Similarly if a young man is pursuing truth, and suddenly stumbles on God; he may allow God’s spirit into his soul. Jung in Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, says that in the depths of our Psyche we all have the entire inheritance of the whole human race. Most of us are unaware of this privilege, because this enormous inheritance is pure potential, and does nothing to influence our response to its presence. But there, whether we like it or not, says Jung, in the depths of our Psyche is the archetype or image of God, rather like the anima in man but deeper and more frightening. But again something is needed to bring it alive, or one’s image of God remains anthropomorphic, and cannot be anything else. And the thing needed to bring it alive is of course God’s own spirit, as with a woman. Hence the same difficulty of getting rid of God, once you have let him into your soul, as there is in changing women. You think you are being false to yourself. And however many lies you tell other people, few people like lying to themselves, unless they have to.
But is the archetype or image of God in the depths of the Psyche true, or only make-belief and fantasy? Well the best argument for a Creator is creation. And the best argument for the archetype being real, and not fantasy, is that it is there. Why on earth should the whole human race have the same fantasy? Much easier to credit the whole human race with having something of the spirit of the same God, within them. Quite easy to ignore this spirit; not so easy to prevent his emerging at unwanted moments. And he does not always emerge as a vision of the beatific Godhead; but like any rejected lover, he may appear as paranoid obsession, loss of confidence, the worship of absurd shibboleths, and finally madness. God has many ways of teaching men that it is unwise to try to live without Him.
Now Jesus will have had the same archetypal image of God, as everyone else. Only his response was different. There was a generosity in his nature which did not seek to lead his own little life of domestic happiness in Nazareth, if his vocation led him elsewhere. And by all accounts it did led him elsewhere. It led to a profound knowledge of God, such as few mystics have attained; yet at the same time to a dynamic power, which no mystic ever seems to have had; and which persuaded the Authorities at the time that it was either his world or theirs. Either they had to destroy him; or by his magnetic hold over men he would destroy them. There could be no compromise, neither on their part, nor his. Once he had discovered that he had the power of healing, and used it frequently, once he had let God into his life to that extent, it was impossible for him to turn back. Even in Gethsemane, it will have been Jesus who gave the answer to his own prayer. It was not the God, whom he called “Father”, who drove him remorselessly on; it was he who drove himself remorselessly on. In any real crisis we have to answer our own prayers. Hence the need to speak and act with authority.
Religion Rewritten, a religious view of nature and the universe.
Essay 2 - Man Made In The Image Of God.