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The Human Equation
Learning to be Human
Society
Has models
Has images
Of what human beings should be like
Transmitted by
Cultural practices
Institutions
Sociology and Psychology
Human attributes
Reason
The capacity for production
The creation of social organization
Capacity for symbol making
Creation of moral systems
Propensity for religious affirmations
The ability to mature (to constantly change)
The capability to transcend oneself
Allows humans to think the infinite
Soren Kierkegaard, Danish Thinker
Humans are both finite
Embodied
Their present existence defined by the past
Located in a specific historical, geographical, space-time setting
And transcendent.
With consciousness
With self-awareness
Able to transcend in thought every concrete, finite situation
To be open to a yet undetermined future
Religious Ideas of Humanity
Hindu
The personal union of self with Spirit
Brings joy
The "Self", seen as the Divine with the human
Religious Ideas of Humanity
Christianity
The self as the image of God
Each human being is created in the image of God
Jesus, the Christ, modeled what it is to be fully human in the image of God
Through faith in Jesus, a person is released to become fully human in the image of God.
A Wedding of Religious Thinking and Psychology
Carl G. Jung
Swiss analyst
Former colleague of Freud
In depth study of the human and the religious nature of the human
A Quote by Carl G. Jung
"Religious experience is absolute. It is indisputable. You can only say that you have never had such an experience….No matter what the world thinks about religious experience, the one who has it possesses the great treasure of a thing that has provided him with a source of life, meaning and beauty and that has given a new splendor to the world and to mankind."
The Religious Mammal
An article by Nancy Pfaff, M.A.
What is the "essential origin" of religion?
The human being is religious by nature.
Argument
(Anthony Wallace, Anthropologist)Mankind has produced over 100,000 different religions.
Mankind has shown religious tendencies since the Neanderthals who lived about 100,000 years ago. (small altars of bear bones)
Religion is a universal aspect of human culture
Carl G. Jung
An expert on "inner states"
Saw religion as both a cultural product and as an experience
Integrates the personality
Unites the individual with society and traditional values
Saw a problem related to maturing
The problem of maturing
The need to integrate "the opposites"
Life and Death
Love and Hate
Youth and Old Age
-Religion seen as necessary to facilitate this integration by providing encouragements and symbolic models.
The structure of the human psyche
The psyche: the immaterial part of a person; the actuating cause of an individual life; that which is responsible for one's thoughts and feelings; the seat of the faculty of reason and intuition
Includes the conscious as well as the unconscious mind
Religious experience arises from the human psyche.
Interpreted as:
Spirits, demons, gods, forces and powers
The numinosum:
A quality
Belonging to a visible object
An influence
Of an invisible presence that causes a unique alteration of consciousness
Diagram of the Psyche
Simplified Jungian version of psyche
Aim of all religious practice
To keep the individual (ego) related to the deity (self)
Religious ceremonies of all kinds
The natural growth of the human psyche
Ego gets stronger as it deals with the realities of life. Then…
A strong ego begins to relate to the self
Through
life-changing, dramatic and compelling
Inner world or outer world events which indicate the existence of something beyond ego.
Karen’s Experience
Healing of a long-term, chronic, painful illness through a "numinous" dream.
My Own Experience
Daytime vision experience in Paris
Summary
The essential origin of religion
Inherent in the nature of the human psyche
"Receiver" of the numinosum, the instigator of religious experience
The psyche responsible for dreams, visions, altered states of consciousness
The self breaking through
Religious practice designed to relate the ego and the self; the person and the "more"