Psychic Schism

Spirituality, in contrast to popular view, is in fact a manipulative as well as sensory organ. Like all organs, spirituality evolved out of need; a need to reconcile the passionate unconscious with the cold, calculating conscious mind. Our emotions, imagination, and instincts are dichotomous with our physical senses, logic, and all other, more “rational” faculties. Should these two “spheres” of ourselves not operate symbiotically, or in co-operation, we experience a harsh, internal split, a psychic division, and thus neuroses develop. In our persistently pan-phobic , gluttonous, and generally sick time, where sterility of art, philosophy, and culture is the ultimate goal, it is painfully obvious to the intelligent observer that this division has occurred. While various “neo-spiritual” and Church revivalist movements break out all around, the perceptive can easily see that these superficial attempts at self-correction are merely symptoms of a much deeper illness. Even as certain regions of the modern world grow more and more “spiritual,” true spirituality is quickly disappearing.

The Swedish psychologist and philosopher Dr. C.G. Jung thoroughly explained the idea of mythology and spirituality being means of unifying the whole mind, in the first section of the posthumous Man and His Symbols. In it, he states that the symbols produced by the Unconscious in the form of archetypes, dreams, and myths serve to aid the consciousness in understanding the subtleties of the universe it cannot otherwise comprehend. He goes on to say that, according to various surveys conducted from the time of his youth up to the 1960’s, patients seeking aid for mental illness were more commonly Protestants and Jews than Catholics. While all simply emanations of the same moralist system, Protestantism and Judaism focus severely on the sterility and acceptability of behaviour, while Catholicism is rich in mythology, symbols, and, as some would say, “superstition.” It is these things that Jung attributes to the relative mental health of Catholics over Protestants and Jews . To provide evidence of mental illness in religion today from a more contemporary source, a recent Newsweek centres on the story of a gun-ho American Christian GI in Iraq and his so-called “spiritual journey,” as recorded in his journal. Unsettlingly to most US Christians, his final entry reads, “I hate God. I hate it when people try to explain God. They don’t understand Him.” And truly, who nowadays is able to explain the mysterious in terms other than “mysterious”? The highest art we have to dedicate to the forces which wrought this world is Steven Curtis Chapman, with his record-breaking speed in writing his “songs” (if you can call them that). All other “art” we have is plastic and truly rings as empty, dedicated to no god, no values, no aspect of the world which is eternal; only the here and now. It is apparent even to the most ardent followers of “American Christ” that, as Nietzsche had declared over a century before, God is dead.

The mental illness resultant of this psychic division manifests itself most prevalently as the dogmatic animosity many die-hard religious adherents exhibit against “the blasphemous,” independent of whether or not these “sinners” are actually causing any problems or even if they are consensually sinful in the eyes of other interpretations of the same doctrine. However, this symptom’s prevalence is only relative as it is simply the one most observed among the masses. Truly, the strongest and most destructive symptom of this mental schism is its binary morality of right-contra-wrong. Even the most “open-minded” and “amoral” of the masses (meaning, the ones who shop at New Age stores and are so vegan, they won’t eat anything that casts a shadow) still insist on the “evil” of causing anyone else pain, even if its for their own good (such as making decisions for a small child or killing a madman). Dogmatism, even in “progressiveness,” provides a sense of security to its weak-minded devotees. It takes all the intellectual work out of decision-making, which is just fine for the individual, but deadly for the generations he will breed with his sickly and dying intellect. As much as Catholicism is rich in symbolism, it does not protect against the illnesses brought on by its modern-day rigidity and obstinacy, as opposed to the truly catholic (as in, universal) Christianity that sought to mould itself to the already existent beliefs of the Pagan world, not to displace them. Catholics and Protestants alike have developed an unnatural obsession with “wholesomeness” that retards artistic expression and the blooming of eternal values, instead watering all art down to G-ratings and Disney animation. Not only is this obsession prevalent in all aspects (Christian or not) of society today, but so is the uniquely Judaic dualistic separation of the spiritual and physical. To those of us who seek a truly healthy unity with the natural world, we understand the spiritual and physical to be two sides of the same coin, two aspects of the same entity. However, ask any plastic, empty-headed “open-mind” about the spiritual, and they will refer you to a completely separate world we go to when we die, or when we enter séances. Like a virus, Judeo-Christian dualism has infected every aspect of the modern world… or, rather, the symptom of dualism can be seen in both Judeo-Christianity and all other aspects. The Christian Heaven has become the Ultimate Goal in life. It is not to attain higher art or culture or to pass on noble traits to one’s offspring, but to make money, live comfortably, and die having obeyed all the rules God told you to follow. It’s a simple, straight path, requiring only a watered-down system of mythology, with obvious and easy-to-remember morals at the end (thus effectively destroying our capacity for producing engaging tales or epics).

The only thing which can combat this schism is holism, a system of perceiving the world that regards it and oneself as one single entity, and does not rely on static interpretations of it to survive. Such was the goal of the original Catholic Christianity, which sought to unify the concept of death-rebirth (as in, the end of a cycle, the beginning of another) in the form of the Bacchus-Osiris-Christ figure with the beliefs and mythologies of Pagan peoples. Essentially, we must encourage a sense of how fulfilling the values of our pre-Christian faiths and cultures can be and then unify them with the symbols and motifs of Christianity where necessary. We needn’t destroy Christianity or simply let the virus kill us all off, but rather transform it into something positive, something effective. Instead of making Jesus and the Commandments the central tenets of European Christianity, we must restore the faiths which Christ had once suffocated.

To those who choose not to open themselves to the misery that is their kosher, diluted existence, this will all be quickly labeled blarney. They needn’t even read it. So long as it attacks the beliefs on which this world was founded, it must be wrong. After all, how could a system that lets us drive, eat, and watch whatever we want be wrong? It’s easier, after all, to ignore the ever-mounding Apocalypse we are forging for ourselves when we’re enjoying our Seinfeld and casual butt-sex. Again, here we must rely on the “trickle-down” effect. We must attain positions of power so that the more mindless among the world will emulate our behaviour. To read it, it doesn’t seem nearly as noble as a revolution, but the effects of such an undertaking will speak for themselves. We needn’t fear death nor use of violence, but we must also consider cause-and-effect, as our entire philosophy is based on such. We must reconcile the physical world with true spirituality, so that the sickly, starving entity that is our world will convalesce and grow strong and healthy once more.

By Conchobhair Ó Scannlain