In Answer to Job Jung analyzes God. He shows a masterful biblical scholarship in the exegesis of Old and New Testament as well as extraordinary knowledge of history, combined with his overarching perspectice on collective spiritual developments. Therefore this book affords a quasi prophetic understanding of man‘s evolution of consciousness,
For Jung the term of the God-image is SELF, the divine center in man‘s unconscious. This is not the theological God image, but the archetypal image of Self, the ever-present origin as Jean Gebser called it. Or the Omega point of Teilhard de Chardin, the increasing intensification of consciousness permitting an ever greater concrescence with the spiritual, the unconscious, the whole.
Now, with this pandemic situation holding the whole world as victim, there is a deeper cause for this book to come into my hands again, I feel. An incomprehensible and invisible virus has spread around the world. To slow down the number of infections public life has been shut down. A situation which has never been there before brought all normal life to a stop.
And the numbers of infected people and the death toll published daily in the news media increases fear and insecurity among the listeners, even more. There seems to be no end to this nightmare.
And many people might ask the same question I ask myself. Why is this catastrophe happening right now? And to all people alike, regardless of nations, beliefs or status in life.
With these thoughts in mind I took up the book “Answer to Job” again, which I hadn’t touched for a long time..
For me, to understand the essence of the book, it is necessary to keep in mind, that the drama of Job and Yahweh is not bound to physical historical events, but has been consummated for all eternity as a psychic drama, where Yahweh’s/God’s or Self‘s dual nature has been revealed. There is a center in the unconscious where the opposites unite. We call this center Self, Christ or God. For Jung, the goal of the evolution of consciousness is that natural man, ordinary man realizes that the many faces of God, the manifestations in different cults and religions are different expressions of the God-Self within man, the archetype of wholeness, totality, where all opposites unite.
Let us look at the figure of Job. It’s a biblical figure from the OT. And what is the whole bible about? It is the timeless myth of the development of man’s soul. Here we deal not with historical physical events. This is a description of psychic truths. Jung said in the introduction to Answer to Job: “Psychic truths can neither be explained nor proved nor contested in any physical way”
And the story of Job illustrates man’s age-old question: Why does evil and suffering exist? Why do bad things happen to good people?
The answer to Job is an answer to all of us. The answer is that there is a pleromatic model for what is going to happen: through the transformation, humanization of God/Self, not only God’s son, Christ, as foreseen from all eternity, but to all men as such. They can become conscious of their savior, which is inside of them and consequently immortal, identify themselves as not only physical, ego bound persons, but also spiritual beings, by transforming ego into Self.
The incarnation of God/Self in Christ was the manifestation of the good side, the loving Father, the message of Love as the deliverance from fear. But, it seems as if mankind’s consciousness is still unbalanced, not based on love but rather driven by fear. It is this “fear” Jesus referred to, when he said: “In this world you have fear, but see I’ve overcome this world”. He had reached the state of SELF, Christ-Consciousness, become the SON of GOD and knew that he would overcome the physical death of the body by resurrection, spiritualization.
Jesus’ teaching pointed out the path to that state, the goal, that every man could reach, if he would follow him on his path. But Jesus was not every man. He was born from a virgin and conceived by the Holy Spirit. Christ had two natures, GOD-Man. But we are natural, ordinary men. Would this mean we could also become Son’s of God? Jesus the first son paved the way and gave us a new law, the Law of Love, which if we would be able to understand it and hold fast,unwavering, it would give us the key to work consciously on the evolution of consciousness and bring the divine child in us to life, the Self, the whole man, the assimilation of the spiritual into consciousness.
However, we must be aware that following “The Way” which Jesus has opened, means confronting the darkness, and this darkness comes out of the depth of our own unconscious and might be manifesting outside, as a severe illness, obstacles in our life, wars or pandemics.
A first step in gaining a little understanding of evil – and we have to give much credit to Jung – is our acceptance that it is a projection from our own unconscious into the outer world. Jung calls this “the shadow”, i.e. unconcious contents projected outward on another person, situation etc. – maybe the virus, right now? The task is to recognize that this shadow is part of us, a content of our unconscious which we are not aware of or don’t want to own it, integrate it.
The process of individuation – which Jung describes in many of his books – is the transformation from the individual/ego (enlightenment) towards the Self/the center, the divine energy which unites unconscious and conscious.
But the process of individuation is not finished with awakening/enlightenment. This is a flash, a momentous stroke of grace, which befalls you. Nothing you can achieve or force or hold on to. One thing could be said about it after you have experienced it. You will not be the same person as before. Often it is referred to as “Awakening”. And suddenly you are drawn like a magnet into a different direction. And you feel the deep urge towards the light, becoming more conscious, to know the deep things of life, to experience the hidden side of the material world. What you can do to move forward to enlarge your consciousness is cleansing and purifying yourself and doing much work of “Know thyself” which means strengthens your virtues and integrate your shadows. Integrate means, own them, they are not out there, but belong to you.
There is a nice saying to describe this process: Enlighten, Awake, Turn darkness to light! This work is the hardest work man can embark. It is the Great Work of the alchemists. And all the myth and spiritual traditions talk about this. But as the language of the unconscious is transmitted in images, symbols and dreams, we have difficulties to decipher and understand it. But to follow the teaching of Christ means listening to your intuition and your feeling side, your inner soul guide, the Holy Spirit, the spiritual energy of love and wisdom who can strengthen and sustain you in your work to achieve a higher level of consciousness, some name it Christ Consciousness.
The key to achieve integration, become whole, is LOVE. Love unites the opposites, overcomes the ego-boundedness, suddenly not your ego but the beloved other is in the center. And from this perspective of connectiveness of being in love, you become ONE. There is no feeling of separation any more.
The philosopher Hegel said of love: Now I recognize myself in you. In the bible whenever love is referred in the OT, it is said: And then ….recognized …… It is the one and the other becoming one in spirit, into a new existence, of an overcoming of separation.
Therefore the incarnation of Christ and manifestation of his message of Love has indeed paved the way and is the way, to achieve wholeness. Namely, to balance the energies of man and woman, of good and evil, light and shadow, life and death as two aspects of the ONE, one stream of consciousness. There are two poles, one negative and one positive, but both belong to One universal energy. The mastery/balance of these two energies is achieved in the holy Spirit of Love, the answer to the deep questions of life.
Jung’s introspection into the unconscious also was a realization that God/Self ultimately is unknowable. Jung knows this and says in “Answer to Job”: “Even the enlightened person remains what he is, and never more than his own limited ego before the One who dwells within him, whose form has no knowable boundaries, who encompasses him on all sides, fathomless as the abysms of the earth and vast as the sky.”
Jung like Job bows before the ultimate mystery. When we talk about God, we are creating our image of God, psychologically speaking, and we are, yet again, talking about ourselves and within our human limitations.
But the challenge for man is today as it has been for all times: Know Thyself and you will know God and the universe”. Such was the inscription above the temple of Apollo at Delphi in ancient Greece. April 6, 2020