For that matter, everything supernatural is a physical impossibility by definition. And the character of an event that makes it a miracle is that it is a physical impossibility.
That is to say, that the power and goodness of fatherhood; the wisdom and the lovingness of motherhood; the light and the grace which is all blessed love; the Trinity and the unity; the great supreme goodness of every kind of thing; who makes you to love; who makes you to long; the endless fulfilling of all true desires, is God.
“If you focus too narrowly on a single path to God, all you will ever find is the path.”
Meister Eckhardt
Jung sought a Divine Quaternity. What should we make of a godhead that has a Father and Son but no Mother? Of course the holy Spirit could be thought of as feminine. But then it is said to have impregnated Mary.
Anyway Jung was very happy with the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary by the Roman Catholics in which he saw greater balance and wholeness in the symbol of God.
The Meister Eckhart quote balances the saying of Jesus that the way is narrow by asserting that to make it too narrow misses the mark.
That seems like an artificial division that need not be made. When you make it, you’re claiming to know more about God than you probably do know. So then saying that “religious assertions are physical impossibilities” becomes reasonable because you have removed God and religious statements out of the physical. It’s true based on the definitions that you are using.
That did not used to be the case. Newton thought that God had to adjust the motion of celestial bodies on a regular basis.
And let’s face it, the universe ought not to exist. Physics doesn’t have an explanation for why it does.
It’s simpler to focus on the mechanics of what is observable, which is a small fraction of the whole.
If you shove God and creation into the supernatural category, then sure, “by definition” …
What if God is natural?
Phyllo
I haven’t checked it out, but I have read that Hobbes thought that God was a physical material entity. People that say God is a space alien or something like that seem to think that such God is a physical being as well. Biblical fundamentalists see God as literally walking around as a physical being in the garden of Eden and Jesus living on in heaven as a physical human. And no I don’t claim to know.
But Jung and I didn’t “shove” God into being essentially spirit. The Gospel of John chapter 4 verse 24 states that as well as many other passages of scripture. The preponderance of judeo-christian tradition and the experience of people like CG Jung and the mystics, most religious people and myself supports this.
Jung’s point in the quotation was that God is apprehended psychically and that with the Roman Catholic doctrine of the assumption of Mary they had hit upon a psychic fact that protestantism missed.
I agree with you is that the fact that the universe exists at all is astonishing. From a phenomenological standpoint the picture that the universe has expanded too it’s present unthinkable size from something infinitesimally small is absurd. Why is there anything and not nothing?
Furthermore the mystery is much closer to us than we usually think. Because we don’t have an understanding of the consciousness by which we understand everything. Is it physical? Perhaps we should answer that question conclusively before we move on to the question of the nature of God. I don’t see that answer forthcoming. It is the great mystery that is embedded in the mystery that is our own psyche.
“…There is always a tension and a dialectic-- a shifting back and forth-- between concrete life and mental work on it, between living our loves and understanding them, between the desire for intimacy and the wish for solitude, between the soul of attachment and the spirit of detachment.”
Thomas Moore, Soul Mates, honoring the mysteries of love and relationship.
The above is a phenomenal description so true to my experience. What is at the center of the two poles of our experience? Who throws the switch that transitions us from one pole to another? Jung called it the Self. Hillman the daimon. To the mechanistic thinkers it’s a psychological mechanism. Whatever–it isn’t under our conscious control. Our interests choose us rather than vice versa. Our conscious self interacts with our unconscious self to determine our fate.
The basic idea here is that there’s an organizing spirit within the psyche that drives towards unity. Stated like that it seems self-evident. If it were not so how would we arrive at the organized integrated personality? And yet implied within that statement is the origin of religion and the quest for overarching transcendent wholeness of reality itself.
I am reading a book from a Dutchman Bernado Kastrup at present, who I found being quoted elsewhere and I followed an online discussion with him. He is interesting, coming from a computer science background, well grounded in science and AI, he has been looking at the materialist foundation of science, and come to the conclusion that basic assumptions the rule where scientific discovery go are flawed. Especially with regard to consciousness he argues that the material worldview is lacking. It is well written (especially for someone like me) and he explains how that, when working on AI, the question came whether the machine would at some time know that it was answering questions, let alone know that it knows, like we do. He came to the conclusion that the materials that he had to his disposal could not be reasonably expected to cause awareness of this kind. In the same way, the basic building blocks of the universe do not seem to be inherently intelligent or aware, so where does consciousness come from?
He argues that we are always working with some model of reality, rather than with reality itself, because we just can’t grasp reality in its vast complexity. Our brains have the task to sort and reject those things that would overload us, and so it is with a reduced perception that we go to work on understanding our existence. He says that science is using precisely this reduced perception to explain the universe, suggesting, however, that it is getting the whole picture. He gives some examples of when this ordering task of the brain is impaired, in particular Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist who suffered a stroke and was able to recover and analyse what she had been through – especially the perceptions she had whilst suffering the stroke. She came to the same conclusion as he, that what she saw, in some ways very similar to what people on psychotropic drugs reported, was a result of the ordering process breaking down, and being overwhelmed by the aspects of reality that the brain otherwise blocked. Thus, they assume that hallucinogenic drugs don’t further our perceptions, but break down the brain’s ability to block that which we can’t cope with. He also sees a similar effect when people report of near-death experiences.
I find this very inspiring, because he goes on to ask whether the somewhat depressing materialist view of a universe without purpose or meaning is lacking some input that primitive people were able to access in the past. In this way he connects with CG Jung, who has inspired him all the way, and the collective unconscious. What if consciousness is at the root of everything, and we are just receptive to a certain “wave-length” of consciousness? Just like when you turn the dial of an old radio and the internal parts lit up in various places as a new channel was selected, perhaps consciousness is a question of reception. He asks if material can’t produce consciousness, can consciousness produce material? However, you’d have to read his books to get the details. He speaks and writes convincingly and is quite modest. It may be someone worth a read. He is asking the questions that I feel need to be asked.
I just started watching Kastrup on YouTube after reading your post. He takes the leap into metaphysical idealism. This of course involves speculation. It’s interesting. I usually hang out in the epoche of phenomenology suspending judgment on metaphysical speculation. But, I’ll keep watching.
I agree, it is a leap, but I find that he does show the opinions of materialism and scientism to be an attempt to claim that they know reality (realism) whereas they live on ideas and hypotheses rather than a 1:1 depiction of reality. I think that this is quite obvious because, as he says, who can depict reality in that way? Reality is so huge that we can only look at bits of it at a time, which is why our brains have various functions that limit the input of our senses.
I find this applicable to the subject of wholeness because, as Kastrup says somewhere, our understanding of being apart from the world enables us to distinguish ourselves from others. But we find ourselves continually in exchange with our environment, whether it is breathing, drinking, eating, communication, or just presence. We hardly ever have an original idea, we orientate ourselves on consensual standards, learning permanently to cope with situations by interaction. Therefore, what do we need to be whole, if this exchange is a permanent occurrence that we can’t control?
The other aspect is his idea that consciousness is a hard problem because we can’t understand how it can arise in matter that for itself shows no evidence of consciousness. For him, consciousness, or mind, is universal, and we are like vortices in the river of consciousness, distinct only by the whirling of the water we are part of. The river is the unconscious mind, ever present but unconscious to the vortices, arising only in dreams and visions, or when the mind isn’t able to reduce its input because of illness or through psychotropic substances. Another analogy of the brain is that of a radio, which receives consciousness like a radio receives radio signals.
If this were true, what would wholeness look like?
Bob
I agree with your first paragraph.
If I understand the question with which you end your second paragraph, I would answer that when reaching toward being whole we need our ego ideal which is embedded in the myth of the hero, as for example, in the gospels of Jesus as a Christ.
To your third paragraph, my response is first that I get the point about the mystery of emergence of consciousness. I’m not sure I understand why if consciousness is universal there’s an unconscious. Isn’t that kind of a contradiction?
Finally I would say that what we have are analogies and images of wholeness but not wholeness itself. It’s like a horizon we are ever moving toward but never reaching.
Thanks for your reply, I think I am still somewhat befuddled by these ideas.
What I meant with the second paragraph was, what do we need to be physically whole, if our exchange with our environment is a permanent occurrence? Surely, we are therefore part of that environment, taking and giving back as we live. If we were to live purely natural lives, this would perhaps be a balanced giving and taking, but wholeness in a physical sense would then also mean being in harmonious union with our natural environment. As it is, we are estranged from nature in many ways and can’t see the spiritual aspect of nature.
With regard to the third paragraph, I picked up the analogy with the river back when I read Siddhartha from Hermann Hesse, which Kastrup has used in his book. I understand it to say that mind or consciousness (or God?) is the ground of being and flows like a river. We are individually like vortices in that river, aware of our own whirl (ego?), circling ourselves if you like, but the greater mind is unconscious to us, except under certain circumstances. Those who experience this greater mind are the mystics, visionaries, dreamers, who somehow are able to escape the monologue of our egos, the continuing circling around ourselves, and suddenly experience an ineffable vastness.
Of course, analogies only work to a certain degree, but, as you say, they are what we have to work with. The way I understand what you wrote is that wholeness is something we yearn for, and perhaps it is only accessible through joining the greater mind, towards which we are journeying but never quite reaching in this life. Nirvana or heaven, it is the goal of this life to be free of suffering and finally re-joined with God/the great mind.
I’ve experienced all kinds of ineffable things.
Peace seems to be the best thing,
because it requires nothing but free space in order to exist.
Vastness upon vastness.
Worlds upon worlds.
etc.
That sounds a lot like quiescence …
I call it proficiency through minimalistic austerity.
When I think about what we humans doing to the environment I despair. It seems that Martin Heidegger was right when he said only a god can save us.
…yet and so, let us follow Jung’s wise and Taoistic example:
Hi Felix,
How many Buddhist monks and Deepak Chopra’s are there out there? 
That’s a long journey. Do you also see that there are Moments where one can experience wholeness in the blink of an eye? It just comes to us through some catalysts or other. Well, perhaps there was something brewing within which we were not aware of. We just experience that perfect harmony as in “all is right with the world and with us”. Maybe we eventually grow into Wholeness at a more steady pace the more often we experience PH.
I think wholeness is like grief in a sense. It comes to us in the moment and leaves us until the next time.
But just remember —
“He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity’s sun rise.”
William Blake
I memorized that rhyme of Blake when I was in adolescent, and I remind myself of it when the bonds of my attachments are broken.
We have visions of wholeness–glimpses as it were. To see it is to feel it. But, the totality of wholeness–the expression is a paradoxical absurdity in itself–the ultimate monist ideal of self and reality-- is beyond our ken. Thank you for evoking the vision for me in this present moment.
Here Charles Taylor discourses on how Schiller saw aesthetic experience can afford a means of experiencing wholeness:
This reminds me of Schiller’s Ode to Joy which is set to music by Beethoven in the last movement of his 9th symphony. If you’ve ever been moved by it as I have you may accept it as evidence that Schiller’s proposition about the unifying power of the aesthetic is true.