Do you believe in God? If so, what do you mean by “God”?
The great psychologist Carl Jung was asked this question in an interview 2 years before his death. His answer shocked the world.
INTERVIEWER: Do you now believe in God?
C.G. JUNG: Now? Difficult to answer… I know. I don’t need to believe. I know.
Jung’s words caused such an uproar that he felt it necessary to explain himself in an open letter. There, he writes:
I did not say in the broadcast, “There is a God.” I said “I do not need to believe in God; I know.” Which does not mean: I do know a certain God … but rather: I do know that I am obviously confronted with a factor unknown in itself, which I call ‘God’…
[God] is an apt name given to all overpowering emotions in my own psychical system subduing my conscious will and usurping control over myself.
C.G. Jung, Letter to “The Listener”, January 21, 1960
By “God”, Jung means a force external to the ego that overpowers one’s will. This is an odd statement I’ve struggled to make sense of for years. Only recently have I begun to understand how profound it is.
The Edge of the Abyss
You see, I’m writing this piece for very personal reasons. For over a month now, I’ve felt completely incapacitated, unable to do the work, live the life, and be the person I’ve been these past few years. I tried labeling my state as a “writer’s block”, “burnout”, or “depression”; I tried more romantic framings too, such as “existential crisis”, or even “dark night of the soul”… But none of these terms did justice to my lived experience. That is, sudden disenchantment with everything I’ve felt to be important so far; sudden awareness, also, of the hurt and ignorance rampant in the world, hurt and ignorance I myself am propagating.
This experience, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually, has now held me transfixed for months. For all my study of Buddhism, I find myself returning to my Christian roots in trying to make sense of what I am going through. The only framing of my experience that’s made sense to me is to see it as an encounter with God. An encounter with God Who, for mysterious reasons, has brought my path to the edge of an abyss and asks me to gaze into that abyss, punishing all attempts to avert my eyes.
What is God?
You see now why Jung’s words have started making sense to me. In his letter, he writes:
[God is] the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans, and intentions and change the course of my life for better or worse.
C.G. Jung, Letter to “The Listener”, January 21, 1960
This, you will notice, is a first-person, experiential definition of God. It is free of theological, mythological, or Judaeo-Christian baggage. Jung stresses the psychological reality of God as an experience. This experience gets interpreted differently across different times and cultures, but is always present. He writes:
God is a psychic quantity which nothing can deprive of its reality, which does not insist on a definite name and which allows itself to be called reason, energy, matter, or even ego.
C.G. Jung, Forward to Fr Victor White’s God and the Unconscious
If …we say “God,” we give expression to an image or verbal concept which has undergone many changes in the course of time… Our reason is sure only of one thing: that it manipulates images and ideas which are dependent on human imagination and its temporal and local conditions…
There is no doubt that there is something behind these images that transcends consciousness and operates in such a way that the statements do not vary limitlessly and chaotically, but clearly all relate to a few basic principles or archetypes.
C.G. Jung, Answer to Job
The Beginning of Wisdom
The common patterns we find in different wisdom traditions suggest there is some common experience these traditions are trying to describe. An experience you too are likely to have had – even if you never dressed it up in religious language. But why does Jung describe that experience in such negative terms? Again, his definition of God is:
… all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly…
C.G. Jung, Letter to “The Listener”, January 21, 1960
Well, Jung’s definition actually agrees with numerous stories from world mythology. Stories that warn of the perils mortals are exposed to when encountering the Divine. Semele instantly perishes upon gazing at the true form of Zeus, Arjuna nearly loses his mind when Krishna reveals his true aspect, and Yahweh says to Moses:
You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live.
Exodus 33:20
The world’s religions all warn us, one way or another, that
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom…
Proverbs 9:10-12
A Substitute for God
To fear God may sound like an archaic, primitive spiritual attitude. Especially for a Christian to whom God is Love, or to a Buddhist, to whom the various gods are simply patterns of causal manifestation. But fear of God is the foundation of most organized religion. Religion, Jung insists, has not evolved to bring us closer to the Divine, but to protect us against a direct encounter. He writes:
Since the dawn of humanity there has been a marked tendency to limit [God’s] unruly and arbitrary “supernatural” influence by means of definite forms and laws… What is ordinarily called “religion” is a substitute [with] the obvious purpose of replacing immediate experience by a choice of suitable symbols tricked out with an organized dogma and ritual… people are effectively protected against immediate religious experience.
C.G. Jung, Psychology and Religion
In short, religion acts like a psychological firewall between us and direct spiritual experience. Now, why have the stewards of religion felt the need to dilute the sacred, spoonfeeding us God, as it were, in manageable portions? Is this just a power move on the side of the priest class? Is it an attempt to control us by usurping our spiritual lives? It often is, I think. But could there also be some wisdom in “the fear of the Lord”?
I’ve personally never seen any wisdom in it – only outdated superstition. That is, until now, when I feel God’s grip on me and tremble.
Let’s explore what it means to encounter God with a story. But let’s avoid the obvious stories from the Bible. If God is a universal experience, all traditions should describe that experience, even supposedly atheistic ones, like Buddhism. Indeed, the legend of the Buddha himself relates the power of divine intervention.
Before we continue, I want to thank everyone who supports my work! These pieces are the fruits of my personal journey, and each one takes me over a month of work. If you’re finding value here, you can support my work by joining our community on Patreon. This will also give you access to exclusive content, community events, and the ability to submit your questions for guests on my podcast. Thank you for your support!
When Buddha Met God
The story of how Prince Siddhartha left life in the palace in search of awakening is a well-known one. At the age of 29, the prince had known only comfort, pleasure, and abundance. Siddhartha’s father had arranged that his son never come face to face with old age, suffering, and death. The prince, he thought, must be kept away from all things that make people question the meaning of life. The prince must know only the pleasures and power of royalty.
One day, Siddhartha goes out into the city and meets a man dried up by old age. The prince had never seen anything like this before, and the sight of it disturbs him deeply. All the more so when his charioteer explains that old age afflicts all living things, including Siddhartha. Shortly after, the prince goes out into the city again. This time, he comes across a man overcome by sickness, and again learns that all living things eventually fall ill, as will he one day. On a following occasion, he sees a cremation and learns that his corpse too will one day be burned and his life will be no more. The prince falls into a deep depression at this sudden encounter with suffering and impermanence. Discovering his father’s deception makes his despair complete.
Now a broken man, Siddhartha goes out into the city for what will be the last time. Suffering is all he sees around him. That is, until he comes across a solitary man sitting cross-legged under a tree. Looking at that man fills the prince with a sense of peace he had never tasted before. Not the peace of momentary pleasure or ignorance; rather, peace that remains even in full awareness of suffering. Siddhartha then learns from his charioteer that the man he saw was a contemplative, one who had renounced the world in search of enlightenment.
These “Four Sights”, as they are called, an old man, a sick man, a corpse, and a contemplative, turn Siddhartha’s life around. The prince, so carefully reared for royalty, steals away from the palace at night and sets off on a quest for that peace that passeth understanding.
Deus Ex Machina
This story does not figure in the Pali Canon, but that’s beyond the point here. We shouldn’t treat it as a historical account anyway. The story’s purpose is to describe a universal pattern of human experience. What Joseph Campbell calls “the hero’s journey”, what Jung calls “individuation”, and what I would describe as an encounter with God.
It’s curious that both the Theravada and the Mahayana versions of this story say Siddhartha’s Four Sights were arranged by the gods. In the Nidānakathā, we read:
The [gods] thought, “The time for young Siddhattha to attain Enlightenment is near, let us show him the Omens.”
The Nidānakathā, translated by T. W. Rhys Davids
Now, why would Buddhism, which teaches liberation through personal effort, depict the gods helping the Buddha? The story of the Four Sights is not an isolated case of this either. After attaining enlightenment, the Buddha is unsure whether to teach his insight. It then takes yet another divine intervention to convince him. This time, the Pali Canon tells us that. The Buddha thought to himself:
Enough now with teaching what only with difficulty I reached. This Dhamma is not easily realized by those overcome with aversion & passion.
Ayacana Sutta; SN 6.1
Answering this hesitation, the god Brahma Sahampati manifests in front of the Buddha, kneels down, and speaks:
Lord, let the Blessed One teach the Dhamma! … There are beings with little dust in their eyes who are falling away because they do not hear the Dhamma. There will be those who will understand the Dhamma.
Ayacana Sutta; SN 6.1
Of Gods and Men
Again, why does a supposedly atheistic tradition talk about how the gods aided its founder? One reason for this is propaganda. We want to depict the old gods as serving our new master, kneeling down if possible. We must depict our tradition as superseding what came before it. Another reason for including the gods is the mythical thinking prevalent some 2500 years ago. The Buddha taught a rational path of practice, but he had to adapt his teachings for an audience that was still thinking mythically, even magically.
I think, however, a deeper factor has kept these stories alive and central to the tradition. Remember, Buddhism is not only rationalist, but also deeply psychological. Stories of divine intervention have their value in depicting those mysterious, irrational forces that act on consciousness from without. Forces that manifest in the coming together of meaningful coincidences, like the Four Sights. Or the force of love which overpowers pragmatic thinking, like when the Buddha decided to teach the Dhamma at no gain for himself. Such experiences can aptly be called encounters with God, and today, more than ever, we need to learn how to reconnect with them.
God Today
Over the door of his house, Jung had inscribed: ‘Whether summoned or not, God will be present‘. The authors of Buddhist scripture understood this, consciously or instinctively. They paid homage to the mysterious forces we call “gods” rather than reduce all human experience to rationality.
Today, such humility of the intellect is a rare thing. In the new, secular view, experience must either conform to our reasoning, or it must be rejected. By “mystery” we no longer mean “what cannot be known”, but “what is not yet known”. We take it for granted that, analyzed properly, all phenomena must make rational sense. The notion of spiritual forces acting in the world is now seen as a superstition… But what have we replaced it with? Jung writes:
The motto “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” is the superstition of modern man…
He is blind to the fact that, with all his rationality and efficiency, he is possessed by “powers” that are beyond his control. His god and demons have not disappeared at all; they have merely got new names. They keep him on the run with restlessness, vague apprehensions, psychological complications, an insatiable need for pills, alcohol, tobacco, food—and, above all, a large array of neuroses.
Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols
Perhaps the loss of the spiritual dimension today is a consequence of the failure of religion. Perhaps priests and theologians have been a bit too wise in their “fear of the Lord”. So much so that we have killed God, as Nietzsche cried, and now seek fulfillment in workaholism, mindless entertainment, and pornography.
Re-Discovering God
But we have not killed God. We have killed the word, but not the spirit. Today, we have the same spiritual encounters we have always had, but we lack the framework for making sense of them. The gods show us the same Sights they showed the Buddha, but our culture does its best to distract us from them. Our father keeps us blissfully ignorant in his palace.
Jung’s psychology attempts to bridge ancient spirituality with today’s rationality. To do so, it uses the language of symbols. Symbolic interpretation, Jung suggests, allows us to extract the wisdom of ancient traditions without the associated dogma and superstition. We read:
[If] the statement that Christ rose from the dead is to be understood not literally but symbolically, then it is capable of various interpretations that do not conflict with knowledge and do not impair the meaning of the statement…
Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self
The purely symbolic approach is a compromise, to be sure. It fails to account for the fact that spiritual reality does sometimes manifest physically. But a compromise is better than losing our relationship with the transcendent altogether. It is this relationship, Jung writes, that is our deepest source of meaning in life:
[Religion is] the empirical awareness, the incontrovertible experience of an intensely personal, reciprocal relationship between man and an extramundane authority which acts as a counterpoise to the “world” and its “reason” …
The individual who is not anchored in God can offer no resistance on his own resources to the physical and moral blandishments of the world. For this he needs the evidence of inner, transcendent experience which alone can protect him from the otherwise inevitable submersion in the mass.
Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self
God as Guide
We become individuals, Jung says, only to the degree to which we are in a personal relationship to a transcendent reality. Whether we conceptualize this reality as God, as a pantheon of gods, or as an eternal principle like the Tao or Dhamma, is secondary. In fact, the deeper our experience, the less use we have for names and concepts.
Lacking a spiritual dimension of our life, we get indoctrinated into the narratives of the collective, of the times, seeing no higher authority. We fail to discover any deeper meaning to our lives than that of being well-oiled cogs in the global machine. We remain productive citizens, kept in line through propaganda, fearmongering, and the exploitation of our desires.
The Buddha would never have started on his path or completed it without the aid of the gods. If we take Jung’s advice and interpret this story symbolically, what does it tell us? It tells us God is the voice of adventure. God is the call to becoming oneself, to realizing one’s destiny. God uproots us from the community, forcing us to forge our own, individual attitude to life. And when we have discovered our unique place in the world, God brings us back to the collective so we may heal it.
Becoming Oneself
In the Bible, God says:
[W]hoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.
Matthew 16:25
Indeed, Siddhartha dies voluntarily so that the Buddha may be born. May we too have the courage to follow the call and take the leap. May we live in the world, but be not of it. Else, we remain prey for the worldly powers seeking always to use us for their advantage. Only an individual can act with true independence of the collective. And only one centered in Spirit, Jung tells us, becomes an individual. Such a person alone can stand on their own two feet and declare with the Buddha:
I do not argue with the world; it is the world that argues with me.
Pupphasutta, SN 22.94
To learn about the different paths and stages of self-discovery, have a look at my earlier piece on this.
Thank you for reading, and remember: What you seek is seeking you.
See you next time,
Simeon
