Carl Jung: In this way Christ realized the idea of the Self.

These mythological statements, coming from within the Christian sphere as well as from outside it, adumbrate an archetype that expresses itself in essentially the same symbolism and also occurs in individual dreams or in fantasy-like projections upon living people (transference phenomena, hero-worship, etc.).

The content of all such symbolic products is the idea of an overpowering, all-embracing, complete or perfect being, represented either by a man of heroic proportions, or by an animal with magical attributes, or by a magical vessel or some other “treasure hard to attain,” such as a jewel, ring, crown, or, geometrically, by a mandala This archetypal idea is a reflection of the individual's wholeness, i.e., of the Self, which is present in him as an unconscious image.

The conscious mind can form absolutely no conception of this totality, because it includes not only the conscious but also the unconscious psyche, which is, as such, inconceivable and irrepresentable.

The archetype of the Self in the soul of every man that responded to the Christian message, with the result that the concrete Rabbi Jesus was rapidly assimilated by the constellated archetype.

In this way Christ realized the idea of the Self.

But as one can never distinguish empirically between a symbol of the Self and a God-image, the two ideas, however much we try to differentiate them, always appear blended together, so that the Self appears synonymous with the inner Christ of the Johannine and Pauline writings, and Christ with God (“of one substance with the Father”), just as the atman appears as the individualized Self and at the same time as the animating principle of the cosmos, and Tao as a condition of mind and at the same time as the correct behaviour of cosmic events.

Psychologically speaking, the domain of “gods” begins where consciousness leaves off, for at that point man is already at the mercy of the natural order, whether he thrive or perish.

To the symbols of wholeness that come to him from there he attaches names which vary according to time and place The Self is defined psychologically as the psychic totality of the individual.

Anything that a man postulates as being a greater totality than himself can become a symbol of the Self.

For this reason the symbol of the Self is not always as total as the definition would require. Even the Christ-figure is not a totality, for it lacks the nocturnal side of the psyche's nature, the darkness of the spirit, and is also without sin ~Carl Jung

, CW 11, Paras 230-232

Carl Jung: It is frankly disappointing to see how Paul hardly ever allows the real Jesus of Nazareth to get a word in.

They think they have to do with rational facts, whereas it entirely escapes them that it is and always has been primarily a question of irrational psychic phenomena.

That this is so can be seen plainly enough from the unhistorical character of the gospels, whose only concern was to represent the miraculous figure of Christ as graphically and impressively as possible. Further evidence of this is supplied by the earliest literary witness, Paul, who was closer to the events in question than the apostles.

It is frankly disappointing to see how Paul hardly ever allows the real Jesus of Nazareth to get a word in.

Even at this early date (and not only in John) Christ is completely overlaid, or rather smothered, by metaphysical conceptions: he is the ruler over all daemonic forces, the cosmic saviour, the mediating God-man.

The whole pre-Christian and Gnostic theology of the Near East (some of whose roots go still further back) wraps itself about him and turns him before our eyes into a dogmatic figure who has no more need of historicity.

At a very early stage, therefore, the real Christ vanished behind the emotions and projections that swarmed about him from far and near; immediately and almost without trace he was absorbed into the surrounding religious systems and moulded into their archetypal exponent.

He [Christ] became the collective figure whom the unconscious of his contemporaries expected to appear, and for this reason it is pointless to ask who he “really” was. Were he human and nothing else, and in this sense historically true, he would probably be no more enlightening a figure than, say, Pythagoras, or Socrates, or Apollonius of Tyana.

He opened men's eyes to revelation precisely because he was, from everlasting, God, and therefore unhistorical; and he functioned as such only by virtue of the consensus of unconscious expectation.

If nobody had remarked that there was something special about the wonder-working Rabbi from Galilee, the darkness would never have noticed that a light was shining.

Whether he lit the light with his own strength, or whether he was the victim of the universal longing for light and broke down under it, are questions which, for lack of reliable information, only faith can decide.

At any rate the documentary reports relating to the general projection and assimilation of the Christ-figure are unequivocal.

There is plenty of evidence for the co-operation of the collective unconscious in view of the abundance of parallels from the history of religion.

In these circumstances we must ask ourselves what it was in man that was stirred by the Christian message, and what was the answer he gave ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 228

Carl Jung: The most important of the symbolical statements about Christ are those which reveal the attributes of the hero's life:

If we are to answer this psychological question, we must first of all examine the Christ-symbolism contained in the New Testament, together with the patristic allegories and medieval iconography, and compare this material with the archetypal content of the unconscious psyche in order to find out what archetypes have been constellated.

The most important of the symbolical statements about Christ are those which reveal the attributes of the hero's life:

Improbable origin
Divine father
Hazardous birth
Rescue in the nick of time
Precocious development
Conquest of the mother and of death
Miraculous deeds
A tragic, early end
Symbolically significant manner of death
Post-mortem effects (reappearances, signs and marvels, etc.)

As the Logos, Son of the Father, Rex gloriae, Judex mundi, Redeemer, and Saviour, Christ is himself God, an all-embracing totality, which, like the definition of Godhead, is expressed iconographically by the circle or mandala.

Here I would mention only the traditional representation of the Rex gloriae in a mandala, accompanied by a quaternity composed of the four symbols of the evangelists (including the four seasons, four winds, four rivers, and so on)

Another symbolism of the same kind is:

Choir of saints, angels, and elders grouped round Christ (or God) in the center. Here Christ symbolizes the integration of the kings and prophets of the Old Testament
As a shepherd he [Christ] is the leader and center of the flock
He is the vine, and those that hang on him are the branches
His body is bread to be eaten, and his blood wine to be drunk
He is also the mystical body formed by the congregation

In his human manifestation he is the hero and God-man, born without sin, more complete and more perfect than the natural man, who is to him what a child is to an adult, or an animal (sheep) to a human being ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 229

Carl Jung: In our diagram, Christ and the devil appear as equal and opposite, thus conforming to the idea of the “adversary.”

In our diagram, Christ and the devil appear as equal and opposite, thus conforming to the idea of the “adversary.”

This opposition means conflict to the last, and it is the task of humanity to endure this conflict until the time or turning-point is reached where good and evil begin to relativize themselves, to doubt themselves, and the cry is raised for a morality “beyond good and evil.”

In the age of Christianity and in the domain of trinitarian thinking such an idea is simply out of the question, because the conflict is too violent for evil to be assigned any other logical relation to the Trinity than that of an absolute opposite: In an emotional opposition, i.e., in a conflict situation, thesis and antithesis cannot be viewed together at the same time.

This only becomes possible with cooler assessment of the relative value of good and the relative non-value of evil.

Then it can no longer be doubted, either, that a common life unites not only the Father and the “light” son, but the Father and his dark emanation.

The unspeakable conflict posited by duality resolves itself in a fourth principle, which restores the unity of the first in its full development.

The rhythm is built up in three steps, but the resultant symbol is a quaternity ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 258.

Carl Jung: The act of love embodied in the Son is counterbalanced by Lucifer's denial

If we disregard the specifically Persian system of dualism, it appears that no real devil is to be found anywhere in the early period of man's spiritual development. In the Old Testament, he is vaguely foreshadowed in the figure of Satan.

But the real devil first appears as the adversary of Christ, and with him we gaze for the first time into the luminous realm of divinity on the one hand and into the abyss of hell on the other.

The devil is autonomous; he cannot be brought under God's rule, for if he could he would not have the power to be the adversary of Christ, but would only be God's instrument.

Once the indefinable One unfolds into two, it becomes something definite: the man Jesus, the Son and Logos.

This statement is possible only by virtue of something else that is not Jesus, not Son or Logos.

The act of love embodied in the Son is counterbalanced by Lucifer's denial ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 254

Carl Jung: In the gospels themselves factual reports, legends, and myths are woven into a whole.

From a psychological standpoint this view can be translated as follows: Christ lived a concrete, personal, and unique life which, in all essential features, had at the same time an archetypal character.

This character can be recognized from the numerous connections of the biographical details with worldwide myth-motifs.

These undeniable connections are the main reason why it is so difficult for researchers into the life of Jesus to construct from the gospel reports an individual life divested of myth.

In the gospels themselves factual reports, legends, and myths are woven into a whole.

This is precisely what constitutes the meaning of the gospels, and they would immediately lose their character of wholeness if one tried to separate the individual from the archetypal with a critical scalpel

The life of Christ is no exception in that not a few of the great figures of history have realized, more or less clearly, the archetype of the hero's life with its characteristic changes of fortune.

But the ordinary man, too, unconsciously lives archetypal forms, and if these are no longer valued it is only because of the prevailing psychological ignorance.

Indeed, even the fleeting phenomena of dreams often reveal distinctly archetypal patterns.

At bottom, all psychic events are so deeply grounded in the archetype and are so much interwoven with it that in every case considerable critical effort is needed to separate the unique from the typical with any certainty

Ultimately, every individual life is at the same time the eternal life of the species.

The individual is continuously “historical” because strictly time-bound; the relation of the type to time, on the other hand, is irrelevant.

Since the life of Christ is archetypal to a high degree, it represents to just that degree the life of the archetype.

But since the archetype is the unconscious precondition of every human life, its life, when revealed, also reveals the hidden, unconscious ground-life of every individual.

That is to say, what happens in the life of Christ happens always and everywhere.

In the Christian archetype all lives of this kind are prefigured and are expressed over and over again or once and for all.

And in it, too, the question that concerns us here of God's death is anticipated in perfect form. Christ himself is the typical dying and self-transforming God ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 146

Carl Jung: Christ as an Archetype of the Self

The oldest known icon of Christ Pantocrator – Saint Catherine’s Monastery. The two different facial expressions on either side emphasize Christ’s dual nature as both divine and human.

226 The Trinity and its inner life process appear as a closed circle, a self-contained divine drama in which man plays, most, a passive part. It seizes on him and, for a period of several centuries, forced him to occupy his mind passionately with all sorts of queer problems which today seem incredibly abstruse, if not downright absurd.

It is, in the first place, difficult to see what the Trinity could possibly mean for us, either practically, morally, or symbolically. Even theologians often feel that speculation on this subject is a more or less otiose juggling with ideas, and there are not a few who could get along quite comfortably without the divinity of Christ, and for whom the role of the Holy Ghost, both inside and outside the Trinity, is an embarrassment of the first order. Writing of the Athanasian Creed,

A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE TRINITY

to the Symbolum Quicuinque has abjured the laws of human thought.” Naturally, the only person who can talk like that is one who is no longer impressed by the revelation of holiness and has fallen back on his own mental activity. This, so far as the revealed archetype is concerned, is an inevitably retrograde step: the liberalistic humanization of Christ goes back to the rival doctrine of homoiousia and to Arianism, while modern anti-trinitarianism has a conception of God that is more Old Testament or Islamic in character than Christian.

227 Obviously, anyone who approaches this problem with rationalistic and intellectualistic assumptions, like D. F. Strauss, is bound to find the patristic discussions and arguments completely nonsensical. But that anyone, and especially a theologian, should fall back on such manifestly incommensurable criteria as reason, logic, and the like, shows that, despite all the mental exertions of the Councils and of scholastic theology, they failed to bequeath to posterity an intellectual understanding of the dogma that would lend the slightest support to belief in it.

There remained only submission to faith and renunciation of one’s own desire to understand. Faith, as we know from experience, often comes off second best and has to give in to criticism which may not be at all qualified to deal with the object of faith. Criticism of this kind always puts on an air of great enlightenment that is to say, it spreads round itself that thick darkness which the Word once tried to penetrate with its light: “And the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.”

228 Naturally, it never occurs to these critics that their way of approach is incommensurable with their object. They think they have to do with rational facts, whereas it entirely escapes them that it is and always has been primarily a question of irrational psychic phenomena. That this is so can be seen plainly enough from the unhistorical character of the gospels, whose only concern was to represent the miraculous figure of Christ as graphically and impressively as possible. Further evidence of this is supplied by the earliest literary witness, Paul, who was closer to the events in question than the apostles. It is frankly disappointing to see how Paul hardly ever allows the real Jesus
of Nazareth to get a word in. Even at this early date (and not only in John) he is completely overlaid, or rather smothered, by metaphysical conceptions: he is the ruler over all daemonic forces, the cosmic saviour, the mediating God-man.

The whole pre-Christian and Gnostic theology of the Near East (some of whose roots go still further back) wraps itself about him and turns him before our eyes into a dogmatic figure who has no more need of historicity. At a very early stage, therefore, the real Christ vanished behind the emotions and projections that swarmed about him from far and near; immediately and almost without trace he was absorbed into the surrounding religious systems and moulded into their archetypal exponent.

He became the collective figure whom the unconscious of his contemporaries expected to appear, and for this reason it is pointless to ask who he “really” was. Were he human and nothing else, and in this sense historically true, he would probably be no more enlightening a figure than, say, Pythagoras, or Socrates, or Apollonius of Tyana.

He opened men’s eyes to revelation precisely because he was, from everlasting, God, and therefore unhistorical; and he functioned as such only by virtue of the consensus of unconscious expectation. If nobody had remarked that there was something special about the wonder-working Rabbi from Galilee, the darkness would never have noticed that a light was shining. Whether he lit the light with his own strength, or whether he was the victim of the universal longing for light and broke down under it, are questions which, for lack of reliable information, only faith can decide. At any rate the documentary reports relating to the general projection and assimilation of the Christ-figure are unequivocal.

There is plenty of evidence for the co-operation of the collective unconscious in view of the abundance of parallels from the history of religion. In these circumstances we must ask ourselves what it was in man that was stirred by the Christian message, and what was the answer he gave.

229 If we are to answer this psychological question, we must first of all examine the Christ-symbolism contained in the New Testament, together with the patristic allegories and medieval iconography, and compare this material with the archetypal content of the unconscious psyche in order to find out what archetypes have been constellated. The most important of the symbolical statements about Christ are those which reveal the attributes of the hero’s life: improbable origin, divine father, hazardous birth, rescue in the nick of time, precocious development, conquest of the mother and of death, miraculous deeds, a tragic, early end, symbolically significant manner of death, postmortem effects (reappearances, signs and marvels, etc.).

As the Logos, Son of the Father, Rex gloriae, Judex mundi, Redeemer, and Saviour, Christ is himself God, an all-embracing totality, which, like the definition of Godhead, is expressed iconographically by the circle or mandala.6 Here I would mention only the traditional representation of the Rex gloriae in a mandala, accompanied by a quaternity composed of the four symbols of the evangelists (including the four seasons, four winds, four rivers, and so on). Another symbolism of the same kind is the choir of saints, angels, and elders grouped round Christ (or God) in the centre. Here Christ symbolizes the integration of the kings and prophets of the Old Testament.

As a shepherd he is the leader and centre of the flock. He is the vine, and those that hang on him are the branches. His body is bread to be eaten,and his blood wine to be drunk; he is also the mystical body formed by the congregation. In his human manifestation he is the hero and God-man, born without sin, more complete and more perfect than the natural man, who is to him what a child is to an adult, or an animal (sheep) to a human being.

These mythological statements, coming from within the Christian sphere as well as from outside it, adumbrate an archetype that expresses itself in essentially the same symbolism and also occurs in individual dreams or in fantasy-like projections upon living people (transference phenomena, hero-worship, etc.). The content of all such symbolic products is the idea of an overpowering, all-embracing, complete or perfect being, represented either by a man of heroic proportions, or by an animal with magical attributes, or by a magical vessel or some other geometrically, by a mandala. This archetypal idea is a reflection of the individual’s wholeness, i.e., of the self, which is present
in him as an unconscious image. The conscious mind can form absolutely no conception of this totality, because it includes not only the conscious but also the unconscious psyche, which is, as such, inconceivable and irrepresentable.

231 It was this archetype of the self in the soul of every man that responded to the Christian message, with the result that the concrete Rabbi Jesus was rapidly assimilated by the constellated archetype. In this way Christ realized the idea of the self. But as one can never distinguish empirically between a symbol of the self and a God-image, the two ideas, however much we try to differentiate them, always appear blended together, so that the self appears synonymous with the inner Christ of the Johannine and Pauline writings, and Christ with God (“of one
substance with the Father”), just as the atman appears as the individualized self and at the same time as the animating principle of the cosmos, and Tao as a condition of mind and at the same time as the correct behaviour of cosmic events. Psychologically speaking, the domain of “gods” begins where consciousness leaves off, for at that point man is already at the mercy of the natural order, whether he thrive or perish. To the symbols of wholeness that come to him from there he attaches names which vary according to time and place.

232 The self is defined psychologically as the psychic totality of the individual. Anything that a man postulates as being a greater totality than himself can become a symbol of the self. For this reason the symbol of the self is not always as total as the definition would require. Even the Christ-figure is not a totality, for it lacks the nocturnal side of the psyche’s nature, the darkness of the spirit, and is also without sin. Without the integration of evil there is no totality, nor can evil be “added to the mixture by force.” One could compare Christ as a symbol to the mean of the first mixture: he would then be the middle term of a triad, in which the One and Indivisible is
represented by the Father, and the Divisible by the Holy Ghost, who, as we know, can divide himself into tongues of fire. But this triad, according to the Timaeus, is not yet a reality. Consequently a second mixture is needed.
233 The goal of psychological, as of biological, development is self-realization, or individuation. But since man knows himself only as an ego, and the self, as a totality, is indescribable and indistinguishable from a God-image, self-realization to put it in religious or metaphysical terms amounts to God’s incarnation. That is already expressed in the fact that Christ is the son of God. And because individuation is an heroic and often tragic task, the most difficult of all, it involves suffering, a passion of the ego: the ordinary, empirical man we once were is burdened
with the fate of losing himself in a greater dimension and being robbed of his fancied freedom of will. He suffers, so to speak, from the violence done to him by the self. The analogous passion of Christ signifies God’s suffering on account of the injustice of the world and the darkness of man. The human and the divine suffering set up a relationship of complementarity with compensating effects. Through the Christ-symbol, man can get to know the real meaning of his suffering: he is on the way towards realizing his wholeness. As a result of the integration of
conscious and unconscious, his ego enters the “divine” realm, where it participates in “God’s suffering.” The cause of the suffering is in both cases the same, namely “incarnation,” which on the human level appears as “individuation.” The divine hero born of man is already threatened with murder; he has nowhere to lay his head, and his death is a gruesome tragedy. The self is no mere concept or logical postulate; it is a psychic reality, only part of it conscious, while for the rest it embraces the life of the unconscious and is therefore inconceivable except in the
form of symbols. The drama of the archetypal life of Christ describes in symbolic images the events in the conscious life as well as in the life that transcends consciousness of a man who has been transformed by his higher destiny. ~Carl Jung; Psychology and Religion

Betrayal and Taking of Christ

According to the Canonical Gospels, after the Last Supper, Jesus and his disciples travel to Gethsemane, a garden located at the edge of the Kidron Valley, thought by scholars to probably have been an olive grove. Once there he is described as leaving the group so that he can pray privately.

The synoptics state that Jesus asked God that his burden be taken from him, and requesting not to need to undergo the events that he was due to, though giving the final choice to God. Luke states that an angel appeared and strengthened Jesus, who then returned to his disciples.

The synoptics state that the three disciples that were with Jesus had fallen asleep, and that Jesus criticized them for failing to stay awake even for an hour, suggesting that they pray so that they can avoid temptation.

At this point Judas appears on the scene, accompanied by a crowd that includes the Jewish priests and elders and people with weapons.

When the band of men enters the garden in search of Jesus, he steps forth and asks them, “Whom seek ye?”.

They answer that they were indeed seeking Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus replied and spoke, “I am He”, at which point all members of the arrest party fall back and on the ground.

At this point Judas gives Jesus a kiss, as a pre-arranged sign to those that had accompanied Judas as to who Jesus was. Having been identified, the crowd arrests Jesus, although one of Jesus’ disciples tries to stop them by using a sword to cut off the ear of one of the men in the crowd.[2][3]

The Gospel of John specifies that it had been Simon Peter who had cut off the ear of Malchus, a servant of Caiaphas, the high priest.[2][3] Luke adds that Jesus healed the wound. John, Matthew, and Luke state that Jesus criticized the violent act, insisting that they do not resist Jesus’ arrest. In Matthew, Jesus makes the well known statement: all who live by the sword, shall die by the sword.

Carl Jung: It was known, and stated, very early that the man Jesus, the son of Mary, was the principium individuationis.

It was known, and stated, very early that the man Jesus, the son of Mary, was the principium individuationis.

Thus Basilides is reported by Hippolytus as saying:

''Now Jesus became the first sacrifice in the discrimination of the natures, and the Passion came to pass for no other reason than the discrimination of composite things.

For in this manner, he says, the sonship that had been left behind in a formless state [anopsia] . . , needed separating into its components, in the same way that Jesus was separated."

According to the rather complicated teachings of Basilides, the "non-existent" God begot a threefold sonship.

The first "son," whose nature was the finest and most subtle, remained up above with the Father.

The second son, having a grosser (iraxv^pio-Tepa) nature, descended a bit lower, but received "some such wins: as that with which Plato . . . equips the soul in his Phaedrus."

The third son, as his nature needed purifying, fell deep est into "formlessness."

This third "sonship" is obviously the grossest and heaviest because of its impurity.

In these three emanations or manifestations of the non-existent God it is not hard to see the trichotomy of spirit, soul, and body.

Spirit is the finest and highest; soul, as the ligamentum spiritus et corporis, is grosser than spirit, but has "the wings of an eagle," so that it may lift its heaviness up to the higher regions.

Both are of a "subtle" nature and dwell, like the ether and the eagle, in or near the region of light, whereas the body, being heavy, dark, and impure, is deprived of the light but nevertheless contains the divine seed of the third sonship, though still unconscious and formless.

This seed is as it were awakened by Jesus, purified and made capable of ascension by virtue of the fact that the opposites were separated in Jesus through the Passion (i.e., through his division into four).

Jesus is thus the prototype for the awakening of the third sonship slumbering in the darkness of humanity.

He is the "spiritual inner man."

He is also a complete trichotomy in himself, for Jesus the son of Mary represents the incarnate man, but his immediate predecessor is the second Christ, the son of the highest archon of the hebdomad, and his first prefiguration is Christ the son of the highest archon of the ogdoad, the demiurge Yahweh.

This trichotomy of Anthropos figures corresponds exactly to the three sonships of the non-existing God and to the division of human nature into three parts.

We have therefore three trichotomies:


First sonship Christ of the Ogdoad Spirit

Second sonship Christ of the Hebdomad Soul

Third sonship Jesus the Son of Mary Body ~Carl Jung, Aion, Para 118

Carl Jung: Simple things are always the most difficult.

Simple things are always the most difficult.

In actual life it requires the greatest art to be simple, and so acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the acid test of one's whole outlook on life.

That I feed the beggar, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ—all these are undoubtedly great virtues.

What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ.

But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yea the very fiend himself—that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved—what then?

Then, as a rule, the whole truth of Christianity is reversed there is then no more talk of love and long-suffering; we say to the brother within us "Raca," and condemn and rage against ourselves.

We hide him from the world, we deny ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves, and had it been God himself who drew near to us in this despicable form, we should have denied him a thousand times before a single cock had crowed. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 520