A Requiem for the Past

Among all the prolific intellectuals who had come to exercise a decisive influence on my opinions, it was Carl Jung, most of all, whom I had profoundly admired for his remarkable felicity and astounding erudition. At the very outset of acquainting myself with his brilliant corpus, the fact that he spoke of archaic literature as though they were of the utmost relevance to the present era seemed exceedingly strange for a young liberal like myself. I have always held the opinion that the past was merely a store house of the failures of our forefathers and that there was no utility whatsoever in sifting through those seemingly nonsensical texts to find hidden wisdom that could supposedly deliver us from human follies. I did acknowledge the fact that our ancestors had made some contributions to the success of our civilizations but how could they possibly assert anything of relevance ten or twenty years from their inevitable demise?

To my modern sensibilities it seemed extremely far fetched and perhaps even absolutely ludicrous to suggest the idea that the contemporary questions humanity struggles with could be answered if instead of looking far ahead into the future one looked far back into the past. That theologians and philosophers who lived in immemorial times that were primarily characterized by ignorance and primitive superstitions magically stumbled upon perennial wisdom which if lost would ensure our own peril. Jung however firmly believed that the ghost of our ancestors had a lot more to teach even after their morbid dissolution and dedicated most of his life in the pursuit of archaic knowledge so that he can listen to their faint wailings.

This principle difference in attitude that Jung had fortunately harboured sparked much controversy among his contemporaries for it appeared to be diametrically opposed to the scientific reductionism that was perpetuated by major schools of thought in his time. In an era of enlightenment where revolutionary thinkers like Freud and Adler had made unparalleled contributions to the realm of empirical psychology by their zeal for rigorous methodology, it seems quite obvious why Jung’s ostensibly mystical preoccupations were either met with abject reluctance or well-nigh hostility. It is much more expedient for the rational intellect to simply disregard archaic conceptions as feeble products of an infant psyche because the alternative seemed to suggest that the world was far more mysterious than what its reasonable denizens made it out to be.

The reason Jung had sought to integrate the age old conceptions of his ancestors prevalently stigmatized with his own intellectual orientation was because he was much more likely to attribute the incoherence of ancient ideas to his own cognitive ineptitude than that of his forefathers. Although this intellectual humility might seem relatively unimportant compared to the feats of his materialistic counterparts, it was precisely this fundamental difference in opinion that made him one of the most eminent psychologists to have ever existed.

One of the chief insights that beset Jung while he scoured through the immense literature of antiquity was that any standpoint which intended to view archaic notions in the light of a scientific context betrayed the existence of a grave categorical error.

He believed that most of the criticisms and polemics directed against religion and the entire corpus of the past emerged from this fundamentally absurd insistence evaluating the tenability of these ideas from an exclusively scientific context. Ever since the inception of post-experimentalist thought, people have for some reason taken for granted that the fundamental tenets of empiricism has always been self evident, even in the times of our forefathers. This incorrect presumption fueled the proclivity to translate modern psychology back into the times of antiquity, while heedlessly ignoring the primitive context. But Jung, however, saw through the mists that shrouded the essence of these texts and as a consequence penetrated into the deepest strata of human consciousness.

Dispensing with the assumption that these age old formulations reflected empirical truths, Jung sought to discover what precisely constituted the meaning of these ideas that have survived the arduous test of time. The destiny of entire civilizations which ruled over millions of individuals for thousands of years were predicated upon the very principles that we now choose to casually denigrate under the pretext of furthering rational thought. If the ideals in question were simply ideological drivel deliberately contrived by the oligarchy to control the masses, or perhaps the product of a morbid human imagination conjured up to appease the demands of our existential dilemmas, how could they possibly exert such a numinous influence on the exponents of such beliefs? Is the lofty world of gods merely a phantasm of the archaic mind concocted for a necessity that we have long outgrown, or does it somehow represent truths whose obscure nature partly owes its explanation to the predominantly materialistic outlook of our time?

In spite of being absolutely certain that theological formulations could not be eschewed simply because of its incompatibility with enlightened rationalism, Jung soon realised that effecting a proper synthesis of the two was perhaps one of the most daring ventures anyone could undertake, for it required him to garner knowledge from extremely diverse and arcane subjects that were blithely ignored due to its mystical veneer.

However it seems to me that the decisive contribution Jung had made to the dialectic of religion was discovering its psychological dimensions, whose existence prompted him to reflect on what constituted the fundamental elements of the human psyche. Unlike his Freudian contemporaries who endeavoured to reduce the complexity of our psychological dispositions to the instinct of sexuality, Jung believed that such a frame of reference was grotesquely skewed because it could never account for the multitude of expressions that we find in bygone literature.

Regarding theological conceptions as merely a sublimation of primordial sexual desires drastically oversimplified the richness that they evidently possessed and manifested itself to any dispassionate inquirer of truth, among whom Jung enjoyed a prominent position. Nonetheless, he wasn’t interested in a philosophical reconciliation as much as the experiential underpinnings which occasioned the numinousity that was often associated with such ideas. From a phenomenological perspective, it seemed irrelevant to ask whether God was an objective tangible being who actually existed, because the experience of God, and the plethora of concomitant theological frameworks, is by no means contingent upon the former. More than anything else he realised that this phenomenology of God was the most pervasive human experience documented across all levels of culture in all epochs and testified to the immensely deep roots that connected us to the mystifying past of ancestral humanity.

Discovering psychological undercurrents that influenced the religious train of thought enabled Jung to develop a conceptual framework through which he could explain profuse manifestations in the divine landscape. Intellectually speaking, though his ideas deserve wide commendation from all those who have laboured tirelessly to illuminate the knowledge of our ancestors, I think what is even more significant is to recognise the attitude Jung had espoused throughout the course of his life for therein lies the true pearls of his wisdom.

From a modern perspective, considering the entire body of religious literature soon imparts a feeling of utter repugnance on anyone who was brought up in the auspices of enlightened ideals. The unprecedented material progress the rational mind has effected through the purveyors of science has altogether threatened the viability of religious dogma which appeared to be diametrically opposed to the lucid thinking characteristic of that era. By completely disregarding means of knowledge that transcended the sensory apparatus, the rationalist worldview sought to liberate human kind from the delusions they had formerly entertained. This process of rendering all other proclivities in man subservient to the unswerving judgment of the intellect defined the enlightenment and produced all the unforseen material prosperity we recognise around us.

Although outwardly it appeared as though we were becoming increasingly wealthier by forgoing the propensity of our forebears, the vestiges of the past aroused inner exigencies which could be seldom soothed by a mere proliferation of inanimate opulence. On the contrary, the solution to this inner predicament required a radical change in our understanding of what constituted human nature and most importantly necessitated a recognition of the inexplicable bond we shared with the past.

In spite of being the product of a time that extolled the virtues of rationalism, Jung still endeavored to illustrate why the religious corpus had remained relevant to the enlightened modern consciousness. Although innumerable attempts have been made to effect a reconciliation of these two divergent worldviews, it seems to me that what separates Jung from the rest of the cohort was his peculiar instinct for the wisdom of the past. As far as Jung was concerned, the past was fraught with secrets and arcane knowledge waiting to be unearthed by individuals who were free of prejudice and displayed an immeasurable resolve to discover the truth regardless of where it may lead them. This passion for truth is what caused Jung to venture into forgotten lands in the hopes of finding knowledge that could potentially transform our understanding of archaic frameworks. Notwithstanding the complete reconceptualization this would have on my conceptions of the past, what appeared to be even more salient is the effects it would have on what truth precisely consisted of. Something that Jung himself had left implicit in his writings so that even his most astute readers would struggle to comprehend its subtle implications.

The reason I suppose Jung holds such special place in the pantheon of intellectuals I have encountered is because he makes one realise the significance of all that is left unsaid. Expanding his horizons beyond the materialistic confines of rationality, he pushes further to discover the very nucleus of religiosity by diligently perusing ancient manuscripts only to discover that there is a world of meaning buried underneath. In addition to making such a remarkable discovery, it seems to me that Jung also provides an avenue through which we can better understand the immutable connection we share with the past.

The modern world with all its scientific progress looks down upon history as a time where mental infirmities abound. Thus any idea which appear to be the product of such a time must be inconsequential compared to the lofty conceptions born out of a rational mindset. Nonetheless, by discerning the fact that myth and religion does not reflect objective truth, we move one step closer in resolving this age old predicament but more importantly realise that human nature is the source of an endless mystery that is far from being rendered comprehensible. As trivial as it may sound, this reflection constitutes the very essence of Jungian thought and forms the necessary precondition through which the past transforms itself from a fleeting spectre of forgotten times into an ever evolving edifice manifesting itself through the individual.

And it was precisely this verity that motivated Jung to seek answers in the dark embrasures of religious thinking for unlike most of his contemporaries he believed “that truth was often complex and inconceivably nuanced that it can only be grasped in the farthest realms of intuition"