The Mystical Chorus: Jung and the Religious Dimension

The Mystical Chorus: Jung and the religious dimension by Broadribb, Donald (Donald Richard), 1933- with Holly, Marilyn and Lyons, Norma (Norma E.) First published in 1995 by Millennium Books (an imprint of E.J. Dwyer (Australia) Pty Ltd), ISBN 1-86429-019-6, LCCN 95-193988. This edition has been OCR scanned from the Millennium Books edition for publication on the net, and is dated June 2000. See http://www.poboxes.com/bookleaf/ Copyright © 1995 Donald Broadribb xix, 241 p. : ill. ; 21 cm. 200.19 BL48 .B72 1995 Typeset in New Century Schoolbook 9/12 pt. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors are grateful for permission to use material from the following: Joseph Epes Brown (ed.), The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1953. The Spiritual Legacy of The American Indian, by Joseph Epes Brown. © 1982 by Joseph Epes Brown. Reprinted by permission of The Crossroad Publish- ing Company. The Crossroad Publishing Company, New York, 1982. The paper by Chung-Yuan Chang “Tao and the Sympathy of All Things” is based on a lecture given at the Eranos Conference in Ascona in 1955 and was published in Eranos 24-1955, © Eranos Foundation, Ascona, Switzer- land. The quotation from this paper that appears in the text is reprinted with kind permission of Eranos Foundation, Ascona, Switzerland. Edward Conze (tr.), Buddhist Scriptures, Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth, 1959. © Edward Conze, 1959. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd. Dionysius the Areopagite, quoted by permission of The Shrine of Wisdom, Brook, Godalming, Surrey. C.G. Jung Speaking, ed. William McQuire and R.F.C. Hull, Princeton Univer- sity Press, Princeton, 1977. The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1959- 1973. Baba Kubi of Shiraz, “The Sufi Path of Love,” tr. R.A. Nicholson, Mysticism— A Study and an Anthology, ed. F.C. Happold, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. John (Fire) Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes, Lame Deer Seeker of Visions, Washington Square Press, New York, 1972. The paper by Paul Radin “The Religious Experiences of an American Indian” was published in Eranos 18-1950, © Eranos Foundation, Ascona, Switzer- land. The quotations from this paper that appear in the text are reprinted with kind permission of Eranos Foundation, Ascona, Switzerland. N.K. Sandars, The Epic of Gilgamesh: An English Version, Penguin Classics, revised edition, Harmondsworth, 1964. © N.K. Sandars, 1960, 1964. Repro- duced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd. Seven Arrows by Hyemeyohsts Storm. Copyright © 1972 by Hyemeyohsts Storm. Reprinted by permission of Harper Collins Publishers. Harper Col- lins Publishers Inc., New York, 1972. Every effort has been made to trace and obtain permission from the copyright holders of material quoted in this book. In the event that any inadvertent omissions have been made, the authors apologize and would appreciate relevant information so that acknowledgments can be included in future editions. Introduction . ix The Collected Works of Carl Jung . xix 1. What is Religion? . 1 2. Buddhism . 15 3. Christianity . 51 4. Mysticism . 97 5. A Chorus of Powers: American Indian Belief (Marilyn Holly) . 143 6. The Sacred Land: Australian Aboriginal Religion (Norma Lyons) . 195 Conclusion . 227 INTRODUCTION ost readers of this book will have had some type of religious instruc- tion. Whether as children we were taught at a church Sunday school Mor some other religious institution, or we absorbed simple social assumptions from the culture we live in, none of us grow up in a religious vac- uum. Through most of history the majority of people appear to have been rea- sonably satisfied with the religious culture which went hand in hand with their social structure. It has been only in the past two or three centuries that religious questioning has occupied the minds and hearts of a large share of the population. Religious questioning is now a concern of the entire world, West and East alike. One sign of this is the extraordinary proliferation of new religious creeds and organizations. It sometimes feels as if there are as many religious creeds as there are adherents. It is true that the vast majority of Westerners continue to list themselves on the census forms as Christian or Jewish, but for many people these terms have come to lose nearly all meaning except to identify them with a set of traditional festivals and a generalized “Yes,” if asked, “Do you believe in God?” I cannot claim to stand out from the majority of people in this. Like everyone else I have had my own personal experiences which have unquestionably colored my view. In order to help you understand my religious biases and to compensate for them in your own mind as you read this book, I wish to set before you a brief autobiographical religious profile, pointing out some of the possible preconceptions which may weave themselves into the fabric of the chapters to follow, even though in them I will try to be as objective as possible. As a child I was reared in a fundamentalist Christian family which had little by way of formal affiliation with any particular church but which made a practice of going to some church each Sunday and of sending me to Sunday school. When I was about thirteen or fourteen I was baptized into a Baptist church—not, I must admit, out of religious conviction but because it was expected of me. With a small gnawing doubt which I did my best to push out of my mind, I looked forward to baptism by immersion as practiced in that church—desperately hoping that some sort of religious experience, or at least uplift, would come about, for the emptiness inside me was very great. My disappointment after the baptism was equally great, though not totally unexpected. No tremendous experience took place. Following the baptism, when the minister asked me to tell the congregation how I had met Christ, I sat mute in my chair, for I had had no encounter. I nursed a small hope that first communion would bring about the longed for experience, but it passed without any feeling except one of disillusion. For quite a few years I continued attending church each Sunday, still hoping to fill the hunger inside. Eventually I had tried every Christian church available. The conservative Protestant churches (such as Baptist or Salvation ix Army) left me feeling sad and lonely while everyone else in the congregation seemed to work up enormous enthusiasm. The liturgical churches—Luthe- ran, Catholic, Episcopalian (the name given to the Church of England in the United States) left me with a sense of coldness, making me feel a total out- sider watching a stage play without a beginning, middle or end, in which I could only be part of the audience but never part of the cast. The liberal Prot- estant churches (e.g., Unitarian, Congregational and most community churches) I felt to be more social than religious gatherings. Whatever the church, I always left feeling empty and spiritually somehow cheated. Once I was at university, philosophy seemed to me an obvious alternative to the churches. After all, theology had started as part of philosophy and the separation between the two of them is still not complete. I was already famil- iar with Plato. I could sense that he had come upon an insight which has its origins in something far deeper than mere intellectual reasoning. His mentor, Socrates, had known the vox dei (divine voice within) which gave him internal direction. But, as Plato reports Socrates as saying, he doubted whether any- one else could experience that same voice, and sadly I feared that he was right.1 Aristotle’s writings made good sense, but I could never feel that his heart was in his subject as it was for Plato. Aristotle came across as regarding philosophy like an intellectual puzzle with which to play. For Plato it was a neces- sity of life. For a long time I had felt that if I got to the roots of religious belief and practice I could find what I was missing in modern day religion. I enrolled in Union Theological Seminary in the city of New York for a post-graduate degree, hoping to fill the gap within me and then be able to convey spiritual assistance to others. The historical and philosophical studies I undertook at Union Theological Seminary unexpectedly led me to search in a completely different direction than I had anticipated. The more I learned of the background of theological doctrines, the less relevant to life they seemed to be. I realized that to become a minister of religion would mean to live a lie, for I could not really believe in what I would be expected to preach. The required courses in traditional theology brought home to me the problem of linking church doctrines with personal experience. I could learn the doctrines, but they did little to ease my feeling of inner emptiness. I began to attend gatherings of the Riverside Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, the Quakers. Riverside Meeting could not really be called 1 Socrates is reported by Plato as claiming that at times he sensed a supernatural voice within himself forbidding him to undertake some action, though it never attempted to persuade him to undertake an action. His comment that he supposed it unique to himself is in The Republic section 496c. x a church. It had no membership. It had no budget. It had no teachings. It continued the traditional form of Quaker Meetings for Worship,1 which consists of silent meditation that may continue for the full hour of the meeting.

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