Meister Eckhart And C G Jung

Most Christian readers today have been taught by Church theologians of many different creeds that one must have faith in Christ above everything else. Meister Eckhart and C.G. Jung taught us to have trust in ourselves, in our own inner images of God, or the Self first. Eckhart was a man of the earth who came after Christ. By birth of the Holy Spirit in humanity, Herrmann means in this book the birth of the Self in Eckhart and Jung and also in you, the reader. We are all after Christs and are therefore incarnating the Holy Spirit through our callings to individuate from the Imprinter, which is beyond God, not the traditional God of theology. One of the good things that comes with being a postmodern Jungian analyst, and not a member of the Catholic Church as an institution, is the freedom and liberty granted to spiritually democratic people who can speak their own truths from conscience. Herrmann’s book adds something new and significant to the gendered language in theology: God is beyond gender. The book remains true to what Eckhart said about God and Sophia, or Wisdom; for as everyone knows today who has made a deep reading of the Master’s works, he was in essence talking about men and women, about all people. God could be a she or an it in postmodernity. In fact, for Eckhart and Jung, the origin of God is the feminine Godhead, or primal Ground of all metaphysical and empirical being. Both theologically and psychologically speaking, the Self, or Holy Spirit is essentially trans-dual, above all duality of male or female. For Eckhart and Jung, the vocation of the Self includes the archetypal feminine, the soul or anima and animus, above all categories of thought, transcendent of time and above gender.

Jung's explanation of the religious tendency of the psyche addresses many sides of the contemporary debate on religion and the role that it has in individual and social life. This book discusses the emergence of a new mythic consciousness and details ways in which this consciousness supersedes traditional concepts of religion to provide a spirituality of more universal inclusion. On Behalf of the Mystical Fool examines Jung's critique of traditional western religion, demonstrating the negative consequences of religious and political collective unconsciousness, and their consequent social irresponsibility in today's culture. The book concludes by suggesting that a new religiosity and spirituality is currently emerging in the West based on the individual’s access to the sense of ultimacy residual in the psyche, and seeking expression in a myth of a much wider compass. This book will be of interest to scholars and students at all levels who are engaged in the expanding field of Jungian studies. It will also be key reading for anyone interested in the theoretical and therapeutic connections between the psyche and religious experience.

Jung’s psychology describes the origin of the Gods and their religions in terms of the impact of archetypal powers on consciousness. For Jung this impact is the basis of the numinous, the experience of the divine in nature and in human nature. His psychology, while possessed of a certain claim to science, is based on depths of subjective experience which transcends psychology and science as ordinarily understood. Jung and his Mystics: In the end it all comes to nothing examines the mythic nature of Jung’s psychology and thought, and demonstrates the influence of mysticism and certain religious thinkers in formulating his own work. John P. Dourley explores the influence of Mechthild of Magdeburg and fellow mystics/Beguines, and traces the mystic impulse and its expression through Meister Eckhat and Jacob Boehme to Hegel in the nineteenth century. All of these mystics were of the apophatic school and understood the culmination of their experience to lie in an identity with divinity in a nothingness beyond all form, formal expression or immediate activity. Dourley shows how this is still of relevance in our lives today. The book concludes that Jung’s understanding of mysticism could greatly alleviate the conflict between faiths, religious or political, by drawing attention to their common origin in the depths of the human. Jung and his Mystics: In the end it all comes to nothing is aimed at scholars and senior research students in Jungian Studies, including religionists, theologians and philosophers of religion, especially those with an interest in mysticism. It will also be essential reading for those interested in the connection between religious and psychological experience.

A systematic coverage of Jung's criticism of biblical imagination, the Goddess as Mother of the Trinity, and Jung's appropriation of Eckhart to make the above points. The three sections comprising this work are entitled Jung's Critique of Biblical Imagination: An Appreciative Undermining, The Goddess as Mother of the Trinity, and Jung and Meister Eckhart: Breakthrough to the Goddess.

'These writings of his are strongly alive; in most instances Jung does not present us with final solutions and last words about any of the great East-West problems, but rather with suggestions for a deeper kind of approach, thus opening up new planes of investigation.' - Journal of Analytical Psychology “My own world of European consciousness had become peculiarly thin... it is quite possible that India is the real world and that the white man lives in a madhouse of abstractions.” C.G. Jung was inspired to write these words after his very first visit to India. Long concerned with the hold that myth and archetype had on the human psyche, it was inevitable that the legendary psychoanalyst would turn his attention to Eastern modes of thought. Psychology and the East collects together many of Jung’s most memorable writings on the subject, including his Psychological commentaries on the I Ching and The Tibetan Book of the Dead, his thoughts on Buddhism and Islam and a full travelogue of that fateful first encounter with India in 1936.

Jung's interest in the East was deep-rooted and life-long, and the traditional teachings of China and India played an important role in his personal and intellectual development, as well as in the formations of the ideas and practices that are central to Jungian psychology. Jung on the East brings together key selections from his work on Buddhism, yoga and Taoism, and on such classic texts as the I Ching and The Tibetan Book of the Dead. It also includes accounts on his own journey to India. The clear and perceptive introduction sets the context for Jung's encounter with the East, and provides an excellent framework that will enable the reader to get the most out of Jung's writings in this area. The book will be of interest to everyone seeking to further their understanding both of Jung, and of Eastern thought and spirituality.

Was the leading psychologist of his time a Nazi sympathiser? This was the question asked by many after the Second World War, as they sought to explain Jung's actions and publications during Nazi rule. So great was the controversy that his reputation risked being permanently damaged. Essays on Contemporary Events was the first broadside in his vigorous defence of his beleaguered reputation. This remarkable work is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand Jung. It will enable the reader to decide: was Jung wholly innocent of the accusations or had he, like so many others, fallen under the Nazi spell and was now trying to make amends.

What are the blissful islands? And where are they? This book takes as its starting-point the chapter called ‘On the Blissful Islands’ in Part Two of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and its enigmatic conclusion: ‘The beauty of the Superman came to me as a shadow’. From this remarkable and powerful passage, it disengages the Nietzschean idea of the Superman and the Jungian notion of the shadow, moving these concepts into a new, interdisciplinary direction. In particular, On the Blissful Islands seeks to develop the kind of interpretative approach that Jung himself employed. Its chief topics are classical (the motif of the blissful islands), psychological (the shadow), and philosophical (the Übermensch or superman), blended together to produce a rich, intellectual-historical discussion. By bringing context and depth to a nexus of highly problematic concepts, it offers something new to the specialist and the general reader alike. So this book considers the significance of the statue in the culture of antiquity (and in alchemy), and investigates the associated notion of self-sculpting as a form of existential exercise. This Neoplatonic theme is pursued in relation to a poem by Schiller, at the centre of which lies the notion of self-sculpting, thus highlighting Nietzsche’s (and Jung’s) relationship to Idealism. Its conclusion directly addresses the vexed (and controversial) question of Nietzsche’s relation to Plato. This book’s main ambition is to provide a cross-cultural, interdisciplinary reading of key themes and motifs, using Jungian ideas in general (and Jung’s vast seminar on Zarathustra in particular) to uncover a dimension of deep meaning in key passages in Nietzsche. Engaging the reader directly on major existential questions, it aims to be an original, thought-provoking contribution to the history of ideas, and to show that Zarathustra was right: There still are blissful islands! This book will be stimulating reading for analytical psychologists, including those in training, and academics and scholars of Jungian studies, Nietzsche, and the history of ideas.