as the central, ultimate, and only medium or lens of perception of the world and our personal experience of living . . . but as in no way literal or material itself.  In essence, this is "pure spirit", spirit freed from the animistic mindset, projections that have all been retrieved and re-attributed to the psyche.  In alchemy, this is the White Stone or Tincture, the "lunar consciousness" represented by the spirit-winged hermaphrodite standing on the crescent moon next to the moon tree with its 13 moon fruits (in the Rosarium).  The recognition that the psyche is real is also the recognition that the Self is real, and that the ego is meant to be a subordinate to and conduit for the Self.  That is, the ego (conscious attitude) takes up a devotional (spiritual) stance toward the Self (as a God image) . . . and the Self is fully recognized as Other.  The first Opus is about establishing this relationship to the Self, finding the spiritual source within the psyche itself.  It must be found in the psyche, because the ego's projections have to be withdrawn entirely in order to differentiate the ego from the Self . . . and only in such a differentiation is the Self truly recognized and consciously related to.

The second opus deals with the problems of acting in accord with the Self's Will (as opposed to the passive realizing, envisioning, and relating to of the first opus).  This requires a "de-spiritualization" of the psyche.  That is, the numinousness of the Self is divested of some of its spiritual mythos.  I believe this is necessary in order for the ego to move from a purely devotional, but largely passive and introverted, stance toward the Self into an active, facilitating stance.  Here, one realizes that the Self's Will is instinctual, libidinous, and directed at living in the world (i.e., it is not actually directed at or primarily concerned with "communion" between the ego and the Self in a detached or meditative inner state . . . that is the ego's concern entirely).  The ego must sacrifice its dependency on the Self for "spiritual sustenance", and instead "go forth" and find a way to feed and sustain the Self, finding a way to make an effective bridge between the instinctual unconscious and material world (no easy task in modern society).  As one actually becomes a "worker for the Self", one becomes more intimately acquainted with the Will of the Self . . . and this Will seems more and more instinctual, adaptive, material, biological, animal.  The purely spiritual numen evaporates or is depotentiated.

After the individual has found some success at this task s/he will have to make a further sacrifice: the sacrifice of all of the "achievements" the Work has provided the individual.  The individual must accept that, even in the "demonstration of perfection" (as portrayed by the emblem of the clothed hermaphrodite standing by the sun tree in the Rosarium), s/he was only ever following the instincts of the unconscious and allowing those instincts to realign her/his ego strategies with the Will of the Self.  That is, the ego did not do the Work for itself, but allowed the Work to be done for the facilitation of the Self.

I outline this mystical process as I have experienced it as a kind of plea to say that I am not a stranger to spirituality or the unconscious or the "irrational" Will of the Self and its mystical Call.  And yet, in all of this, I have seen nothing that makes me believe in the paranormal.  To me the process, the Work, all makes perfect sense from a psychological and biological standpoint.  This process for me was never stalled by my lack of belief or my psychologization of spirituality (rationalism is, in fact, a late development in my worldview, although I was always driven by a very gnostic intelligence).  Quite the contrary, my desire to understand what was happening to me in as non-mystical terms as possible seemed to drive the Work forward at an accelerated pace.  The Self, in my experience, has no desire to remain hidden in shadow and be mystified or abstracted.  It wants to be real and present and connected to the living, material world.  But it will always remain a mystery, because it is Other to the ego.  The ego does not have dominion over the Self.  The ego must learn to adapt to a functionality between two (often opposing) unknowns: the Self and the world.  Neither can be controlled.  The ego is not a master but a mechanism, a tool of highly plastic adaptivity that evolved to allow the source of biological life in each individual (the Self) to live in the evolutionary niche of the human species.

What we like to call "free will" is not really all that free.  I think what we are experiencing as "freedom" is extreme, but not absolute, plasticity.  It gives us an evolutionary advantage by reducing our dependence on specific environmental conditions.  That is, we are (unquestionably) super-adaptive.  But this extreme plasticity can sometime require a great deal of molding to make it adaptive . . . and equally, it can get severely out of shape.  Such is the nature of our freedom.

...

You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way.

   [Bob Dylan,"Mississippi]

Matt Koeske

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Re: Spirituality for Skeptics?
« Reply #1 on: June 15, 2007, 02:17:21 PM »
That said, I would like to go on to advocate one version of a skeptic's spirituality.  It has been my experience that a pursuit of gnosis, of dedication to knowing "what is" rather than leaping to conclusions based on "what must be", or in other words, what things seem to be based on our perception of them . . . is not destructive to the core of spirituality.  The gnostic pursuit merely leads to understanding that spirit is psyche, imaginal, non-literal.  But gnosis does not, in spite of this, in any way devalue spirituality.  Even stripped of its literalness, spirituality still has a psychic and instinctual value to our species.  It is not a delusion or an error.  It is essential to who and what we are.

But our perception and the nature of the ego in general is not an accurate measuring device.  We do not directly experience what is, but rather how things relate to us or what they mean to us, what value or strategic usefulness they have to us.  That is, to our egos.  Gnosis as I see it is an attempt to construct an understanding of the ego (or consciousness) and the egoic, human condition from a non-ego perspective . . . or to "see through" the illusoriness of our human perception, taking the ego's perception with a "margin of error" . . . or seeing through the "veil of Maya".  The gnostic pursuit is undertaken not to conquer illusion, but to relate to human experience for two (or more) positions simultaneously: a self-orientation and an Other-orientation.  Gnosticism seeks out and develops (or "incarnates") the Other-orientation to complement and even help conduct the self-orientation.  In this sense, it is like "god-making" . . . which is precisely what early Catholicism found so offensive about Gnostic Christianity.

We can can learn to "see through" and "incarnate" in this way to the degree that we can learn to access the instinctual unconscious, which seems to perceive things in a more naturalistic or biological way than the ego . . . which perceives things abstractly, strategically, and narratively (or fictionally).  I don't mean to suggest that the instinctual Self has access to the "Truth" about what is or that it perceives with absolute accuracy.  I really don't know the extent of the accuracy of the Self's perceptions.

What I do know is that the Self reacts logically to stimuli like any natural, material thing.  It reacts like something that is material and alive.  Logic or Logos (if you prefer to kick logic up a notch into a spiritual principle) is simply "the way matter behaves".  Matter is ordered and consistent and therefore (knowing all the essential factors), largely predictable.  I.e., logical.


A digression with further comments on the relationship between quantum physics and psychology

The gnostic, skeptical attitude I bring to the investigation of quantum physics (in the digression linked above) is the same attitude I bring to spiritualistic phenomena, for which there is substantially less evidence than there is for some of the still-mysterious quantum theories.

What spiritualism and some manifestations of quantum theory have in come (as part of the religious attitude) is a tendency to conflate what we perceive with what is literally true of matter.  As we investigate spiritualisms and the paranormal, there is always one consistent thread: the insistence on the literalization of phenomena.  Believers are not content with imaginal or non-literal beliefs alone.  They must seek material or literal confirmation for these beliefs.  I suspect this comes from a somewhat perverted realty instinct.

We must have a reality instinct (an ability to assess what is in the material world with a fairly high degree of accuracy), because it would be necessary for our existence and survival.  It would be naturally selected for.  But it is obviously not all-powerful in the human psyche.  What is is important, but not as important as what is personally meaningful.  Beliefs can be scientifically "false" but entirely adaptive to certain environmental conditions.  Beliefs (driven by instincts) can powerfully motivate behaviors . . . and I would contend that religious beliefs tend to accumulate around instinctual drives for survival and adaptivity most of all.

So, take for instance, animism.  The belief that matter is filled with spirit or consciousness or will might encourage us to see our ordered social behavior as meaningful.  In a tribe, a collective fear of the spirits or ancestors can help strengthen tribal unity or participation.  That there is strength in numbers is a radical understatement for our species.  In "numbers", there is near-omnipotence for us on this planet . . . as we have certainly discovered.  This is likely why instincts for human sociality are mighty . . . and disruptions of sociality are often looked upon as taboo, heretical, or criminal.

Too extreme a reality function might lead an individual to reject animism or the participation mystique of his or her tribe.  But at this extreme, it is a violation of the tribe's participation mystique totem and represents a dangerous force that must be tabooed or destroyed.  For an individual to "suffer" from too extreme a reality function but still feel instinctually connected and dedicated to the tribe takes a transformative act of consciousness.  I.e., it is a very, very slow, quasi-evolutionary process (an individuation).  But belief in the tribe's participation mystique enables the tribe to act in a more instinctual, unconscious manner . . . reflexively.  And that usually means a better chance of survival and proliferation.

Usually, but not always.  Because (among other potential reasons) it is evolutionarily advantageous to be able to "see through" the totems, gods, and beliefs of other tribes.  Knowing the falsity of another's beliefs gives one potential power over that other.  In this sense "irrational" beliefs, even when instinctually organized, can be survivability weaknesses.  From which we might conclude that there has always been a war raging between the "weapons" of the reality function and unconscious belief (since belief systems tend to be tribal and not speciesistic).

And, it should come as no surprise that, as a weapon, the reality principle (applied to others or competitors) is more empowering, and therefore more adaptive.  Knowing the fictions of others grants the knower some power (or mana).  Jung's bemoaning of rationalism in the early 20th century is his reaction to the realization that the reality principle triumphed socially . . . while denaturing the individual of his or her instinctual rootedness in psychic experience.  Thus, the "Problem of the Modern".

The "weaponization" of rationalism (the philosophy abstracted from the reality principle) is aptly symbolized in Remo Roth's characterization of the "atomic bomb" that threatens the invisible Unus Mundus.  What he calls the Unus Mundus, I would characterize as the instinctual unconscious (or a sense of passive oneness with the instinctual unconscious, such as we seldom see in modern society, but which is a common characteristic of tribal societies) . . . especially as it reinforces the tribalistic sociality instinct (but I suspect he would disagree with this reductive rationalization).  The language Remo uses is psychologically accurate, but it is also heavily partisan.  That is, from the perspective of the tribe in participation mystique (or the modern individual who yearns to return to such a state), anti-animistic rationalism is a weapon of mass destruction.  But seen from outside the tribe, this rationalism may not be destructive at all.

This is a scenario that I feel illustrates the danger of using quantum physics as language for psyche.  Remo seems to model his Unus Mundus theory on quantum indeterminacy and acausality.  Although, even in quantum physics, acausality is a theoretical principle (that Milo Wolff and Carver Mead, among others, have different opinions on), in psychology, the analogy becomes dangerously abstract.  In this psychic situation (the Problem of the Modern), an acausal "explanation" is not necessary.  It requires a leap of faith, a dive into belief.  When looked at in an entirely causal framework of evolutionary biology, we are forced to recognize that the "triumph" of rationalism in our species has aided the evolutionary success of the species.  I.e., it is adaptive.

But, of course, the issue is more complex.  As Remo's analogy illustrates, the danger of unbridled rationalism is the devaluation of instinctuality (or "loss of soul").  And as Jung believed, this unbridled materialistic rationalism can also be a major factor in the devaluation of the individual.  That is, the individual represents the "space" in which the ego and the unconscious are closest, in which they are in fact inseparable.  The value of soul (and a life with soul) to the individual is more immediate for the individual than it is for a large society or culture.  The individual hosts the wound and directly suffers the denaturing of his or her instinctuality.

But the unconditional return to tribalism or participation in the Unus Mundus is a short-term solution to a much more substantial problem.  We have already seen that "modernism will out" in our species, because it is more adaptive.  Returns to tribalism are "paradisaical", but not practical for human beings en masse.  What Jung did not (in my opinion) correctly realize in his critiques of 20th century totalitarian movements is that these were attempts at enforcing wide-scale tribalism within a modern social structure.  They were unmitigated disasters and atrocities of previously unimagined magnitude.  Apocalypses.  Holocausts.

I don't mean to imply that tribalism is atrocious and evil or equivalent to fascism.  I wish merely to place a spotlight on previous attempts to curtail modernism with tribalism or with nationalistic, exlcusivist ideologies.  Utopianisms have yet to succeed. Christianity and Islam (in their respective areas of the world) have managed to create longer lasting forays into mass tribalism, but to the degree that these religions are expressed in fundamentalist (purely tribal) ways, they are clearly dangerous . . . and not only to each other, but to anyone who wants to abstain from the battle.  Countless millions have died to keep these ideologies "tribally solvent" . . . and the main victims (over the last 2000 years) of both ideologies have been "heretics", i.e., those tribe members who reneged on tribal obligations or broke tribal taboos.

We cannot blame these atrocities on science or rationalism.  The early Church did everything it could to destroy the "dangerous" rationalism of pagan Rome.  Jung's romanticization of medieval Catholicism strikes me as naive . . . if not fundamentally perverse.

So, I am suggesting that the war between the rational and the spiritual is not the core conflict in the problem of modernism.  I think that what we are experiencing is better seen as an evolutionary tension.  One part of us wants to adapt to the modern (adapt, not succumb), and another part wants to regress back to fundamentalist tribalism.  This conflict is very easy to see in the U.S. today, especially as illustrated by the growing numbers of Christian Evangelicals and their "arch-enemies", the "liberals".  The "Intelligent Design" vs. evolution debate/debacle is itself a condensed symbol of this evolutionary tension.  Quite simply, do we go forward or backward?  Progressive or regressive?  Do we "see through" or do we embrace appearance?

Obviously, I ally myself with the progressives here, but it is worth noting that there is no organized tribe of progressives.  This is the problem with political progressiveness at least in the states.  There is just not as much tribal cohesion or desire among progressives as there is among Evangelicals and "globalists" or "Neocons".  The imitation progressive party, the Democrats, are an excellent example of this.  And the reason for this is obvious when we understand the human instinct for sociality.  Tribalism generates more unity among individuals . . . but at the cost of consciousness.

What I think has happened with the Problem of the Modern is in some ways the opposite of the way Jung characterized it.  The problem is actually rooted in the gradual empowerment of more and more individuals (this is the general force behind the creation of a middle class).  As these individuals are empowered (with wealth and status), they want rights and protections and privileges . . . all for their individuality.  In order to expand its population, tribalism must fracture.  Instead of deriving one's identity primarily from the original all-encompassing tribe, individuals begin to derive most of their identity from their sub-tribes.  Most human individuals have social lives that still function within a social network of the magic number of about 150 or fewer individuals (see Dunbar's Number).  These sub-tribes all want status or privileges with the larger tribe.  To the degree that these sub-tribes can learn to compromise and cooperate with (or tolerate for mutual strategic advantage) one another, they are able to increase their power as their collective numbers increase . . . and eventually (way down the line) you get the rise of the middle class.

The tribal movement of Christianity and all of the tribal totalitarian movements of the 20th century were determined to destroy this middle class, thereby returning power to the elite minority of "tribal leaders".  To achieve tribal egalitarianism on a massive social scale requires a great deal of consciousness and compromise and tolerance of otherness.  We still fail to achieve this even in our most "progressive" modern societies.

And the battle is not just being fought socially, but also in the individual.  What does an individual want from sociality?  Which tribe/s do I belong to?  How do I rank the value of each tribal affiliation?  The impulse or instinct of human sociality is to surrender to a tribal community.  It takes deterministic or directed thinking and long-term planning to withhold ourselves from the magnetism of participation mystique.  Eventually, we must recognize that we are tribes of one . . . in addition to our other affiliations.  It is easiest to realize this when our numerous affiliations begin to become incompatible with one another.  We need an ego, a mediator, to address these conflicts and complexities, this information overload.

And the more necessary or the higher the demands on an ego, on individuality, the more important it is to protect and empower this individuality.  The rise of rationalistic philosophies such as humanism during the Enlightenment brought awareness to the needs of the individual.  Individuals were the least protected and respected beings in growing societies.  The gist of humanistic morality is to refocus the instinct for egalitarianism away from the tribal unit and onto the individual (as the most valuable unit of a species).

Modernism involves the rise of the individual as a recognized and entitled entity.  I would contend that it is the backlash against this shift of power from the tribe (or from the most powerful tribes) onto the individual (regardless of his or her affiliations) that caused the dehumanizing "loss of soul" that then led to the "neurotic complex" and catalyzed the (entirely modernist) psychoanalytic movement.  That is, psychotherapies arose to address the Problem of the Modern.  Whether or not the proponents of specific schools could admit it, these psychotherapies were religions for individuals.  With individualism in the ascendant, tribalism (the tribal instinct for participation mystique and human sociality) was relegated to the shadow, where it could possess "demonic power" over consciousness.  That is, we did not understand (and probably still don't) why we hungered for the tribal participation mystique so ravenously that we were able to purge and murder so many "heretics" and Others to taste its nectar.  We felt we had to "purify", and purification is a technique of maintaining tribal coherence.  But as we well know today, the Other was in us all the time.  The real Other was our modern individuality.  My guess is that the reason Christianity "took", in the 3rd through 5th centuries (and beyond) was that this dangerous shadow-individuality (on the back of the leviathan of the middle class) was a frightening "original sin" we had to stomp out . . . even if it was self-destructive.

[This is, I suspect, why Jung became so muddled with Nazism and the Wotan/Siegfried phenomenon he saw behind it.  He tried to see this instinctual welling-up as a dark god possessing the too-rational minds of individuals.  But this "dark god" was actually the repressed instinct for human tribal sociality.  Jung's anti-rationalistic/pro-instinctual ideas became inevitably intertwined with the instinctual force in the modern collective shadow.  That is, Jung's philosophy was significantly tribal or instinctual (i.e., archetypal).  He was prescribing a return to instinct or a return of our consciousness or valuation to instinctuality.  This was a major theme of modernist German romanticism . . . a well from which Nazism also drew refreshment.  Jung went on to differentiate the individuality-destroying force in the compensatory shadow (manifested in the various fascisms) from the conscious, adaptive relationship to the instincts/archetypes (individuation).  But not before becoming entangled with the compensatory shadow he crossed paths with.  Although I have never personally felt any draw toward communism or other form of modern mass-tribalism, I sympathize with Jung's mistake, because I have had similar entanglements with some spiritualisms.  That is, when faced with these tribal spiritualisms, I did not immediately see that, even though we were mining in the same quarry, we had drastically different ideas about the purpose of the work.  It is in fact the eventual realization of this that has sparked me to make the danger of unconscious tribalism such a prominent issue in my current writings.]

The prevailing religions (or religion in the Western world) did not address the individual's spiritual experience.  Christianity is a tribal religion . . . all the more obvious when we consider some of the Catholic rituals like the mass or the communion (complete with god-eating ritual), or when we look at the totems of the Church (the frightening crucifix where the individual is sacrificed, the cathedrals, the ceremonial paraphernalia of the mass, etc.).  Gnosticism, which does address the spiritual needs of the individual, was the arch-heresy of the Catholic Church . . . and had long since been destroyed.

Jung often remarked that few of his patients were Catholic, and he even recommended a return to the Faith for patients who were lapsed Catholics.  I do not think this was an indication that Catholics are better adapted to modernism than protestants or Jews or non-religious people.  More likely, it is an indication of the tribal protection against the modern offered by Catholicism, which is a more tribal form of Christianity than (white, middle and upper class) Protestantism.  Look at the Vatican, for instance.  It's a tribal stronghold even today.  But some of the forms of Protestantism in the U.S. are extremely tribal, and of these the Evangelical community is the most massive and powerful, showing that it has significant influence on elections and national policy making.  Of course this influence is universally regressive.  The Evangelical tribe recognizes only its own members as entirely human.  It's hard to say whether this is its most dangerous regression or whether its allegiance with or unconscious embrace of globalist power elites and their Neocon agenda will ultimately prove more destructive.

Could any of us (who are even marginally progressive) today imagine advising an analysand to return to their Evangelical roots and embrace intolerance and End Time lust?  It hardly seems to be the path to individuation or adaptation . . . although it could certainly provide the individual a tribal comfort if embraced.

The issues of modern individuality and rationality are deeply intertwined.  In order to survive the tides of innumerable and conflicting tribalisms, the reality principle becomes essential to the individual.  But human "realities" (or environments) are complex and diverse . . . all the more so for modern humans who often live within a very high degree of otherness, or, in the Information Age, live with ready access to countless forms of otherness through information.  In other words, the demands on the reality principle for our species are enormous.  Our existence is no longer merely a matter of avoiding saber tooth tigers and poisonous berries, and the more information we have to assess and valuate, the higher the demand on our egos to assess and valuate accurately.

It is no wonder that the creed of rationalism would develop as the informational or environmental demands increased.  By creed, I mean a conventional, collective, reality strategy.  I want to differentiate the creed of rationalism from the reality instinct and even from the philosophy of rationalism (whereby "philosophy", I mean the conscious and organized application and expansion of the reality instinct . . . as opposed to a rationalist creed or belief system that approximates rationalistic philosophy).  The creed of rationalism might be demonstrated in the attitude that would dismiss all immaterial (both spiritual and psychic) phenomena as a rule of thumb or law.  That is, no conscious evaluation of data is being made.  The decision to disregard spirit and psyche is preordained and needs merely to be applied unconsciously as a formula (or, more correctly, a talisman) against irrationalism.

This is the the kind of rationalism with which Jung had a bone to pick.  And he did not make the necessary differentiation in his writings between this and the rational philosophy that drives gnostic investigations.  But we can deduce that he made this differentiation personally, as he frequently called himself a scientist or empiricist.  And, beyond doubt, Jung's method of inquiry was deeply gnostic.

Many post-Jungians and New Age advocates have picked up the anti-rationalism that Jung often prescribed, but they apply it in a blanket dismissal of reality and the reality instinct.  This may be why so few Jungians and New Agers who measure themselves with the tribal sorting toy called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator come out as sensation types.  That is, the New Age community (I would say dangerously) devalues the reality instinct and any gnostic philosophy one might derive from its adaptive employment.  My guess is that it is not the rationalism, per se, that the New Ager abhors as much as it is the gnosticism.  The rationalist philosophy (as I have tried to explain or at least acknowledge with this essay) is not truly dangerous to spirituality or the valuation of the psyche.  But gnosticism dismantles unconsciousness ("sees through") and undoes unconsciously tied knots of belief, differentiating the individual from the tribe in correspondence with the voracity and dedication with which it is pursued.

Gnosticism (or individuated consciousness) is dangerous to beliefs which we have adopted unchallengingly and which form the unconscious foundations of our tribal identities.  The rationalistic creed is just an opposing tribe, a group of Others.  They can be imagined into demons or destroyers, but the twain never really meet.  The New Age spiritualist community can rant and rave about soulless "rationalists" and the "rationalists" can rant and rave about the daftness of believers, but no one ever really crosses the tracks.  These are campfire stories of boogie men that are meant for intra-tribal story time only.  The stories from either tribe hardly reflect the real Other they demonize at all.

Which is why, ultimately, one cannot embrace an anti-rationalist tribal stance without falling into unconsciousness and projection of the shadow.

If we are to think about the Problem of the Modern and the issues of rationalism and loss of instinctuality constructively and consciously, we have to be able to see the usefulness, and yes, the instinctuality of rationalism.  The reality principle is instinctual.  It is not the enemy.  Nor is it equivalent to the ego.  The ego is not primarily concerned with the Real . . . but the adaptivity of the ego is significantly dependent on its openness to the reality principle.  That is, the degree to which the ego inaccurately assesses the reality of its environment is directly proportional to the degree of its failure to adapt, or its neurotic dissociation.

The easiest "solution" to dissociation is to hide one's maladaptivity away in a cult or small tribe of similarly afflicted individuals.  I.e., to alter one's immediate environment to suit the disease.  But this is rarely if ever practical.  Most of us today cannot exist in cults . . . and most of the cults that exist use the credulity of believers to funnel money to the elite leadership of the cult.  That is, culthood, in the modern world, is expensive.  But even when culthood isn't an out and out scam, it is radically unlikely to provide an adaptive solution to the Problem of the Modern.  Cult members must hope to fly well under the radar of the demands of the modern and the powerful outside the cult.  And of course, they must also sacrifice much of their individuality and consciousness.

The hard path is the gnostic path.  This is the path that demands one either adapt human instinctuality to modernity or "die out".  One might argue that cultism and tribalism are merely forms of "dying out", but obviously cult and tribe members wouldn't see it this way.  In fact, the tribal belief system holds that the tribe will become ascendant and empowered in the larger society . . . usually because of its special grasp of "sacred wisdom" or "divine love".  The tribe hopes to profit from its tribalism . . . but since it has not employed long-term strategic thinking (which is generally foreign to tribes), it has probably not sufficiently understood the real relationship of the tribe to the larger society and its many other sub-tribes.  The tribal mentality counts on its unity and "Truth" to succeed in the larger world.  This is the instinctual fall-back position (probably because we are still genetically hunter-gatherers).  The kind of directed thinking required to formulate long-term strategies and adapt to complex, new environments is a novelty in the tribe . . . and usually a dangerous one at that (see the discussion of Shamanism for more on that subject).  Such novel thinking steals libido or Eros away from the tribe's participation mystique.

But this gnostic consciousness is precisely what is needed to adapt today and face the Problem of the Modern.  This is a two-way kind of thinking, as it must address instinctual needs (that cannot be repressed or ignored without sparking some sort of disease) while simultaneously addressing environmental demands.  The gulf between these two things in the modern world is vast . . . and the ego must be "trained" and stretched extensively in order to achieve the plasticity required to bridge such a gulf.  We are faced with an instinctual dilemma.  Modernity does not favor unconsciousness, except in its largest, most powerful tribes.  In order to adapt successfully, we have to individually learn how to first recognize and then negotiate with our tribalistic gravity.

But establishing a strong relationship with the Self means devoting oneself to living in the world, or to adaptivity (the super-adaptive instinct).  The Will of the Self will encourage adaptation.  This Will seeks equilibrium with whatever environment we must exist in.  That is, it tries to survive in/adapt to any environment as successfully as possible.  As most of us are forced to live in the modern world, the Self's adaptive Will will seek equilibrium with the modern, information-deluged environment.  Many of us will retreat (often numerous times) to the shelter of tribes where we can find temporary solace in unconsciousness and participation, but these tribes will eventually have to face modernity in one form or another.  Perhaps they will become internally divisive (because they cannot respond to diverse individuality), or perhaps they will suffer financial burdens from without, or perhaps the leadership of the tribe will retire, die, or "crack up".  Modernity will always be a wolf at the door.

In general, we find that our tribes fail us.  They comfort us for a while, but they don't help us adapt.  Their tribal religions or ideologies do not address the individual's plight, the Problem of the Modern.  And gradually, we are either defeated or forced to learn an individualist spirituality.  Such a spirituality is an undertaking so massive that few succeed in formulating one . . . let alone an adaptive one.

I think Jung's psychology was an excellent attempt at such an individual's spirituality.  For Jung, it seemed to work pretty well.  But he was, of course, Jung and not a Jungian . . . and rightfully thankful for that blessing.  In other words, Jung had his cake and ate it, too, because he got to be a practicing shaman (in psychotherapists and philosopher's clothing).  He got to have tribalism and individuality both.  But few have the talent and charisma of Jung, and the modern world is up to its ears in (would be, wannabe, as well as valid) shamans.  I think that Jung's foray into modern spirituality was most notable, not for its interest in mysticism and the paranormal, but for its harnessing of the rationalist instinct, the gnostic drive, to the spiritual quest.  He demonstrated that the absurd idea of the religion-science (or spiritualist-rationalist) coniunctio was, perhaps, credible . . . if not yet distilled into an adaptive philosophical or spiritual system (system, or tool, not belief).  That is, Jung's great achievement was not in creating another mysticism, but in predicting a mysticism that was compatible with science and rationalism.

Regrettably for the Jungian community, this mysticism was by no means complete by the time of Jung's death, nor did it manage to provide a sufficient solution to the Problem of the Modern.  But it told us that this problem existed and that it could be both analyzed and addressed with a combination of rationalism and spiritualism.  It is left to us to continue working on this religion-science coniunctio, the formulation of a philosophical language that can remain plastic and adaptive itself so that it can aid modern humans in their quest for spiritual meaning.

And so, to answer the question posed in the title of this topic, I think there can be a spirituality for skeptics.  The pursuit of gnosis and adaptivity is a spiritual pursuit.  It is an instinctual pursuit, because it depends on the super-adaptivity of human instinct.  But this adaptivity to the modern will require an extensive reorganization and re-coordination of our instinctual framework.  Essentially, we must reconstruct our egos in line with the super-adaptive instinct.  We must become consciously adaptive, give our extremely plastic consciousness over to the instinct to find equilibrium with our environments.  We can no longer be unconsciously dependent on fixed, tribal environments (without suffering some kind of dissociation) . . . expecting our environments to sustain and protect us.  Our environments cannot sustain us in this way any longer, because in the modern world, the intrusion of other environments is unavoidable.  There is no Eden, no Utopia.  Instead there is diversity, or "the recognition of the Opposites".

We must evolve.  And this is a spiritual quest as grand and heroic as any.  There is no perfect ideology or tribal collective to save us from the painfulness of adapting.  There is only the process of transformation, "spiritual" death and rebirth.  This fundamentally natural, even biological, process is part of the essential mysticism of our species.  It remains every bit as mysterious, numinous, and compelling in rational, scientific language as it is in more spiritualistic trappings . . . and this is because the journey is instinctual.  It is deeper than belief and idea, deeper than spirit, deeper than psyche.  It is the Will of adaptivity, the Will of Life.

We may despise the fact that our species has arrived at an impasse in which it must utilize its potential for consciousness in order to adapt or evolve . . . but we would do well to keep in mind that consciousness as we understand it is the product of evolution.  Consciousness was and is adaptive for our species.  The fact that our free will confounds us is merely the side-effect of the extreme plasticity of our consciousness.  In order to adapt to various evolutionary entanglements, we had to develop this plasticity.  And now, even as this plasticity seems to be our greatest enemy, it is also our greatest asset.  It is both the disease and the medicine to cure it.  The illness and the god are one.

« Last Edit: June 15, 2007, 02:23:38 PM by Matt Koeske »
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Matt Koeske

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Digression on the relationship between quantum physics and psychology
« Reply #2 on: June 15, 2007, 02:19:56 PM »
What follows is a digression on the relationship between quantum physics and psychology as mentioned and linked above in the previous post.  Click here to return to the spot in the previous post where this digression is linked.

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Does the quantum universe behave "illogically" and if so, does it matter to human spirituality?  Like most people (including quantum physicists, according to Richard Feynman), I don't understand quantum physics.  I know only that it is still a relatively new and uncertain area of science.  I know that there is enough data to suggest there is definitely something valid to some quantum theories . . . but not enough data to suggest that all of these theories are scientifically valid or finalized.  I know that the theories of quantum physics tend to address probabilities of quantum behavior but do not present many "natural laws" in the sense that classical, Newtonian physics does.

I know that the fate of modern physics was largely decided by the debate between Einstein and Neils Bohr.  Einstein felt that there were probably natural laws for quantum behavior that we simply haven't discovered yet.  Bohr advocated a lawlessness, but a measurable probability for quantum behavior.  As Einstein could not demonstrate a law to explain quantum behavior, Bohr and the Copenhagen school became ascendant.  It is my understanding that the take over of modern physics by the Copenhagen school has steered the field away from the investigation of potential natural laws for the quantum universe.  I.e., little or no research is going into this pursuit (although such a pursuit would be perfectly in order with the scientific principle of investigation).  I also know that a number of the claims Neils Bohr made around the time of his debate with Einstein (regarding quantum behavior and what is or is not possible) have since been disproved.

In other words, what I know is that modern quantum physics is an ideology-driven field . . . i.e., not an absolutely scientific field.  What I don't know is how severely this ideology hinders the understanding of quantum behavior.  But I can utilize my psychoanalytic eye in reading about the history and discoveries of quantum physics to notice that modern physics has a great deal in common with medieval alchemy.  Yes, there is some material phenomenon at work here.  But, no, we do not entirely understand it yet.  And so we (as this is human nature) project our psyche onto the unexplained phenomena, seeing reflections of our consciousness whether in the metals and chemicals of alchemy or in the quantum matter of modern physics.  And in this analysis, we can see that, in the absence of scientific or natural explanations of some quantum behaviors, the good old religious attitude of our species creeps in.  The pursuit of quantum laws is tabooed.  We are not to look behind the curtain (according to the Copenhagen "creed").  We are only to observe and believe in what we perceive.  Suddenly (in modern theoretical physics) the human ego has risen in status as an instrument of scientific measurement.

This resounds with the spiritualistic (or egoic) attitude.  Does this resounding indicate that some of these quantum theories are as false as the notion that the earth is flat or that the sun revolves around it?  No.  Of course not.  It is not in any way a (dis)proof.  But it is a good reason to maintain a skeptical attitude toward some of the seemingly irrational claims coming out of modern physics.  I.e., withholding conclusiveness until more data is accumulated and processed.

Carver Mead, a physicist who worked with Richard Feynman, has written a book that offers a critique of the Copenhagen school's non-scientific attitude toward certain quantum phenomena (Collective Electrodynamics: Quantum Foundations of Electromagnetism . . . (perhaps ignored by the New Age community for its lack of credulity and insufficiently spiritualistic title) in which he refers to the reign of the Copenhagen doctrine in modern physics in writing, "
"It is my firm belief that the last seven decades of the twentieth century will be characterized in history as the dark ages of theoretical physics."

I bring this up (again) because it makes for a good illustration of gnosis vs. belief.  I cannot say that Carver Mead's counter-theory is correct.  I don't have the knowledge necessary to come to that conclusion.  Were I to accept Mead's counter-theory, it would be a belief.  All I know is that Mead's assessment of a Copenhagen ideology dominating modern physics sounds logical, and that further investigation of the real process by which the field of quantum physics was constructed is necessary.  Also the criticisms of Copenhagen doctrines of "belief in probability" without investigation of potential laws posed by Mead, Milo Wolff, and other physicists are absolutely credible.  That is, the Copenhagen school has not done a sufficiently scientific job of investigating potential laws behind quantum phenomena, nor has it addressed the psychological (or perhaps "ethical") issue of its failure to pursue this obvious avenue of scientific investigation sufficiently.

Could such an investigation definitively prove the claims of the current manifestations of the Copenhagen school?  Certainly.  But the current field of physics, from what I have been able to discern, is disinclined to think outside of its probability and "pure math" box.  As a gnostic, then, I have to remain undecided, but skeptical.  I can distinguish some clear flaws and some potential flaws in prevailing quantum theories (on the level of logical and rhetorical construction and the overt psychology of belief), but I cannot determine the ultimate veracity of various conflicting claims.

This is not the case, for instance, in a debate between evolution and Creationism in which scientific, verifiable, demonstrable, testable evidence supporting evolution severely outweighs the "argument" for Creationism (which is, ultimately, a belief system and not a true argument at all).

As for theories like Mead's and Wolff's that simplify or resolve the quantum problem of wave/particle duality by holding to a purely wave structure of matter . . . would I like to believe in them?  Sure.  They are significantly more elegant and (at least fundamentally or principally) scientific (or "naturalistic") than the Copenhagen doctrines.  Relieving an inconsistency, unknown, or contradiction would be a stress-relieving epiphany.  But this is a leap I will not take in order to merely gratify my pre-existing sense of coherence or elegance or knowability.
« Last Edit: June 15, 2007, 02:27:17 PM by Matt Koeske »
You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way.

   [Bob Dylan,"Mississippi]