Gospel of the Self: Jungian Themes in the Aramaic New Testament, Part 6

Image of Wholeness

This week we continue our series on the Aramaic translation of early Christian texts, and how those translations parallel core aspects of Jungian thought.  

Jung wrote that it is an integral part of us as human beings to move toward wholeness.  We live day to day in a world beset by differences, where the conflict of opposites seems to drive everything. But at our deepest core, there is at least an intuition that there is an overarching wholeness that transcends all differences.  Our thinking mind, and our small ego, cannot really come to grips with the immensity of wholeness.  It may even feel terrifying – a sense that my identity might dissolve or explode if I gave up my familiar ways of relating to the world, separated into distinct objects and warring polarities.  But Jung said that there is an underlying current that moves us always closer to wholeness, defying the places in our personalities where we are overly one-sided, giving us dreams and life experiences that will broaden and deepen us, if only we are open to them.

Jung said that a major area where our longing for wholeness breaks through is in our spiritual practices.  Since pre-history, people have developed devotional practices and systems of belief that attempt to assert the reality that there is a Higher Power that exceeds human intellect and that it matters a great deal how we approach that Higher Power.  These practices and systems sometimes get set down in dogma, in which case they are called religions. To Jungians, what they have in common, and what is most significant about them, is that each of them has a core image which permits the ego to relate to that Higher Power in a way that neither decimates the ego nor shuts out the possibility of wholeness.  In the end, every spiritual practice, every religion, and every image of God falls short, because the full experience of Higher Power is simply beyond human capacity.  What Jung found fascinating were the ways in which this “falling short” occurred, and the consequences of it.

Jung was particularly interesting in the religion of Christianity.  On the one hand, he wrote thousands of pages on the symbols and images of Christianity and the ways in which they had encouraged people to become increasingly whole, in deeper and deeper relatedness to Higher Power.  But Christianity had fallen short – the image of God at the core of Christianity, the Trinity, leaves out three key elements, that is, the feminine, the material, and the darker aspects of the divine.

It is fascinating to note that the image of the Higher Power in the Aramaic translations of early Christian texts is not lacking in these three elements. In fact, the Aramaic texts open the possibility of a very different God image, one that carries a great deal more wholeness.

First, the spiritual and the material.   In Christianity, there is a distinction between  heaven and earth, the spiritual and mundane realms, with the material realm seen as fallen.  Not so in Aramaic. The Aramaic word for heaven, shemaya, is best translated as a sacred vibration that vibrates without limit throughout the entire universe (Douglas Klotz, p 83).  The Aramaic word for earth, ar’ah, does not just mean the ground or materiality; it refers to all of nature and any being that has individual form, the aspect of the vibrational pattern that takes form that we perceive as solid.  As Douglas-Klotz puts it:

From an “earth” point of view, we are an array of infinitely diverse and unique beings.  From a “heaven” point of view, we are connected with everything in the universe through one wave of light or sound.  TO look at existence from only one viewpoint is incomplete, like walking around with only one eye open.  With both eyes open, we can see the depth of two realities that interpenetrate simultaneously.  (p. 83)

Second, the feminine.  Tracing back to the original Aramaic, Jesus was quoted at multiple points as saying that there was a queendom, malkutha, that was coming form the inside out.  His way of teaching – through parables, stories, and short sayings – appealing more to the intuitive mind, and uniting it with the logical mind.  Jesus extended hospitality to all, especially the mariginalized and despised people, and chided those in authority who refused to do the same.  Jesus spoke at several points about nourishment, at all levels, coming from a much more feminine direction. Finally, the Aramaic word that is often translated as God – alaha – is genderless, elevating the feminine and masculine equally.

Third, the darker aspects.  Quoting Douglas-Klotz:

I want to emphasize that the shem-light includes all vibration, from the slowest to the fastest, from the most dense waves to the most expanded.  It includes what we normally call darkness, and what physicists now call “dark matter, the stuff that makes up most of what we know as the universe.  (p. 60)

In the sayings of Jesus, from the Aramaic, darkness and light are held forth as balancing, equal forces.  There is no sense of light triumphing over, or being more god-like than, darkness.  Instead, nuhra (light, which also means illuminating intelligence) is balanced against hosech (darkness, which also means an older, more instinctive way of knowing).  Again quoting from Douglas-Klotz: 

The illumination of nuhra – working in the light and toward what some traditions call enlightenment – operates by straight-line methods. The work of indirect transformation – “endarkenment” – operates by curved methods.  St. John of the Cross called this experience of the latter type of spiritual work “the dark night of the soul.” In our lives we are constantly working to make sense of both these “universes” and to integrate them in our everyday lives  (p. 70)

I will end with Douglas-Klotz’s re-translation of  Luke 11:35, which is (in the KJV):  Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness.

Take care in this circumstance;

When the light in you actually becomes darkness,

Then it is no longer light:

When your understanding loses its clarity

Or becomes lost in complexity,

It cannot claim to be teaching or illumination

Pay attention that you use clear understanding

For what is straightforward, able to be taught.

Use veiling and darkness for what

Is circular, indirect, only able to be suggested.