Punctum Saliens

I offer you a personal fantasy. Suppose the universe consists of an omniscient mind containing total and absolute knowledge, But it is asleep. Slowly it stirs, stretches and starts to awaken. It begins to ask questions. What am I? — but no answer comes. Then it thinks, I shall consult my fantasy, I shall do active imagination. With that, galaxies and solar systems spring into being. The fantasy focuses on earth. It becomes autonomous and life appears. Now the Divine mind wants dialogue and man emerges to answer that need. The deity is straining for Self-knowledge and the noblest representatives of mankind have the burden of that divine urgency imposed on them. Many are broken by the weight. A few survive and incorporate the fruits of their divine encounter in mighty works of religion and art and human knowledge. These then generate new ages and civilizations in the history of mankind. Slowly, as this process unfolds, God begins to learn who He is.

Edward F. Edinger, The Creation of Consciousness

We know turn to the meaning of consciousness. Etymology indicates that consciousness is made up of two factors: knowing and withness. That is, it is the experience of knowing together with an other.

Edinger tackles the act of knowing from a psychological-empirical approach rather than a philosophical approach. Through the former approach, says Edinger, “the experience of knowing can be at least descriptively elaborated.”

The psychological function of knowing or seeing requires first of all that undifferentiated, diffuse experience be split into a subject and an object, the knower and the known. . . . As [Erich] Neumann says, “This act of cognition, of conscious discrimination, sunders the world into opposites, for experience of the world is only possible through opposites.”

This is exactly Jung’s individuation process which is realized through the experience of the tension of the opposites. Each new increment of consciousness that we collect requires a repetition of this same process of separating object from subject. Schopenhauer talks about the ability for a man to step away from his struggling, suffering life and observe it as if he is a spectator to a play. All the things that were intensely emotion are now cold, foreign, and strange. It is this process that turns an “unconscious complex which has one by the throat into an object of knowledge” and is “an extremely important aspect for increasing consciousness.” The myth of Perseus and Medusa also demonstrates the power of reflection. Once cannot look upon Medusa directly but one can view her via the mirror-shield — the process of human culture or art.

Being known as object is the other half of the process of knowledge. The ego as “knower” is only providing simple knowing. “To achieve authentic consciousness the ego must also go through the experience of being the object of knowledge, with the function of the knowing subject residing in the ‘other’.” This “other” must ultimately be the inner “knowing one,” i.e., the Self or inner God-image. The “Last Judgment” is the ultimate experience of being the object of knowledge. It “can be understood psychologically as a projection into the afterlife of the ego’s encounter with the Self and the archetypal experience of being the known object of a transpersonal subject; it is an awesome experience, as the myths make clear, an experience that man has understandably tried to postpone as long as possible by transferring it to the afterlife.”

We all begin as the known object and slowly, as the ego develops, become the knowing subject. This is a tranquil and powerful state since the subject dominates the object and the object is the victim of the knower. But we must give up our relative freedom as we realize that we are also the known object, once again, to the Self. So, we alternately must play the role of subject and object. The real key to the process is the realization of the “dynamism of connectedness, the relationship principle” that is knowing with. It is a coniunctio, a union, of Logos (knowing) and Eros (withness) and, as such, we are simultaneously playing both parts. Furthermore, this process also applies to the Self which must also be the known object to the ego’s subject. In Answer to Job, Jung says:

Existence is only real when it is conscious to somebody. That is why the Creator needs conscious man even though, from sheer unconsciousness, he would like to prevent him from becoming conscious.

What we see in Job is that “because Job has seen Yahweh’s amoral nature, Yahweh is obliged to change.” In other words, God — or the Self — needs man to promote the Self’s consciousness.

This reciprocal relation between the ego and the Self — in which both are object and subject — has some interesting implications. The unconscious provides the material of our dream life and thus the Self becomes visible to the ego. But what if the life dramas of the ego are the dreams of the Self, the process of God becoming aware of himself?

In this modern age, religion is the Eros, or withness, factor and seeks the maintain man’s connectedness with God and is Self-oriented. Science is the Logos, or ego-oriented, factor and seeks human knowledge at the expense of the connection with the other. Science alone inadequate to the needs of the whole man and the intellectually naive standpoint of religious faith is equally inappropriate for us today. It is the synthesis and linking of these two factors that will increase consciousness in the universe.

[ Finally getting back to this book. I actually lost it for a while in the black hole residing in the center of my office. But I've managed to rescue it from the event horizon and now we'll continue... ]

It is the union of opposites that is the essential feature:

Consciousness is the third thing that emerges out of the conflict of twoness. Out of the ego as subject versus the ego as object; out of the ego as active agent versus the ego as passive victim; out of the ego as praiseworthy and good versus the ego as damnable and bad; out of a conflict of mutually exclusive duties — out of all such paralyzing conflicts can emerge the third, transcendent condition which is a new quantum of consciousness.

It is in “paralyzing conflicts” that we grow, learn, and mature. It is the no-win situation that makes us confront our passive, un-examined beliefs and prejudices and figure out what we truly believe. Being in a rut — physically, emotionally, mentally — simply atrophies our being. Nothing new comes from one-track thinking and avoiding to actually make the tough decisions.

Edinger then goes on to talk about the Trinity and how the Holy Spirit could only come after Jesus’ death in which the opposites of the Father and the Son collided on the cross. In this respect, the Holy Spirit embodies the creation of consciousness and thus the indwelling of the Parachlete “thus anticipates the new myth which sees each individual ego as potentially a vessel to carry transpersonal consciousness.”

As two archetypal figures who both represent the idea of a carrier of consciousness, Christ and Buddha give us the opportunity for comparison and objectivity.

As long as there is but one figure embodying supreme value he can only be worshipped but not understood. With the presence of two we can discover the separate third thing which they both share; understanding and greater consciousness then become possible.

I think this is exactly the situation of the Old Testament God versus the new Testament God. In the Old Testament, there was only the one God and so he could only be worshiped; there was no point of comparison from which he could be understood. It took Jesus, as the wrathful, jealous God’s opposite in order for us to be able to put them both in perspective.

The new myth suggests that man is an experiment in the process of creating consciousness; “that the sum total of consciousness created by each individual in his lifetime is deposited as a permanent addition in the collective treasury of the archetypal psyche.” There are many mythical images that talk about the transfer from the personal life of the ego to the eternal realm: the early Egyptian idea of the dead being turned into stars and the translation of dead kings to the heavenly realm; Christian symbolism of the righteous ascending into Heaven; the promise in Revelation that the victorious will be a pillar in the temple of God.

This new myth gives meaning to our mundane life:

Every human experience, to the extent that it is lived in awareness, augments the sum total of consciousness in the universe. This face provides the meaning for every experience and gives each individual a role in the on-going world-drama of creation.

Things were pretty much perfect in the ol’ Garden of Eden before the whole “apple” incident, right? And God created everything and said (and I quote) “That’s frickin’ Good!” So, were there ticks and mosquitos and fleas and tapeworms and hookworms in the Garden? And if so, what was their relationship to humans and animals? Were mosquitoes “nice” blood suckers who didn’t inject poison into their victim to make an itchy, red welt? Did fleas bite but not cause disease and itching? Did Adam have tapeworms but they caused no ill side-effects?

“Jesus expected”

These two words in Rudolf Bultmann’s Jesus Christ and Mythology stopped me in my tracks and got me thinking about the nature of Jesus.

Bultmann is talking about Jesus’ conception of the Kingdom of God and his thinking that it “would take place soon, in the immediate future.” The fact that “this hope of Jesus … was not fulfilled” only makes the argument stronger: Jesus was not omniscient.

Then I realized that Jesus was not omnipotent, either. He needed sleep, he needed rest, he needed fortitude, he struggled with his purpose. His temptation not only proved his human-ness but it also seems to question his God-ness. The challenge to toss himself off the nearest tall building only makes sense if he could not have saved himself or survived the fall. The challenge was predicated on God doing the rescuing.

Yet Jesus did perform super-human feats: walking on water, feeding the 5000, calming storms, casting out demons, knowing the hearts and minds of others. So, at times, he does appear omniscient and omnipotent (or, at least, more scient and more potent than your average human). But two things strike me about his miracles. First, Jesus’ God-ness seems to be absent for the most part and then appears at opportune times. Second, the miracles which Jesus performs are not very conclusive proof of his God-ness but rather more strongly demonstrate — due to their intermittency — a power working through him in a manner similar to the miracles performed by the prophets and the apostles.

Now, we also have Jesus’ verbal claim that he was the Son of God but Alan Watts, in Myth and Religion, writes:

… that each one of us is what would be called in Arabic, or Hebrew, the Son of God. The phrase “Son of” means “of the nature of,” as when you call someone a “son of a bitch,” So, “Son of God” means a divine person, a human being who is in the nature of God and realizes it.

And what makes Jesus different than the prophets and apostles is that he realized his divine nature while the others were not so sure. That is why Jesus assumed the presence of the power to perform the miracles and the prophets and apostles were less sure and asked for it.

Where does this leave us? For one thing, it brings Jesus down off the pedastal and makes him much more accessible to you and me. The exhortation to “be like Jesus” is no longer a fairy tale but a feasible possibility (it’s still not easy) since being like God is no longer the standard. Rather, we are “simply” being asked to realize our true nature; to see the divine in all of us.