bodies produce such mysterious things as cancers and that they are quite unaware of what is going on in their kidneys, hearts, and bowels. Thus if there are unconscious realms and activities in the body, it seems reasonable to suggest, if only by analogy, that there is an unconscious aspect of the mind.5
The Contribution of Jung
Analogy might suggest even more than this. The physical body has intimate connections with the entire material universe, most of which are equally unconscious, and might it not be supposed that the unconscious mind extends its roots far beyond the individual, having begun long before he was conceived in the womb? With much more than analogy to support this idea, Freud’s pupil C. G. Jung propounded a theory of the unconscious which came close to the fringes of mysticism.6 For to him the unconscious mind is personal only on its surface; essentially it is collective, racial, and perhaps universal, for Jung found that in their dreams modern men and women spontaneously produced myths and symbols thousands of years old of which they had no conscious knowledge. Thus the infantile sex life of the individual was a comparatively unimportant factor in the unconscious, and Freud’s analysis was found to be just the first important step into this undiscovered realm.
The significance of the idea of the unconscious is twofold, for it reveals a natural universe on the inside of man as well as on the outside. It also raises important questions as to the character of man’s real self. I have already suggested that this self lies much deeper than conscious reason and intellect, deeper even than man’s individuality which appears more and more to be an instrument animated by natural and universal forces. Now that we find the roots of the soul descending far below the personal level, we can understand why Jung describes the ego (which we ordinarily regard as our central self) as a complex of the unconscious. That is to say, it is a device employed by the unconscious mind to achieve certain results; in the same way the apparently self-contained human body is a device employed by nature to achieve certain results. But it must not be thought that this employment of a device is necessarily purposive in the same way that the reasoned actions of human beings are, for human purpose may be only a rationalization of natural impulse, as reason can only operate in terms of purpose.
To us these ideas are very new. But I said that they bordered on mysticism because in fact they would have been well understood by many of the ancient peoples of the world. Thus to the Hindus man’s self was identified with his individual person only because of his limited vision; they knew that if this vision could be enlarged, he would discover that his true self was Brahman. In other words, man’s ego is a trick or device (maya)7 to assist the functions of life, for if life is to manifest itself it must do so in the form of separate things. Life as such is one and has no form; nobody has ever seen life without a form. Thus, according to the Vedic teaching of the Hindus, Brahman is one and has in itself no form, and hence Brahman as such cannot do anything, cannot express itself. Action and expression can only be achieved when Brahman manifests itself in these devices or forms, and therefore they say that actions are done by the forms and not by Brahman.
Parallel teachings may be found in other ancient civilizations, notably the Egyptian and Chinese. Thus in the Shabaka inscription of ancient Egypt we find:8
Ptah lived as the governor in every body, and as the tongue in every mouth of all the gods, all cattle, all reptiles and everything else.…Thus every kind of work and every handicraft, and everything done with the arms, and every motion of the legs, and every action of all the limbs take place through his command, which…giveth value to everything.
And the Chinese sage Chuang Tzu writing about 200 BC says:9
Your body is the delegated image of Tao. Your life is not your own. It is the delegated harmony of Tao. Your individuality is not your own. It is the delegated adaptability of Tao.…You move, but know not how. You are at rest, but know not why.…These are the operations of the laws of Tao.
Such illustrations might be multiplied indefinitely, and there is every reason to believe that this was not just speculative philosophy. These ancient sages wrote not what they thought but what they felt, and the intuitive and poetic quality of their wisdom is emphasized by the fact that they simply stated what they felt and seldom, if ever, argued the point.
But modern man demands that his reason be convinced and expects his philosophy to be argued like a proposition in geometry. Among thinking people this is a heritage some five hundred years old at least and neither Freud nor wars and crises will make him doubt the supremacy of reason in a mere thirty years. But this heritage has left him in an awkward position having slain his faith in the psychologically satisfying doctrines of the Church, for there is no doubt that those who can really believe in a loving God, in the redemptive power of His Christ, and in the efficacy of confession, penance, and absolution, are essentially happy people. They feel themselves to lie in the everlasting arms of a Father whose demands on them are not too exacting because, having taken on human flesh Himself, He knows its frailties and because, having understood all, He can forgive all. For this and other reasons the Catholic Church is a master in the art of relieving man of his responsibilities, and where its priests do not indulge in petty politics and mild terrorism its people are among the happiest on earth. For they are able to trust life, knowing that however much it may pain them its master will never let them down.
The New Religions
But what of those whose reason will not allow them to believe these things? What do they do when the pains of life become too much? The majority, I suppose, try to forget them, and civilization offers countless ways of escape—movies, sports, magazines, mystery novels, high-speed travel, and the more time-honored remedies of wine, women, and song, all of which while being instructive, entertaining, and relatively harmless do not really solve the problem. For underlying all and the unescapable, wearing threats of economic insecurity and war, the tense, nerve-wracking struggle of business, the social and economic barriers to normal sex life coupled with the saddest misunderstanding of the art of marriage, the frustration of trying to make oneself a place in a huge, unwieldy community that cares nothing for you—one might compile quite a long list. And to know that the escapes do not work one has just to look at faces, especially when people think they are not being watched.
Then there are those who, being fundamentally religious and yet skeptical of orthodox Christianity, resort to the various new religions with which modern society abounds—Christian Science, Theosophy, Spiritualism, Buchmanism, Rosicrucianism, not to mention those unnamed cults which revolve around such personalities as Krishnamurti, Ouspensky, Meher Baba, Alice Bailey, the Ballards, Gurdjieff, Crowley, and a thousand other lesser teachers whose followers are comparatively few but often influential.10 In the same category must be included those who have found a substitute for religion in one of the many schools of the new psychology, some of which are almost semireligious in a certain sense of the word. But this category is especially interesting because although the man in the street may have little or no knowledge of such things, they are becoming increasingly popular among the intelligentsia, and in small, unobtrusive ways their influence slowly extends to society as a whole. It has often been observed that members of this category and also of the churches are predominantly women approaching or past the middle of life—a class which seems to constitute a special problem in the modern world. Many were deprived of their husbands in the Great War, others have lost them somewhat early in life for American men in particular are apt to die young through business worries and nervous strain. Others still are those who have failed to marry at all or who have made unsuccessful marriages. Thus it is often concluded that their interest in these matters is simply the result of sexual frustration. But while this may well be a contributory cause in some cases, it should be remembered that people naturally acquire an interest in religion in the latter half of life, having accomplished their mundane duties, and that women are more inclined to religious feeling than men. Perceiving this as a natural phenomenon the Hindus divided life into two main stages. In the first man’s duties consisted of Artha and Kama, the fulfillment of the duties of citizenship and the fulfillment of the
