S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 7 - 2 Fa l l 2 0 2 1 3 1 Andrej Rajský psychological data only under an assumption that is highly metaphysical. By building psychology on a conception that transcends empirical psychological observations because libido is observable only in individual forms and manifestations, Jung complied with the Aristotelian doctrine that no science can explain its last principles and must leave this task to philosophy. For traditional metaphysics, the formless energeia is synonymous with actus purus, and philosophy has always referred to God as a “pure act”. Jung’s “undifferentiated libido” is apparently just an abstraction from distinct forms of libido (White 1953, 57). Within the precise boundaries of empirical psychology, this energy (as in physics) is an abstraction, expressing dynamic relationships, based on a theoretical assumption that is confirmed by experience. In any case, Jung thus rejects purely causal mechanistic hypotheses (Freud) and positivist assumptions to “open the horizon” of empirical psychology to references to Ganz Andere, “wholly other”. In his writing Psychology and Religion (1937), we read: “Religion, as the Latin word [Note: religio] denotes, is a careful and scrupulous observation of what Rudolf Otto aptly termed the numinosum, that is, a dynamic agency or effect not caused by an arbitrary act of will. On the contrary, it seizes and controls the human subject, who is always rather its victim than its creator… The influence of an invisible presence causes a peculiar alteration of consciousness…We might say, then, that the term ‘religion’ designates the attitude peculiar to a consciousness which has been changed by experience of the numinosum.” (Jung 1969, 7–8). According to Jung, numen is an archetype, an imprint in the soul of man (like Otto’s a priori), which is commonly referred to as imago Dei, “the image of God”. In the human soul, however, the presence of the Absolute appears only as a flash, an intuition, never as knowledge of its essence. This numinous insight can be actualized to a real religious experience in man’s psyche [6]. The human being is thus naturally religious, man is homo religiosus, although their religiosity is manifested in the diversity of confessions and in the different intensity of religious experiences. And this will only happen if despite their human limitations, they are able to realize the qualities hidden in their unconsciousness and to dispose of archetypal symbols of the Sacred for an encounter that is “tremendum et fascinans”. Only in this way can the individual soul discover a hidden personality that can reach its full development, the integral Self (Ger. Selbst), which is the ideal center of psychic totality.
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