deems religious myths as ever beneficial for the not enlightened masses. But then, when those myths are cleared of obsolete elements it means protection against “monsters of the universe” similar to peace and security received in the childhood from parents. Only the enlightened elite can uncover religion for themselves in a form of crippling neurosis because their spiritual needs go far beyond urge for security. For Jung individuation means continuous loss and re-establishing of psychic balance, while neurosis is accompanying effect of this process. For modern man religion seems to play clear part in one part of the individuation cycle but unclear in the latter: “[A]mong all his patients in the second half of life there is not one whose main problem is not related to his attitude towards religion” (Ellenberger 1970, 714). In the years when opus Liber Novus was being created, Jung underwent a period of inner turmoil during which he tested his theories on himself. In his lectures, however, especially in The Theory of Psychoanalysis (1913), he again emphasized a need to study parallelism between unconscious fantasies and mythical religious motifs and to search for common grounds between them. He identifies the mind of a child with that of the primitive, thus implying again ontogeny-phylogeny model (CW 4 1913). It is precisely in that time when Jung uses the termarchetype [6] for the first time (1919–1920). Jung repeatedly stated that Christianity is strictly an ascetic response to uncontrolled instinctiveness, and so the fate of Christianity is to be absorbed by history as a consequence of the human spirit advancement. As long as it is done collectively, there is only a couple of individuals with the courage and insight to embed their values elsewhere. Some commentators, for instance James Heisig, see Nietzsche’s [7] influence here, even if Jung did not reflect on that at the time (Heisig 1979). 3 Religious activity as psychological fact Jung’s growing lenience towards God and deity as psychologically indisputable phenomenon can be seen in small modifications of his theory of symbols. Based on a comparison of dreams and fantasies of patients with mythological symbolism across cultures he establishes hypothesis of transpersonal level of unconscious – as an area of a number of spiritual, paranormal and transcendental experiences, including ESP phenomena, ego transcendence and other states of expanded consciousness – within one’s mind. This psychological layer common to all human species cannot be, according to Jung, exhausted by the theory of wish fulfilment that Jung previously fiddled with. In the letter to Hans Schmid he writes: “The core of the individual is a mystery of life, which is snuffed out when it is grasped. That is why symbols want to be mysterious (...) they are not so merely because what is at the bottom of them cannot be clearly apprehended. The symbol wants to guard against Freudian interpretations, which are indeed such pseudo-truths that they never lack for effect...” (Letters 1, 31). Jung made here a subtle shift: Religion is not only allegorical wish fulfillment, or hundreds Spirituality Studies 2 (1) Spring 2016 53
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