Punctum Saliens

I feel like I’ve been harping on this a lot lately but this is what I’ve been thinking about and trying to deal with in my life. MysticSaint at, Inspirations and Creative Thoughts, has another excellent post from which I’ll pull a couple quotes that he quotes:

… the mystic is known only through the fact that he brings opposites together, for all of him is the Real. Thus Abu Said al Kharraz was asked, “Through what have you known Allah?” He replied, “Through the fact that He brings opposites together,” for he had witnessed their coming together in himself.

– Ibn Arabi

Praise be to God who hath given His creatures no way of attaining to knowledge of Him except through their inability to know Him.

– Abu Bakr

Things lie hidden in their opposites, and but for the existence of opposites, the Opposer would have no manifestations.

– Al Alawi

I’ve written elsewhere about the anthropomorphism of God but another parallel with Jung’s psychology has suggested itself. This time, it is the concept of transference. Again, from The Theory of Psychoanalysis: Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series, No. 19:

Freud calls this process transference, owing to the fact that the images of the parents are henceforth transferred to the physician, along with the infantile attitude of mind adopted towards the parents. The transference does not arise solely in the intellectual sphere, but the libido bound up with the phantasy is transferred, together with the phantasy itself, to the personality of the physician, so that the physician replaces the parents to a certain extent. (p. 102)

A little later, Jung discusses the role of transference:

Through the transference to the physician, a bridge is built, across which the patient can get away from his family, into reality. In other words, he can emerge from his infantile environment into the world of grown-up people, for here the physician stands for a part of the extra-familial world.

Now, I would like to suggest an analogy where the “patient” is us and the “physician” is Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament. The transference was initiated by Jesus when he taught his disciples to pray, “Our Father who art in heaven.” We now view Jehovah as a father figure, i.e. we have transferred to Jehovah the image of a parent. What this transference provides us is a way to “grow-up”; to shed the “infantile environment” of the Old Testament and enter a more mature world with a more mature view of God. However, there can be a downside to transference:

But on the other hand, this transference is a powerful hindrance to the progress of treatment, for the patient assimilates the personality of the physician as if he did stand for father or mother, and not for a part of the extra-familial world. If the patent could acquire the image of the physician as a part of the non-infantile world, he would gain a considerable advantage. But transference has the opposite effect; hence the whole advantage of the new acquisition is neutralized.

How often have you seen this exact symptom? Someone, or a group of people, “assimilat[ing] the personality of the physician.” Think of all those Christians filled with “righteous anger” who condemn (or worse) sinners “in the name of God.”

There are two end results of transference:

The more the patient succeeds in regarding his doctor as he does any other individual, the more he is able to consider himself objectively, the greater becomes the advantage of transference. The less he is able to consider his doctor in this way, the more the physician is assimilated with the father, the less is the advantage of the transference and the greater will be its harm. The familial environment of the patent has only become increased by an additional personality assimilated to his parents. The patient himself is, as before, still in his childish surroundings, and therefore maintains his infantile attitude of mind. In this manner, all the advantages of transference can be lost.

Transference can lead to either greater maturity or a continued infantile attitude. In the latter case, Jehovah maintains a strongly human father image and we continue to take on the personality of the Old Testament God, the only result of which is a wallowing in our childhood and immaturity.

A follow-up to my Knowing God post. In that post, I wrote:

God is in us, God is that part of us that is unchanging, God is our “I,” our knower, our true self. And the way to know God is to look within. To look for what in us does not change; what in us says “I.”

I was a little unsure about that conclusion; I was unable to justify it. However, now I think I can.

When you know or perceive something you are the subject and the thing is the object. The subject knows the object. The object cannot know the subject. Now, God is — by definition, I dare say — the ultimate subject since nothing can know God as object as that would require something to be unknowable to God. So, how can we know God? The only way possible is if we are God.

Does that make sense?

Typical of neurotic people is their attitude of disharmony towards reality, that is their diminished capacity for adaptation.

– C.G. Jung, The Theory of Psychoanalysis:
Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series, No. 19, p. 102

When I read this, I immediately thought about Fred Phelps. Pat Robertson, George Bush, the Kansas State School Board, &c., &c., &c. That is, everyone who vehemently defends that “old time religion” but doesn’t realize the “old time” for which they are nostalgic was populated by people vehemently defending that “old time religion” but didn’t realize their “old time” was populated by people vehemently defending …

Christian Fundamentalism, fundamentalism in general, is a prolific source of neuroses. Regression is one of the central dynamics in any neurosis. When confronted with an obstacle or conflict, the neurotic reverts to pathways that are old and outdated, hence infantile. These old pathways have nothing to do with the current obstacle and offer no effective means of resolution but the neurotic’s energy gets “backed up” due to the obstacle and spills over into these infantile, regressive pathways or thought processes. That is why they seem so irrational and downright childish — their current ideas, actions, and conclusions are being motivated and rationalized by ideas and thought processes that are irrelevant to the conflict at hand and are outdated. It is impossible for them to adapt to a changing world because they are still living in the past.

You may ask — you are bound to ask me now: What, then, is in your opinion the value of natural science? I answer: Its scope, aim and value is the same as that of any other branch of human knowledge. Nay, none of them alone, only the union of all of them, has any scope or value at all, and that is simpluy enough described: it is to obey the command of the Delphic deity … know yourself.

– Erwin Schrödinger, Nature and the Greeks and Science and Humanism, p. 108

If consciousness is created by embracing the tension of the opposites — paradox — and faith is also the tension of the opposites, what is the connection with the superposition of states in quantum physics? Take the most common example of the electron existing as a particle and a wave. These two states seem mutually exclusive, paradoxical, yet the electron exists as both/and in a superposition. It is only with observation that the electron collapses to one of the two states — that is, “becomes” either a particle or a wave. Faith and creating consciousness can be described as the superposition state where multiple possibilities exist; attachment and identification is then the collapsed state where only one possibility exists.

Perhaps the “real” world is the world of superposition and the “concrete” world is the world of collapsed states as we experience it with our senses. Perhaps the goal is to not be attached to the single, collapsed state but embrace the paradox of the superposition. I’ll have to ponder this more but I think there is something there.

Have you thought about this? Can you help me find what I think is out there waiting to be found?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueler? Bueler?

My wife has started to help me count calories. She has a nifty computer program that she has used for a while. Today was the first day following “the plan” and all I can say is, “I’m Starving!”

I did not eat poorly before but I never thought about calories. What I thought was a reasonable day’s food turned out to be 2700 calories! Not an ideal situation for losing the 13 pounds I’m shooting for.

Basically, to lose weight, you need to be hungry All The Time!

This got me thinking about being “filled with the Spirit.” Should we really be filled or is that a final goal to be realized in the future? If we get filled with food, we get lazy and fat and go to sleep. Is it the same with the Spirit?

What do you think?

In thinking about my recent post on ritual, it occurred to me that my problem with ritual is that I’m intellectualizing it too much. I am trying to force onto the ritual a meaning which, when absent, leaves me empty. Instead, perhaps, I should be just experiencing the ritual experience — as I said in my post: Just for the hell of it.

Intellectual knowledge and experiential knowledge are two very different beasts. Carl Jung, when talking about using amplification in dream analysis (the process of pulling in collective symbols — mythology, religious, &c.) says that it cannot be done by head-knowledge but only by someone with long experience.

When I was a child, I had all the head knowledge about Christianity. I was the best at Bible drills, could memorize scripture, had all the right answers. But, I had no experience — my personal Christian life was in shambles. My intellectual knowledge allowed me to fool everyone but there was nothing really there.

In The Eight Upanishads it says:

Of these, the lower [knowledge] comprises the Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda, Atharva Veda, the science of pronunciation, &c., the code of rituals, grammar, etymology, metre, and astrology. Then there is the higher [knowledge] by which is realized the Immutable.

(What a great word to describe God: The Immutable.)

With the Bible as with the Upanishads, the real, higher meaning is not learnt from reading, studying the texts, memorizing, &c. The real meaning is learnt by practice, by experiencing God and not by reading about God. The intellectual part is all too simple and all too public and allows us to deceive others all too easily.

God made sense turn outward, man therefore looks outward, not into himself. Now and again a daring soul, desiring immortality, has looked back and found himself.

– The Ten Principal Upanishads, p. 33

According to Vedanta, self knowledge comes not from looking at external things nor even from delving into our minds. Self knowledge comes from finding that which is aware of the mind; becoming aware of the knower.

A very recent post on You Are Dreaming talks about this very thing — finding the “I” that is your true self, the “I” that

remains unchanged throughout the day. What remains unchanged as the thoughts and feelings come and go like the clouds? What remains unchanged as the body moves around, typing, clicking the mouse, shifting in the chair? What is the factor or principle that is steady and unshaken as the appearances of hands and thoughts wiggle around?

Knowing your true self, your unchanging “I”, the knower is not becoming aware of an object because there would always be another knower of that object which would have to be perceived. So, if the knower is not an object, then what is it? What is aware of your mind, never changes, and is not an object that can be perceived? Sounds a little bit like God, to me!

Furthermore, to know the knower is to realize that you are the knower. Jesus says as much in John 10:30 –“I and the Father are one.” It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

But wait … if the knower is God and you are the knower, then, are you God? Well, Jesus says so in John 17

… that they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us … And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given to them; that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and didst love them, even as Thou didst love Me.

There certainly are a lot of parallels between Jesus and “them.” They are in God and Jesus, they are one just as God and Jesus are one, Jesus is in them and God is in Jesus, God loves them just as God loves Jesus.

God is not something “out there,” totally separate from us. If he were, he would be an object that we can perceive and know and, therefore, not God. God is in us, God is that part of us that is unchanging, God is our “I,” our knower, our true self. And the way to know God is to look within. To look for what in us does not change; what in us says “I.”

Some day I’ll get back to my series on Edinger’s The Creation of Consciousness, but until then I’ll just leave you with this thought:

Ram Dass agrees with Jung and Edinger that the creation of consciousness is our goal (or should be, at least). From The Only Dance There Is:

Consciousness does not mean attachment to polarity, at any level. It means freedom from attachment. And once you see that the highest mother is the most conscious mother, the highest student, the highest therapist, the highest lover, the highest anything is the most conscious one, you begin to see that the way you serve another human being is by freeing him from the particular attachment he’s stuck in that turn him off to life.

Non-attachment to polarity is Jung’s “tension of the opposites.” Dealing with polarity, paradox, incongruency and not flip-flopping from one side to the other is the process of creating consciousness. “Freedom from attachment” is the middle way that leads to conscious living and an increase in the sum total of consciousness in the universe.