The Position of the West on the Question of Religion

Notes on the third chapter of Jung's "The Undiscovered Self" which was first published in 1957. Jung was writing at the time of the rise of the communists states and the iron curtain. In this chapter Jung is writing specifically about the response of the West to socialist dictatorships but what he has to say is equally explicable to current world events.

Regarding dictator states "only one possibility remains, and that is a breakdown of power from within, which must, however, be left to follow its own inner development. Any support from outside at present would have little effect, in view of the existing security measures and the danger of nationalistic reactions." (page 24)

"We know that even the biggest guns and the heaviest industry with its relatively high living standard are not enough to check the psychic infection spread by religious fanaticism. The West has unfortunately not yet awakened to the fact that our appeal to idealism and reason and other desirable virtues, delivered with so much enthusiasm, is mere sound and fury. It is a puff of wind swept away in the storm of religious faith, however twisted this faith may appear to us. We are faced, not with a situation that can be overcome by rational or moral arguments, but with an unleashing of emotional forces and ideas engendered by the spirit of the times, and these, as we know from experience, are not much influenced by rational reflection and still less by moral exhortation." (page 25)

According to Jung the antidote to emotional forces is a potent faith of a different and non materialistic kind. Such a faith does not exist in the West. The problem with the Churches is that the creeds are today based more on belief than inner experience. When belief collides with knowledge it it no match for it. Jung argues for a symbolic interpretation of Christian mythology. If the creeds are interpreted symbolically rather than literally then there is no conflict with knowledge.

As I read this chapter I was reminded of an incident in the life of Gandhi which seems to illustrate how a potent faith can stand against emotional forces. At the time of partition in the Indian subcontinent there was much sectarian blood letting. Gandhi went to stay in the Muslim quarter in Calcutta. When a Hindu mob demanded that he leave Gandhi refused saying that they could kill him if they wished but that he would not leave while one Muslim remained afraid. The mob dispersed and the killing in Calcutta ceased.