Thursday, December 03, 2009

Carl Jung's God-image and Self

In reading "Answer to Job" by Carl Jung, I noticed another informative idea about God and the Unconscious that I discussed yesterday. Jung says that when considering God as the Unconscious, it is clear that the disruption and interruption that the Unconscious causes to a person means to bring its content into consciousness. This interaction between conscious and unconscious causes both to change. The consciousness expands as it incorporates aspects of the psyche that were previously unconscious and the Unconscious changes as it becomes more conscious. This is what Jung meant when he discussed the God-image being effected by its interaction with human consciousness and the human consciousness being impacted by its encounter with God.

It's interesting for me to read these ideas because I tend to think of God and the God-image more like symbols of the Soul, voices of wisdom available to my consciousness that I can access for understanding my nature and my choices in life. Jung is more inclined to consider the God-image as a disruptive force in life whose intent is to make itself known. I know that Jung also has postulated the archetype of the Self, which is the intuitive guide and representative of the Whole Being, or Soul. I had not differentiated these concepts before and mostly assumed that God-image and Self were the same in my previous readings of Jung. It will be interesting to see what he does say about the Self, the inner guide and Individuation now that I realize they are not the same.

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