This is the last installment of background information before we get to the meat and potatoes of this paper – dreams; however, it’s important background.  So here it is, installment 9 of “Inner Vision and  Synchronicity:  Dream Work as Taught By Charles Fillmore and Carl Jung.”

Jungian Religion

Carl Jung’s exploration of Eastern, Western and primal religion and religious traditions is vast.  His interest in religion was concentrated on effect of religious experience on the individual.  “Religion, as the Latin word denotes, is a careful and scrupulous observation of what Rudolf Otto aptly termed the ‘numinosum,’ that is, a dynamic existence or effect not caused by an arbitrary act of will…The numinosum is either a quality of a visible object or the influence of an invisible presence causing a peculiar alteration of consciousness” (Jung, 1938, p. 4).  A full volume (number 11) of his Collected Works is dedicated to the subject of Eastern and Western religion and his psychological treatment of religion garners mention in other volumes as well as countless articles and lectures.  Jung was a baptized Protestant, but on account of his focus on the psychology of religion, he was sometimes questioned about his own personal views.  Answering a question about his belief in the existence of God he said:

I am sufficiently convinced of the effects man has attributed

to a divine being.  If I should express a belief beyond that

or should assert the existence of God, it would not only be

superfluous and inefficient, it would show that I am not

basing my opinion on facts… I am well satisfied with the

fact that I know experiences which I cannot avoid calling

numinous or divine (CW 18:1589).

Since Jung was an empiricist, his interest in religion was predicated on the facts of religious experience. He was of the opinion that humans only were able to conceive of an image of God, not totality of God.  Because the facts surrounding God’s existence could not be fully known, discourse about what God is or is not would be generally untenable; however, there was some hope.

What God is in himself nobody knows; at least I don’t.  Thus it is

beyond the reach of man to make valid statements about the divine

nature…I strongly advocate, therefore, a revision of our religious

formulas with the aid of psychological insight.  It is the great

advantage of Protestantism that an intelligent discussion is possible.

Protestantism should make use of this freedom.  Only a thing that

changes and evolves, lives, but static things mean spiritual death

(CW 18:1595).

Regardless of his personal religious views, Jung recognized that one’s mental health was often a result of one’s religious or spiritual sense of well being.  He said:

Among all my patients in the second half of life – that is to say,

over thirty-five – there has not been one whose problem in the

last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.

It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had

lost what the living religions of every age have given to their

followers, and not of them has been really healed who did not

regain his religious outlook.  This of course has nothing

whatever to do with a particular creed or membership of a

church (CW 11:509).

Jung’s statement is a powerful witness to his belief that clergyman and doctor could and should work together.