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 3 Andrej Rajský “explains” it. Here, the gnoseological demands of man expand and move from rationalist schematism (of the ancient, medieval, or contemporary scholastics) to the field of the “living world” of man (see the German phenomenological term Lebenswelt), in which the living symbol is much more revealing and clarifying than precise definitions and conceptual formulations. The symbol moves us, moves the center of our consciousness, changes our values. The numinous experience evokes not only an idea, but especially pleasure, fear, awe, etc. However, according to White, the religious symbol is not only an archetypal embodiment of formless energy in the inner sky of the immanent world of man (Jung), but is rather a “window”, a more or less transparent image through which a transcendent deity shines through to man. Religious or magical rituals are an expression of the effort to make it present and to restore these original images (White 1953, 244–246). There is no doubt that mystical experience offers its phenomenal side to psychological research; on the other hand, this in-depth experience is ungraspable, as it relates to something “un-speakable”. Thus, the spiritual experience stands in the middle, between the world of facts and the metaphysical, that is, also the metapsychological world, and offers itself as their “bridge”. Phenomenologically speaking, the deity, by its “entry” into the history and the depths of man, enables man to find a reference of the ultimate meaning in it. A person who experiences the Numinous perceives it as an immediate address, as a “word” from the outside that transforms their personality to fuller development. The phenomenological approach does not define essences; however, it points out the total transcendence of the Sacred, and thus confirms its ontological status (see e.g. , Dojčár 2013, 5–10). If an individual interprets a spiritual experience as an immanent projection of individual or collective consciousness, they will not consider their experience to be mystical. Transcendence of the Numinous is therefore a guarantee of its ontological value. 6 Conclusion “The one and only immediate guarantor of reality is the observer,” claims the psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (in White 1953, XXIV) – in accordance with phenomenological foundations. If religio is a “careful and scrupulous observation” of the Sacred, then the observer of the Numinous himself guarantees its transcendence, and thus, also its ontological value. Even though it is not possible to grasp the Numinous conceptually and define it (it is possible only tentatively and figuratively), this does not mean that it is ontologically empty – it “controls and fascinates” us (Rudolf Otto) with its unpredictability, immediacy, love, power. Jung insists that the dichotomy between empirical psychology and meta-empirical spirituality is impossible, and calls on us to become more responsible, mature in our religion, or in our godlessness. “Western man fools himself when he thinks he has outgrown religion and has no need of God and he is learning in the bitter Nemesis to his pretensions to self-sufficiency. But he has outgrown an infantile religiosity which is no more than an escape-mechanism, an outer and theoretic compensation for inner godlessness in practice.” (Jung in White 1953, 59).
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