Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 33, No.

4, Winter 1994

Jung's Conception of the Holy Ghost

LARRY GATES
ABSTRACT: Carl Jung saw the Holy Ghost as the crowningfigure in God's revelation of Him-

self. For Jung, the Holy Ghost is that mysterious force which unites opposites and allows the transcendent to enter space and time. Through a process called "continuing incarnation," the Holy Ghost makes it possible for ordinary people to participate in "the sonship of God."

Why would a psychotherapist like Carl J u n g be concerned with the fine points of religious dogma? J u n g said the problems of psychoneurosis often t u r n out to be religious problems; he said he was forced, somewhat against his will, to examine dogma so he could treat his patients. He came to the conclusion t h a t there are "'ruling ideas' which decide our ethical behavior and h a v e . . , an important influence on our practical life. They are in the last resort the principles which, spoken or unspoken, determine the moral decisions upon which our existence depends, for weal or woe. ''1 These ruling ideas are archetypes; they account for worldwide similarities t h a t exist in the structure of the h u m a n imagination. J u n g once said t h a t psychological renewal is always shallow unless it is linked to a significant spiritual tradition. Archetypes need bridges in order to reach consciousness, and the images of religion and myth serve as these bridges. When archetypes fall into containers that are too small--or too secular-neuroticism (such as the obsessive and irrational belief that one has cancer) results. Though he had a life-long love-hate relationship with Christianity-arguing, for example, that it leaves out n a t u r e - - J u n g thought it unwise for westerners to work outside their own rich heritage of symbols and dogma. For Jung, dogma possesses an important psychological function. He took the Nicene Creed, for example, to represent psychological reality; it comes as close as one can come with words to describing the archetypal God-image. Though he did not specifically believe, as Tertullian did, t h a t the soul is Christian, he argued t h a t m a n is a religious animal whose life becomes meaningless and directionless without the symbolic life provided by religion. Larry Gates is Professorof Psychologyat The University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
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One never perceives raw a r c h e t y p e s - - t h e basic building blocks of the p s y c h e - - b u t rather archetypal images. The archetypes come dressed in the clothing provided by one's culture. Religious creeds by their very nature are paradoxical and contrary to logic; but, on the other hand, J u n g says they would be useless if they were logical and empirically verifiable. "Dogma expresses the psyche more completely than a scientific theory, for the latter gives expression to and formulates the conscious mind only. ''2 J u n g believes we should not water down dogmas, b u t rather utilize them as ways of demonstrating truths permanently inaccessible to the rational mind, which makes such a bright light that one must find some w a y to send it temporarily into eclipse so that subtle constellations of the star in the spirit world can be seen. For J u n g the totality of psychological experience is somehow expressed in the Christian Trinity2 Trinitarian images are dynamic; they imply growth and development. According to Jung, every mental process has its opposite process, and the two can be united in a third process, their product. There is also an archetypal tendency to organize life-events in a threefold pattern: a beginning, middle, and end. It is not surprising, then, when one discovers that trinities appear in m a n y other religions besides Christianity. In the twelfth century, Joachim of Flora suggested that there were three stages to be found in the history of man's relation to the divine: the stage of the F a t h e r (Old Testament times), the stage of the Son (the first thousand years of Christianity), and the stage of the Holy Spirit, which was to begin just after Joachim's lifetime. Joachim's influence on J u n g was great, I believe. To J u n g these stages were to be seen in the ontogeny of culture as well as the ontogeny of the spiritual life of an individual. J u n g saw the stage of the Father as a time of pristine oneness with the whole of nature. It was a time without critical judgment or moral conflict. For Jung, the stage of the Son required a sacrifice of childish dependence, a longing for redemption, and an alienation from oneness coupled by a longing to regain that oneness. The stage of the Son comes as the inevitable result of the emergence of consciousness, which creates a conflict situation par excellence, involving an acute awareness of opposites. Next, then, comes the stage of the Holy Ghost. It entails a return of sorts to the first stage, b u t differing from that stage in that it is enriched with the reason and reflection gained in the second stage. The third stage, that of individuation, requires the sacrifice of exclusive independence. One's ego-consciousness is articulated within a supraordinate totality that is more comprehensive than the "I." Many people have difficulty envisioning the Holy Ghost. It is an abstraction, having no personal name and no identifying characteristics; to some, it seems more like a function or an idea than a person. There are numerous sets of clothing this archetype has worn in the history of Christian symbolism. The Holy Ghost has been experienced, for example, as a sweet odor; this has much to do with the use of incense in the Catholic Mass. Medieval alchemists

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often contrasted the flower-like redolence of the Holy Ghost with the stench of graves. Gnosticism, too, spoke of the sweet odor of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Ghost has also been envisioned as a dove, the form in which it descended at Christ's baptism. This incarnation as an animal may have great relevance at a time in history when man's dubious sense of superiority to nature is so destructive to the planet. In the middle ages the Holy Spirit was often envisioned as a unicorn, a wild-spirited animal that can only be tamed in the lap of a virgin. Perhaps John Muir's ecstatic pronouncements about "God's wildness," which he experienced in the Sierra Nevadas, refers to the Holy Ghost. Other more orthodox Christian images for the Holy Ghost are eyes, fire, water, and wind. Jung points out that many historical writers have seen the Holy Ghost as some sort of ligament. The early Fathers of the Church described it as the power that binds Father and Son. In the middle ages, some alchemists saw the Holy Ghost as the ligament binding body and soul together. The Astronomer Kepler spoke of the sun as the Father, the planets as the Son, and the Holy Ghost as the force that holds them together. Christian writers have also treated the Holy Ghost as the life activity that is common to both the Father and the Son, a flowing out; an old doctrine calls it aspiration. Jung sees problems with this image, because--while the Son seems to flow logically from the Father--there is no compelling logic in saying the Holy Ghost flows from the other two members of the Trinity. Many early Christian writers equated the Holy Ghost with breath, a process independent of the physical body, but existing alongside it. In this line of thinking the Holy Spirit is seen as the life that resides in the body. It is super-added, autonomous, unattached to the body. Early Christian theology suggests the Father creates the Son by breathing; then the Father and the Son both breathe the Holy Spirit in and out. The Holy Spirit, after this, engages in passive spiration. St. Thomas said spiration does not proceed from the intellect of the Father and Son, but from their will. To Jung it seems the Holy Ghost is tacked onto Father and Son as a sort of act of intellectual reflection. This idea is older than Christianity, however. In ancient Egyptian theology one clearly finds God the Father, God the Son, and Ka, the lifespirit, or the animating factor of men and gods. Ka is breathed (spirated) by both Father and Son. Clearly there is Biblical justification for saying that the Holy Ghost is breath. At Pentecost the spirit descended on the disciples in tongues of fire; God breathed upon them. It is a rich and powerful idea to envision the Holy Ghost as the breath that heals and makes whole. If prayer works--and there is growing evidence that it does--as described by Larry Dossey4 and others-then we need an image for helping patients and their families to envision the force that does the healing. Why not "the breath of God"? Jung devotes much attention to the theology of continuing incarnation after the death, resurrection, and ascension of the historical Jesus. In the Gos-

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pel of John, Jesus says in no uncertain terms that One will come after Him
who will do even greater works; this Comforter or Paraclete is, of course, the Holy Spirit. Christ says the Comforter will procreate in man, bringing works inspired by Heaven, envisioning his own sacrifice as a necessary prelude to the coming of the Comforter. He says that the Comforter will be for the disciples what Christ had been for them, investing them with powers to do works possibly greater than the works of the Son. 5 It is as if, as Christ had been the deputy of the Father, the Holy Ghost is now the deputy of Christ. On the one hand Matthew says the Holy Ghost is the force that caused the Son to come into existence (1:18), but in John's conception of the Paraclete, He is the legacy left behind by the Son. The Holy Spirit continues the work of redemption by descending on those who merit divine election. To Jung, the Holy Spirit is the crowning figure in redemption as well as in God's revelation of Himself. Another interesting possibility that Jung explores is the Holy Spirit as Mother. To Jung, Christianity, like everything else in consciousness is onesided. Why, he asks, are all three persons of the Trinity male? What happened to Sophia, the Wisdom of God, mentioned briefly in the Old Testament and described at length in some apocryphal texts? Jung suggests that, from an archetypal point of view--as well as from common sense--the Trinity of Father, Mother, and Holy Child seems a richer and more basic idea than Father, Son and Holy Ghost (Spiritus), all masculine. Mary is actually given little attention in the Bible, but one must not forget that she was the instrument of God's birth. It seemed reasonable to Jung to think of her as the Holy Spirit. This leads to a number of interesting ramifications: If the Holy Ghost is a biological mother, for example, then there is a sense in which all humans participate in the Trinity. In Revelation, one finds the story of the sun-woman, who gives birth to a child that when born is almost swallowed by a dragon. Jung insists it was an ordinary woman and an ordinary child; John's vision, he says, "foretells the Incarnation in creaturely man. ''6 The feminine takes us out of the world of forms and brings back concrete reality, the earth, the human touch--making them divine. Through the continuing incarnation of the Holy Ghost in ordinary human beings the divine enters the world. As much as Jung was attracted to this line of reasoning he acknowledged it was probably not the intention of the church fathers. For one thing, a mother's natural place is second, not third; and the seq u e n c e - F a t h e r , Holy Child, Mother--is awkward. Jung cites sources in which the Holy Ghost was envisioned as the bringer of inspiration. Inspiration, he said, is always a gift, one ancient tradition usually attributed to archetypal feminine figures--Jung's anima. In fact, the Hebrew word for spirit is essentially feminine. Medieval alchemists often equated the Holy Spirit with the Gnostic Sophia. In the medieval natural philosophers one also finds a conception of an incarnate Sapientia: of Her one text says, "the wisdom of the father lies in the lap of the mother. ''7 No one who has studied the historical development of the Christian faith

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could deny that it is a religion replete with male images. It is as if material reality, the body, and the earth were feminine, and one must renounce them if one is to achieve spiritual perfection. Why else monasticism and abstinence? In this context the Holy Ghost has often been envisioned as a method of reproduction without women. Because of the Spirit, no woman is necessary. One must not forget that Jesus scorns his mother at the wedding in Cana. In medieval Christian initiation ceremonies, young men were in effect alienated from their mothers and were reborn as spirits. The celibacy of priesthood develops this idea that the spirit is the essence of masculine life, that one's true identity is not one's body, that during spiritual exercises the Ka or immortal soul can detach itself from the body. In this context the Holy Ghost can be seen as the Spiritual Impregnator who allows the eternal to enter the ordinary world of space and time. It would be wise to think of spiritual impregnating as happening to both men and women. The Holy Ghost made Mary pregnant, and the birth she gave was a spiritual birth. A medieval picture shows a tube coming from Heaven and reaching up under Mary's dress. Meister Eckhart wrote that our heart is the womb of the Virgin waiting for the spiritual impregnator. He saw his soul as a woman married to God. Through the Holy Spirit, women, men, and perhaps even animals can become pregnant with God. Jung also sees the Holy Ghost as a uniting symbol, an irrational but uniting third thing that resolves the tension between Father and Son. No idea is more central to Jung's theory than the hope that all psychic tensions can be resolved by some such mysterious, paradoxical third thing. Jung suggests that the Holy Ghost is the change that takes place when one moves from Father to Son; to think of God--or at least one aspect of God--as change or relationship, rather than substance, can be an enriching and transforming experience. Jung conceived of the Father as symbolic of unconscious wholeness and the Son as symbolic of consciousness (which is impossible without doubt). The Son emerges when doubt appears, when the fallen world is seen as needing redemption. The Holy Ghost puts an end to the duality (and the doubt) of the Son, resolving the tension between the conscious Son and the unconscious Father. In this line of reasoning, the Father represents the archetypal, undifferentiated Self, the Oneness, the source of all other archetypes; the Son, the ego that emerges out of this undifferentiated Oneness, brings awareness of opposites, even His own opposite, the Antichrist. In the Holy Spirit, we find the ego-self axis, the crowning achievement of Jungian personality growth, the link that enriches the conscious mind with the unconscious and the unconscious with the structured differentiation of consciousness. Jung saw the Holy Ghost as a natural and spontaneous correction that comes up from the unconscious to compensate for the limitations of consciousness. It is the uniting, paradoxical Symbol that makes us whole. The Holy Spirit is that unexpected gift of the Depths that makes possible a union of opposites, the

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most important task of development in the second half of life. When we integrate opposites such as thinking and feeling, or time and eternity, or male and female, we become whole. In Jung's late thought there arises the image of God incarnated in ordinary individual persons. After the life of Christ, in this speculation, the Holy Ghost began to "seize" individuals. This is a line of thinking that exploded into our culture in the Holy-Ghost heresies that appeared in Western Europe in the time of Joachim of Flora. It was a new way of thinking that paralleled other changes in Western thought--the idea of romantic love, the elevation of the ideal of the individual, the Protestant Reformation. Joseph Campbell calls this change in perspective a genetic mutation. In it we may find some of the essence of modernism as well as the signposts that lead away from modernism. The emergence of personal and idiosyncratic experiences of the Holy Ghost caused many difficulties for the Church. Many individuals now professed to breathe this breath which Christ had once breathed; ordinary people were supposedly participating in the sonship of God. Jung writes: "through the Holy Ghost human beings are surreptitiously included in the mystery of the Trinity. ''8 Jung sees the descent of the Holy Ghost as the Sells actualization in man? The Self is the ineffable God-archetype, the creative Void from which all the other archetypes emerge. In Answer to Job Jung writes, "The future indwelling of the Holy Ghost in man amounts to a continuing incarnation of God. ''1~ Jung argued that the Christ archetype existed before Jesus and will exist after Jesus, as the Holy Spirit continues to bring it into the world. He says further that God... wants to become man, and for that purpose he has chosen, through the Holy Ghost, the creaturely man filled with darkness--the natural man who is tainted with original sin and who learnt the divine arts and sciences from the fallen angels. The guilty man is eminently suitable and is therefore chosen to become the vessel for the continuing incarnation, not the guiltless one who holds aloof from the world and refuses to pay his tribute to life.1' Jung speaks of God continually incarnating through the Holy Ghost in the world of time and space, in the conflict and coming together of opposites in all of us. This is, arguably, the central idea in Jung's late writings on religion. The Unconscious Self, the Ground of All Being, constantly seeks outward manifestation; it is consciously experienced first as duality and later--in the fullness of life and the attainment of wisdom--as what it was before consciousness: unity. In Answer to Job Jung speaks of a Christification of man through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. TM One might come to the conclusion that this simple, bold idea sums up all the complex meanderings, amplifications, and theorizing of the twenty volumes of Jung's Collected Works.

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References
1. Jung, C. G., Collected Works. Trans. R. F. C. Hull, ed. H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, Win. Mcguire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956, X/, pp. 454-5, par. 738. 2. , C.W., Vol. 11, p. 46, par. 82. 3. , "A Psychological Approach to the Trinity." In Collected Works, Vol. 11, pp. 107-200. 4. Larry Dossey, Healing Words, San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1993. 5. John 14:12. , C.W., Vol. 11, p. 459, par. 744. 6. m , , C.W., Vol. 11, p. 162, par. 240. , C.W., Vol. 11, p. 161, par. 239. 8~ _ _ . , C.W., Vol. 11, p. 432, par. 693. 9. _ _ , 1 0 . _ _ . , C.W., Vol. 11, pp. 412-415, pars. 655-8. 1 1 . _ _ . , C.W., Vol. 11, p. 459, par. 746. 1 2 . _ _ . ., C.W., Vol. 11, p. 470, par. 758.