| Psycology, Mythology and Religion The sources of Spiritual Inspiration
Introduction
Most people get their religion from others. Organized religions are communal activities involving group worship, prayer, and ritual. But the fundamental inspiration toward the spiritual occurs on an individual basis. The spiritual aspects of religion are personal, between the individual and the Supreme Being in whom the person believes. The group aspects of religion are worldly in focus, whereas the individual relationship to the Supreme Being is spiritual and eternal in character. There are fundamental explanations for this dichotomy between the individual and the group.
The Means of Revelation
Mythology is created from psychological unconscious forces, which generate signals in the brain of a basic subatomic and undefined character. These signals are translated by the conscious mind (cerebral cortex) into dream imagery recognizable by the person in his/her cultural context. The conscious intellect then constructs the mythology from the dream imagery.
This process happens, especially in ancient or primitive cultures, to some individual with a fortuitous psychological receptivity to his unconscious inspirations that appear to him as dreams or "visions". For this person as an individual, the vision is a psychological archetype of personal significance about his soul and its relationship to the Supreme Being. This visionary, or super-dreamer communicates his vision to his community. The dream or vision imagery is projected outside the person, to a supposedly higher realm (heaven, etc.) when, in fact, it comes from within the person. If the cultural context is favorable, he appears to his community as one who has received a revelation from the Supreme Being - which may be true - and that it has relevance for the community as a whole - which may not be true.
The Community Takes Over From the Individual
There are certain kinds of dreams or visions - not uncommon - involving the visionary person in a resurrection mode -- seeing himself in the dream as buried and rising above the earth, or immersed in a body of water, rising or climbing up by means of a ladder, or crossing a bridge over an abyss or river, sometimes with participation of dream animals from the person's culture. All of these are symbols of the lower self dying, and a new Self rising or being born again. This vision-mythology receives a strong response from other people in the same culture, because they are reacting to it from their own unconscious minds, in which the dream-archetype resonates powerfully (in what Carl Jung called the common or collective unconscious).
There are many well-documented cases of shaman and other psychologically receptive people throughout the world who have experienced dreams and visions of supranormal animals and human-like beings -- images which emanate from their unconscious minds during sleep or trances. These "beings" are treated as if they exist outside the person, as spiritual messengers from an external God or Spirit. This is the way that one person's dream images become the gods of the community. And the same phenomenon can occur by some person presenting conscious, intellectual concepts, which receive their impetus in the unconscious and are articulated in the conscious -- such as resurrection, redemption, escape from this world at some apocalyptic moment -- which resonate in the collective unconscious of many people. They look outwards and upwards for the source of these beliefs, but the source is not "out there"; it is within. All of us have within our unconscious a deep longing for some form of redemption or transcending our basic animal natures and the limitations of this physical life.
Anyone who offers a strong image of this phenomenon will strike a chord within the minds of many people. And when many people get together in the same mythological context, they begin to communicate their feelings and thoughts in a logical framework which becomes a "theology" By itself, the mythology is not a religion, because it lacks the common objective of redemption or salvation for all -- which requires a theology. The conscious minds of the believers construct the rules and rituals which will give the desired result to all who follow the original vision of the initiating individual.
The unconscious imagery is projected outward to an invisible Supreme Being who will reward the believers for behaving properly toward the Supreme Being in the mythology. Once the ingredients of group salvation and theology are added to the mythological mix, the framework of a religion is complete. Rituals are developed to allow the community to worship together, and to judge who is or is not properly obeying these rules, upon which the community's relationship with the Supreme Being supposedly relies. Over centuries and millenia, accretions from many sources cause the religion to mutate into forms far removed from the original inspiration.
The Focus Changes
The communal relationship with the Supreme Being is assumed to be the cause of either good or bad fortune, e.g., good crops, success in war, etc. In other words, the group religious focus shifts away from spiritual growth and toward worldly material concerns. Cohesiveness of the group becomes of paramount importance. The religious group concerns itself with its relationship to the external world, politics, social behavior, etc., rather than with each individual's personal and varied relationship with the Supreme.
Consequently, any individual who questions the established religion, or happens to have a different vision (usually known as a reformer) is persecuted or excluded by the group as a heretic. But it is the reformer who seeks to bring the group back to the spiritual root of their faith. The inspiration or revelation comes from within the mind of an individual, and is projected out to the external world and even to an invisible spiritual world. Once the original revelation to the individual is translated into a communal context, the spiritual meaning becomes distorted by rituals, rules, and associated superstitions. The spiritual component becomes earth-bound, tied to transient worldly activities, the hope for material reward, community security, the maintenance of tradition rather than spiritual growth and the eternal aspect of the person -- the soul and its spiritual relationship with the Supreme Being.
Of course, some practioners of any religion, when acting as individuals, can and have achieved spiritual union with God when they become so devoted to the external form that they experience absorption into the Godhead. For all practical purposes, this subsumes the duality of the believer and God, and Oneness is experienced. But this is not achieved by any group activity, ritual, following rules, etc. For most people, God is "seen" as some invisible external power, because they get their religion from others - a book someone says is sacred, a prophet whose personal visions resonate within the psyches of the believers. But spiritual revelation comes to each person individually. And spiritual growth, unattached to worldly ambitions and desires, can only be achieved on an individual basis.
New Age Mythology
In current "New Age" times, we see whole mythologies being constructed with astral beings, ascended masters, even aliens, with whom some people claim to "channel" or communicate. Other people claim to have special occult powers in the fields of healing, telepathy, or forms of magic derived from some spiritual persona. The oft-stated objective and hope is for this conglomeration of mythological beliefs to congeal around a new world-wide movement toward a utopian world.
This "New Age" mythology has yet to form a definite theology to yield its aims, and cannot yet, in my opinion, be called a religion. The one aspect that approaches a theology is a vague belief that, since we are all made up of light or photons in our subatomic essence, we will live on as light-beings after physical death. What characteristics these light-beings will have vary in description from person to person to suit their desires. But there is no consistent doctrine or set of requirements for this to occur.
The astral or super-beings in "New Age" mythology emanate from within some people's collective unconscious mind in dreams or waking visions -- take image form in the conscious mind -- which then interprets their origin and meaning according to the hopes and biases of the person. The persons involved then project these inner mental activities outward, believing they are actually external beings outside oneself, looking after oneself. But these "beings", when they appear in one's dreams or imaginings, are inner messengers for the person who experiences them, perhaps important and valid indicators about the person's psychological and spiritual health. Of course, some are charlatans. This phenomenon attracts many followers, not because of it drawing them closer to the Supreme Being, but because of the sense of belonging to a progressive movement and the problem-free world it promises. There is also the appeal of an eternal life as a light-being with whatever state of bliss or activities one wishes.
There is much that is positive in the New Age: a deeper level of communication among people all over the world with global telecommunications, bona fide movements toward peace, human justice, and respect for the environment. But these are secular concerns. Each person is still on their own personal wavelength to the Divine, regardless of what the New Age movement achieves.
The Environment of the Unconscious
The environment of the unconscious mind is not bounded in the same terms as the conscious mind or intellect. This has been shown by Carl G. Jung in psychological terms, speaking of the "collective" unconscious -- not the personalized unconscious wherein lie the suppressed memories from one's personal life. There is a universal and unverifiable quality about the collective unconscious. Its stimulations emanate from different areas of the brain than the conscious mind (cerebral cortex) and are beyond the ability of the cerebral cortex to analyze directly.
In addition, the type of signals which generate dreams are quantum in nature, i.e. subatomic. Quantum reality is not bounded either by the everyday limits of space, time, and linear logic which the conscious mind obeys and understands. Therefore, the environment of the unconscious mind, in tandem with quantum reality, is unbounded and beyond the full comprehension of the conscious mind. This situation leaves open the viability of spiritual communication from the unconscious.
If there is a Supreme spiritual Being, and it wants to communicate with us -- then the unconscious mind is the apparent means of doing so. This would also explain why revelation comes rarely and only to individuals, rather than to entire populations at once. The response of the general population to an individual's personal revelation may be virtually simultaneous, but the revelation came to the one person. The "collective unconscious", as shown by Carl Jung, is the common ground for all people everywhere and at all times in history. It is the source of dreams and visions which are interpreted by the person's conscious mind in spiritual and cultural terms specific for that particular person.
The imagery and terminology will vary from culture to culture, as shown by Joseph Campbell, et. al. This leads to different religions throughout history, with different names for God, or the Goddess, Yahweh, Brahman, Allah, Isis, etc., with many spinoff-gods and rituals tied to cultural practices like buffalo hunting, sea-faring, or agriculture. Some people may take this cynically to justify their opinion that there is no real Supreme Being, that it is all a bunch of cultural and psychological junk. But there is a great Truth evident in the highest spiritual writings of all the cultures which have spawned religious systems.
This is the universal Truth of a spiritual Source beyond all forms, which is realized by people in secondary forms which the conscious mind is capable of dealing with. For it would be impossible to articulate a spiritual inspiration in its raw form. It must have a secondary cultural form recognizable by the bounded intellect, and capable of being expressed in human language. But the original inspiration came from the unconscious.
Conclusion
The limitations of the human intellect are not justification for assuming similar limitations for the Supreme Being. Understanding the process of spiritual revelation does not diminish its significance. For the natural or the civilized mind, the Source of revelation is the same - from within. This Truth can only be experienced, beyond ordinary knowledge, by the individual to whom the vision comes.
When the mind is resting in stillness, and by the grace of the spirit sees the spirit, and therein finds fulfillment, then the seeker knows the joy of Eternity: a vision seen by wisdom far beyond what senses can see. He abides therein and moves not from Truth. He has found joy and Truth, a vision for him supreme. He is therein steady: the greatest pain moves him not. Bhagavad Gita, Chpt: 6:20-22, as translated by Juan Mascaro |
