The not so enlightened enlightenment

Author: Christopher Chayban

I find that there is hardly anything or anyone that is really enlightening about the “enlightenment” period. It seems to me, these people were yes, seeds to Depth Psychology, but merely re-hashing or re-naming concepts that were present elsewhere already in the world. It’s just that the split of the psyche from body made things quote “enlightened.” It was a consciousness projecting itself outwardly because we can only be conscious of something, which needs an other thing to be conscious of it.

But still, it is ironic that we call this period the “enlightenment” especially considering the fact that when you are enlightened, the idea is that you “find God” and “find peace or meaning or wholeness” rather than the reverse, which was the liberation from religion and God through rationalism which seems to have aroused the opposite, less peace, more mental illness, less meaning and wholeness. individuals were forced to seek solutions to these problems like Hysteria and Somnambulism.

But again, I am struggling with the name for this period, which seems extremely haughty, because did they really think that they were they really enlightened? Yes, they were liberated from “God and Religion” but were they truly “liberated” on all accounts. Perhaps this lapse of rational judgment for the rationalists’ perceived freedom was necessary for a more psychological approach to wholeness to develop, that was depth psychology and for a new angle to rotate the diamond that we hold in our hand.

That being said, Meister Eckhart said “God rid me of God,” to which I take as, eventually, the idea of God, blocks you to the experience of God, or meaning, or wholeness. To which, I can then see some value to the skeptical reasoning of the enlightenment period.  The dogma had become too rigid and blocked growth. But I still have a hard time with the name. It sounds like a win for the Ego, not the Self. In other words, one-sided and inflated.

That is why Typology and other personality systems work in the West. Because ego’s are differentiated and individuality is valued. And that’s why there is a need for the concept of an ego-Self axis because letting go and annihilation of the ego (that works for the East) would be too damaging in the West. There needs to be a relativizing instead.

During the enlightenment, I think there was an alleviation of persecution stress. But this also created an enormous inflation (because it had been sitting in the unconscious for so long), that yes, maybe helped patients, but also may have contributed to the un-humble and grandiose Mesmer. Since there is no fear of damnation, then being a Charlatan is ok, being a narcissist is ok. Big picture, and reflecting back, yes it was necessary, but also perhaps is has done, is doing, more harm then good. 

The loss of the sacred is an issue that we are grappling with knowingly or unknowingly. The transition from religion to science didn’t just include God, morals and rules for life, but it included meaning, of which science has a hard time nurturing. So yes, it was necessary but now it seems overdue to redeem the sacred. It’s kind of like the enlightenment was a period in history where one goes to college and has their fun, but now (where we are in history), we have had and are having a lot of fun and we forget that sometimes that is not sustainable or the only thing to chase after. What we are chasing after is meaning, which was lost in the enlightenment and a spark or a dash of that has been recovered by Jung.

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