Knowing God

I've been reading Carl Jung's Answer to Job with a group of people while simultaneously reading Edward Edinger's commentary on Jung's Answer to Job. The most recent sections that I read in Jung's book have to do with God's answer to the question raised in the book of Job, which was how can God be moral or conscious if God treats just, good and obedient men like Job so harshly while sometimes rewarding people who are selfish and don't follow God's commandments at all. The answer has to do with God transforming from imperial, unconscious and all-powerful deity into human form, the image of the incarnation of God.

It came to me this morning that the image of the incarnation of God suggests that God is now to be found within human consciousness, the humanization of God. The Catholic Church teaches people to worship the incarnated God and experience God through the Holy Spirit. The institutional Church, however, is uncomfortable with the notion of its members actually experiencing the Holy Spirit for themselves, afraid perhaps of the anarchy or chaos it images would ensue. The Church therefore teaches that the Holy Spirit communicates through the Pope, the hierarchy and the religious in the Church rather than individuals, although it does make concession for the mystics and honors them with sainthood after they've died.

In other words, Jung is saying that for people in the modern world, God is to be found within human consciousness because the God archetype has transformed into a human form. I read this book over 40 years ago and certainly would have read this section. I remember being excited by the notion that God is alive as an archetype in consciousness. I don't know how deeply I was aware that he was saying that God is located within my consciousness.

It's exciting, none the less, to realize that no less an authority than Carl Jung confirms the teachings of Hinduism, Buddhism, Kabbalah and mystical Christianity.