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IV THE EMPTY MANDALA Sixth Principle of the Jungian Paradigm A significant spiritual or religious experience is fundamental to the healing of the personality, especially for those in the second half of life, and in the absence of such an experience the personality remains divided and neurotic. Sixth Principle of the Syndetic Paradigm The Syndetic Paradigm holds that all of life, that is to say, nature in its entirety is bound together in a highly complex whole through an ongoing process of spontaneous self-organization. The Syndetic Paradigm asserts, moreover, that the true point of conscious entry into this self-organizing totality—the sacred circle of nature—is the developmental edge of the differentiating ego. In this respect, the particular becomes the means of one’s direct engagement with unfolding Reality . Accordingly, very much in contrast to the Jungian Paradigm in which the psychological and spiritual are given separate theoretical statuses, and even conceived of as incommensurables, especially through their relegation to the inner and outer worlds, respectively, the Syndetic Paradigm makes no such distinction between them. Indeed, the Syndetic Paradigm goes so far as to assert that to disjoin the psychological and spiritual in this manner ultimately has the opposite effect of the above-described intended objective of the sixth principle of the Jungian Paradigm; that is to say, it serves to split the personality and divide it against itself and Reality. It serves, in short, to promote psychoneurosis rather than subdue and end it. The 1930s marked Jung’s most prolific period of writing on the psychology of religion. Indeed it was out of the essays of that decade that that which would come to constitute the core of Jung’s theorizing about the psychology of religion emerged in the form of four salient themes. Those themes, presented in no particular order, are as follows. Firstly, would be Jung’s observation that organized religion, given the limitations of its fixed and largely unchanging structure, was failing to 195 meet the spiritual needs of ever-increasing numbers of individuals. “I have found,” Jung reflected in his lecture to the Alsatian Pastoral Conference at Strasbourg in 1932, “that modern man has an ineradicable aversion for traditional opinions and inherited ideas. He is a Bolshevist for whom all the spiritual standards and forms of the past have somehow lost their validity. . . . Confronted with this attitude, every ecclesiastical system finds itself in an awkward situation, be it Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, or Confucianist.”1 Secondly, would be Jung’s correlating of this particular shortcoming of organized religion with the apparent increase of neurosis within society in general. As Jung himself put it: “It seems to me that, side by side with the decline of religious life, the neuroses grow noticeably more frequent. . . . We are living undeniably in a period of the greatest restlessness, nervous tension, confusion, and disorientation of outlook.”2 Thirdly, and certainly not unrelated to this spiritual/psychological dilemma, would be Jung’s much-quoted conclusion, derived it should be noted from his own clinical observation of the workings of the psyche, that in the absence of a truly functional spiritual outlook the personality will remain divided and incomplete, that is to say in clinical terms, interminably neurotic. As Jung explained to his Strasbourg audience: “Among all my patients in the second half of life—that is to say, over thirty-five— there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost what the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook. This of course has nothing whatsoever to do with a particular creed or membership of a church.”3 Now it seems to me the important point Jung wished to convey to his Strasbourg audience, yet potentially fell short of clarifying, was that the “religious outlook” of which he spoke must necessarily be acquired not only to heal the neuroses that have emerged in its absence, but it must also be acquired, and this is the absolutely crucial point needing emphasizing, to bring about the healing of all neuroses present in the second half of life. This is because, in keeping with Jung’s groundbreaking thesis, all neuroses associated with the second half of life necessarily and irreversibly lead an individual into the...

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