Gratis verzending vanaf €35,-
Unieke producten
Milieuvriendelijk, hoogste kwaliteit
Professioneel advies: 085 - 743 03 12

God’s dark side: A review of Jung’s ‘Answer to Job’

Seeing | Depth Psychology

Hans Busstra, MA | 2023-10-29

God's eye in colorful universe. 3D rendering

As part of our book club on YouTube, Hans Busstra has made a book review of ‘Answer to Job’ by Carl Gustav Jung. Regarded by Jung as his most important work, Answer to Job is a tour de force in which classical Christian doctrine is turned upside down: Jung argued that the incarnation of Christ was not to redeem humanity for its sins against God, but to redeem God for his sin against Job. In the Book of Job it became clear to Jung that Yahweh, though omniscient, had not consulted his own omniscience, remaining ‘unconscious’ of a dark side within himself—i.e. his fallen son Satan. In the language of analytic idealism: mind at large is not meta-cognitive. In almost all of Christian theology the Book of Job is analyzed as an example of God’s mysterious ways, his unfathomable masterplan for the universe. Ergo, Job suffers purposefully, but will never be able to grasp the higher divine reason of his suffering. Yet, Jung concluded exactly the opposite: Yahweh does not have a full picture, he is an amoral force of nature ‘that cannot see its own back.’ Job is morally superior to Yahweh as he does see the inner antinomy within Yahweh. According to Jung, if held up to his own standards, Yahweh had sinned against Job, and Job subtly confronted Yahweh with this fact. This made the incarnation of Christ not a story about the redemption of humanity for its sins against God, but a redemption of God for his sin against Job. To Hans Busstra, who has a Christian background, this ‘blasphemous’ analysis of Jung made a deep impact, in a positive sense. Though it is highly unlikely that the Church will ever accept Jung’s reading, the new depth he saw in Christian mythology makes the tradition urgently relevant again for this day and age. Nature, God, Mind at Large becomes meta-cognitive through us, and this makes the human experience of crucial importance in our universe. You can watch this video also directly on YouTube.

Subhash MIND BEFORE MATTER scaled

Essentia Foundation communicates, in an accessible but rigorous manner, the latest results in science and philosophy that point to the mental nature of reality. We are committed to strict, academic-level curation of the material we publish.

Recently published

|

Analytic Idealism and the possibility of a meta-conscious cosmic mind

Does Analytic Idealism limit the scope of its own conclusions and implications because of its adoption of realist, empirically-focused, scientific concepts and argument structures? If so, can the notion of a meta-conscious (that is, self-aware, deliberate) universal consciousness be reconciled with it? Dr. Grego argues precisely so in this critical essay.

|

There is no absolute physical world independent of observation

Hans Busstra and Dr. Lídia del Rio talk to Dr. Matthew Leifer, Assistant Professor of Physics at Chapman University, about the epistemic interpretation of quantum mechanics. Classically, when physicists call themselves ‘realists’ they mean that we should assume that a physical, observer-independent universe is fundamental. But if this counts as realism, anti-realism is perhaps the more respectable position. Leifer points, for instance, to ‘Bell-Wigner mashups’: thought-experiments that entangle different observers to arrive at disturbing consequences; for instance, that there is no ‘absoluteness of facts’ for all observers, in a classical sense.

From the archives

|

Biosemiotics: A new way to understand non-human consciousness

What if phenomenal consciousness, signs, communication, and interpretation are fundamental aspects of all living systems, whether or not we can detect brains? This is the departure point of biosemiotics, an interdisciplinary field that combines biology, semiotics (the study of signs and meaning), and philosophy. Environmental philosopher Dr. Yogi Hendlin is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Biosemiotics and, in this conversation, Hans Busstra talks to him about the widespread meaning-making in nature. All living beings, from bacteria to plants to mammals, have an ‘Umwelt,’ a dashboard representation of the world. In a sense, biosemiotics states that our mind is in the world: we are embodied beings, and with every inhalation 50.000 microbes enter our body, and they communicate to us by influencing our microbiome.

|

Relational Quantum Dynamics and Indra’s Net: A non-dual understanding of quantum reality

Professor Zaghi introduces Relational Quantum Dynamics (RQD), a further development of Carlo Rovelli’s Relational Quantum Mechanics (RQM) with a solid mathematical and metaphysical basis. RQD circumvents the infinite regress inherent to RQM (everything being constituted of relations between meta-relations, and these consisting of relations between meta-meta-relations, etc., ad infinitum) by proposing that, although all physical entities are indeed relational, the relations—and even spacetime itself—arise within an underlying field awareness.

|

DNA & neurons cannot explain life & consciousness

Hans Busstra talks to Dr. Bernardo Kastrup about the groundbreaking work of Professor Michael Levin and Dr. Christof Koch. Levin’s research into bio-electric fields reveals that cellular networks use electrical signals not just for immediate physiological tasks, but to coordinate complex patterning and memory across tissues—suggesting a kind of distributed intelligence in living systems. Christof Koch, meanwhile, champions Integrated Information Theory (IIT), which proposes that consciousness is an intrinsic property of certain physical systems with high levels of causal interconnectivity. Both lines of inquiry challenge the traditional reductionist view that mind is merely an emergent byproduct of neural activity. Instead, they point to a more holistic, perhaps even fundamental, role for information and consciousness in nature. Though Levin and Koch make no explicit metaphysical claims in their work, their empirical findings and views are very much in line with analytic idealism.

Reading

Essays

|

Why the quantum state only exists in our mind

Dr. David Schmid, Dr. Lídia Del Rio and Hans Busstra explore a metaphysical shift that’s happening in the foundations of physics: the wave function is no longer regarded as something real, but just as a description of what we know about the world. In philosophical terms: the wave function is not ontic, but epistemic. And in more popular terms: the multiverse is science fiction, resting on a too-literal interpretation of a piece of mathematics called the Schrödinger equation.

|

The Demiurge in our brain’s left hemisphere

The jealous and alienating gnostic Demiurge, a certain mode of attending to the world described by Heidegger, and Iain McGilchrist’s characterisation of the brain’s left-hemisphere, all share remarkable similarities, according to Arthur Haswell. He suggests thus that the Demiurge may be a symbol of something that lives in us, modulating how we relate to others and the world at large. As such, the holistic perspective of the right hemisphere may be a corrective that brings us closer to the transcendent and truly divine.

|

Biosemiotics: A new way to understand non-human consciousness

What if phenomenal consciousness, signs, communication, and interpretation are fundamental aspects of all living systems, whether or not we can detect brains? This is the departure point of biosemiotics, an interdisciplinary field that combines biology, semiotics (the study of signs and meaning), and philosophy. Environmental philosopher Dr. Yogi Hendlin is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Biosemiotics and, in this conversation, Hans Busstra talks to him about the widespread meaning-making in nature. All living beings, from bacteria to plants to mammals, have an ‘Umwelt,’ a dashboard representation of the world. In a sense, biosemiotics states that our mind is in the world: we are embodied beings, and with every inhalation 50.000 microbes enter our body, and they communicate to us by influencing our microbiome.

|

Relational Quantum Dynamics and Indra’s Net: A non-dual understanding of quantum reality

Professor Zaghi introduces Relational Quantum Dynamics (RQD), a further development of Carlo Rovelli’s Relational Quantum Mechanics (RQM) with a solid mathematical and metaphysical basis. RQD circumvents the infinite regress inherent to RQM (everything being constituted of relations between meta-relations, and these consisting of relations between meta-meta-relations, etc., ad infinitum) by proposing that, although all physical entities are indeed relational, the relations—and even spacetime itself—arise within an underlying field awareness.

|

DNA & neurons cannot explain life & consciousness

Hans Busstra talks to Dr. Bernardo Kastrup about the groundbreaking work of Professor Michael Levin and Dr. Christof Koch. Levin’s research into bio-electric fields reveals that cellular networks use electrical signals not just for immediate physiological tasks, but to coordinate complex patterning and memory across tissues—suggesting a kind of distributed intelligence in living systems. Christof Koch, meanwhile, champions Integrated Information Theory (IIT), which proposes that consciousness is an intrinsic property of certain physical systems with high levels of causal interconnectivity. Both lines of inquiry challenge the traditional reductionist view that mind is merely an emergent byproduct of neural activity. Instead, they point to a more holistic, perhaps even fundamental, role for information and consciousness in nature. Though Levin and Koch make no explicit metaphysical claims in their work, their empirical findings and views are very much in line with analytic idealism.

Seeing

Videos

|

Reaching across the great solipsist void in the age of AI

“If experience is all I have, I may be alone—but the essential emotional necessity of the other demands that I live as if I am not,” argues Dr. Moreira in this heart-felt essay. He embodies a long-overdue reemergence of existentialist thought in the 21st century and, as an active and successful AI scientist, in 21st century terms. We think both the worlds of philosophy and popular culture will be hearing a lot more from Dr. Moreira in the coming years…

|

Science can no longer ignore unexplained facts of nature

Dr. Edward Kelly, a professor of experimental psychology, talks about his many years of study of a variety of psi and anomalous phenomena. In this interview with Natalia Vorontsova, he candidly shares how phenomenological evidence has led him to re-examine his metaphysical views on the nature of reality. Are our minds confined to our brains? Do we survive our biological death? Is mind primary to matter? Why should we take anomalous phenomena seriously? These are some of the topics covered in this conversation.

|

Not even language is a ‘language’

Fredric Nord argues that knowing reality through language is fundamentally and inescapably a misunderstanding of reality. We misunderstand what language actually does and, thereby, misunderstand what life is. The key to understanding life is, he argues, a reframing of language and representation. This should end the paradigm of materialism and facilitate transcendence as a priori.

Let us build the future of our culture together

Essentia Foundation is a registered non-profit committed to making its content as accessible as possible. Therefore, we depend on contributions from people like you to continue to do our work. There are many ways to contribute.

Essentia Contribute scaled