Jung's explanation of the religious tendency of the psyche addresses many sides of the contemporary debate on religion and the role that it has in individual and social life. This book discusses the emergence of a new mythic consciousness and details ways in which this consciousness supersedes traditional concepts of religion to provide a spirituality of more universal inclusion. On Behalf of the Mystical Fool examines Jung's critique of traditional western religion, demonstrating the negative consequences of religious and political collective unconsciousness, and their consequent social irresponsibility in today's culture. The book concludes by suggesting that a new religiosity and spirituality is currently emerging in the West based on the individual’s access to the sense of ultimacy residual in the psyche, and seeking expression in a myth of a much wider compass. This book will be of interest to scholars and students at all levels who are engaged in the expanding field of Jungian studies. It will also be key reading for anyone interested in the theoretical and therapeutic connections between the psyche and religious experience.

Jung’s psychology describes the origin of the Gods and their religions in terms of the impact of archetypal powers on consciousness. For Jung this impact is the basis of the numinous, the experience of the divine in nature and in human nature. His psychology, while possessed of a certain claim to science, is based on depths of subjective experience which transcends psychology and science as ordinarily understood. Jung and his Mystics: In the end it all comes to nothing examines the mythic nature of Jung’s psychology and thought, and demonstrates the influence of mysticism and certain religious thinkers in formulating his own work. John P. Dourley explores the influence of Mechthild of Magdeburg and fellow mystics/Beguines, and traces the mystic impulse and its expression through Meister Eckhat and Jacob Boehme to Hegel in the nineteenth century. All of these mystics were of the apophatic school and understood the culmination of their experience to lie in an identity with divinity in a nothingness beyond all form, formal expression or immediate activity. Dourley shows how this is still of relevance in our lives today. The book concludes that Jung’s understanding of mysticism could greatly alleviate the conflict between faiths, religious or political, by drawing attention to their common origin in the depths of the human. Jung and his Mystics: In the end it all comes to nothing is aimed at scholars and senior research students in Jungian Studies, including religionists, theologians and philosophers of religion, especially those with an interest in mysticism. It will also be essential reading for those interested in the connection between religious and psychological experience.

"The Description for this book, The Quotable Jung, will be forthcoming"--

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and C.G. Jung: Side by Side is an anthology written by authors from different backgrounds, sharing how the lives of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Carl Gustav Jung impacted them personally and/or how they understand the relevance of these two men for our present times. Contributors to this fourth volume of the Fisher King Review include: John Dourley, Peter Dunlap, Barbara Faris, Fred R. Gustafson, John Giannini, Richard W. Hanhardt, Robert Henderson, Steven B. Herrmann, Jane A. Kelley, Jon Magnuson, Francisco (Paco) Martorell, Stan V. McDaniel, Dennis L. Merritt, and Laura A. Weber. Though C.G.Jung and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin never met, their independent intellectual inquiries and courageous researches pushed the personal and collective soul forward and placed both of them at the foreground of needing to understand and integrate on a planetary level the core values of their expansive work. Both Jung and de Chardin were concerned with science and religion and operated within these paradigms. Both of them shook the world by offering up views, on one hand, of the profound depths of the human psyche and, on the other, presenting a profound re-consideration of evolution as a process leading toward a social unification of the planet. One used the concept of individuation, the other spoke of evolution. Each took these concepts to a creative depth so much so that the world they lived in either deeply admired or detested them. Both had conflicts in their chosen fields. Jung was a psychologist who used the field of science to explore the religious depths of the human soul by studying mythology, world religions, folk tales, dreams, and human behavior. Chardin used the ground of religion to work in the field of science via paleontology, geology, and physics as he explored a deeper and relevant understanding of evolution. Though each began from different intellectual platforms, they each crisscrossed into the other’s territory of inquiry and related their ideas to include the full scope of humanity. One went deeply into soul and found matter, whereas, the other went deeply into matter and found soul. In their own ways both spent their careers trying to heal the split between spirit and matter in the weltanschauung of their times reflected in the human psyche and in the general religious views permeating most of Western culture.

This book presents a new paradigm for distinguishing psychotic and mystical religious experiences. In order to explore how Presbyterian pastors differentiate such events, Susan L. DeHoff draws from Reformed theology, psychological theory, and robust qualitative research. Following a conversation among multidisciplinary voices, she presents a new paradigm considering the similarities, differences, and possible overlap of psychotic and mystical religious experiences.

Jung's explanation of the religious tendency of the psyche addresses many sides of the contemporary debate on religion and the role that it has in individual and social life. This book discusses the emergence of a new mythic consciousness and details ways in which this consciousness supersedes traditional concepts of religion to provide a spirituality of more universal inclusion. On Behalf of the Mystical Fool examines Jung's critique of traditional western religion, demonstrating the negative consequences of religious and political collective unconsciousness, and their consequent social irresponsibility in today's culture. The book concludes by suggesting that a new religiosity and spirituality is currently emerging in the West based on the individual’s access to the sense of ultimacy residual in the psyche, and seeking expression in a myth of a much wider compass. This book will be of interest to scholars and students at all levels who are engaged in the expanding field of Jungian studies. It will also be key reading for anyone interested in the theoretical and therapeutic connections between the psyche and religious experience.

Our world is bathed in ongoing biological, political, cultural, climate, and spiritual crises that seem endless. If anything, these disruptions appear to be spiraling into ever larger threat fronts that challenge our survival as a species. Carl Gustav Jung, renowned Swiss psychiatrist, avowed in his archetypal psychology that there is a portal of transforming possibility if we have the courage to enter that doorway. That threshold entering demands that we embrace our individual and collective sufferings and then seek the path of meaning and destiny that is always resident deeply at the core of such trauma. This book narrates how this destiny is found and lived forward for both each individual life and for our varied human cultures. It affirms and gives examples of the deep-soul dimension of life that lies under the often chaotic surface—the liminal realm of animate and guiding dream, vision, myth, and spirituality where the gods meet us so that we all can find our mutual way Home. This liminal world is navigated through the metaphoric and literalness of pilgrimage, performance, and political processes in our personal and cultural lives. What might be your path of destiny?

In The Postsecular Sacred: Jung, Soul and Meaning in an Age of Change, David Tacey presents a unique psychological study of the postsecular, adding a Jungian perspective to a debate shaped by sociology, philosophy and religious studies. In this interdisciplinary exploration, Tacey looks at the unexpected return of the sacred in Western societies, and how the sacred is changing our understanding of humanity and culture. Beginning with Jung’s belief that the psyche has never been secular, Tacey examines the new desire for spiritual experience and presents a logic of the unconscious to explain it. Tacey argues that what has fuelled the postsecular momentum is the awareness that something is missing, and the idea that this could be buried in the unconscious is dawning on sociologists and philosophers. While the instinct to connect to something greater is returning, Tacey shows that this need not imply that we are regressing to superstitions that science has rejected. The book explores indigenous spirituality in the context of the need to reanimate the world, not by going back to the past but by being inspired by it. There are chapters on ecopsychology and quantum physics, and, using Australia as a case study, the book also examines the resistance of secular societies to becoming postsecular. Approaching postsecularism through a Jungian perspective, Tacey argues that we should understand God in a manner that accords with the time, not go back to archaic, rejected images of divinity. The sacred is returning in an age of terrorism, and this is not without significance in terms of the ‘explosive’ impact of spirituality in our time. Innovative and relevant to the world we live in, this will be of great interest to academics and scholars of Jungian studies, anthropology, indigenous studies, philosophy, religious studies and sociology due to its transdisciplinary scope. It would also be a useful resource for analytical psychologists, Jungian analysts and psychotherapists.

Eyes to See and Ears to Hear: What Jesus Really Meant is an exploration of all four canonical Gospels as well as other material attributed to Jesus from a Jungian-based perspective. There are many layers of meaning to the sayings of the centerpiece of Christianity that are best elucidated in this manner and in conjunction with quantum physics as well as the other major spiritual systems, both East and West. We are going through a significant shift, or apocalyptic period, as a race, and this book can help the reader to successfully navigate what has been happening and what lies ahead. The material is deep enough to satisfy experts in the field and accessible enough for laypeople to understand. It is critical that we accept and integrate the messages provided in this work if we are to ultimately survive in a meaningful way.

The twenty-first century could well be Jung's century, just as the twentieth century was Freud's. Jung predicted the demise of secular humanism and claimed we would search for alternatives to science, atheism and reason. We would experience a new and even unfashionable appetite for the sacred. Educated people, however, would not return to unreconstructed religions, because these do not express the life of the spirit as discerned by modern consciousness. The sacred has developed a darker hue, and worshipping symbols of light and goodness no longer satisfies the longings of the soul. The new sacred cannot be contained by the formulas of the past, but nor can we live without a sense of the sacred. We stand in a difficult place: between traditional religions we have outgrown and a pervasive materialism we can no longer embrace. These changes in our culture have come sooner than Jung might have imagined. In his time Jung struck many as eccentric or unscientific. But his works speak to our time since we have experienced the full gamut of Jungian transformations: the unsettlement of Judeo-Christian culture, the rise of the feminine, the onslaught of the dark side, the critique of modernism and positivism, and the recognition that the Western ego is neither the pinnacle of evolution nor the lord of creation. A new life is needed beyond the ego, but we do not yet know what it will look like. The outbreak of strong religion and terrorism are signs of the times, but these are expressions of a distorted and repressed spirit, and not, one hopes, genuine pointers to the future. What the future holds is uncertain, but Jung's prophetic vision helps to prepare us for what is to come, and this will be of great interest to analytical psychologists and psychoanalysts, as well as to theologians, futurists, sociologists, and the general reader.