QUESTION 6: May we assume that there is a connection between dual predestination and synchronicity, and that experientially they are the same thing? The same as being in Tao—the simultaneous reality of spirit and matter, simultaneously experienced with equal intensity, but always vibrating dike a compass needle?
What do you mean by dual predestination?
ANSWER FROM THE AUDIENCE: Karl Barth has rethought Calvin’s predestination theory along new lines and says it is not, as Calvin said, that people are either rejected or accepted from the very beginning, but that each person is both accepted at one moment and rejected at another.
Dr. Jung: The theory of predestination has of course nothing to do with synchronicity. Synchronicity is a scientific concept and the predestination theory is a dogma.
Synchronicity is a description of facts, whereas the predestination theory is riddled with contradictions.
If predestination is true, then everything goes on as it must: there are some who are chosen to go to heaven, others are predestined to roast in hell and go down to the kitchen.
If you fit the bill, you’re chosen—or else the good Lord invalidates his own decree by suddenly sweeping up to heaven someone predestined for hell, or snatches someone down from heaven and sticks
him in the pit.
If you examine these things logically it is simply a juggling with words that has nothing to do with actuality.
Dual predestination, indeed! So I am predestined for hell and predestined for heaven, and then suddenly, by a sleight of hand, I am either here or there.
That is not a workable argument, it is a conjuring trick: you think the top hat is empty, and behold there is a white rabbit sitting in it!
MEMBER OF THE AUDIENCE: I had hoped this was a point where depth psychology and theology could finally meet.
Dr. Jung: Oh no, here we are not in agreement at all.
Synchronicity states that a certain psychic event is paralleled by some external, non-psychic event and that there is no causal connection between them.
It is a parallelism of meaning.
That has nothing to do with the acrobatics of predestination. Theologians do perform the merriest pranks.
One professor of theology reproached me for asserting, in contradiction to God’s word, that a man must grow up and put aside childish things.
Man, he said, must remain a child.
Now it is precisely the teaching of the New Testament that one should not remain a child but become as a child.
My view, he declared, was "en flagrant contradiction avec la parole du Maitre."
So I sent him a postcard citing the Biblical passages that say exactly the opposite. The same is true of Catholics.
A Jesuit father came to me, a very intelligent type, and said, I really can’t understand you, you must explain to me how you can assert that Christ and Mary were not human beings.
I replied, But it is very simple.
According to the teaching of the Church you were born in sin, so was I, and all men, and that is how death came into the world.
We are corruptible and have corruptible bodies, but Christ and Mary have incorruptible bodies.
Therefore they were taken up to heaven in the body as was Elijah of old, and therefore they were not human beings.
All men are mortal, all men are corruptible because of original sin. He had never thought of that!
He was so dumfounded that he couldn’t utter a word!
There’s the theologian for you—the general run of theological thinking is often simply incomprehensible. Now can a theologian not notice that Christ and Mary according to dogma have an incorruptible body?
That is a divine attribute, only gods have it, or demons, but not men. Carl Jung, C.G.Jung Speaking Interviews and Encounters, Pages 387-380.
No comments:
Post a Comment