The value of Eliade’s work for Jungian Study
Author: Christopher Chayban
The use of Eliade’s work for Jungian’s is highlighted by the fact that, like the depth psychologists, Eliade takes symbolism seriously. To start, Eliade dichotomized religious man and modern man as participating in two different worlds, which were the sacred and profane respectively. The religious man was interested in the timeless repetitious patterns (archetypes) of the symbolic world. To the religious man, the symbolic image of the sacred tree was a manifestation of the sacred, a “heirophany,” i.e. a spontaneous image from the primordial unconscious, where energy and power lie (Sacred and Profane pg.12) dormant but accessible. Religious man feels a cosmic responsibility for co-creating with the divine and the continuation of life and world. (Sacred and Profane pg.93). For modern man, the world is a desacralized and profane, where “he feels no responsibility except to himself and to society.” His greatest concern for him is to avoid wasting the resources (Sacred and Profane pg.93-94) of life and world. Depth psychology and Eliade’s work likely developed in part, in compensatory relationship to profane man.
He says that symbols and symbolic thinking is not only for children, poets and crazy persons as modern man assumes, but in fact something reveals the deeper and hidden nature of reality (Images and Symbols pg.12) that is often not expressible in words. This inexpressible something is of course the archetype, which is not realizable in its self, but that indirectly, through dreams and images, it offers an escape out the historicity of the “profane time world,” and dips back into the sacred and timeless nostalgic world, the perceived “lost paradise” of the pre or original world (Images and Symbols pg.13) of the mystery and awe. In short, the numinousom.
The symbol for Eliade and depth psychological research is rooted in the imagination. Eliade says that To “have imagination” is to enjoy a richness of interior life, an uninterrupted and spontaneous flow of images” and “The imagination imitates the exemplary models (archetypal structures) the Image’s-reproduces, reactualises and repeats them without end. Finally, “To have imagination is to be able to see the world in its totality, for the power failure of the man “without imagination”; he is cut off from the deeper reality of life and from his own soul.”(Images and Symbols pg.20). It is clear here that Eliade is concerned with, like Jung, with the wholeness and totality of man.
Jung, of course, had a technique called “active imagination” and dedicated a few sections in his chapter on definitions, in volume six of the collected works, to fantasy and imagination. Symbols for Eliade, are extracted from the storehouse of man’s sacred history of religions, i.e. the collective unconscious. He says that through study of symbols of the history of religions, one can do a “metapsychoanalysis” of man (Images and Symbols pg.35) and the symbol is something eternally redeemable/recoverable. Through the symbol, man can renew his consciousness and recover the “anthroprocosmos,” the symbolism of his own body (i.e. the link between the archetype and instinct) that defends against nihilism and historic relativism (Images and Symbols pg.36). Eliade’s emphasis on the symbol and symbolism, proves to be of interest and use to the depth psychological approach to wholeness and meaning of the life of the individual.
There does seem to be a dulling of imagination and also complexity. And just a general lack of depth and exploration.
Profane man is stuck in his rationality and what Jung said about scientific/logical reductionism appears to be true. People left to their own devices these days (without any learning) do not do a good job of interpreting irrational matters.
In a recent interaction I had with two people at the gym, there was a big debate about whether spirituality and spiritual phenomena like psychics are “real,” because some mentalist was on a sports show and performed some predictive techniques that shocked the hosts and a couple of guys thought it was “fake” and just an act. It actually seemed purely psychological and nothing spooky about it. I know it was irrational to them though.
One guy said, if those people could see the future, they would have won the lotto by now and make me some money. I could tell he had never explored this area of life in depth before but also what he secretly desires. I told him true there are many charlatans but that most spiritualists don’t care about money and usually are part of a tradition that has a code of ethics or they themselves have their own code of ethics to protect against that type of thing. He didn’t really buy it.
Another guy comes out with, he doesn’t believe in any of that type thing, meaning God, psychics etc. He says he is atheist and quote “Doesn’t believe that there is some mother effer up there” deciding shit for him. He says that everything is physical and can be traced back to some physical cause. I told him I’m not ready to shut the door on these things because of some experiences that I have had. He and other guy both said “oh I slam that door right away.”
The discussion just showed me the rational bias, unopeness, lack of knowing of what is possible and the supreme value of money. It was both humorous and disappointing to see the cognitive biases at work.
I think there is a defense against irrationality and that defense is because things like imagination and intuition are actually very personal to people and to defend against it they over kill say things like “I slam that door immediately.” I think it stems from being lied to in childhood with Santa Claus, Religion. These things are taken as literal and the symbolic was not taken care of so now it’s devalued because it’s a defense against the hurt.
Resources:
Eliade, M. (1991). Images and symbols: Studies in religious symbolism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Eliade, M. (1957). The Sacred and the Profane: the Nature of Religion. New York: Harcourt, Inc.
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