Yoga: More than Meets the Eyes??

 

By Rev. Ed Hird 

              You may find this a stretching article in body, mind and spirit.  I have intentionally avoided writing this article for years, because I knew that it might be unavoidably controversial.  To be honest, I have been waiting for someone else to write this article instead of me.  Like most pastors, I want people to like me.   With genuine reluctance, I eventually faced my conflict avoidance, obeyed the Lord and read hundreds of yoga books in our local public libraries.  In preparing this article, I have not read one book which warns against yoga.  All book citations in this article are from yoga advocates and practitioners.

 

               To many people, yoga is just the hottest new exercise fad for younger women.  Twenty million North Americans are now doing yoga, including around four million men.  These twenty million people are currently being trained by over 70,000 yoga practitioners in at least 20,000 North American locations.[1]  Many people confuse yoga with simple stretching.  Stretching and calisthenics are good things which I participate in weekly at the local gym.  Yoga has not cornered the market on healthy stretching and calisthenics.  Physical fitness does not begin and end on a yoga mat.  I am convinced 

that we do well when we take care of our bodies as part of our Christian stewardship.  God wants us to be healthier in body, mind, and spirit.

 

I unknowingly participated in yoga, in the form of martial arts, for twenty years before renouncing it.[2]  After much prayer, I reluctantly gave it up because I didn’t want any gray area in my Christian life.   It is not an easy or light thing for someone to renounce this, even as a Christian.  For many, it is absolutely unthinkable.  To even imagine giving it up may leave some feeling threatened or even angry.  In hindsight, I realized that the ritual motions and postures (asanas or katas) had gotten very deep into my psyche, shaping my very identity.[3]  Somehow over twenty years, they had become ingrained in me and even became part of me.  Without intending it, I was to some degree serving two masters.  This was a hard truth for me to accept.  I have heard of one Christian who is so entrenched in yoga that they have vowed to never give up yoga even if God himself told them to stop.  It makes you wonder sometimes who is in charge of our lives.

 

              Historically yoga was only taught in secret to high-caste male Brahmins.[4]  It was very much a guy thing for the wealthy and powerful.   In recent years, North American yoga has largely stripped itself of its more obvious Eastern trappings: gurus, incense, Sanskrit, and loin cloths.[5]  It has gone through a remarkable image makeover in a relatively short time period.  Yoga classes and paraphernalia have become a ten-billion+ dollar consumer-driven industry, involving designer spandex, yoga mats, and DVDs.[6]  Old-time Yoga purists have called this new development the yoga industrial complex.  In some parts of North America, yoga moms are replacing the demographic of soccer moms.  Yoga has become such a strongly entrenched cultural fad that in some parts of North America, it is being taught to children , using tax-payers’ money, in otherwise strictly secular public school systems.  Spiritually speaking, yoga has replaced the Lord’s Prayer which, you will remember, was bounced from our children’s classrooms for being too religious.

 

             This North American yoga industry has registered thousands of copyrights, patents and trademarks, sometimes resulting in threatening lawsuits.[7]  The Indian Government is so concerned about the yoga copyrighting that they have set up their own taskforce to protect yoga from being pirated by Westerners:

“Yoga piracy is becoming very common, and we are moving to do something about it,” says Vinod Gupta, the head of a recently established Indian government task force on traditional knowledge and intellectual-property theft.

‘We know of at least 150 asanas [yoga positions] that have been pirated in the U.S., the UK, Germany and Japan,’ he says. ‘These were developed in India long ago and no one can claim them as their own.’ In an effort to protect India’s heritage, the task force has begun documenting 1,500 yoga postures drawn from classical yoga texts — including the writings of the Indian sage, Patanjali, the first man to codify the art of yoga.”[8]

 

                 There are seven main kinds of yoga: Hatha Yoga, Bhakti Yoga (devotion), Karma Yoga (action), Jnana Yoga (wisdom), Mantra Yoga, Tantra Yoga, and Raja Yoga (royal).[9]  The most popular yoga offered in one’s local Recreation Center is Hatha Yoga, so-called physical yoga involving numerous yoga techniques called asanas.  These yogic asanas appear to the uninitiated as if they are just stretching exercises.  The more fully initiated realize that yogic asanas are worship postures to Hindu deities.   The yoga insiders all know the real scoop.  They also know that North Americans are not quite ready yet for the full truth about the religious identity of yoga.  My question is this: Is it really honest and respectful to pretend yoga is just a physical activity without any spiritual implications?[10]  More importantly, should people get themselves bent out of shape over Christians doing yoga?

 

              For many Westerners, all that matters is that something seems to be working.  We rarely look under the hood of our cars.   Our practical bent is both a great strength and a greater weakness.  We naively think that we can arrogantly detach anything from its heritage, and snatch its alleged benefits without any downside.   Yoga has been carefully repackaged to appeal for North Americans to our strongly pragmatic side.  The yogic philosophy is initially minimized.  Some yoga advocates claim that  asanas are just poses, and mantras are just words.   Context becomes everything.  To argue that asanas and mantras have no inherent meaning is itself a unquestionably reductionistic statement.  It is meaningless to suggest that yoga is meaningless.  Is it really as easy to secularize yogic Hinduism as we individualistic North Americans may think?

 

                I.K. Taimini, Indian scholar and chemist, wrote that there is no subject like yoga which is so wrapped up in mystery and on which one can write whatever one likes without any risk of being proved wrong.[11]  The religion of Hinduism is more than just cows, karma and curry.  Yoga is the very heart of Hinduism.  Nine out of ten Hindus agree that yoga is Hinduism.[12]  Without yoga, there is no Hinduism.  Without Hinduism, there is no yoga.

 

In yoga asanas, one re-enacts the story of a particular Hindu deity, identifying as that specific deity.  According to Sanskritist Dr. N. Sjoman, verses from the 19th century yoga text Maisuru Maisiri  clearly indicate that “the asanas are assumed to have an inner nature that is associated with their specific name.”  The hand postures (mudras) in Hatha Yoga are a replication of the same hand postures in the statues of Hindu gods. Yoga is spiritual embodiment.  The mudras are used to channel psychic energy through the body to alter consciousness.  They facilitate the process of yogic Self-Realization, and are designed to awaken and activate the root yogic chakra.

 

                Unlike Judaism, Christianity and Islam, one does not have to believe in something to be impacted by Hinduism.  Belief for yogic Hinduism is nice but not initially necessary.  The belief or meaning structure is often introduced much later at a deeper level of initiation.  Because Hinduism is technique-based, the performance of the yogic asana is sufficient to open up the chakra energies which produce the psychic interaction.[13]  The irrelevance of belief is one of the reasons why yoga practitioners often promote yoga to North Americans as either non-religious or religiously neutral.[14]  Transcendental Meditation, a form of Mantra yoga, initiated countless westerners with Sanskrit puja rituals that were never explained to them, but still had a significant impact on their core identity.[15]  Yoga is inescapably religious in a way that most North Americans will not notice.[16]   This is why many well-meaning North American Christians have uncritically or unwittingly opened their spirit to yogic Hindu philosophies that clash with  Christ’s teaching.

 

                The term ‘yoga’ comes from the Sanskrit word ‘yug’, which means union.  Yogic practice is designed to bring psychic union with Brahman, the highest of the Hindu deities.  What looks to us like simple stretches are in fact powerful psychic techniques that have been shown to change the very core of our consciousness.  The purpose of yoga is to produce a mind-altering state that fuses male and female, light and darkness, good and evil, god and humanity.[17]  As the best-selling author Deepak Chopra said in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga:

“Krishna teaches Arjuna (in the Bhagavad Gita) the essence of yoga, telling him that good and evil, pleasure and pain, and loss and gain are two sides of the same coin of life.   The solution that yoga offers is to go beyond the realm of duality and become established in the state of being that is beyond time, space and causality….Krishna tells Arjuna, ‘Go beyond the realm of good and evil where life is dominated by beginnings and endings.   Enter into the domain of yoga where all duality finds its unity…”[18]

 

               The term ‘Hatha Yoga’ refers to the union of the sun (ha or male) and moon (tha or female) into one monistic whole.  Some scholars translate Hatha Yoga as ‘violent union’.[19]   The definitive symbol of yoga is the Nataraj asana, known as the dancing Shiva who ‘dances’ destruction upon any distinctions (avidya) between the Creator and creation, good and evil, male and female.[20]  Yoga philosophy believes that all matter and differences are illusion, and that all illusions can be overcome by the performance of yoga rituals.  Yoga  works systemically  to alter biochemical functions, including our hormones and endocrine system.  The so-called physical activity in Hatha Yoga is meant to achieve a changed state of consciousness, eliminating the distinction between subject [self] and object.

 

               Yoga is the primary technique used by the yogis in attempting to become gods themselves.    Through mantric yoga chanting and asanas, the mind experiences both sensory deprivation and sensory overloading, causing a shutting down of the mind.  Unlike Christian prayer and meditation on God’s Word, the purpose of Eastern yogic meditational practices is to ‘kill the mind’.   Mantra or breath yoga causes one to enter into a meditational trance state in which the mind is emptied.  The ‘killing of the mind’ produces the experience of differences disappearing and all becoming one.  Many would hold that yogic Hinduism produces a trance state through self-induced hypnosis.   Is it fair to wonder if intensive yoga has effects similar to psychological brain-washing techniques?

 

               While yogic philosophy is polytheistic, it is also monistic, in the sense that it holds that through yoga, we become the universe and/or god.[21]  While these tenets are rarely taught at community center yoga classes, they are often held by the community center yoga instructor who has gone to a deeper level of yogic initiation.  The further one enters into yoga, the greater the hold that this ‘other master’ has in one’s life.

 

                Yoga promoters realize that most North Americans are not yet ready to hear about the deeper secrets of yoga.  Community Center yoga is largely drip-feeding lower-level yoga practices during this time of cultural shift.  Hatha Yoga is itself derived from the very secretive tantric yoga.  According to William Broad, author of The Science of Yoga, Tantric Yoga developed in India around 600 A.D:

“(Tantric yoga) worships female deities, roots its ceremonies in human sexuality, seeks supernatural powers for material gain, and cloaks its rites in secrecy.”

 

              In around 1200 A.D., Gorakhnath, a Hindu ascetic of western India, merged the traditions of Tantra and  body discipline, forming Hatha Yoga.[22]  Broad teaches that the path of enlightenment towards the ecstatic yoga union was known as Tantra.[23]  Hatha Yoga is designed to bring a tantric awakening of Kundalini, the Hindu goddess having a serpent power.[24]  The Sanskrit word kundalini means “she who is coiled”.[25]   The cobra asana is not mere stretching, but is a mind control technique that has been developed over many centuries with proven psychic results.  Few community centre yoga buffs realize that the cobra asana was developed to awaken the kundalini cobra chakra.  The Kundalini snake is said to reside in the lowest chakra at the base of one’s spine:

“When (Kundalini) is aroused by Yoga practice, she uncoils and travels up the spine toward her lover, Shiva. Traveling the spine through psychic centers called chakras, Kundalini reaches the top chakra to merge with Shiva and there receive divine enlightenment through the union with Brahman….”[26]

 

                According to the Bhagavad-Gita Hindu Scripture, Shiva the Hindu god of destruction is the Lord of Yoga (Yogeshwara) and the first Hatha Yoga teacher.  The Bhagavad Gita used the word “Yoga” in chapter six where the deity Krishna declares, “Thus joy supreme comes to the yogi … who is one with Brahman, with God.”[27]  For many generations, the Hindu texts like Hatha Yoga Pradipikia has described yogis as “able to fly, levitate, stop their hearts, suspend their breathing, vanish, walk through walls, project themselves into other bodies, touch the moon, survive live burial, make themselves invisible, and die at will.”[28]  The magical and sexual aspects of Tantric Yoga have both embarrassed middle-class Indian Hindus while intriguing many Western New Agers.[29]  The Tantric aspect of Hatha Yoga has been linked to a number of high-profile New Age yoga scandals.[30]  Dr. Carl Jung, the father of the New Age movement,  concluded after two decades of study that advanced yoga can loose a flood of suffering of which no sane person ever dream.” [31]

 

                   Yoga came to North America in 1893 when Swami Vivekananda, a disciple of the famous Guru Ramakrishna, taught about yoga at the Chicago World Fair.  Laurette Willis, an ex-yoga teacher, calls yoga the missionary arm of Hinduism and the New Age movement.  In “An Open Letter to Evangelicals”, Swami Sivasiva Palani wrote:

“A small army of yoga missionaries – hatha, raja, siddha and kundalini – beautifully trained in the last 10 years, is about to set upon the western world. They may not call themselves Hindu, but Hindus know where yoga came from and where it goes.”[32]

 

           As Yoga Guru B.K.S Iyengar notes in his book Light on Yoga, “Some asanas are also called after Gods of the Hindu pantheon and some recall the Avataras, or incarnations of Divine Power.”[33]  Because the Hindu deities rode on animals, many yoga asanas are devoted to these deified animals.[34]  In the Sun Salutation asana, one is yogically paying direct homage to Surya, the Hindu Sun Deity.  The Cobra asana is about identification with and worship of the Kundalini snake, yogically awakened in the chakras.  The fish asana (Matsyasana) is the yogic worship and reenactment of the Hindu deity Vishnu who turned himself into a fish to rescue people from a flood.[35] The Half Moon asana involves the yogic identification with and worship of Ganesh, the elephant-headed God who threw part of his tusk at the moon.[36] The Tortoise asana is dedicated to the yogic worship of Kurma the Tortoise incarnation of the God Vishnu.[37]  The Downward Dog asana reenacts the Hindu worship of the dog as happens for five days each November.[38]  The Hanuman asana is dedicated to the yogic worship of the Monkey god, Hanuman.[39]

 

The Warrior asana is identified with the yogic worship of Lord Virabhadra who has a thousand arms, three burning eyes, and a garland of skulls.[40]  The Corpse asana is the death or extinction of the person when yogic unification with the Hindu deity Brahman wipes out one’s own identity and existence.[41]  The Lotus asana is identified with the yogic worship of the Hindu deity Lakshmi who sat on a lotus.[42]  The Marichi asana is dedicated to the yogic identification with and worship of Marichi, one of the seven Lords of Creation and the Grandfather of the Sun God Surya.

 

Sadly a number of well-meaning Christians have been recently promoting Christianized yoga in North America.  In their classes, they usually do the same hatha yoga asanas as the new-agers, but add scripture quotes and Gospel music.  Subhas R. Tiwari, a Hindu University of America professor who has a master’s degree in yoga philosophy, comments: “Such efforts [to Christianize yoga] point to a concerted, long-term plan to deny yoga its origin. This effort . . . is far from innocent. It is reminiscent of the pattern evident throughout the long history and dynamics of colonizing powers.”[43] Tiwari holds that efforts to Christianize yoga are unjust “encroachment” and thinly veiled Christian proselytism of Hindus.

Some Christians claim that 1 Corinthians 8 and Romans 14 gives them the right to christianize yoga, saying that because Paul ate meat sacrificed to idols, then we can do yoga that has been dedicated to idols.  They claim that because they are strong, Spirit-filled Christians, they can do yoga with no downside.  Paul however never encouraged Christians to participate in idolatrous Greek or Roman temple rituals as a way of proving how protected they are by the Holy Spirit.  In fact, in 1 Corinthians 10: 1-13, Paul stated that Christians needed to flee idolatry and syncretism.  Sometimes the wisest thing to do is to simply say no, and remove ourselves from a compromising situation.  Never did the Bible encourage us to christianize idolatry or to hang around the idolatrous temple to prove how strong we are.  It goes with saying that sacrificing animals to the  local temple statue would have been unthinkable for New Testament Christians.

 

What Paul was encouraging in 1 Corinthians 8 was the practice of saying grace before eating meat at dinner.  He knew that most meat would have been sacrificed to idols at the local temple before making it to the butcher.  Rather than becoming vegetarian, Paul advocated saying grace as a cleansing prayer.  The parallel passage in 1 Timothy 4:3-4 says that saying grace is not just a nice religious thing we do before Sunday dinner, but rather is a significant act of thanksgiving (in the Greek, eucharist), which actually consecrates or sanctifies the meat through prayer and God’s Word.

 

Saying grace at dinner is radically different than adopting ancient yogic mind-altering techniques.  Because yoga physically embodies the spiritual philosophy of Hinduism, it inhibits the Lord’s command to take every thought captive in obedience to Christ.  It also  disregards Paul’s encouragement in Colossians 2:8 to not be “taken captive by philosophy and empty deception according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.”  This is not at the same level of whether or not one chooses to have a Christmas tree in one’s living room, or what kind of worship music one prefers.   Yes, there is great freedom on non-essentials for Christians.  But on more essential issues like idolatry or  immorality, the bible is clear that we are to have clear boundaries.  Syncretistically dabbling in things that the bible cautions against leads to great confusion.

 

Ultimately from a biblical perspective, the deities of yoga are no deities at all, and their devotees have no power to prescribe or limit what Christian believers may do with their bodies.  Jesus is Lord of our bodies, which are the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19).  That is why many Christians make use of their bodies in worship, kneeling , arms elevated, or even prostrate.   How we use our bodies is an expression of our identity in Christ.  We need not be afraid that through involvement in stretching and calisthenics, we may accidentally be stretching in a way that might look like yoga.  Even with its 1,500 asana poses, yoga does not own the world of calisthenics and stretching.

 

             With yoga and Hinduism, nothing is what it seems.  This is why it has been described as the embrace that smothers.  Yoga has always been shrouded in illusion and secrecy, and can intentionally look like whatever you want it to in the short term.  Hindus are well aware that yoga is an ancient form of divination.  The bible does not encourage us to see how close to the line we can get before we fall in, but rather to flee idolatry.   In the end, the yogic road leads to idolatry and monism, to serving two masters.   The Lordship of Jesus is what is at stake.

 

Just as there is no Christian Ouija board and no Christian astrology, so there is no Christian Yoga that is either truly Yoga or truly Christian.  I invite you to do the stretching, perhaps unthinkable thing of turning from Yoga towards healthy stretching and calisthenics.  This will not be easy for you, but it will be life-giving.  Pray about it, like I did.  You will not regret choosing to serve one master.  Jesus is Lord.  Yoga is not.

 

p.s. For those who would like to do healthy stretching, I recommend your checking out these two websites:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/stretching/SM00043

http://www.sportsinjuryclinic.net/rehabilitation-exercises/stretching-exercises

 

Rev. Ed Hird, Rector

St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver

Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)

http://stsimonschurch.ca

 -award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’

http://www.battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com

p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘Ed Hird’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD. This can also be done by PAYPAL using the e-mail ed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99 CDN/USD.

-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide : Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada

You can also download the complimentary Leader’s Guide PDF: Battle for the Soul Leaders Guide

---

[1] Colleen Titlman, Teach Yourself Visually Yoga (MaranGraphics, Wiley Publishing Inc, New York, NY, 2003), p. 33.; William J. Broad, The Science of Yoga (Simon & Schuster, New York, NY, 2012), p. 2 “twenty million in the USA…more than two hundred and fifty million (yoga practitioners)…”; “Yoga in America Study 2012″, Yoga Journal. http://www.yogajournal.com/press/yoga_in_america  ”82.2 percent are women; 17.8 percent are men.” (Accessed April 28th 2013)

[2] Nathan Johnson, Zen Shaolin Karate, “Ch’an (zen) monks of the Shaolin Temple” (Ch’an comes from an Indian word dhyana meaning meditation.)

[3] Taekwondo and other martial arts can be traced to a 6th century Buddhist monk Bodhidharma who travelled from India to China and established Zen Buddhism at the Shaolin temple of Ko San So Rim.  There he taught them both sitting meditation and the martial arts (moving meditation) to enable his disciples to free themselves from all conscious control in order to attain enlightenment. The karate equivalent to the poomse is the kata patterns.  As the Taekwondo author and instructor Eddie Ferrie puts it, “Many of the patterns of taekwondo are rooted in semi-mystical Taoist philosophy and their deeper meaning is said to be far more important than the mere performance of a gymnastics series of exercises.  This is not immediately obvious, either when performing or watching the poomse being performed…”

[4] Timothy McCall, Yoga as Medicine: a Yoga Journal Book (Bantam Dell, New York NY, 2007), P. 112 “At one point yoga was only taught to the elite of Indian society, male Brahmins, and then only to those who dedicated their life to it. The teachings and practice of yoga were kept secret from the rest of the world.”

[5] John Capouya, Real Men Do Yoga (Health Communications Inc., Deerfield, Florida, 2003), p. xiii “No chanting, no incense, no gurus…”

[6] Cain Carroll and Lori Kimata, Partner Yoga (Rodale Books, Emmaus, Pennsylvania, 2000), p. 21 “Unlike their predecessors, modern yogis now wear spandex and nail polish and practice postures on thin purple mats.”; “Yoga in America Study 2012″, Yoga Journal. http://www.yogajournal.com/press/yoga_in_america ”The previous estimate from the 2008 study was 5.8 billion dollars.” (Accessed April 28th 2013)

[7] Broad, The Science of Yoga, p. 3.

[8] “India makes moves to reclaim heritage from ‘yoga piracy’”, David Orr, Washington Times, September 22^nd 2005, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2005/sep/22/20050922-114821-4035r/

[9] Titlman, Teach Yourself Visually Yoga, p. 7.

[10] Titlman, Teach Yourself Visually Yoga, p. 11 “…Yoga is not simply a system of physical exercise or a means of releasing psychic stress, as so many in the West have come to believe…”

[11] Broad, The Science of Yoga, p. ix.

[12] Laurette Willis, “Why A Christian Alternative to Yoga?” http://praisemoves.com/about-us/why-a-christian-alternative-to-yoga (Accessed Dec 14^th 2012).

[13] www.yogabasics.com  : “More than just stretching, asanas [yoga postures] open the energy channels, chakras and psychic centers of the body. Asanas purify and strengthen the body and control and focus the mind.” (Accessed Dec 12^th 2012)

[14] Capouya, Real Men Do Yoga, p. xiii “Yoga’s not some weird Eastern religion. In fact it’s not a religion at all.”; Capouya, p.xvii “He’s not looking for a religious experience, and hasn’t found it. You don’t have to sit around and say ‘Om’ to do yoga…It doesn’t have to be all Eastern and mystical.”; Pat Shapiro, Yoga for Women at Midlife & Beyond (Sunstone Press, Santa Fe, 2006), p. 15 (Yoga) “is not connected with any particular religion and does not require a specific belief system.”

[15] “Transcendental Meditation”, http://biblefacts.org/cult/tm2.html

[16] According to the Webster’s New World Dictionary, yoga (coming from an east Indian Sanskrit word which means “union with god” or “to yoke”) is “a mystic and ascetic Hindu discipline for achieving union with the supreme spirit through meditation, prescribed postures, controlled breathing, etc.” Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines yoga as “Hindu theistic philosophy teaching the suppression of all activity of body, mind, and will in order that the self may realize its distinction from them and attain liberation.”

[17] Carroll and Kimata, Partner Yoga, p. 227 “In these moments of absorption, it is said that we are ‘yoked’ to the underlying force behind all creation. In this place, there are no questions, no opposites, and no struggle; there is only union. This is the essence of yoga.”

[18] Deepak Chopra and David Simon, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga (John Wiley and Sons Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey, 2004), p.197.

[19] Broad, The Science of Yoga, p. 17 “The Sanskrit root of Hatha is hath – to treat with violence, as in binding someone to a post…” P. 17 …a number of scholars translate Hatha Yoga as ‘violent union.’…

[20] http://www.theyogatutor.com/natarajasana The Yoga Teacher, “The definitive symbol of yoga is the Nataraja, otherwise known as the Dancing Shiva.”; http://bit.ly/TNFTRV Tirusula Yoga, “Nata= Dancer. Raja = King / Lord” (Accessed Dec 23^rd 2012)

[21] David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri) “Hindu View of Nature”, Hindu Voice UK, http://www.vedanet.com/2012/06/hindu-view-of-nature “Ultimately for the Hindu as the Upanishads say, ‘Everything is Brahman’ Sarvam Khalvidam Brahma.” (Accessed April 5^th 2013)

[22] Broad, The Science of Yoga, p. xxv.; Broad, p.16 “In truth, Hatha is a branch of Tantra.”

[23] Broad, The Science of Yoga, p. 15.

[24] Titlman, Teach Yourself Visually Yoga, p. 16.

[25] Lee Sannella, The Kundalini Experience (Integral Publishing, Lower Lake, California 1987, 1992), P. 8.; Titlman, Teach Yourself Visually Yoga, P.7 “Two popular forms of Tantra Yoga are Kundalini and Kriya Yoga.”

[26] Titlman, Teach Yourself Visually Yoga, p. 26.; Capouya, Real Men Do Yoga, p.89 “In the yoga tradition…there’s a ‘chakra’, or an energy center, around the solar plexus…”

[27] Laurette Willis http://praisemoves.com/about-us/why-a-christian-alternative-to-yoga “…according to Hatha Yoga Pradipika.”; Titlman, Teach Yourself Visually Yoga, p. 12 (Bhagavad-Gita is) “a classic Hindu text believed written between the Fifth Century B.C. and the Second Century A.D.”

[28] Broad, The Science of Yoga, p. 17.

[29]Capouya, Real Men Do Yoga, P. xv (yoga) “…recharges your sex life.”; p.172” …in the Kundalini tradition, the perineum is where energy supposedly enters the body. The more energy you take in there, it’s believed, the hornier you get…”; Carroll and Kimata, Partner Yoga, p. 27 “…contrary to popular belief, not all Tantric yoga is sexual.”; Broad, The Science of Yoga, p.24 “Middle-class Indians found (yoga’s) its obsession with sex and magic to be an ‘embarrassing heritage,’ according to Geoffrey Samuel, a yoga scholar…”; Broad, p. 26 “Throughout his career, Gune maintained a virtual taboo on the word ‘Tantra’- the parent of Hatha which Hindu nationalists had come to abhor.”;

[30] Broad, The Science of Yoga, p. 164 “…modern yoga throbs with open sexuality ranging from the blatantly erotic and the bizarrely kinky to the deeply spiritual.”; Broad, p. 164 “…the discipline (of yoga) itself began as a sex cult …”; p. 175 “Even Kripalu came under fire. Former devotees at the Berkshires ashram won more than $2.5 million after its long-term guru–a man who gave impassioned talks on the spiritual value of chastity- confessed to multiple affairs.”; McCall, Yoga as Medicine, p. 109 “Kripalu: This system is perhaps the most New Age in feel of the Yoga styles common in the West.”

[31] Broad, Science of Yoga, p. 10

[32] Sivasiva Palani, “An Open Letter to Evangelicals”, Hinduism Today, January 1991, http://bit.ly/10Bzxr1.

[33] http://www.hafsite.org/media/pr/yoga-hindu-origins Hindu American Foundation, “Yoga Beyond Asana: Hindu Thought In Practice”,  “Yet, even when Yoga is practiced solely in the form of an exercise, it cannot be completely delinked from its Hindu roots.” (Accessed Dec 23^rd 2012)

[34] “The Significance of Animals in Hinduism” http://www.hinduwebsite.com/hinduism/essays/animals.asp “Hindus revere many divinities in animal form.  Lord Vishnu incarnated upon earth first as a fish, then as a tortoise and then as a boar… In the Hindu pantheon, each god and goddess is associated with an animal as a vehicle.” (Accessed April 5th 2013); “Why Animal Worship in Hinduism?”, http://bit.ly/XZ4mbS  “Almost all the deities in Hinduism have animals as their mode of transport (vehicle) or are associated with animals… Brahma travels on a humongous swan Hamsa, Lord Shiva on the Divine Bull Nandi and Lord Vishnu travels on the Golden-Eagle Garuda”  (Accessed April 5^th 2013)

[35]“Fish Pose”, http://www.yogajournal.com/basics/2335 (Accessed Dec 26th 2012)

[36]  History of Yoga Postures,  http://bit.ly/12puYFs (Accessed Dec 29^th 2012)

[37] “Sitting like a Tortoise”, http://bit.ly/ZErk2K  (Accessed Dec 29^th 2012)

[38] “Animal Worship” http://bit.ly/2ogQaB (Accessed April 5th 2013)

[39] http://www.yogajournal.com/practice/889 Hanumanasana: Pose Dedicated to the Monkey God, Hanuman, By Aadil Palkhivala

[40]   “Viradhadra” http://bit.ly/K1fK0R (Accessed April 5th 2013)

[41] Mike Stokes, “Shavasana the dead pose”, http://www.godrealized.com/Shavasana.html (Accessed April 5th 2013) “Why is it that in nearly every yoga class, no matter what the style, we end with Savasana?… Why practice death pose? …The reason lies in the fact that death brings us face to face with total annihilation of the self… the essence of Savasana and the essence of yoga, namely total annihilation of separateness and unification with the whole.  Annihilation of the self is the access to the experience of yoga.”

[42]“Lakshmi: Goddess of Wealth & Beauty!” http://hinduism.about.com/od/hindugoddesses/p/lakshmi.htm “Lakshmi is the household goddess of most Hindu families.”; “Name: Padmasana” http://babynamesworld.parentsconnect.com/meaning_of_Padmasana.html (Accessed April 5th 2013)

[43] “Pose dedicated to Marichi” http://www.yogajournal.com/poses/939; “Urban Ashtanga Teacher Training” http://bit.ly/XZ2xf3 (Accessed April 5th 2013); Subhas R. Tiwari, “Yoga Renamed is Still Hindu,” Hinduism Today, January-February-March 2006.

Looking back on 2011: My most-widely read online articles

		Views
Home page		67,699
Motherhood and Apple Pie		31,594
Florence Nightingale: Mother of Nursing		26,395
Queen Victoria and Sir James Simpson		17,492
Alexander Graham Bell: Inventing the future		5,324
Thomas Edison: Let There Be Light….		4,131
Samuel de Champlain and Sieur de Monts: Canadian heroes		3,820
Laura Secord: more than just chocolates		3,753
Dr. James Naismith: Father of Basketball		3,738
My Fair Lady		2,768
Sir Alexander Fleming: Countless Millions Saved		2,554
Simon Fraser: Canada’s most successful failure		2,236
Carl Jung and the Gnostic Reconciliation of Gender Opposites		2,204
Taekwondo and the Martial Arts: Mere Exercise or Trojan Horse??		2,044
Louis Riel: Canadian Patriot?		1,856
Carl Jung, Neo-gnosticism, and the MBTI		1,573
The Birth of the Book		1,432
Sir Alexander Mackenzie the Scottish Bulldog		1,378
Captain James Cook: World Explorer		1,264
David Thompson: “Star-Gazer”		1,216
Jesus Loves me, This I know…		1,179

250,000 visitors later

As of today, the http://edhird.wordpress.com  blog has had 250,000 visitors in just over two years.  These are the more widely read of the blog articles:

Home page		63,585
Florence Nightingale: Mother of Nursing		24,444
Motherhood and Apple Pie		18,289
Queen Victoria and Sir James Simpson		17,724
The Unforgettable Benjamin Franklin		15,781
Winston Churchill the British Bulldog		9,406
Alexander Graham Bell: Inventing the future		7,990
Laura Secord: more than just chocolates		4,460
Jesus Loves me, This I know…		4,216
Samuel de Champlain and Sieur de Monts: Canadian heroes		3,682
Dr. James Naismith: Father of Basketball		3,649
Pain: Useless intrusion or gift of God?		3,611
Thomas Edison: Let There Be Light….		3,124
Carl Jung, Neo-gnosticism, and the MBTI		2,918
Alfred Nobel: Lord of Dynamite, Servant of Peace		2,863
Sir Alexander Mackenzie the Scottish Bulldog		2,627
Taekwondo and the Martial Arts: Mere Exercise or Trojan Horse??		2,045
Simon Fraser: Canada’s most successful failure		1,978
Louis Riel: Canadian Patriot?		1,964
Carl Jung and the Gnostic Reconciliation of Gender Opposites		1,919
Don Quixote: Chasing After Marriage’s Windmills		1,859
James Watt: Creative Genius		1,679
Good King Wenceslas last looked out…		1,660
My Fair Lady		1,530
The Gift of Courage Can Be Imparted		1,510
Sir Alexander Fleming: Countless Millions Saved		1,435
When the Saints Come Marching In		1,433
The Birth of the Book		1,395
Captain James Cook: World Explorer		1,392
Lord and Lady Baden-Powell: Character Builders		1,200
David Thompson: “Star-Gazer”		1,088

The Reverend Ed Hird, Rector

St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver

Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)

http://stsimonschurch.ca 

-previously published in the North Shore News & the Deep Cove Crier

-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’

http://www.battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com

p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘Ed Hird’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD.  This can also be done by PAYPAL using the e-mail ed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99 CDN/USD.

-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide :  Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada 

You can also download the complimentary Leader’s Guide PDF: Battle for the Soul Leaders Guide

200,000 visitors…

Within the next 24 or so hours, we will have had 200,000 visitors to this blog (100,000 new visitors since Jan 2011 http://edhird.wordpress.com

 

Through your dialing in today, you will help us reach that number of people .

 

This blog started on August 2009, less than two years ago.  The next goal will be to have a total of 500,000 visitors which we will hopefully see within the next two years.

 

There are now 353 articles on the blog that you can check out. Thanks for your support and interest. The most popular articles are as follows:

Home page		48,091
Florence Nightingale: Mother of Nursing		18,844
Queen Victoria and Sir James Simpson		16,619
The Unforgettable Benjamin Franklin		15,684
Winston Churchill the British Bulldog		9,288
Alexander Graham Bell: Inventing the future		7,216
Motherhood and Apple Pie		4,939
Laura Secord: more than just chocolates		4,081
Jesus Loves me, This I know…		3,851
Pain: Useless intrusion or gift of God?		3,592
Samuel de Champlain and Sieur de Monts: Canadian heroes		3,320
Dr. James Naismith: Father of Basketball		3,058
Alfred Nobel: Lord of Dynamite, Servant of Peace		2,719
Carl Jung, Neo-gnosticism, and the MBTI		2,668
Sir Alexander Mackenzie the Scottish Bulldog		2,545
Louis Riel: Canadian Patriot?		1,927
Don Quixote: Chasing After Marriage’s Windmills		1,831
Good King Wenceslas last looked out…		1,609
Taekwondo and the Martial Arts: Mere Exercise or Trojan Horse??		1,582
James Watt: Creative Genius		1,542
The Gift of Courage Can Be Imparted		1,502
Thomas Edison: Let There Be Light….		1,463
When the Saints Come Marching In		1,358
Carl Jung and the Gnostic Reconciliation of Gender Opposites		1,335
Captain James Cook: World Explorer		1,257
Sir Alexander Fleming: Countless Millions Saved		1,216
Lord and Lady Baden-Powell: Character Builders		1,138
Simon Fraser: Canada’s most successful failure		1,052
David Thompson: “Star-Gazer”		1,038

Carl Jung, Neo-gnosticism, and the MBTI

A report by Rev. Ed Hird, Past National Chair of ARM Canada

 

In 1991, I had the wonderful privilege of attending the Episcopal Renewal Ministries(ERM) Leadership Training Institute (LTI) in Evergreen, Colorado.  Since then, I and others encouraged Anglican Renewal Ministries Canada to endorse the LTI approach, reporting in the ARM Canada magazine with articles about our helpful LTI experiences.  ARM Canada, through our LTI Director, Rev. Murray Henderson, has since run a number of very helpful Clergy and Lay LTIs across Canada, which have been well received and appreciated. 

 

Through listening to the tapes by Leanne Payne and Dr. Jeffrey Satinover from the 1995 Kelowna Prayer Conference, I came across some new data that challenged me to do some rethinking about the Jungian nature of the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Temperament Indicator) used in the current ARM Canada LTIs.  Dr. Jeffrey Satinover’s critique of Jungianism came with unique credibility, given his background as an eminent Jungian scholar, analyst, and past President of the C.G. Jung Foundation.  I began to do some reading on Carl Jung, and mailed each ARM Board member a copy of the two audio tapes by Payne and Satinover.  The ARM Board at our April 1996 meeting took an initial look at the Jungian nature of the MBTI, and whether we should continue to use the MBTI in our LTIs.  Our ARM Board agreed to do some investigating on this topic and report back with some information to discuss at the November 1996 ARM Board meeting.

 

Currently approximately two and a half million people are ‘initiated’ each year into the MBTI process. [1] According to Peter B. Myers, it is now the most extensively used personality instrument in history. [2]  There is even a MBTI version for children, called the MMTIC (Murphy-Meisgeier Type Indicator for Children)[3], and a simplified adult MBTI-like tool for the general public, known as the Keirsey-Bates Indicator.  A most helpful resource in analyzing the MBTI is the English Grove Booklet by Rev.  Robert Innes, of St. John’s College, Durham, entitled Personality Indicators & the Spiritual Life.  Innes focused on “the two indicators most widely used by Christian groups – Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram.”[4]  One of the key questions for the ARM Board to settle is whether the MBTI is an integral part of Jungian neo-gnosticism, or alternately, that it may be a detachable benevolent portion of Jung’s philosophy in an otherwise suspect context.  To use a visual picture, is the MBTI the ‘marijuana’, the low-level entry drug that potentially opens the door to the more hard-core Jungian involvement, or is it just a harmless sugar tablet? To get at this question, I have broken my analysis down into smaller, more concrete questions.

 

1. Is the MBTI actually connected with Carl Jung?

The Rev. Canon Charles Fulton, President of ERM, commented in a June 17th, 1996 letter that “We have certainly had some concerns over the MBTI over the years and its Jungian nature”.  Rev. Fred Goodwin, Rector of National Ministries for ERM, commented in a September 18th, 1996 letter that “…we (ERM) no longer use the MBTI in our teachings…we’ve not included it in the last couple of years – believing that there are many other models and issues that need to be discussed with clergy and lay leaders.”  In Isabel Briggs-Myers’ book Introduction To Type (1983), she comments that the MBTI is “based on Jung’s theory of psychological types.”[5]  In the book People Types and Tiger Stripes written by Jungian practitioner Dr. Gordon Lawrence, he states that “The (MBTI) Indicator was developed specifically to carry Carl Jung’s theory of type (Jung, 1921, 1971) into practical application.”[6]  In the Grove Book on personality indicators, Robert Innes comments that “Carl Jung’s psychology lies behind…the MBTI”.[7]

 

The Buros Mental Measurement YearBook (1989, 10th Edition) notes that the MBTI “…is a construct-oriented test that is inextricably linked with Jung’s (1923) theory of psychological types.”[8]  As to the evidence of validity, Buros characterizes the stability of type classification over time as “somewhat disappointing.”[9]  The Jungian/MBTI stance, as expressed by Dr. Gordon Lawrence, former President of the Association for Psychological Types, is that MBTI “types are a fact”, not a theory.[10]  After reviewing the statistical evidence relating to the MBTI, however, Dr.  Paul Kline, Professor of Psychometrics at Exeter University, commented that “There has been no clear support for the 8-fold categorization, despite the popularity of the MBTI.”[11]  Mario Bergner, a colleague of Leanne Payne in Pastoral Care Ministries, observed in a July 2nd, 1996 letter that “of all the different types of psychological testing, forced choice tests (such as the MBTI) are considered the least valid.”  More specifically, Bergner noted that “the validity of the MBTI is at zero because the test is based on a Jungian understanding of the soul which cannot be measured for good or bad.”  The official MBTI view, as expressed by Dr. Gordon Lawrence, is that MBTI personality designations are “as unchangeable as the stripes on a tiger”.[12]  Bergner, in contrast, does not believe that all of humanity can be unchangeably boxed into 16 temperament types, and is concerned about cases where people are being rejected for job applications, because they don’t fit certain MBTI categories.

 

 2. What is Carl Jung’s Relation to Neo-Gnosticism? 

Carl Jung is described by Merill Berger, a Jungian psychologist, as “the psychologist of the 21st century”.[13]  Dr. Satinover says “Because of his great influence in propagating gnostic philosophy and morals in churches & synagogues, Jung deserves a closer look.  The moral relativism that released upon us the sexual revolution is rooted in an outlook of which (Jung) is the most brilliant contemporary expositor.”[14]  One could say without overstatement that Carl Jung is the Father of Neo-Gnosticism & the New Age Movement.  That is why Satinover comments that “One of the most powerful modern forms of Gnosticism is without question Jungian psychology, both within or without the Church”.[15]  Carl Jung “explicitly identified depth psychology, especially his own, as heir to the apostolic tradition, especially in what he considered its superior handling of the problem of evil.”[16]  Jung claimed that “In the ancient world, the Gnostics, whose arguments were very much influenced by psychic experience, tackled the problem of evil on a broader basis than the Church Fathers.”[17] Dr. Satinover notes that “Whatever the system, and however the different stages are purportedly marked, the ultimate aim, the innermost circle of all Gnostic systems, is a mystical vision of the union of good and evil.”[18]

 

Jung, says Satinover, “devoted most of his adult life to a study of alchemy; he also explicated both antique hermeticism and the ‘christian’ gnostics; his earliest writings were about spiritualism…”[19]  In his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung claimed: “The possibility of a comparison with alchemy, and the uninterrupted intellectual chain back to Gnosticism, gave substance to my psychology.”[20]  Most people are not aware that Jung collected one of the largest amassing of spiritualistic writings found on the European continent.[21] Dr. James Hillman, the former director for the Jungian Institute in Zurich, commented, “(Jung) wrote the first introduction to Zen Buddhism, he…brought in (Greek Mythology), the gods and the goddesses, the myths,…he was interested in astrology…”[22]

 

In 1929, Jung wrote a commentary on the Secret of the Golden Flower, which he said was “not only a Taoist text concerned with Chinese Yoga, but is also an alchemical treatise.”[23]  He comments that “…it was the text of the Golden Flower that first put me on the right track.  For in medieval alchemy we have the long-sought connecting link between Gnosis (i.e. of the Gnostics) and the processes of the collective unconscious that can be observed in modern man…”[24]  Dr. Richard Noll comments that “the divinatory methods of the I Ching, used often by Jung in the 1920s and 1930s, were a part of the initial training program of the C.G. Jung Institute of Zurich in 1948, and its use is widely advocated today in Jungian Analytic-Training Institutes throughout the world.”[25]

 

During the hippie movement of the 1960’s, the Rock Opera Hair boldly proclaimed the alleged dawning of the Age of Aquarius.  Once again Carl Jung foreshadowed this emphasis in a 1940 letter to his former assistant, Godwin Baynes: “1940 is the year when we approach the meridian of the first star in Aquarius.  It is the premonitory earthquake of the New Age.”[26]  In Jung’s book Aion, he holds that “…the appearance of Christ coincided with the beginning of a new aeon, the age of the Fishes.  A sychronicity exists between the life of Christ and the objective astronomical event, the entrance of the spring equinox into the sign of Pisces.”[27] In a letter written by Jung to Sigmund Freud, he said: “My evenings are taken up very largely with astrology.  I made horoscopic calculations in order to find a clue to the core of psychological truth…I dare say that we shall one day discover in astrology a good deal of knowledge which has been intuitively projected into the heavens.”[28]

 

Jung’s family had occult linkage on both sides, from his paternal Grandfather’s Freemasonry involvement as Grandmaster of the Swiss Lodge[29], and his maternal family’s long-term involvement with seances  and ghosts.  John Kerr, author of A Most Dangerous Method, comments that Jung was heavily involved for many years with his mother and two female cousins in hypnotically induced seances.  Jung eventually wrote up the seances as his medical dissertation.[30]  Jung acquired a spirit guide and guru named ‘Philemon’[who was described by Jung as ‘an old man with the horns of a bull...and the wings of a fisher’].  Before being Philemon, this creature appeared to Jung as ‘Elijah’, and then finally mutated to ‘Ka’, an Egyptian earth-soul that ‘came from below’.[31]  It may be worth reflecting upon why Jung designated his Bollingen Tower  as the Shrine of Philemon.[32]

 

Jung himself was the son of a Swiss Pastor caught in an intellectual faith crisis.  When younger, Carl Jung had a life-changing dream of a subterranean phallic god which reappeared “whenever anyone spoke too emphatically about Lord Jesus.”[33]  Jung commented that “…the ‘man-eater’ in general was symbolized by the phallus, so that the dark Lord Jesus, the Jesuit and the phallus were identical.”[34]  This “initiation into the realm of darkness”[35] radically shaped Jung’s approach to Jesus: “Lord Jesus never became quite real for me, never quite acceptable, never quite lovable, for again and again I would think of his underground counterpart…Lord Jesus seemed to me in some ways a god of death…Secretly, his love and kindness, which I always heard praised, appeared doubtful to me…”[36]  The next major spiritual breakthrough in his life was what Jung described as a “blasphemous vision”[37] of God dropping his dung on the local Cathedral.  This vision, said Jung, gave him an intense “experience of divine grace”.[38]

 

3. How serious is  the Jungian Reconciliation of Good and Evil?  

Leanne Payne says of  Dr. Jeffrey Satinover that “like (C.S.) Lewis, he knows that we can never reconcile (synthesize) good and evil, and this synthesis is the greatest threat facing not only Christendom but all mankind today.”[39]  Dr. Satinover sees the temptation facing our generation that”…on a theological plane, we succumb to the dangerous fantasy that Good and Evil will be reunited in a higher oneness.”[40]

 

One of Jung’s key emphases was that the “dark side” of human nature needed to be “integrated” into a single, overarching “wholeness” in order to form a less strict and difficult definition of goodness.[41]  “For Jung”, says Satinover, “good and evil evolved into two equal, balanced, cosmic principles that belong together in one overarching synthesis.  This relativization of good and evil by their reconciliation is the heart of the ancient doctrines of gnosticism, which also located spirituality, hence morality, within man himself.  Hence ‘the union of opposites’.”[42]

 

Jung believed that “the Christ-symbol lacks wholeness in the modern psychological sense, since it does not include the dark side of things…”[43]  For Jung, it was regrettable that Christ in his goodness lacked a shadow side, and God the Father, who is the Light, lacked darkness.[44]  He spoke of “…an archetype  such as…the still pending answer to the Gnostic question as to the origin of evil, or, to put it another way, the incompleteness of the Christian God-image”[45]  Jung sought a solution to this dilemma in the Holy Spirit who united the split in the moral opposites symbolized by Christ and Satan.[46]  “Looked at from a quaternary standpoint”, writes Jung, “the Holy Ghost is a reconciliation of opposites and hence the answer to the suffering in the Godhead which Christ personifies.”[47]  Thus for Jung, says John Dourley, the Spirit unites the exclusively spiritual reality of Christ with that which is identified with the devil, including ‘the dark world of nature-bound man’, the chthonic side of nature excluded by Christianity from the Christ image.[48]  In a similar vein, Jung saw the alchemical figure of Mercurius as a compensation for the one-sideness of the symbol of Christ.[49]  That is why Jung believed that “It is possible for a man to attain totality, to become whole, only with the co-operation of the spirit of darkness…”[50]

 

4. How Much Influence does Jungian Neo-Gnosticism have on the Church? 

There are key individuals promoting the Jungian gospel to the Church, such as Morton Kelsey, John Sanford(not John & Paula Sandford), Thomas Moore, Joseph Campbell, and Bishop John Spong.  Thomas Moore, a former Roman Catholic monk, is widely popular with a new generation of soul-seekers, through his best-seller: Care of the Soul.  John Sanford, the son of the late Agnes Sanford, is an Episcopal Priest and Jungian analyst, with several books promoting the Jungian way.  Morton Kelsey is another Episcopal Priest who has subtly woven the Jungian gospel through virtually every one of his books, specially those aimed for the Charismatic renewal constituency.  Satinover describes Kelsey as having “made a career of such compromise”, noting that Kelsey has now proceeded in his latest book Sacrament of Sexuality to approve of the normalization of homosexuality.[51]

 

Joseph Campbell, cited by Satinover as a disciple of Jung, is famous for his public TV series on “The Power of Myth”.[52]  Bishop John Spong, who has written two books (Resurrection: Myth or Reality & The Easter Moment) denying the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ, gives Joseph Campbell credit for shaping his views on Jesus’ resurrection.  “I was touched by Campbell’s ability to seek the truth of myths while refusing to literalize the rational explanation of those myths…Campbell allowed me to appreciate such timeless themes as virgin births, incarnations, physical resurrections, and cosmic ascensions…Slowly, ever so slowly, but equally ever so surely, a separation began to occur for me between the experience captured for us Christians in the word Easter and the interpretation of that experience found in both the Christian Scriptures and the developing Christian traditions…”[53]  Few people have realized that Bishop Spong’s spiritual grandfather is none other than Carl Jung.

 

“Jung’s direct and indirect impact on mainstream Christianity – and thus on Western culture,” says Satinover, “ has been incalculable.  It is no exaggeration to say that the theological positions of most mainstream denominations in their approach to pastoral care, as well as in their doctrines and liturgy – have become more or less identical with Jung’s psychological/symbolic theology.”[54]   It is not just the more ‘liberal’ groups, however, that are embracing the Jungian/MBTI approach.  In a good number of Evangelical theological colleges, the MBTI is being imposed upon the student body as a basic course requirement, despite the official Jungian stance that “The client has the choice of taking the MBTI or not. Even subtle pressure should be avoided.”[55]

 

While in theological school, I became aware of the strong influence of Dr. Paul Tillich on many modern clergy.  In recently reading C.G. Jung & Paul Tillich [written by John Dourley, a Jungian analyst & Roman priest from Ottawa],  I came to realize that Tillich and Jung are ‘theological twins’.  In a tribute given at a Memorial for Jung’s death, Tillich gave to Jung’s thought the status of an ontology because its depth and universality constituted a ‘doctrine of being’.[56] It turns out that Tillich is heavily in debt in Jung for his view of God as the supposed “Ground of Being”.  As well, both Tillich and Jung, says Dourley, “understand the self to be that centering force within the psyche which brings together the opposites or polarities, whose dynamic interplay makes up life itself.”[57]  As a Jungian popularizer, Tillich saw life as “made up of the flow of energy between opposing poles or opposites.”[58]

 

So many current theological emphases in today’s church can be traced directly back to Carl Jung.  For example, with the loss of confidence in the Missionary imperative, many mainline church administrators today sound remarkably like Jung when he said: “What we from our point of view call colonization, missions to the heathen, spread of civilization, etc, has another face – the face of a bird of prey seeking with cruel intentness for distant quarry – a face worthy of a race of pirates and highwaymen.”[59]  In speaking of Buddhism and Christianity, Jung taught the now familiar inter-faith dialogue line, that “Both paths are right.”[60]  Jung spoke of Jesus, Mani, Buddha, and Lao-Tse as ‘pillars of the spirit’, saying “I could give none preference over the other.”[61] The English Theologian Don Cupitt says that Jung pioneered the multi-faith approach now widespread in the Church.[62]

 

For those of us who wonder why some Anglicans are mistakenly calling themselves “co-creators with God”,  the theological roots can again be traced back to Jung: “…man is indispensable for the completion of creation; that, in fact, he himself is the 2nd creator of the world, who alone has given to the world its objective existence…”[63]  In light of our current Canadian controversies around “Mother Goddess” hymnbooks,  it is interesting to read in the MBTI source book, Psychological Types( Carl Jung, 1921) about the “Gnostic prototype, viz, Sophia, an immensely significant symbol for the Gnosis.”[64]  Carl Jung is indeed the Grandfather of much of our current theology.

 

5.  What is the connection between ‘Archetypes’, the Unconscious and the MBTI?

Keirsey and Bates are strong MBTI supporters who have identified the link between the MBTI psychological types and Jungian archetypes.  In their book Please Understand Me, they state Jung’s belief that “..all have the same multitude of instincts (i.e. archetypes) to drive them from within.”  Jung therefore “invented the ‘function types’ or ‘psychological types’” to combine the uniformity of the archetypes with the diversity of human functioning.[65]  In their best-selling MBTI book: Gifts Differing, Isabel Myers Briggs and Peter B. Myers speak openly about Jungian Archetypes as “those symbols, myths, and concepts that appear to be inborn and shared by members of a civilization”.[66]

 

Dr. Richard Noll holds in his book The Jung Cult that such Jungian ideas as the “collective unconscious” and the theory of the archetypes come as much from late 19th century occultism, neopaganism, and social Darwinian teaching, as they do from natural science.[67]  Jung’s post-Freudian work (after 1912), especially his theories of the collective unconscious and the archetypes, could not have been constructed, says Noll, without the works of G.R.S. Mead on Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and the Mithraic Liturgy.  Starting in 1911, Jung quoted Mead, a practicing Theosophist, regularly in his works through his entire life.[68]  Richard Webster holds that “the Unconscious is not simply an occult entity for whose real existence there is no palpable evidence.  It is an illusion produced by language – a kind of intellectual hallucination.”[69]

 

Jung was a master at creating obscure, scientific-sounding concepts, usually adapted from occultic literature.  Jung held that “the collective unconsciousness is the sediment of all the experience of the universe of all time, and is also the image of the universe that has been in process of formation from untold ages.  In the course of time, certain features became prominent in this image, the so-called dominants (later called archetypes by Jung).”[70]  [Much of Jung’s teaching on archetypes is so obscure that I have placed the relevant data in the footnotes of this report, for the more motivated reader.]

 

In his phylogenetic racial theory, Jung assumes that acquired cultural attitudes, and hence Jungian archetypes, can actually be transmitted by genetic inheritance.  Richard Webster, however, explodes Jung’s phylogenetic theory as biologically untenable.[71] Peter B. Medawar, a distinguished biologist, wrote in the New York Review of Books (Jan. 23, 1975): “The opinion is gaining ground that doctrinaire psychoanalytic theory is the most stupendous intellectual confidence trick of the 20th century: and a terminal product as well – something akin to a dinosaur or zeppelin in the history of ideas, a vast structure of radically unsound design and with no posterity.”

 

“This work Psychological Types (1921), said Jung, “sprung originally from my need to define the way in which my outlook differs from Freud’s and Adler’s.  In attempting to answer this question, I came across the problem of types, for it is one’s psychological type which from the outset determines and limits a person’s judgment.”[72]  In words strangely reminiscent of L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology, Jung teaches in Psychological Types (PT) that “The unconscious, regarded as the historical background of the psyche, contains in a concentrated form the entire succession of engrams (imprints), which from time to time have determined the psychic structure as it now exists.”[73]

 

Jung held in PT that “The magician…has access to the unconscious that is still pagan, where the opposites still lie together in their primeval naiveté, beyond the reach of ‘sinfulness’, but liable, when accepted into conscious life, to beget evil as well as good with the same primeval and therefore daemonic force.”[74]  Jung entitled an entire section in PT: “Concerning  the Brahmanic Conception of the Reconciling Symbol”.  Jung notes: “Brahman therefore must signify the irrational union of the opposites – hence their final overcoming…These quotations show that Brahman is the reconciliation and dissolution of the opposites – hence standing beyond them as an irrational factor.”[75]

 

My recurring question is: “Do we in ARM Canada  wish to  be directly or indirectly sanctioning this kind of teaching?”  Symbolically, the  MBTI can be thought of as a “freeze-dried” version of Jung’s Psychological Types (1921). Since PT teaches extensively about Jung’s archetypes and collective unconscious, it seems clear to me that to endorse the ‘freeze-dried’ MBTI is ultimately to endorse Jung’s archetypal, occultic philosophy.

 

6.  What is the Relationship between Neo-gnosticism and the MBTI?

Dr. Richard Noll of Harvard University comments that “We know that (Wilhelm) Ostwald was a significant influence on Jung in the formation of his theory of psychological types.”[76]  Jung mentioned Ostwald’s division of men of genius into classics and romantics in his first public presentation on psychological types at the Psychoanalytic Congress in Munich in September 1913.  The classics and the romantics corresponded, according to Jung, to the introverted type and the extraverted type.  Long quotations from Ostwald appear in other of Jung’s work between 1913 and 1921 – precisely the period of Ostwald’s most outspoken advocacy of eugenics, nature worship, and German imperialism through the Monistenbund, a Monistic Alliance led by Ostwald.  An entire chapter of Jung’s Psychological Types is devoted favorably to these same ideas of Ostwald.”[77]  Is any link, however,  between Ostwald’s Germanic anti-Semitism and Jung merely an exercise in ‘guilt-by-association’?  The newly emerging hard data would suggest otherwise.  The influence of Germanic anti-Semitism on Jungianism can now be seen in a secret quota clause designed to limit Jewish membership to 10% in the Analytical Psychology Club of Zurich.  Jung’s secret Jewish quota was in effect from 1916 to 1950, and only came to public light in 1989.[78]

 

“The book on types (PT)”, says Jung, “yielded the view that every judgment made by an individual is conditioned by his personality type and that every point of view is necessarily relative.  This raised the question of the unity which much compensate this diversity, and it led me directly to the Chinese concept of Tao.”[79]  Put simply, the MBTI conceptually leads to Taoism.  Jung held that the central concept of his psychology was “the process of individuation”.  Interesting the subtitle of the PT book, which The MBTI claims to represent, is “…or The Psychology of Individuation”.  Philip Davis, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of P.E.I. comments, “In this lengthy process of ‘individuation’, one learns that one’s personality incorporates a series of polar opposites: rationality and irrationality, the ‘animal’ and the ‘spiritual’, ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’, and so on.  The goal of the (Jungian) exercise is the reconciliation of the opposites, bringing them all into a harmony that results in ‘self-actualization’.”[80]  Once again, it seems that aspect after aspect of this seemingly innocuous personality test leads back to Jung’s fundamental philosophic and religious teachings.

 

Two of Jung’s ‘most influential archetypes’ are the anima & animus, described by Jung as “psychological bisexuality”.[81]  Jung teaches in PT that every man has a female soul (anima) and every woman has a male soul (animus).[82]  Noll comments that “Jung’s first encounter with the feminine entity he later called the anima seems to have begun with his use of mediumistic techniques…”[83]  Based on the recently discovered personal diary of Sabina Spielrein, John Kerr claims that Jung’s so-called anima “the woman within” which he spoke to, was none other than his idealized image of his former mistress, patient, and fellow therapist, Sabina Spielrein.[84]  After breaking with both Spielrein and Freud,  Jung felt his own soul vanish as if it had flown away to the land of the dead.  Shortly after, while his children were plagued by nightmares and the house was seemingly haunted, Jung heard a chorus of spirits cry out demanding: ‘We have come back from Jerusalem where we have not found what we sought.’[85]

 

In response to these spirits, Jung wrote his Seven Sermons to the Dead.   In these seven messages Jung ‘reveals’, in agreement with the 2nd century Gnostic writer Basilides,  the True and Ultimate God as Abraxas, who combines Jesus and Satan, good and evil all in one.[86]  This is why Jung held that “Light is followed by shadow, the other side of the Creator.”[87]  Dr. Noll, a clinical psychologist and post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University, holds that “Jung was waging war against Christianity and its distant, absolute, unreachable God and was training his disciples to listen to the voice of the dead and to become gods themselves.”[88]

 

7.  What Does the MBTI Prototype Book “Psychological Types” teach about Opposites?

Consistently Jung teaches about reconciliation of opposites, even of good and evil.  Jung comments in MDR : “…a large part of my life work has revolved around the problem of opposites and especially their alchemical symbolism…”[89]  Through experiencing Goethe’s Faust, Jung came to believe in the ‘universal power’ of evil and “its mysterious role it played in delivering man from darkness and suffering.”[90] “Most of all”, said Jung, “(Faust) awakened in me the problem of opposites, of good and evil, of mind and matter, of light and darkness.”[91]  Being influenced as well by the Yin-Yang of Taoism, Jung believed that “Everything requires for its existence its opposite, or it fades into nothingness.”[92]

 

Dr. Gordon Lawrence, a strong Jungian/MBTI supporter, teaches that “In Jung’s theory, the two kinds of perception – sensing and intuition – are polar opposites of each other.  Similarly, thinking judgment and feeling judgment are polar opposites.”[93]  It seems to me that the setting up of the psychological polar opposites in PT functions as a useful prelude for gnostic reconciliation of all opposites.  The MBTI helps condition our minds into thinking about the existence of polar opposites, and their alleged barriers to perfect wholeness.  In the PT book, Jung comments that “One may be sure therefore, that, interwoven in the new symbol with its living beauty, there is also the element of evil, for, if not, it would lack the glow of life as well as beauty, since life and beauty are naturally indifferent to morality.”[94]  My question for the ARM Board is: “Do we accept Jung’s ‘polar opposites’ view that there can be no life and beauty without evil?”

 

“We must beware”, said Jung, “of thinking of good and evil as absolute opposites…The criterion of ethical action can no longer consist in the simple view that good has the force of a categorical imperative, while so -called evil can resolutely be shunned.  Recognition of the reality of evil necessarily relativizes the good, and the evil likewise, converting both into halves of a paradoxical whole.”[95]  Here is where Jung ties in his ethical relativism to the PT/MBTI worldview: “In practical terms, this means that good and evil are no longer so self-evident.  We have to realize that each represents a judgment.”[96]

 

Jung saw the reconciliation of opposites as a sign of great sophistication: “(Chinese philosophy) never failed to acknowledge the polarity and paradoxity of all life.  The opposites always balanced one another – a sign of high culture.  Onesideness, though it lends momentum, is a sign of barbarism.”[97]  It would not be too far off to describe Jung as a gnostic Taoist.  In PT, Jung comments that “The Indian (Brahman-Atman teaching) conception teaches liberation from the opposites, by which every sort of affective style and emotional hold to the object is understood…Yoga is a method by which the libido is systematically ‘drawn in’ and thereby released from the bondage of opposites.”[98]

 

While in India in 1938, Jung says that he “was principally concerned with the question of the psychological nature of evil.”[99] He was “impressed again and again by the fact that these people were able to integrate so-called ‘evil’ without ‘losing face’…To the oriental, good and evil are meaningfully contained in nature, and are merely varying degrees of the same thing.  I saw that Indian spirituality contains as much of evil as of good…one does not really believe in evil, and one does not really believe in good.”[100]

 

In a comment reminiscent of our 1990’s relativistic culture, Jung said of Hindu thought:

“Good or evil are then regarded at most as my good or my evil, as whatever seems to me good or evil”.[101]  To accept the eight polarities within the MBTI predisposes one to embrace Jung’s teaching that the psyche “cannot set up any absolute truths, for its own polarity determines the relativity of its statements.”[102]  Jung was also a strong promoter of the occultic mandala, a circular picture with a sun or star usually at the centre. Sun worship, as personified in the mandala, is perhaps the key to fully understanding Jung.[103]  Jung taught that the mandala [Sanskrit for ‘circle’] was “the simplest model of a concept of wholeness, and one which spontaneously arises in the mind as a representation of the struggle and reconciliation of opposites.”[104]

 

In conclusion, to endorse the MBTI  is to endorse Jung’s book Psychological Types, since the MBTI proponents consistently say that the MBTI “was developed specifically to carry Carl Jung’s theory of types (1921, 1971) into practical application.”[105]  Let us seek the Lord in unity as he reveals his heart for us in this matter.

 

p.s. ARM Canada decided unanimously in November 1997 after much prayer and reflection to no longer use the MBTI in the Clergy and Lay Leadership Training Institutes.

 

The Reverend Ed Hird, Rector

St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver

Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)

http://stsimonschurch.ca 

-previously published in Anglicans for Renewal Canada

-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’

http://www.battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com

p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘Ed Hird’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD.  This can also be done by PAYPAL using the e-mail ed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99 CDN/USD.

-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide :  Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada 

You can also download the complimentary Leader’s Guide PDF: Battle for the Soul Leaders Guide

 

[1] Isabel Briggs Myers with Peter B. Myers,  Gifts Differing, Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Press, Inc., 1980,p. xvii.  Many charismatics have a soft spot for this book, because it quotes portions of scripture from Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12.  The actual link, however, between those bible passages, and  the Jung/Myers-Briggs theories is rather questionable.

In an October 29th, 1996 letter from Rev. Fred Goodwin, Rector of National Ministries for ERM,  Fred Goodwin commented: “I would suggest that in light of your concerns, you drop the MBTI and use some of the material out on small group ministry and discipling instead—which we find are desperate needs for leadership training in the church.”

[2]  Ibid., p.210; also Dr. Gordon Lawrence, People Types & Tiger Stripes, p. xi;  A book Prayer & Temperament written by Msgr. Chester Michael and Marie Norrisey in 1984 has been very effective in winning Roman Catholics and Anglicans to the MBTI.  The book claims that the MBTI designations will make you either oriented to Ignatian prayer (if you are SJ), Augustinian prayer (if you are NF), Franciscan prayer(if you are SP), or Thomistic prayer(if you are NT).  In the MBTI, the four sets of types are Extravert(E) & Introvert(I), Sensate(S) & Intuitive(N), Thinking(T) & Feeling(F), and Judging(J) & Perceiving(P).  None of these 8 innocuous-sounding type names mean what they sound like.  Instead each of the 8 type names has unique and mysterious, perhaps even occultic, definitions given by Jung himself in a massive section at the back of Psychological Types.

[3] Dr. Gordon Lawrence, People Types & Tiger Stripes, Gainesville, FL: Center for Applications of Psychological Types, 1979, p. 222

[4] Robert Innes, Personality Indicators and The Spiritual Life, Grove Books Ltd., Cambridge, 1996, p.3;  The Ennegram is significantly occultic in nature and origin, coming from Sufi, numerology, and Arica New-Age sources.  George Gurideff, Oscar Ichazo of Esalen Institute, and Claudio Naranjo are the prominent New Agers who have popularized it, and then introduced it, through Fr. Bob Oschs SJ, into the Christian Church.  For more information, I recommend Robert Innes’ booklet and Mitchell Pacwa SJ article’s “Tell Me Who I Am, O Ennegram” Christian Research Journal, Fall 1991, pp. 14ff.

[5] Isabel Briggs Myers, Introduction to Type, Palo Alto, CA: Consulting

Psychologists Press, 1983, p.4

[6] Dr. Gordon Lawrence, People Types & Tiger Stripes, p. 6, also p. x

[7] Robert Innes, Personality Indicators and The Spiritual Life, p.8

[8] The Buros Mental Measurement YearBook (1989, 10th Edition), p. 93

[9] Ibid., p. 93

[10] Dr. Gordon Lawrence, People Types & Tiger Stripes, p.150

[11] Dr. Paul Kline, Personality: The Psychometric View: Routledge, 1993, p.136

[12] Dr. Gordon Lawrence, People Types & Tiger Stripes, Back Cover

[13]  Merill Berger & Stephen Segaller, The Wisdom of the Dreams, C.G. Jung Foundation, New York, NY, Shamballa Publications, Front Cover

[14] Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, Baker Book House Co., 1996, p. 238

[15] Jeffrey Satinover, The Empty Self, p. 27.  Jung has “blended psychological reductionism with gnostic spirituality to produce a modern variant of mystical, pagan polytheism in which the multiple ‘images of the instincts’ (his ‘archetypes’) are worshipped as gods”, Satinover, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, p. 238

[16] Ibid., p. 238

[17] Dr. Carl Jung, Aion, Collected Works, Vol. 9, 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), p. 10

[18] Jeffrey Satinover, The Empty Self, p. 23

[19] Ibid., p. 27, Ft. 28

[20] Carl Jung & Aniela Jaffe, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, translated from the German by Richard & Clara Winston, Vintage Books-Random House, 1961/1989, p. 205

[21] Jeffrey Satinover, The Empty Self, p. 28

[22] The Wisdom of the Dreams: Carl Gustav Jung: a Stephen Segaller Video, Vol. 3, “ A World of Dreams”. Jung also wrote the first western commentary on the Tibetan Book of the Dead.( Psychology & the East, p. 60)

[23] Carl Jung, Psychology & the East, London & New York: Ark Paper Back, 1978/1986, p. 3

[24]  Ibid., p. 6

[25] Dr. Richard Noll, The Jung Cult.: Origins of a Charismatic Movement, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 333

[26] Merill Berger & Stephen Segaller, The Wisdom of the Dreams, p. 162;  Jung & Jaffe, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 340

[27] Jung & Jaffe, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 221

[28] Richard Webster, Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science, & Psychoanalysis, Basic Books: Harper Collins, 1995, p. 385.   Jung comments: “For instance, it appears that the signs of the zodiac are character pictures, in other words, libido symbols which depict the typical qualities of the libido at a given moment…”

[29] Jung & Jaffe, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p.232

[30] John Kerr, A Most Dangerous Method: the Story of Jung, Freud, & Sabina Spielrein, New York, Alfred Knopf Books, 1993, p. 50 & 54

[31] Satinover, The Empty Self, p. 37;  The spirit guide Philemon/Elijah later mutated into Salome, who addressed Jung in a self-directed trance vision as Christ.  Jung ‘saw’ himself assume the posture of a victim of crucifixion, with a snake coiled around him, and his face transformed into that of a lion from the Mithraic mystery religion.(C.G.  Jung, Analytical Psychology rinceton University Press, 1989:, p. 96, 98)

[32] Jung & Jaffe, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p.223.  “Shrine of Philemon: Repentance of Faust” was the inscription carved in stone by Jung over the entrance of the Bollingen Tower, where he lived and wrote.

[33] Ibid., p. 12

[34] Ibid., p. 12

[35] Ibid., p. 15

[36] Ibid., p. 13

[37] Ibid., p. 58.   Jung concluded from this ‘Cathedral’ experience that “God Himself can…condemn a person to blasphemy” Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 74

[38] Ibid., p. 55

[39] Satinover, The Empty Self, p. 3

[40] Satinover, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, p. 238

[41] Ibid.,  p. 240

[42] Ibid.,  p 240.  Keirsey & Bates, authors of Please Understand Me, and creators of the more popularized Keirsey-Bates adaptation of the MBTI, teach openly in their book on the Jungian “shadow…It’s as if, in being attracted to our opposite, we grope around for that rejected, abandoned, or unlived half of ourselves…(p.68)”

[43] Jung, Aion, Collected Works, p. 41

[44] John P. Dourley, C.G. Jung & Paul Tillich: The Psyche as Sacrament, Inner City Books, 1981, p. 63 “(Jung) also feels that it is questionable in that (the Christ symbol) contains no trace of the shadow side of life.”  Fr. Dourley, a Jungian analyst, also comments on p. 63 about Jung’s “criticism of the Christian conception of a God in who there is no darkness.”

[45] Jung & Jaffe, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 318

[46] Dourley, C.G. Jung & Paul Tillich, p. 70

[47] Carl Jung, ‘A Psychological Approach to The Trinity’, CW11,  para. 260

[48] Ibid., para. 263

[49] Carl Jung, ‘The Spirit Mercurius’, Alchemical Studies, CW13,  para. 295.   Jung comments, “As early as 1944, in Psychology and Alchemy, I had been able to demonstrate the parallelism between the Christ figure and the central concept of the alchemists, the lapis or stone.” MDR, p.210

[50] C.G. Jung, ‘The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy Tales, CW9, para. 453

[51] Satinover, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, p. 241

[52] Satinover, The Empty Self, p. 9;  Joseph Campbell in fact worked personally with Jung and published through the Jungian-controlled Bollingen Foundation , ( Philip Davis, “The Swiss Maharishi”, Touchstone Issue 92, Spring 1996, p.11)

[53] The Right Reverend John Spong, Resurrection: Reality or Myth, Harper, 1994, p.  xi.  His parallel book is The Easter Moment.

[54] Satinover, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, p.240. Satinover dryly comments that “in the United States, the Episcopal Church has more or less become a branch of Jungian psychology, theologically and liturgically.” (Empty Self ,p. 27, Footnote. 27)

[55] Dr. Gordon Lawrence, People Types & Tiger Stripes, p. 218

[56] A Memorial Meeting : New York, Analytical Psychology Club, 1962, p. 31

[57] Dourley, C.G. Jung & Paul Tillich, p. 17

[58] Ibid., p. 48  The persistent modern emphasis on the so-called ‘inner child’ makes a lot more sense when seen as a spin-off from Jung’s teaching that the symbol of the child is “that final goal that reconciles the opposites.” (Dourley, p. 83)

[59] Ibid., p. 248

[60] Ibid., p. 279

[61] Dourley, C.G. Jung & Paul Tillich, p. 65

[62] The Wisdom of the Dream, p. 99

[63] Jung, MDR, p. 256

[64] Carl Jung, Psychological Types: or the Psychology of Individuation, Princeton University Press, 1921/1971, p. 290.  Dr. Jeffrey Satinover memorably comments as a former Jungian that ‘Goddess worship’ is not the cure for misogyny, but it is its precondition, whether overtly or unconsciously. (The Empty Self, p. 9);  Marija Bimbutas, the late professor of archeology at UCLA, included Jung and more than a half dozen of his noted disciples in the bibliographies to her books on the alleged matriarchies of the Balkans:The Language of the Goddess(1989)and The Civilization of the Goddess(1991),(Philip Davis,”The Swiss Maharishi”, Touchstone Issue 92, Spring 1996, p.13)

[65] David Keirsey & Marilyn Bates, Please Understand Me, Del Mar, CA: Promothean Books, p. 3

[66] Isabel Myers Briggs & Peter B. Myers, Gifts Differing, p. xiv

[67] Richard Noll, The Jung Cult, front cover

[68] Ibid., p. 69  Dr. Noll comments: “I therefore argue that the Jung cult and its present day movement is in fact a ‘Nietzschean religion’”, p. 137;  Frederick Nietzsche’s stated view on Christianity is: “The Christian Church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie.” (Canadian Atheist, Issue 8: 1996, p. 1)

[69] Richard Webster, Why Freud was Wrong, p.250

[70] Jung, Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology, ‘The Psychology of Unconscious Processes’) p. 432  These dominants, said Jung, “are the ruling powers, the gods; that is, the representations resulting from dominating laws and principles, from average regularities in the issue of images that the brain has received as a consequence of secular processes.”(p. 432)

[71] Webster, Why Freud was Wrong p. 387

[72] Berger & Segaller,  Wisdom of the Dreams; p. 103,  MDR, p. 207

[73] Jung, Psychological Types, p. 211

[74] Ibid., p. 233  It would be interesting to research how much Jungian reading George Lucas did in preparing to produce his Blockbuster Star Wars. [i.e. The Force be with you].  The deity-like Force in Stars Wars was either good or evil, depending how you tapped into it..

[75] Ibid., p. 245-46

[76] Noll, The Jung Cult, p. 51

[77] Ibid., p. 69

[78] Ibid., p. 259

[79] Jung, MDR p. 207; Carl Jung, Psychology & the East, p. 15 “The wise Chinese would say in the words of the I Ching: ‘When Yang has reached its greatest strength, the dark power of yin is born within its depths, for night begins at midday when yang breaks up and begins to change into yin.”

[80] Ibid., p. 209;  Philip Davis,”The Swiss Maharishi”, Touchstone Issue 92, Spring 1996, p.12

[81] Ibid., p. 391;  Henri F. Ellenberger makes a strong case that Jung borrowed his matriarchy and anima/animus theories from Bachofen, an academic likened by some to the scientific credibility of Erik Von Daniken of The Chariots of the Gods and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi of TM and its Yogic Flying. (Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious, Penguin Press, 1970, pp. 218-223);  Philip Davis, “The Swiss Maharishi”, Touchstone Issue 92, Spring 1996, p.13); Richard Noll, The Jung Cult, p. 188-90

[82] Jung, Psychological Types, p. 595

[83] Noll, The Jung Cult, p. 202-203;  Philip Davis comments: “Jung’s therapeutic technique of ‘active imagination’ is now revealed as a sanitized version of the sort of trance employed by spiritualistic mediums and Theosophical travelers, with whom Jung was personally familiar.” (Philip Davis,”The Swiss Maharishi”, Touchstone Issue 92, Spring 1996, p.14)

[84] John Kerr, A Most Dangerous Method, p. 12; 49;191; 498 “…there (the Russian-born Spielrein) remained (in almost complete obscurity) until the publication of the Freud/Jung correspondence in 1974.”;p. 502;503: After the collapse of the Spielrein affair, John Kerr notes that “Jung’s condition had so deteriorated that his wife allowed Toni Wolff openly to become his mistress, and a sometime member of the household, simply because she was the only person who could calm him down.”;  p. 507- Jung’s stone bear carving in his Bollingen Tower specifically symbolized the anima .  Curiously the inscription said: “Russia gets the ball rolling”;  In a letter to Freud, Jung commented: “the prerequisite for a good marriage…is the license to be

unfaithful.”  The Freud/Jung Letters, trans. by R. Manheim & R. Hull (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 289

[85] Ibid., p. 503; MDR, p.190

[86] MDR, p. 378

[87] MDR, p. 328

[88] Noll, The Jung Cult, p. 224

[89] MDR, p. 233

[90] Ibid., p. 60

[91] Ibid., p. 235

[92] Jung, Psychology & the East, p. 184

[93] Lawrence, People Types & Tiger Stripes, p. 113

[94] Jung, Psychological Types, p. 235

[95] MDR, p. 329

[96] Ibid., p. 329

[97] Jung, Psychology & The East, p. 11

[98] Jung, Psychological Types, p. 149-50

[99] MDR, p. 275

[100] Ibid., p. 275

[101] Ibid., p. 275

[102] Ibid., p.350

[103] Noll, The Jung Cult, p. 137

[104] MDR, p. 335

[105] Lawrence, People Types & Tiger Stripes, p. 6

Carl Jung and the Gnostic Reconciliation of Gender Opposites

By the Rev Ed Hird  

Leanne Payne wrote an unforgettable book in 1995 entitled ‘Crisis in Masculinity’. We live in an age where equality is equated with sameness, where men and women are deeply confused about their gender identity, about what really is authentic male and authentic female. I believe that this Gnostic Reconciliation of Gender Opposites, this gender-blending about authentic maleness and femaleness, is the direct result of our culture’s embracing of the Jungian agenda.

In 1991, I had the wonderful privilege of attending the Episcopal Renewal Ministries(ERM) Leadership Training Institute (LTI) in Evergreen, Colorado. Following that, I encouraged Anglican Renewal Ministries Canada to endorse the LTI approach, including the use of the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Temperament Indicator). However, as I later listened to tapes by Leanne Payne and Dr. Jeffrey Satinover[1], I rethought the Jungian nature of the MBTI, writing a report entitled Carl Jung, Neo-gnosticism, and the MBTI. After much prayer and reflection, ARM Canada decided unanimously in November 1997 to no longer use the MBTI in the Clergy and Lay Leadership Training Institutes.

Over two and a half million people are ‘initiated’ each year into the MBTI process. [2] It is now the most extensively used personality instrument in history. [3] There is even an MBTI version for children, called the MMTIC (Murphy-Meisgeier Type Indicator for Children)[4], and a simplified adult MBTI-like tool for the general public, known as the Keirsey-Bates Indicator. Rev. Robert Innes, of St. John’s College, Durham identifies “the two indicators most widely used by Christian groups – Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram.”[5] One of the key questions is whether the MBTI is an integral part of Jungian neo-gnosticism or alternately a detachable benevolent portion of Jung’s philosophy in an otherwise questionable context. To use a visual picture, is the MBTI the ‘marijuana’, the low-level entry drug that potentially opens the door to the more hard-core Jungian involvement, or is it just a harmless sugar tablet?

Researching the roots of the MBTI showed me Jung’s far-reaching influence in our culture. In 1946, Jung said: “Biographies should show people in their undershirts…This way of looking at people is better than false hero worship!”[6] In this presentation, we will be looking at Carl Jung in his undershirt. Stripped down, we see aspects of Jung and his work which some good church people refuse to acknowledge. You could call this article my search for the historical Jung, looking past the Jung Myth for the real Jungian undershirt. Carl Jung is described by Merill Berger, a Jungian psychologist, as “the psychologist of the 21st century”.[7] Dr. Satinover says “The moral relativism that released upon us the sexual revolution is rooted in an outlook of which (Jung) is the most brilliant contemporary expositor.”[8] Leaders of the 1960’s hippie movement like Timothy Leary were heavily influenced by Jungian teaching[9]. One could say without overstatement that Carl Jung is the Father of Neo-Gnosticism & the New Age Movement. That is why Satinover comments that “One of the most powerful modern forms of Gnosticism is without question Jungian psychology, both within or without the Church”.[10] Dr. Satinover notes that “the ultimate aim…of all Gnostic systems is a mystical vision of the union of good and evil.”[11]

Gnosticism, which is the exalting of esoteric knowledge and experience, is rooted in monism[12]. Monism, the claim that all is one, is the major competing worldview to Judeo-Christian Monotheism. Monotheism of course holds that there is one God. Carl Jung advocated monism, a philosophy that treats all differences as ‘maya’, as illusion.[13] The monistic worldview in Hinduism and the New Age sees the earth and ourselves as the Lord God Almighty. It holds that all is God, including light and darkness, good and evil, right and wrong. Jung’s monism was the core of his advocacy of the reconciliation of opposites, including gender opposites of male and female.

Jung held that our ‘central problem was of course the coniunctio’, the alchemical symbol for the union of opposites.[14] Dr. Satinover notes that Jung “devoted most of his adult life to a study of alchemy…”[15] Alchemy is the search for the Philosopher’s Stone that transmutes lead into gold, a search which Jung resymbolized as psychic and psychological transmutation and wholeness.[16]

In 1929, Jung wrote a commentary on the Secret of the Golden Flower, which he said was “not only a Taoist text concerned with Chinese Yoga, but is also an alchemical treatise.”[17] He comments that “…it was the text of the Golden Flower that first put me on the right track. For in medieval alchemy we have the long-sought connecting link between Gnosis (i.e. of the Gnostics) and the processes of the collective unconscious that can be observed in modern man…”[18] Jung comments: “…a large part of my life work has revolved around the problem of opposites and especially their alchemical symbolism…”[19] Tracy Cuotto comments that “Alchemy involves the uniting of opposites…the fusion of male and female, good and evil, life and death — whose union eventually creates the perfected and completed, ideal personality called Self.”[20]

Many people are not aware that Jung collected one of the largest amassing of spiritualistic writings found on the European continent. Jung wrote the first introduction to Zen Buddhism and the first western commentary on the Tibetan Book of the Dead.[21] Dr. Richard Noll comments that “the divinatory methods of the I Ching, used often by Jung in the 1920s and 1930s, were a part of the initial training program of the C.G. Jung Institute of Zurich in 1948, and its use is widely advocated today in Jungian Analytic-Training Institutes throughout the world.”[22] Jung was also a strong promoter of the occultic mandala, a circular picture with a sun or star usually at the centre. Sun worship, as personified in the mandala, is perhaps the key to fully understanding Jung.[23] Jung taught that the mandala [Sanskrit for ‘circle’] was “the simplest model of a concept of wholeness, and one which spontaneously arises in the mind as a representation of the struggle and reconciliation of opposites.”[24]

During the hippie movement of the 1960’s, the Rock Opera Hair boldly proclaimed the alleged dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Once again Carl Jung foreshadowed this emphasis in a 1940 letter to his former assistant, Godwin Baynes: “1940 is the year when we approach the meridian of the first star in Aquarius. It is the premonitory earthquake of the New Age.”[25] In a letter written by Jung to Sigmund Freud, he said: “My evenings are taken up very largely with astrology. I made horoscopic calculations in order to find a clue to the core of psychological truth…I dare say that we shall one day discover in astrology a good deal of knowledge which has been intuitively projected into the heavens.”[26] In the 1950’s, Jung began to use Tarot reading as part of his astrological psychologizing. [27] Jung was known among his intimate colleagues as the ‘Warlock” (Hexenmeister) of Zurich.[28]

Jung’s family had occult linkage on both sides, from his paternal grandfather’s Freemasonry[29] involvement as Grandmaster of the Swiss Lodge[30], and his maternal family’s long-term involvement with séances and ghosts. Jung was heavily involved for many years with his mother and two female cousins in hypnotically induced séances.[31] They ‘used a primitive, homemade Ouija board and a glass that moved over the letters to spell out answers to questions.”[32] Jung eventually wrote up the séances as his 1902 medical dissertation entitled “On the Psychology and Pathology of So-called Occult Phenomena”.[33] His Preiswerk relatives were outraged that they were ‘shamefully’ included, and blamed Carl Jung for the inability of several of his cousins to find husbands.[34] James A Herrick notes that Jung’s mother ‘introduced him as a child to Hindu gods, for which he maintained a life-long fascination.’[35] After the death of three babies in a row before Carl Jung’s birth, his mother “Emilie withdrew, taking refuge in the private interior visions of the spirits.”[36] Emilie often had to be hospitalized, leaving Carl Jung with the feeling of the feminine as ‘natural unreliability, one can never rely on it’ and the term ‘father’ as ‘reliability and powerlessness.’[37]

Jung’s maternal Grandfather Samuel Preiswerk, a Basel pastor, had weekly séances attempting to contact his deceased first wife in the presence of his second wife, (Jung’s grandmother) and his daughter (Jung’s mother).[38] Jung acquired a spirit guide and guru named ‘Philemon’ [who was described by Jung as ‘an old man with the horns of a bull...and the wings of a fisher’]. Before being Philemon, this creature appeared to Jung as ‘Elijah’, and then finally mutated to ‘Ka’, an Egyptian earth-soul that ‘came from below’.[39] It may be worth reflecting upon why Jung designated his Bollingen Tower as the Shrine of Philemon.[40] Carl Jung commented: “Philemon represented a force which was not myself. In my fantasies I held conversations with him, and he said things which I had not consciously thought. For I observed clearly that it was he who spoke, not I. . . . Psychologically, Philemon represented superior insight. He was a mysterious figure to me. At times he seemed to me quite real, as if he were a living personality. I went walking up and down the garden with him, and to me he was what the Indians call a guru.”[41]

Jung’s fascination with the occult (the hidden) was at the root of his painful break in 1913 with his mentor Sigmund Freud.[42] Freud saw everything through the lens of sexual obsessions, and described the occult as ‘a sea of black mud’ which he feared would compromise the respectability of psychoanalysis.[43]

Jung’s “family was steeped in religion – he had eight uncles in the clergy as well as his maternal grandfather and his earliest playgrounds were churches and graveyards.”[44] The famous Ulysses author James Joyce disparagingly referred to Carl Jung as the Reverend Dr. Jung[45], hinting that Jungianism was really a religion. Carl Jung’s pastor-father loved theological school reflections, but deeply disliked rural congregational life and was losing his faith.[46] The famous Liberal German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher had converted and baptized Carl Jung’s grandfather. Carl Jung was deeply aware of and damaged by his father’s spiritual emptiness, saying “What he said sounded stale and hollow, like a tale told by someone who knows it only by hearsay and cannot quite believe it himself.”[47] Carl Jung’s first and only time of taking Holy Communion was a devastating experience for him: “Slowly I came to understand that this communion had been a fatal experience for me. It had proved hollow; more than that, it had proved to be a total loss. I knew that I would never again be able to participate in this ceremony. ‘Why, that is not religion at all,’ I thought. ‘It is the absence of God; the church is a place I should not go to. It is not life which is there, but death.’”[48]

When younger, Carl Jung had a life-changing dream of a subterranean phallic god which reappeared “whenever anyone spoke too emphatically about Lord Jesus.”[49] Jung commented that “…the ‘man-eater’ in general was symbolized by the phallus, so that the dark Lord Jesus, the Jesuit and the phallus were identical.”[50] This “initiation into the realm of darkness”[51] radically shaped Jung’s approach to Jesus: “Lord Jesus never became quite real for me, never quite acceptable, never quite lovable, for again and again I would think of his underground counterpart…Lord Jesus seemed to me in some ways a god of death…Secretly, his love and kindness, which I always heard praised, appeared doubtful to me…”[52] Jung later confessed to Sigmund Freud that as a boy he had been ‘the victim of a sexual assault.’[53] To what degree, I wonder, was Jung’s ‘revelation’ of the phallus god a fruit of childhood sexual abuse? The next major ‘spiritual breakthrough’ in his life was what Jung described as a “blasphemous vision”[54] of God dropping his dung on the local Cathedral. This vision, said Jung, gave him an intense “experience of divine grace”.[55] These early experiences birthed what many see as a new religion, clothed in a psychological undershirt. Dr Richard Noll notes that “in his December 1913 vision, Jung assumed the stance of the crucified Christ and then was transformed into the lion-headed god.”[56]

How serious, you may wonder, is the Jungian Reconciliation of Good and Evil? Leanne Payne says of Dr. Jeffrey Satinover that “like (C.S.) Lewis, he knows that this synthesis or reconciliation is the greatest threat facing not only Christendom but all mankind today.”[57] “For Jung”, says Satinover, “good and evil evolved into two equal, balanced, cosmic principles that belong together in one overarching synthesis.”[58]

Jung believed that the “dark side” of human nature needed to be “integrated” into a single, overarching “wholeness” in order to form a less strict and difficult definition of goodness.[59] Jung significantly said: “I would rather be whole than good.”[60] Wholeness for Jung is really the gnostic reconciliation of opposites.

“If Christ means anything to me,” said Jung, “it is only as a symbol…I do not find the historical Jesus edifying at all, merely interesting because controversial.”[61] Jung believed that “the Christ-symbol lacks wholeness in the modern psychological sense, since it does not include the dark side of things…”[62] For Jung, it was regrettable that Christ in his goodness lacked a shadow side, and God the Father, who is the Light, lacked darkness.[63] Jung sought a solution to this dilemma in the Holy Spirit who allegedly united the split in the moral opposites symbolized by Christ and Satan.[64] “Looked at from a quaternary standpoint”, writes Jung, “the Holy Ghost is a reconciliation of opposites and hence the answer to the suffering in the Godhead which Christ personifies.”[65] Jung believed that Satan and Jesus, as spiritual opposites, were gnostically reconciled through the Holy Spirit. “It is possible”, said Jung, “for a man to attain totality, to become whole, only with the co-operation of the spirit of darkness…”[66]

After experiencing Goethe’s Faust, Jung came to believe in the ‘universal power’ of evil and “its mysterious role it played in delivering man from darkness and suffering.”[67] “Most of all”, said Jung, “(Faust) awakened in me the problem of opposites, of good and evil, of mind and matter, of light and darkness.”[68]

In post-modern culture, the Judeo-Christian worldview is often dismissed as too narrow-minded and dogmatic. Jung saw the reconciliation of opposites as a sign of great cultural sophistication: “(Chinese philosophy) never failed to acknowledge the polarity and paradoxity (sic) of all life. The opposites always balanced one another – a sign of high culture. One-sidedness, though it lends momentum, is a sign of barbarism.”[69] It would not be too far off to describe Jung as a gnostic Taoist. “The book on types (PT)”, says Jung, “yielded the view that every judgment made by an individual is conditioned by his personality type and that every point of view is necessarily relative. This raised the question of the unity which must compensate this diversity, and it led me directly to the Chinese concept of Tao.”[70] Being influenced by the Yin-Yang of Taoism, Jung believed that “Everything requires for its existence its opposite, or it fades into nothingness.”[71] The Batman movie ‘Dark Knight’ has a very Jungian moment where the Joker says to Batman: “I don’t want to kill you! What would I do without you? Go back to ripping off mob dealers? No, no, NO! No. You… you… complete me.”[72] George Lucas’ ‘dark side of the Force’ in Star Wars is another epic Jungian moment that conditions post-moderns to see spirituality as a reconciliation of light and darkness.

In the book Psychological Types, Jung comments that “Yoga is a method by which the libido is systematically ‘drawn in’ and thereby released from the bondage of opposites.”[73] Jung entitled an entire section in PT: “Concerning the Brahmanic Conception of the Reconciling Symbol”. Jung notes: “Brahman therefore must signify the irrational union of the opposites – hence their final overcoming…These quotations show that Brahman is the reconciliation and dissolution of the opposites – hence standing beyond them as an irrational factor.”[74]

While in India in 1938, Jung says that he “was principally concerned with the question of the psychological nature of evil.”[75] He was “impressed again and again by the fact that these people were able to integrate so-called ‘evil’ without ‘losing face’…To the oriental, good and evil are meaningfully contained in nature, and are merely varying degrees of the same thing. I saw that Indian spirituality contains as much of evil as of good…one does not really believe in evil, and one does not really believe in good.”[76]

In a comment reminiscent of our post-modern relativistic culture, Jung said of Hindu thought: “Good or evil are then regarded at most as my good or my evil, as whatever seems to me good or evil”.[77] “We must beware”, said Jung, “of thinking of good and evil as absolute opposites…The criterion of ethical action can no longer consist in the simple view that good has the force of a categorical imperative, while so -called evil can resolutely be shunned. Recognition of the reality of evil necessarily relativizes the good, and the evil likewise, converting both into halves of a paradoxical whole.”

“This work Psychological Types (1921), said Jung, “sprung originally from my need to define the way in which my outlook differs from Freud’s and Adler’s. In attempting to answer this question, I came across the problem of types, for it is one’s psychological type which from the outset determines and limits a person’s judgment.”[78] Freud called Jung’s Psychological Types book ‘the work of a snob and a mystic’.[79] Jung was deeply traumatized by his split with Freud, and used the Psychological Types book to rationalize the Jung/Freud split. Jung saw himself as the so-called introvert, focusing on thinking, in contrast to Freud who was allegedly the extrovert, focused on feeling.[80] Many are unaware that the terms ‘introvert’ and ‘extrovert’ were invented by Carl Jung, and mean far more conceptually than simply being outgoing or shy.[81]

Dr. Gordon Lawrence, a strong Jungian/MBTI supporter, teaches that “In Jung’s theory, the two kinds of perception – sensing and intuition – are polar opposites of each other. Similarly, thinking judgment and feeling judgment are polar opposites.”[82] It seems to me that the setting up of the psychological polar opposites in PT functions as a useful prelude for gnostic reconciliation of all opposites. The MBTI helps condition our minds into thinking about the existence of polar opposites, and their alleged barriers to perfect wholeness. To accept the eight polarities within the MBTI predisposes one to embrace Jung’s teaching that the psyche “cannot set up any absolute truths, for its own polarity determines the relativity of its statements.”[83]

Jung was accused of anti-Semitism because the Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie journal, which Jung edited, endorsed Mein Kampf as required reading for all psychoanalysts.[84] His defense was that he was trying to save psychoanalysis from being obliterated by the Nazis as a ‘Jewish science.[85] In 1936, Jung said of Hitler: “[Hitler] is a medium, German policy is not made; it is revealed through Hitler. He is the mouthpiece of the Gods of old… He is the Sybil, the Delphic oracle.”[86] The influence of Germanic anti-Semitism on Jungianism can now be seen in a secret quota clause designed to limit Jewish membership to 10% in the Analytical Psychology Club of Zurich. Jung’s secret Jewish quota was in effect from 1916 to 1950, and only came to public light in 1989.[87] While it would be a mistake to paint Jung as an outright Nazi sympathizer, there was much confusion, almost a gnostic reconciliation of good and evil, in how Jung responded to Hitler’s Germany.[88] The Rev Charles Raven, Director of SPREAD, comments that “Jung’s confused response to Nazi Germany and anti-Semitism contrasts sharply with the clear-sightedness of Karl Barth and the Confessing Church expressed in the Barmen Declaration in 1933. This helps to underline the way that Jungian psychology saps the ability to recognise and resist evil.”[89]

Two of Jung’s ‘most influential archetypes’ are the anima & animus, described by Jung as “psychological bisexuality”.[90] Jung teaches in PT that every man has a female soul (anima) and every woman has a male soul (animus).[91] Noll comments that “Jung’s first encounter with the feminine entity he later called the anima seems to have begun with his use of mediumistic techniques…”[92] Based on the recently discovered personal diary of Sabina Spielrein, John Kerr claims that Jung’s so-called anima “the woman within” which he spoke to, was none other than his idealized image of his former mistress, patient, and fellow therapist, Sabina Spielrein.[93] After breaking with both Spielrein and Freud, Jung felt his own soul vanish as if it had flown away to the land of the dead. Shortly after, while his children were plagued by nightmares and the house was seemingly haunted, Jung heard a chorus of spirits cry out demanding: ‘We have come back from Jerusalem where we have not found what we sought.’[94]

Jung’s next mistress Toni Wolff also started as Jung’s patient and became a Jungian analyst. Toni Wolff was hugely influential in the forming of Jungian Psychology. Jungian Analyst Dr. C.A. Maier holds that ‘when it comes to psychological types, (Toni Wolff) played a very important role there.’[95] “In this unfamiliar, terrifying underground of the collective unconscious, (Toni Wolff) was Jung’s guide to such an extent that she lived with him…She reflected his anima in a way that Mrs Jung didn’t.”[96] Baroness Vera von der Heydt comments that “It was (Toni Wolff) who introduced him to all the Eastern things, Eastern spirituality, Eastern philosophy and so on.”[97]

Part of the gender-bending and gender-blending of our post-modern culture is rooted in Jung’s androgynous teaching about the so-called anima and animus.[98] In the Jungian ‘Matter of the Heart’ video series, Dr Joseph (Jane) Wheelwright comments: “This is built into the heart of Jung’s whole psychology that one should develop one’s contrasexual components, as Margaret Mead so quaintly phrases it. Jung prefers to talk about the anima and the animus…All of us who are really committed and involved in the Jungian world are very busy trying to develop our animuses or our animas….This androgynous, or almost androgynous, state of being, is the way that one hopes to be before they throw the switch.”[99] Dr Richard Noll comments about Jung’s pansexual practices: “Emma Jung did not choose polygamy freely. The situation was presented to her by her husband. At best, she freely chose to adapt to it”[100] In a letter to Freud dated January 30, 1910, Jung wrote: “The prerequisite for a good marriage, it seems to me, is the license to be unfaithful.”[101]

Jung’s sexual views were profoundly influenced by the German physician and psychoanalyst Otto Gross (1877-1920). Otto Gross advocated the “life-enhancing value of eroticism which is so great that it must remain free from extraneous considerations in laws, and above all, from any integration into everyday life…. Husbands and wives should not begrudge each other whatever erotic stimuli may present themselves. Jealousy is something mean. Just as one has several people for friends, one can also have sexual union with several people at any given period and be ‘faithful’ to each one…. Free love will save the world.”[102] As a child of the 1960’s and ‘70’s, I cannot read Otto Gross without thinking of Haight-Ashbury. Is it merely a co-incidence that Timothy Leary was psychoanalyzed by Joseph Henderson, a California Jungian analyst, before he birthed the hippie/drug movement?[103]

Otto Gross and Jung sometimes psychoanalyzed each other for up to twelve hours non-stop. Speaking of Gross’ sexual/religious orgies, Jung commented: “The existence of a phallic or orgiastic cult does not indicate a particularly lascivious life any more than the ascetic symbolism of Christianity means an especially moral life.”[104] Jung’s patient/mistress Sabina Spielrein comments: “I sat there waiting in great depression. Now he [Jung] arrives, beaming with great pleasure, and tells me with strong emotion about Gross, about the great insight he had just received [i.e. about polygamy]; he no longer wants to suppress his feelings about me…”[105] Gross’ motto was ‘Nichts verdraengen!’ (repress nothing!)[106]

After being haunted by ghosts, Jung wrote his Seven Sermons to the Dead book in 1917. In these seven messages, Jung ‘reveals’, in agreement with the 2nd century Gnostic writer Basilides, that the True and Ultimate God is Abraxas, who combines Jesus and Satan, good and evil all in one.[107] This is why Jung held that “Light is followed by shadow, the other side of the Creator.”[108] Richard and Linda Nathan, long-term ex-Jungians, commented that “In true Gnostic fashion, Jung shared the Seven Sermons to the Dead book with close friends but hid it from the public.[109]

You may be asking yourself: “How much influence does Jungianism actually have on the Church and postmodern culture? The answer is that there is an enormous and sometimes subtle influence. “Jung’s direct and indirect impact on mainstream Christianity – and thus on Western culture,” says Dr. Satinover, “has been incalculable. It is no exaggeration to say that the theological positions of most mainstream denominations in their approach to pastoral care, as well as in their doctrines and liturgy – have become more or less identical with Jung’s psychological/symbolic theology.”[110]

There are key individuals promoting the Jungian gospel to the Church, such as Morton Kelsey, John Sanford (not John & Paula Sandford), Thomas Moore, Joseph Campbell, and Bishop John Spong. Thomas Moore, a former Roman Catholic monk, became widely popular through his best-seller: Care of the Soul. John Sanford, the son of the late Agnes Sanford, is an Episcopal Priest and Jungian analyst, with several books promoting the Jungian way. Morton Kelsey is another Episcopal Priest who has subtly woven the Jungian gospel through virtually every one of his books, especially those aimed for the Charismatic renewal constituency. Satinover describes Kelsey as having “made a career of such compromise”, noting that Kelsey has now proceeded in his latest book Sacrament of Sexuality to approve of the normalization of homosexuality.[111]

Joseph Campbell, cited by Satinover as a disciple of Jung, is famous for his public TV series on “The Power of Myth”.[112] Bishop John Spong, who has written two books (Resurrection: Myth or Reality & The Easter Moment) denying the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ, gives Joseph Campbell credit for shaping his views on Jesus’ resurrection. “I was touched by Campbell’s ability to seek the truth of myths while refusing to literalize the rational explanation of those myths…Campbell allowed me to appreciate such timeless themes as virgin births, incarnations, physical resurrections, and cosmic ascensions…Slowly, ever so slowly, but equally ever so surely, a separation began to occur for me between the experience captured for us Christians in the word Easter and the interpretation of that experience found in both the Christian Scriptures and the developing Christian traditions…”[113] Few people have realized that Bishop Spong’s spiritual grandfather is none other than Carl Jung.

While in theological school, I became aware of the strong influence of Dr. Paul Tillich on many modern clergy. In recently reading C.G. Jung & Paul Tillich [written by John Dourley, a Jungian analyst & Roman priest from Ottawa], I came to realize that Tillich and Jung are ‘theological twins’. In a tribute given at a Memorial for Jung’s death, Tillich gave to Jung’s thought the status of an ontology because its depth and universality constituted a ‘doctrine of being’.[114] It turns out that Tillich is heavily in debt in Jung for his view of God as the supposed “Ground of Being”. As well, both Tillich and Jung, says Dourley, “understand the self to be that centering force within the psyche which brings together the opposites or polarities, whose dynamic interplay makes up life itself.”[115] As a Jungian popularizer, Tillich saw life as “made up of the flow of energy between opposing poles or opposites.”[116]

So many current theological emphases in today’s church can be traced directly back to Carl Jung. For example, with the loss of confidence in the Missionary imperative, many mainline church administrators today sound remarkably like Jung when he said: “What we from our point of view call colonization, missions to the heathen, spread of civilization, etc, has another face – the face of a bird of prey seeking with cruel intentness for distant quarry – a face worthy of a race of pirates and highwaymen.”[117] In speaking of Buddhism and Christianity, Jung taught the now familiar inter-faith dialogue line, that “Both paths are right.”[118] Jung spoke of Jesus, Mani, Buddha, and Lao-Tse as ‘pillars of the spirit’, saying “I could give none preference over the other.”[119] The English Theologian Don Cupitt says that Jung pioneered the multi-faith approach now widespread in the Church.[120]

In light of the current controversies around “Mother Goddess” hymnbooks, it is interesting to read in the MBTI source book Psychological Types about the “Gnostic prototype, viz, Sophia, an immensely significant symbol for the Gnosis.”[121] You are probably well aware that in the best-selling book The Shack, God the Father is portrayed as an Aunt Jemima/Oprah Winfrey blend named Elouisa, and the Holy Spirit becomes Sarayu, an eclectic woman of Asian descent. While I personally enjoyed reading much of the popular Shack novel, I have unresolved concerns about how The Shack may be used, even unintentionally, to deconstruct people’s classical understandings of the Trinity and replace it with mother/father god/dess worship.[122] Postmodern thinking, even among evangelicals, is remarkably subjectivist and fluid, easily leading to a gnostic reconciliation of gender opposites even in the Godhead.[123]

My challenging to those reading this is to seek the Lord about where God may be calling you to renounce any false gods, any secret idolatry, any gnostic reconciliation of opposites, particularly in the area of Jungianism and the New Age. May we never forget the warning of the prophet Isaiah, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness” (Isaiah 5:29)[124]. It is time to stand up and affirm the authentic male and authentic female, to affirm the biblical definition of marriage in an age of Jungian-inspired gender confusion.

The Reverend Ed Hird, Rector

St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver

Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)

http://stsimonschurch.ca

-previously presented and published at the Think Tank Conference in San Diego, California

-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’

http://www.battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com

p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘Ed Hird’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD.  This can also be done by PAYPAL using the e-mail ed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99 CDN/USD.

-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide :  Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada

You can also download the complimentary Leader’s Guide PDF: Battle for the Soul Leaders Guide

[1] Dr. Jeffrey Satinover’s critique of Jungianism came with unique credibility, given his background as an eminent Jungian scholar, analyst, and past President of the C.G. Jung Foundation.
[2] Isabel Briggs Myers with Peter B. Myers, Gifts Differing, Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Press, Inc., 1980,p. xvii. Many charismatics have a soft spot for this book, because it quotes portions of scripture from Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12. The actual link, however, between those bible passages, and the Jung/Myers-Briggs theories is rather questionable.
In an October 29th, 1996 letter from Rev. Fred Goodwin, Rector of National Ministries for ERM, Fred Goodwin commented: “I would suggest that in light of your concerns, you drop the MBTI and use some of the material out on small group ministry and discipling instead—which we find are desperate needs for leadership training in the church.”
[3] Ibid., p.210; also Dr. Gordon Lawrence, People Types & Tiger Stripes, p. xi; A book Prayer & Temperament written by Msgr. Chester Michael and Marie Norrisey in 1984 has been very effective in winning Roman Catholics and Anglicans to the MBTI. The book claims that the MBTI designations will make you either oriented to Ignatian prayer (if you are SJ), Augustinian prayer (if you are NF), Franciscan prayer(if you are SP), or Thomistic prayer(if you are NT). In the MBTI, the four sets of types are Extravert(E) & Introvert(I), Sensate(S) & Intuitive(N), Thinking(T) & Feeling(F), and Judging(J) & Perceiving(P). None of these 8 innocuous-sounding type names mean what they sound like. Instead each of the 8 type names has unique and mysterious, perhaps even occultic, definitions given by Jung himself in a massive section at the back of Psychological Types.
[4] Dr. Gordon Lawrence, People Types & Tiger Stripes, Gainesville, FL: Center for Applications of Psychological Types, 1979, p. 222
[5] Robert Innes, Personality Indicators and The Spiritual Life, Grove Books Ltd., Cambridge, 1996, p.3; The Enneagram is significantly occultic in nature and origin, coming from Sufi, numerology, and Arica New-Age sources. George Gurideff, Oscar Ichazo of Esalen Institute, and Claudio Naranjo are the prominent New Agers who have popularized it, and then introduced it, through Fr. Bob Oschs SJ, into the Christian Church. For more information, I recommend Robert Innes’ booklet and Mitchell Pacwa SJ article’s “Tell Me Who I Am, O Ennegram” Christian Research Journal, Fall 1991, pp. 14ff. My article on ‘George Gurdjieff and the Enigmatic Enneagram’ can be read at http://www3.telus.net/st_simons/arm04.htm
[6] CG Jung, 1946 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJhblm4KUmo
[7] Merill Berger & Stephen Segaller, The Wisdom of the Dreams, C.G. Jung Foundation, New York, NY, Shamballa Publications, Front Cover
[8] Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, Baker Book House Co., 1996, p. 238 “Because of his great influence in propagating gnostic philosophy and morals in churches & synagogues, Jung deserves a closer look. The moral relativism that released upon us the sexual revolution is rooted in an outlook of which (Jung) is the most brilliant contemporary expositor.”
[9] Robert Greenfield, Timothy Leary: a Biography, Harcourt Books, 2006, p. 86; Robert C Fuller, Stairways to Heaven: drugs in religious history, Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 2000, p. 126, “That is why Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and mystics like Allan Watts or Aldous Huxley were important to the spiritual underground; they were purveyors of the alternate myths and pathways to spiritual experience.”
[10] Jeffrey Satinover, The Empty Self, p. 27. Jung has “blended psychological reductionism with gnostic spirituality to produce a modern variant of mystical, pagan polytheism in which the multiple ‘images of the instincts’ (his ‘archetypes’) are worshipped as gods”, Satinover, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, p. 238: Carl Jung “explicitly identified depth psychology, especially his own, as heir to the apostolic tradition, especially in what he considered its superior handling of the problem of evil.”
[11] Jeffrey Satinover, The Empty Self, p. 23 Jung claimed that “In the ancient world, the Gnostics, whose arguments were very much influenced by psychic experience, tackled the problem of evil on a broader basis than the Church Fathers.” “Whatever the system, and however the different stages are purportedly marked, the ultimate aim, the innermost circle of all Gnostic systems, is a mystical vision of the union of good and evil.”
[12] Monism: “a view that there is only one kind of ultimate substance b: the view that reality is one unitary organic whole with no independent parts” http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monism
[13] Walter Shelburne, Mythos and Logos in the Thought of Carl Jung, 1988, Sunny Press, Albany, New York, p. 18
[14] Bair, Ibid., p. 526
[15] Ibid., p. 27, Ft. 28
[16] Carl Jung & Aniela Jaffe, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, translated from the German by Richard & Clara Winston, Vintage Books-Random House, 1961/1989, p. 205 “The possibility of a comparison with alchemy, and the uninterrupted intellectual chain back to Gnosticism, gave substance to my psychology.”
[17] Carl Jung, Psychology & the East, London & New York: Ark Paper Back, 1978/1986, p. 3
[18] Ibid., p. 6
[19] MDR, p. 233
[20] “Psychology, Astrology and Carl Jung”, Metamorphosis Newsletter, August 2004, by Tracy Cuotto, http://consciousevolution.com/metamorphosis/0408/jung0408.htm
[21] Jeffrey Satinover, The Empty Self, p. 28 Dr. James Hillman, the former director for the Jungian Institute in Zurich, commented, “(Jung) wrote the first introduction to Zen Buddhism, he…brought in (Greek Mythology), the gods and the goddesses, the myths,…he was interested in astrology…” The Wisdom of the Dreams: Carl Gustav Jung: a Stephen Segaller Video, Vol. 3, “ A World of Dreams”. Jung also wrote the first western commentary on the Tibetan Book of the Dead.( Psychology & the East, p. 60)
[22] Dr. Richard Noll, The Jung Cult.: Origins of a Charismatic Movement, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 333
[23] Noll, The Jung Cult, p. 137
[24] MDR, p. 335
[25] Merill Berger & Stephen Segaller, The Wisdom of the Dreams, p. 162; Jung & Jaffe, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 340; In Jung’s book Aion, he holds that “…the appearance of Christ coincided with the beginning of a new aeon, the age of the Fishes. A sychronicity exists between the life of Christ and the objective astronomical event, the entrance of the spring equinox into the sign of Pisces.” p. 221
[26] Richard Webster, Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science, & Psychoanalysis, Basic Books: Harper Collins, 1995, p. 385. Jung comments: “For instance, it appears that the signs of the zodiac are character pictures, in other words, libido symbols which depict the typical qualities of the libido at a given moment…”
[27] Bair, ibid., p. 549 “Both Hanni and Gret used several different sets of cards when they taught (Jung) how to consult the Tarot, before they settled on the Grimaud cards of Antoine Court de Gebelin, the Ancien Tarot de Marseilles. Jung thought it was the only deck that possessed the properties and fulfilled the requirements of metaphor that he gleaned from within the alchemical texts.”
[28] The Gnostic Jung and The Seven Sermons to the Dead By Stephan A. Hoeller, A Quest book, The Theosophical Publishing House , 1982. p. xiii
http://books.google.ca/books?id=XDSSXDezdBMC&pg=PR13&lpg=PR13&dq=Hexenmeister+of+Zurich&source=web&ots=aXYRkrGcqp&sig=z1rtge0YGGQdgYNNEoxQFugI2i8&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result ; Carl G. Jung: Man of Science or Modern Shaman?, By Richard and Linda Nathan http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/08/nathan/jung.htm
[29] Dr George Puritch, a Prayer Ministry leader, commented recently to me: “I have felt for a long time that many of the false beliefs within the church had their foundations in the occultism of Free Masonry. Your research that Jung’s grandfather was a Grand Master of the Lodge reveals the roots of his deep occultism, not to mention his occultic roots on his mother’s side.” All the occultic practices of Masonry as described by Ankerberg and Weldon (1990. The Secret Teachings of the Masonic. A Christian Perspective. Moody Press Chicago) are revealed in Jung’s philosophies, the relativism of good and evil, the denial of the deity of Jesus, universalism, worship of the dead, deification of man, etc.”
[30] Jung & Jaffe, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p.232
[31] John Kerr, A Most Dangerous Method: the Story of Jung, Freud, & Sabina Spielrein, New York, Alfred Knopf Books, 1993, p. 50 & 54
[32] Deirdre Bair, Jung: a Biography, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, p. 46
[33] John Kerr, ibid., p. 50 & 54; The New Encyclopedia of the Occult, by John Michael, Llewellyn Worldwide Publisher, p. 250
[34] Bair, ibid., p. 64 “Later generations held Jung’s dissertation directly responsible for the fact that many of the younger Preiswerk daughters in Helly’s generation did not marry.”
[35] James A Herrick, The Making of a New Spirituality, Intervarsity Press, 204, p. 191; Campbell, Portable Jung, p. viii; Deirdre Bair, Jung: a Biography, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 2003, p. 18
http://books.google.ca/books?id=KzbobUhvpf4C&pg=PA191&lpg=PA191&dq=Carl+Jung+Occult&source=bl&ots=JVx6vwaVug&sig=OCZs_AGb9shRQJyjzSzL2ojQ2AU&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result
[36] Bair, ibid., p. 18
[37] Bair, ibid., p. 21
[38] “Session 11: Jung and Pagan Psychology”, Temple of the Sacred Spiral, http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/palette/187/session11.html
[39] Satinover, The Empty Self, p. 37; The spirit guide Philemon/Elijah later mutated into Salome, who addressed Jung in a self-directed trance vision as Christ. Jung ‘saw’ himself assume the posture of a victim of crucifixion, with a snake coiled around him, and his face transformed into that of a lion from the Mithraic mystery religion.(C.G. Jung, Analytical Psychology rinceton University Press, 1989:, p. 96, 98)
[40] Jung & Jaffe, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p.223. “Shrine of Philemon: Repentance of Faust” was the inscription carved in stone by Jung over the entrance of the Bollingen Tower, where he lived and wrote.
[41] MDR, p. 183
[42] The final straw was when Jung published Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (translated as Psychology of the Unconscious.) http://everything2.com/title/Carl%20Jung
[43] Alex Owen, The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern, University of Chicago Press, 2004, p. 143
[44] “Session 11: Jung and Pagan Psychology”, Temple of the Sacred Spiral, http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/palette/187/session11.html
[45] Bair, ibid., p. 407
[46] Joel Ryce-Menuhin, Jung and the Monotheisms, Routledge Publisher, p. 183
[47] MDR, p. 42-43
[48] Ibid, p. 55
[49] Ibid., p. 12
[50] Ibid., p. 12
[51] Ibid., p. 15
[52] Ibid., p. 13
[53] Bair, ibid, p. 70
[54] MDR, Ibid., p. 58. Jung concluded from this ‘Cathedral’ experience that “God Himself can…condemn a person to blasphemy” Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 74
[55] Ibid., p. 55
[56] Dr Richard Noll, The Aryan Christ, Random House,1997, p.138.
[57] Satinover, The Empty Self, p. 3; Dr. Satinover sees the temptation facing our generation that”…on a theological plane, we succumb to the dangerous fantasy that Good and Evil will be reunited in a higher oneness.” Satinover, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, p. 238
[58] Satinover, Ibid., p 240. “…This relativization of good and evil by their reconciliation is the heart of the ancient doctrines of gnosticism, which also located spirituality, hence morality, within man himself. Hence ‘the union of opposites’.” Keirsey & Bates, authors of Please Understand Me, and creators of the more popularized Keirsey-Bates adaptation of the MBTI, teach openly in their book on the Jungian “shadow…It’s as if, in being attracted to our opposite, we grope around for that rejected, abandoned, or unlived half of ourselves…(p.68)”
[59] Satinover, Ibid., p. 240
[60] http://www.trans4mind.com/jamesharveystout/jung.htm ; Spirituality and Psychological Health By Richard H. Cox, Betty Ervin-Cox, Louis Hoffman, COSSP Press, p. 199
[61] Bair, ibid., p. 526; Carl G Jung to Adolf Keller, CL-2, March 20th, 1951, p. 10
[62] Jung, Aion, Collected Works, p. 41
[63] John P. Dourley, C.G. Jung & Paul Tillich: The Psyche as Sacrament, Inner City Books, 1981, p. 63 “(Jung) also feels that it is questionable in that (the Christ symbol) contains no trace of the shadow side of life.” Fr. Dourley, a Jungian analyst, also comments on p. 63 about Jung’s “criticism of the Christian conception of a God in who there is no darkness.”
[64] Dourley, C.G. Jung & Paul Tillich, p. 70
[65] Carl Jung, ‘A Psychological Approach to The Trinity’, CW11, para. 260 “Thus for Jung, says John Dourley, the Spirit unites the exclusively spiritual reality of Christ with that which is identified with the devil, including ‘the dark world of nature-bound man’, the chthonic side of nature excluded by Christianity from the Christ image.” para. 263; In a similar vein, Jung saw the alchemical figure of Mercurius as a compensation for the one-sideness of the symbol of Christ. Carl Jung, ‘The Spirit Mercurius’, Alchemical Studies, CW13, para. 295. Jung comments, “As early as 1944, in Psychology and Alchemy, I had been able to demonstrate the parallelism between the Christ figure and the central concept of the alchemists, the lapis or stone.” MDR, p.210
[66] C.G. Jung, ‘The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy Tales, CW9, para. 453
[67] MDR, Ibid., p. 60
[68] MDR, Ibid., p. 235
[69] Jung, Psychology & The East, p. 11
[70] Jung, MDR p. 207; Carl Jung, Psychology & the East, p. 15 “The wise Chinese would say in the words of the I Ching: ‘When Yang has reached its greatest strength, the dark power of yin is born within its depths, for night begins at midday when yang breaks up and begins to change into yin.”
[71] Jung, Psychology & the East, p. 184
[72] Dark Knight movie, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/quotes
[73] Jung, Psychological Types, p. 149-50 “The Indian (Brahman-Atman teaching) conception teaches liberation from the opposites, by which every sort of affective style and emotional hold to the object is understood…”
[74] Jung, Psychological Types, p. 245-46
[75] MDR, p. 275
[76] Ibid., p. 275
[77] Ibid., p. 275
[78] Berger & Segaller, Wisdom of the Dreams; p. 103, MDR, p. 207
[79] Bair, Ibid., p. 286
[80] Bair, ibid., p. 286
[81] The Old Wise Man, By HP-Time.com, Monday, Feb. 14, 1955 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,807036-3,00.html ; “According to Carl Jung, introversion and extraversion refer to the direction of psychic energy. If a person’s energy usually flows outwards, he or she is an extravert, while if this energy normally flows inwards, this person is an introvert.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introvert
[82] Lawrence, People Types & Tiger Stripes, p. 113
[83] MDR, Ibid., p.350
[84] http://www.answers.com/topic/carl-jung#Response_to_Nazism
[85] “Carl Jung”, Crystalinks, http://www.crystalinks.com/jung.html
[86] C.G Jung Speaking, Interviews and Encounters, Princeton University Press, 1977, p. 93
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung
[87] Noll, Ibid., p. 259
[88] Dr. Richard Noll, The Aryan Christ: the secret life of Carl Jung, Random House, 1997
http://www.amazon.com/Aryan-Christ-Secret-Life-Carl/dp/0679449450
[89] SPREAD, http://www.anglicanspread.org/
[90] Ibid., p. 391; Henri F. Ellenberger makes a strong case that Jung borrowed his matriarchy and anima/animus theories from Bachofen, an academic likened by some to the scientific credibility of Erik Von Daniken of The Chariots of the Gods and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi of TM and its Yogic Flying. (Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious, Penguin Press, 1970, pp. 218-223); Philip Davis, “The Swiss Maharishi”, Touchstone Issue 92, Spring 1996, p.13); Richard Noll, The Jung Cult, p. 188-90
[91] Jung, Psychological Types, p. 595
[92] Noll, The Jung Cult, p. 202-203; Philip Davis comments: “Jung’s therapeutic technique of ‘active imagination’ is now revealed as a sanitized version of the sort of trance employed by spiritualistic mediums and Theosophical travelers, with whom Jung was personally familiar.” (Philip Davis,”The Swiss Maharishi”, Touchstone Issue 92, Spring 1996, p.14)
[93] John Kerr, A Most Dangerous Method, p. 12; 49;191; 498 “…there (the Russian-born Spielrein) remained (in almost complete obscurity) until the publication of the Freud/Jung correspondence in 1974.”; p. 502;503: After the collapse of the Spielrein affair, John Kerr notes that “Jung’s condition had so deteriorated that his wife allowed Toni Wolff openly to become his mistress, and a sometime member of the household, simply because she was the only person who could calm him down.”; p. 507- Jung’s stone bear carving in his Bollingen Tower specifically symbolized the anima . Curiously the inscription said: “Russia gets the ball rolling”
[94] Kerr, Ibid., p. 503; MDR, p.190
[95] Carl Jung- Matters of the Heart Video – Part 6, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3nKlA-Z-P0
[96] Matters of the Heart Video – Part 6, ibid.
[97] Matters of the Heart Video – Part 6, ibid.
[98] Matters of the Heart Video, Part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJhblm4KUmo
[99] Dr Joseph Wheelwright, San Francisco Jungian Analyst, Matters of the Heart Video, Part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJhblm4KUmo
[100] Dr. Richard Noll, The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung, New York: Random House, 1997, p, 96; “The Erring Christ”, by the Richard Kew, Touchstone Magazine, July /August 1998, http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=11-04-052-b
[101] Sigmund Freud/Carl Jung Letters, edited by William McGuire, 1974, p. 289
[102] “The Jung Cult . . .” by Paul Likoudis, The Wanderer Magazine, December 29, 1994, St. Paul, MN http://www.ewtn.org/library/NEWAGE/JUNGCUL1.TXT
[103] Robert Greenfield, Timothy Leary: a Biography, Harcourt Books, 2006, p. 86
[104] Likoudis, ibid., http://www.ewtn.org/library/NEWAGE/JUNGCUL1.TXT ; Carl Jung, Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, Collected Works of CG Jung, Volume 5
http://www.archive.org/stream/psychologyoftheu011802mbp/psychologyoftheu011802mbp_djvu.txt
[105] Seduction of Unreason, by Richard Wolin, Princeton University Press, 2004 p. 79; Wolin notes that ‘Gross met an untimely if foreseeable end on the streets of Berlin where he was discovered starving and homeless in 1920’, p. 78.
[106] Frank, Links wo das Herz ist, p. 49; Bair, ibid., p. 136; Gross’ motto reminds me of the 1960’s slogan ‘if it feels good, do it.’
[107] MDR, p. 378
[108] MDR, p. 328
[109] “Carl G Jung: Man of Science or Modern Shaman?”, by Richard and Linda Nathan, 2008, http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/08/nathan/jung.htm When a famous Jewish theologian, Martin Buber, happened upon it, he accused Jung of being a modern Gnostic. Jung vehemently denied it, claiming the book was only a “youthful frivolity,” but in other places he called it central to all his later work.”
[110] Satinover, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, p.240. Satinover dryly comments that “in the United States, the Episcopal Church has more or less become a branch of Jungian psychology, theologically and liturgically.” (Empty Self ,p. 27, Footnote. 27)
[111] Satinover, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, p. 241
[112] Satinover, The Empty Self, p. 9; Joseph Campbell in fact worked personally with Jung and published through the Jungian-controlled Bollingen Foundation , ( Philip Davis, “The Swiss Maharishi”, Touchstone Issue 92, Spring 1996, p.11)
[113] The Right Reverend John Spong, Resurrection: Reality or Myth, Harper, 1994, p. xi. His parallel book is The Easter Moment.
[114] A Memorial Meeting : New York, Analytical Psychology Club, 1962, p. 31
[115] Dourley, C.G. Jung & Paul Tillich, p. 17
[116] Dourley, Ibid., p. 48 The persistent modern emphasis on the so-called ‘inner child’ makes a lot more sense when seen as a spin-off from Jung’s teaching that the symbol of the child is “that final goal that reconciles the opposites.” (Dourley, p. 83)
[117] Ibid., p. 248; www.thejungiansociety.org/Jung%20Society/Conferences/Conference-2004/Colonial-Postcolonial-Context.html
[118] Ibid., p. 279
[119] Dourley, C.G. Jung & Paul Tillich, p. 65
[120] The Wisdom of the Dream, p. 99
[121] Carl Jung, Psychological Types: or the Psychology of Individuation, Princeton University Press, 1921/1971, p. 290. Dr. Jeffrey Satinover memorably comments as a former Jungian that ‘Goddess worship’ is not the cure for misogyny, but it is its precondition, whether overtly or unconsciously. (The Empty Self, p. 9); Marija Bimbutas, the late professor of archeology at UCLA, included Jung and more than a half dozen of his noted disciples in the bibliographies to her books on the alleged matriarchies of the Balkans:The Language of the Goddess(1989)and The Civilization of the Goddess(1991),(Philip Davis,”The Swiss Maharishi”, Touchstone Issue 92, Spring 1996, p.13)
[122] Ed Hird, Battle for the Soul of Canada, 2006, p. 44, “It is not by accident that virtually every new-age fad, including the DaVinci Code deception, sooner or later draws people into mother/father god/dess worship and sexual immorality. I have found that idolatry and immorality are identical twins that always hang out together, especially around god/desses… I know of Anglican Cathedrals in Canada that both endorse the pan-sexual agenda and twist Jesus’ own words to pray “Our Father/Mother in Heaven, Hallowed be Your Name”. As Jesus clearly taught us, God’s name is Father, and He likes His name.”
[123] In the key Montreal Declaration of Anglican Essentials, section 1 says: “The Triune God: There is one God, self-revealed as three persons, “of one substance, power and eternity,” the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. For the sake of the Gospel, we decline proposals to modify or marginalize these names and we affirm their rightful place in prayer, liturgy, and hymnody.” For those wishing to study further on the mother/father god/dess issue, I commend ‘Speaking the Christian God’ edited by Alvin F. Kimel, Dr. Donald Bloesch ‘The Battle for the Trinity’ and John W Miller’s ‘Biblical Faith and Fathering: why we call God ‘Father’”. http://www.anglicanessentials.ca/pdf/montreal_declaration_aec.pdf
[124] The Apostle Paul cautioned: “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.” (Colossians 2:8)