The Psychology of Religion
Oh, lately I've been thinking about Religion Psychology. I just finished this fairly dense book about it by David M. Wulf called Psychology of Religion (part 1). Even if it was pretty dull in some regards as part 1 is the more objective side of Religion psychology while part 2, that is even longer, is about the more subjective/ psychoanalytical part of it. And you know, as the emotional creature that I am, that the objective science part of it has to be pretty damn interesting for me to keep my interest in it. What I found there in the drowsiness was a distinct feeling that I was a) not getting it b) wasting my time. Then at the dinner table I had trouble articulating the use of Religion Psychology even for myself. So, it's time to get to the bottom of it so I can read my obscure Religious books at peace.
The quasi-Jungian defense
I think I validate the approach a lot with the Jung's existence, without have read that much Jung. That's oddly shameful and I'm always a little embarrassed when I hear myself bring him up without really knowing what to say. But my quasi-Jungian defense if someone would question me about religion would be something like "I believe that the substrate of our consciousness is a symbolic landscape that only spiritual and religious thinking can make sense of. It's the place that meaning and purpose comes from and can teach us the deepest questions of life". Yeah, something like that. I'm not myself completely convinced though that this is true. I believe in the big mystery and I believe that we are all in this together. There is a scary scarecrow at the back of our head, maybe, and there is mysterious things that we can't completely understand in our normal way of being. But I have a hard time understanding the symbolic nature of nature. Well, right now when I'm thinking about it I guess it makes sense, our million of years past had to probably encode the fundamental imagery and representations for us to work in this world, and on a subsubsubconscious level they might still be tinkering with us.
The problem with that line of thinking revolves around it's purpose , especially in therapy. If someone would ask me why we need to face the primordial image of the snake I guess my answer would boil down to "Because understanding symbols are understanding the truth of human nature and truth is good". But would it actually be true? I think that in most cases no, every truth ever should not be revealed all the time. Especially if you have a responsibility and care about the people you talk too. But the possibility to expand our understanding of the truth should be possible for everyone. That's were I think an obscure expertise in religion will play a role. If not more then at least it can broaden the picture.
Is there something unique about religion?
Of fucking course. That's my short answer. But a lot of people do not think so, they believe that religion was more or less a coping mechanism of the world before the enlightenment graced us all with the right answer: science. There is probably some truth to that that I do not myself fully grasp. One of the reasons for me to be embarrassed is that I'm so god awfully bad at history. I just have such a hard time caring. Well, now I feel that I would care, especially the work surrounding Christianity. I guess you do not really have to be a historian to understand that Religion has brought with it a lot of bullcrap and evils. Like the burning of the divorced women in India, the whole of ISIS and Jesus Camps. In the religious name people have been tortured and killed for thousands of years. That actually helps me with the question though in a way, that there is something uniquely hexing in religion that we only can find in maybe communist China. Religion can point the way in how exactly we are getting controlled by ideas and at what grounds. Sure, you can be a behaviorist and say that everything is taught, but isn't that an idea in itself?
Because what is learning? Adapting your behavior to your world for survivor. Religion in this sense is, like I've mentioned, just a low resolution symbolic framework that you can use that for some reason work in this world. Science claim is that they have stripped of most of the illusions to find something more true, something more objective. One of science's more stand out claim to fame is that it takes an immense intelligence to get everything there is to get, something that you can not say is needed to join a Yoga group. Scientists are hard working people while religious people seem like self obsessed junkies just spacing out looking at the wall most of the day. That that spacing out would get you some deep treasures about the human condition seems almost like an excuse to feel special without doing the hard lifting.
So what do I think is uniquely found in religion? For one thing I think religion done right, as a searching not a dogmatic thought system put to rule of people, directly faces the hard questions. Who am I? Where am I? What is a world? How should you act? Why does weird stuff happens? What the fuck is the synchronicity? Is there a destiny? All these things does have scientific and psychological answers to them too. They are completing the picture, or at least can weed out the baloney for the legitimate, but they can not solely explain everything. Psychology can for example show how irrational we are in a bad way, how a lot of God worshiping is nothing more then a prepubescent wish for having no responsibility in your life. Religion can for example show that some kinds of God worshiping does work in some perhaps subtle way but real ways.
Maybe religious
Okay, that's the sound of me hitting rock bottom. I believe that my fascination with religion is far more a curiosity over if there is some magical, spiritual realms that you can explore in this life that I do not know about then me believing that religion is the savior of human race. I'm driven more to finding cheat codes to life, to make it more exciting, full filling and easy then actually being altruistically involved. A big part of it is that I just want attention, I want to seem special. But this, what is just said, is just the small part of it. I am also feeling a lot of mysterious thing in my life. There is things happening that science is to shallow to answer for me. A lot of the time when I open myself up to a religious truth I feel that that is actually saying something, and when other people talk it's just talk.
For example I get dizzy a lot of the wast world. When ever I go out to town there is a sense that the world is scary, mysterious. I know that that is probably just social anxiety sometimes, but I do not think that it's so most of the time. Or perhaps it is. Maybe religion is just my way of trying to find meaning in a meaningless world, a deeper fulfillment and a deeper knowledge. Maybe not. What I do know is that I'm an agnostic, right now. And that religion gives a tool for understanding the ancient mind while psychology makes you understand the trivial one. That could be a good distinction. And if everything fails, the religions idea history might be the best and most surreal and interesting story ever told. Even thought that statement is making a fool of all of it's victim and gives me survival guilt the destructiveness of it can not be stopped until we understand the real part of it too.
Do I sound ambivalent? That's because I'm in my 20s, so get over it. As a closer I want to play a cool song with Kero Kero Bonito that makes me raise above my ambivalence a little while. The reason being that this song have just the right tone undertones of someone accepting their ignorant nature while still thinking way to much on what is true.
https://open.spotify.com/track/6BxCICKvFlf5vUWEOV00FQ