sciousness is carried with us in the matrix of unconscious. And thus, what disrupts wholeness for Augustinus, makes wholeness possible for Jung. It is, however, necessary to note that for Jung evil is not entirely evil. It becomes evil providing we banish it there. At the end of the Archetype and Collective Unconscious (1934) he adds: “We do not know what good and evil are in themselves. It must therefore be supposed that they spring from a need of human consciousness and that for this reason they lose their validity outside the human sphere. That is to say, a hypostasis of good and evil as metaphysical entities is inadmissible because it would deprive these terms of meaning. If we call everything that God does or allows ‘good’, then evil is good too and ‘good’ becomes meaningles.“ (CW 9II 1950, 267). Jung did not intend to relativize moral good and evil. On the contrary, he claims that the moral evil arises from the fact that we cannot, due to our own natural tendencies, come to terms with evil and instead of integrating it, we repress it and we pretend it does not belong to us. In unconscious, however, “death” does not stand for demise, but as if it inevitably implied the resurrection in renewed force. Despite the mutual fondness Jung came to a disagreement with Victor White [11] especially when the matter of “privatio boni” is concerned. 4 Psychological defense and criticism of religion Jung’s attitude towards religion changes with time. He accepts it practically – as a cultural convenience that enables people things that are impossible on biological level – progress, sacrifice of oneself, etc. He also acknowledges that religion can serve us in a way of connecting us with the realms of unconscious otherwise unreachable. Therefore, it would be short-sighted to try to replace it altogether with science. The realm of unconscious from which the images of God and the Self emerge are, according to Jung, unknown and uncontrollable (CW 10 1918). As a psychologist, Jung takes into account healing capacities of religion that bring release to chaotic instincts by means of fantasy. Therefore, we cannot simply get rid of religion without putting our own psychic health in jeopardy. Jung proposes to distinguish religious functions from religious dogmas that serve in every religion to prevent believers from confronting their own unconscious (CW 6 1921). Dogmas act as a protective shield of a believer against his own first-hand experience with God and as such it has its pros and cons. The advantage is that man is not directly confronted with his unconscious. Jung himself experienced it and he thinks that not everybody is capable of handling it. A strong man, however, can break this shield of religion and individually “experience God”. In the light of this dichotomy between the “mass” and the strong and enlightened individuals Jung puts emphasis on “nobleness” of more individually understood religion: „The astonishing range of Catholic symbolism, for instance, has an emotional appeal which for many natures is absolutely satisfying (…) It is perhaps only temporarily and for relatively few individuals that the existing collective religious have become inadequate.“ (CW 8 1928, 59). Spirituality Studies 2 (1) Spring 2016 57
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