XII

XII. THE "WHOLE PERSON"

By Stephen Palmquist (stevepq@hkbu.edu.hk)

34. Heaven and Wholeness in Nature

By now each of you should have completed ten weeks of dreamwork. In this final week, lets take a rest to reflect on the overall goals of what we have been doing. We have seen over and over throughout this course that psychologists tend to view "wholeness" as the ultimate goal of personal growth in general and of dream interpretation in particular. We then saw at the end of Lecture 33 that Jung seemed far from reaching this goal in his old age. The problem this raises-indeed, the crucial question that must be answered before the legitimacy of depth psychology can be accurately assessed-is whether this goal is itself just an impossible dream. What would wholeness look like, if we were ever to attain it?

Today we shall begin constructing an answer to this question by looking at a topic that might at first appear to be unrelated to the issue of psychological wholeness: heaven. Religious people have a wide variety of (often conflicting) ideas about what heaven might be like. But the function of heaven in religion is directly parallel to the function of wholeness in psychology: namely, to point us to our ultimate resting place, the goal of all personal/spiritual growth. Heaven is the "place" where everything is "perfect". Thus, not long after announcing that "the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matt. 4:17), Jesus exhorts the people "to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (5:48).

What is Jesus talking about when he makes such statements? Is he making an impossible demand, that we live our entire lives without any moral or ethical defects (i.e., totally free of sin)? I don't believe this is his meaning. Rather, to be perfect is to be complete, or whole. That this is not a static state, but a process that requires us to work through our imperfections, is implied by the Bible's acknowledgment that even Jesus had to learn obedience in order to be "made perfect" by God (Heb. 5:8-9; cf. 1 Cor. 13:9-10). Likewise, theological terms such as "salvation" can be interpreted as referring to a process of being made whole. Salvation said to be the "clothing" that prepares us for our ultimate resting place in God (2 Chr. 6:41); as such, it is often used in conjunction with "rock" symbolism (cf. Lecture 13), as in Psalm 18:2: "The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold." (See also 2 Sam. 22:3 and Ps. 62:1-8.) The biblical conception of salvation implies that we grow into perfection by learning to rest in the higher wholeness of God. The emotion that chiefly characterizes those who come to this Rock of Wholeness is joy (see e.g., Ps. 95:1).

Those of you who have taken my Introduction to Philosophy course may recall that in Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Chiang denies that heaven is literally a place, saying instead that "Heaven is being perfect" (see TP, Ch.15). Once Jonathan recognizes this insight, he is freed to explore a new way of flying-one that transcends space, time and the other limitations of his physical body-the flight of imagination. This, I believe, is not incompatible with the Bible's depiction of Jesus' view of heaven, though of course we must beware of an overly fanciful interpretation of what it means to transcend the body's limitations. I once read a newspaper article, for example, about a teenager who, after reading one of Richard Bach's books, drove his car into a brick wall at 90 miles per hour, in the belief that this would transport him into a form of spiritual "flight". The Easter 1997 mass suicide by members of the "Heaven's Gate" cult seems to have been motivated by a similar desire to do away with bodily limitations in order to become pure spiritual beings.

When Jesus continually announces the "nearness" of the "kingdom of heaven", and tells people about the perfection or salvation that will come to those who "enter in" to this new realm, he is not talking about a future existence that can only be enjoyed after we die. He clearly believed that heaven is right here "among us" in the natural world. I believe the best way to explain this is as a reference to a spiritual dimension of nature. In our normal, day-to-day existence, we tend to view our experience in terms of four dimensions (the three dimensions of space, plus time). But Jesus (together with numerous other religious and spiritual teachers) appears to be suggesting that the world is fundamentally incomplete if we view it in this way. For there is a higher, spiritual aspect to our experience that is actually present in the natural world, perhaps as a "fifth dimension".

The problem is that our tendency to focus on the four dimensions of space-time blinds us to this higher, spiritual reality, even though it is all around us. In order to imagine how this fifth dimension might manifest itself in our experience, we can examine how the relationships between other, lower-level dimensions operate. These relationships, being easier for us to understand, may then be used as an analogy to help us understand what the fifth dimension would be like. The following reflections are based on E.A. Abbott's book, Flatland. This short fantasy is well worth reading in full, though it does not take the extra step of applying such reflections to the spiritual dimension or personal wholeness.

Imagine a one-dimensional world, called "Pointland", where all living beings are points existing on a single line (see "A", "B", "C" and "D" in Figure XII.1a). They can move only back and forth, so they never have direct contact with any beings other than the ones immediately in front and in back of them. Now imagine another, two-dimensional world, where all living beings are simple geometrical figures, such as lines, triangles, circles and squares (see "W", "X", "Y" and "Z" in Figure XII.1b). These beings in "Flatland" will be able to move not only back and forth, but also right and left. But in neither world would anyone have any conception of what our words "up" and "down" might mean. This third dimension, so obvious and natural to us, would be totally hidden from their view. Beings in Flatland would therefore perceive each other as simple line segments that change their length as they move around. Line W, for example, would look like a single point when viewed from one end (as from Circle Y's position in Figure XII.1b).

(a) Pointland (b) Flatland

Figure XII.1: Lower-Dimensional Worlds

Suppose now that a being from Flatland were somehow to enter into Pointland. Line segment W could make itself appear as a single point, by "breaking into" Pointland at an angle, say between points A and B. It could then leave Pointland and "magically" break in again between points B and C, and so on. By making itself parallel to that world, W could even fill up numerous different points all at the same time! The points in Pointland would have no idea what words like "angle" and "parallel" meant; all they would know is that a being was able to jump in and out of their world at will, appearing sometimes between two specific points, other times between other pairs of points, and still other times filling up a whole continuum of points. The whole thing would be a great mystery!

The inevitable sense of shock experienced by the beings in Pointland would also be experienced by the line segments in Flatland, if a three-dimensional being were to enter into their two-dimensional space. For instance, if a sphere were suddenly to make contact with Flatland, it would start out looking like a point. But as the sphere passed through the flat surface, it would look like a line first growing, then shrinking after its equator passed through the plane. If you imagine yourself being in Flatland, you'll realize that the edges of all two-dimensional structures would function as walls, providing just as much privacy for them as three-dimensional walls do for us. The space inside any enclosed figure would therefore be invisible to anyone outside. Yet the sphere, from its vantage point outside the plane, would be able not only to "see through walls" in Flatland, but also to see inside any solid objects, as follows:

Figure XII.2:

Seeing Through Walls from a Higher Dimension

The similarity between the sphere's apparent ability to "see through walls" in Flatland and what Jung called "intuition" suggests that human beings may also have access to a dimension of reality that is higher than our five senses on their own can detect.

Around the beginning of the 20th century, scientists discovered that the most accurate way to make large-scale measurements is to view the universe not simply as three dimensions of space, but also to consider a fourth physical dimension, time. The change in the way the natural world appears to us when we regard it in this way, as a single, space-time continuum, is as shocking as in the case of one- and two-dimensional beings suddenly experiencing the next higher dimension. For instance, the shortest distance between two points, we are now told, is not a straight line, but rather a space-time curve! Light is not only a particle, but at the same time a wave. And if some quantum physicists are to be believed, even stranger implications follow: future events may have a causal influence on past events; objects may not exist when we are not observing them; and much more.

By now we are so accustomed to thinking of the universe as a four-dimensional reality, that taking one additional step should not be as difficult as it must have been in Jesus' day. On the contrary, the foregoing analogies suggest certain key features that the fifth dimension ought to have. First, spiritual reality will be "all around" us, even though we may not be able to see it. Just as W could appear anywhere in Pointland, or even everywhere at once, so also the spiritual world permeates the entire material world. The two are, in fact, one world, just as genuinely as both time and space are part of four-dimensional nature. Moreover, a higher-dimensional (spiritual) being will appear to pop in and out of the lower dimension, growing and shrinking apparently at will, and seeing into the very center of the world as we know it. Perhaps this is what Jesus experienced at his baptism (Mark 1:10) when "he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove."

Thinking of heaven in this higher-dimensional way can help us understand the imagery used in the last book of the Bible, Revelation. Near the end of the book, for instance, the writer depicts heaven as a giant cube, descending down to earth. An interesting point here is that we always measure property in two-dimensional units (e.g., "my apartment is 2000 square feet"), never in cubic measurements. Yet heaven's measurements are all three-dimensional! What is the extra dimension?

My suggestion is that the new dimension that is part of the very fabric of heaven is personhood, expressed in its highest form as love. The term "dimension" refers to a unique direction that makes movement possible, so the movement of this extra dimension of heavenly measurement (the hidden, fifth dimension of our space-time world) just is the movement we have been calling "personal growth". We are used to thinking of things as moving in the three spatial directions (up-down, right-left, front-back), and in the direction, time (past-future); but we can now see that they also move in the direction of personality. Indeed, a person's personal growth can be measured most accurately by their capacity to love. If this interpretation of Jesus' words about heaven is accurate, then the amount of "heavenly property" owned by each person is directly proportional to the love that person has been willing to give and receive (cf. John 14:1-4 and 1 John 4:7-21). Moving toward love is a form of transformation that takes place in what might be called "the eternal present".

In some primitive cultures this fifth, spiritual dimension of the natural world is called "dream time". This mythical belief is briefly mentioned in The Tree (see Ch.2), in connection with belief in a "golden age" in more developed cultures. But we can now see an even more significant implication: the dream time is still available to be experienced today, for it is the ever-present spiritual reality that makes religion meaningful. Even non-religious people touch this higher dimension, in the dreams they have each night. This is why dreams are such an important part of our quest for wholeness: they automatically put us in touch with a part of ourselves that might otherwise be difficult to access, remaining hidden from some people throughout their lives.

Seeing dream reality as a higher dimension of this world suggests a plausible interpretation of Chuang Tzu's butterfly dream (see Lecture 1). Neither Chuang Chou nor the butterfly alone represents his true personality, but only both images taken together. In seeing himself as a butterfly, Chuang Chou is peeking through the torn veil, into the heavenly "dream time" that exists within him. No wonder he ends his story by musing: "This is called the Transformation of Things." The transformation that leads to wholeness is the realization that the body and the spirit are bound up with each other as intimately as the butterfly is bound up with Chuang Tzu sleeping on the mountain top.

Jung's deep awareness of the identity of the spiritual and natural worlds is evident in the following passages from DA:

Probably in absolute reality [i.e., heaven?] there is no such thing as body and mind, but body and mind or soul are the same, the same life, subject to the same laws, and what the body does is happening in the mind. (20)

For the collective unconscious is not a psychological function in your head, it is the shadow side of the object itself. (78)

The collective unconscious is the unknown in objects. (74)

The latter statement, reminiscent of Kant's unknowable "thing in itself" (see TP, Ch.7), comes just after an alchemical allusion to Jesus' hidden kingdom: "No one approaches the Kingdom of Heaven without having passed through the flame and been burnt through and through."

These quotes suggest that, when we compare Jung's map of the psyche (see Figure VI.1) with the one I proposed in Lecture 4 (see Figure II.2), the overlap between the unconscious (i.e., everything to the right of "ego") in his and "body" in mine is more than just coincidental. The higher dimension of reality we have been discussing here gives us a standpoint that enables us to identify the personal unconscious with the human body, and the collective unconscious with the whole of physical nature. (The fact that my wife-to-be and I came up with Figure II.2 in a late-night conversation during our college days could itself be taken as evidence of the existence of the collective unconscious.) Recognizing this higher-level connection provides a perspectival framework that has the potential to solve the mind-body problem (see Lecture 5) and unite the conscious-unconscious division at once! For as we approach wholeness, we realize that "the self is felt empirically not as subject but as object" (CW 9.315); its "unconscious component ... can only come to consciousness indirectly, by way of projection." When Jesus institutes the central Christian ritual with the words "Take and eat; this is my body" (Matt. 26:26), he is therefore inviting us to participate in the wholeness of his personal unconscious (that of the Christ) through the collective symbol of bread. In so doing, we become fully aware of ourselves by projecting our unconscious onto Jesus and his cross. As we saw in Lecture 32, the Christian symbolism here fits perfectly with Jung's.

Of the many philosophers who have toyed with ideas relating to this spiritual aspect of the natural world, one of the most interesting with respect to the fifth dimension is Kant, who often refers to the "intellectual" or "noumenal" world (in contrast to the "phenomenal" world). Although in his mature philosophy he carefully adopted an austere, epistemological standpoint for interpreting the meaning of any reference to these worlds, and persuasively proved that we cannot have any scientific knowledge of their existence or reality (see TP, Ch.7), his early writings (and occasional hints throughout his life) clearly suggest that he believed in a world of spirits. I have argued in KCR (Ch.II) that he derived some of his most significant ideas from the Swedish mystic, Swedenborg (1688-1772), whose visions were the subject of Kant's critical analysis in his 1766 book, Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, Illustrated by Dreams of Metaphysics. Indeed, Kant's overall approach to philosophy, when properly understood in the context of this early work, can be regarded as establishing the foundation for a "Critical Mysticism".

Recently some quite serious work has been done on what is now called "paranormal experiences", such as seeing visions or ghosts. There was a time when reputable psychologists could, like Freud, treat such experiences as mere illusions. Writers such as Raymond Moody, however, have convinced many that seeing ghosts need not be a frightening, "spooky" experience, but can be the occasion for great joy. Moody points out that mirrors have often been the avenue of communication with the spiritual world, as in the famous story of Alice in Wonderland. Interestingly, the diagram of intersecting circles, used in Figure X.3 to depict the spiritual communion created by love, has a mirror-like quality.

The possibility that a world of spiritual beings actually exists as a higher dimension of this world raises interesting questions about dream interpretation. Bosnak appeals to such a notion, for example, as a way of defending Jung's concept of "active imagination" (the process whereby we fill in missing details in a dream text by replaying the dream images in our imagination):

Active imagination assumes that, just as in the dream world, many different bearers of consciousness exist simultaneously and that the I-figure can make (renewed) contact with these dream beings....

In doing active imagination it is important first to alter our state of awareness into an image consciousness....

If you do not begin active imagination in such a state of consciousness, there is a chance that you will just fabricate stories, which produces a sense of unreality. In active imagination, you don't have the feeling of unreality; it is rather as if you participate in two equally true realities simultaneously (LCD 43-44).

Along the same lines, I believe a "perspectival theory of dream interpretation" could be developed, relating dream events to interactions with spiritual beings. Such a theory, though highly speculative and philosophically unjustifiable, could serve as a basis for a method of interpretation that would view some of our dreams as adopting other people's perspectives. The theory might explain this as being a result of their spirits somehow communicating with, or influencing, ours during sleep. Naturally, none of this can be proven; but to anyone who has had strange and otherwise unexplainable experiences with a spiritual, yet convincingly "natural" character, the need for such a theory will be obvious.

Does this higher-dimensional world really exist? Or is it just a fantasy, a waking dream philosophers and mystics (following Plato and the whole idealist tradition) have produced and put forward as if it were true? To answer this question in a philosophically responsible and psychologically aware (i.e., philopsychic) way, we must recall the main point of metaphysics, according to Part One of The Tree: to enable us to recognize our ignorance. If we approach this whole issue of the reality of the "heavenly" world that Jesus says is here among us from the standpoint of metaphysical humility, then the way forward seems clear. We are free to believe in its reality, and to interpret any mystical experiences we may have of it accordingly; but we must not force others to believe it.

Our initial answer to the questions raised at the beginning today is therefore that our dreams of wholeness are not in vain. Rather, they put us in touch with the most real and most meaningful aspect of human life: the spiritual dimension that is so close at hand that we tend to forget all about it. Could this spiritual dimension itself be an illusion, a dream that serves only to ease the pain of the harsh realities of human life on earth? Such pain, and the proper response to it, will be our topic in the next hour.

35. Forgiveness: Quest for the Self in God

Reading students' dream diaries always fills me with a tremendous sense of awe. When you share your dreams with another person, you are in effect allowing that person to peer into the fifth dimension of your life, to see your deepest spiritual self. Your willingness to make yourself vulnerable to another person in this way is the spiritual reason why religion and psychology are able to work the way they do. Being open to another person by sharing part of yourself in an atmosphere of trust and love literally opens up a connection between you and the higher-dimensional spiritual realm we discussed in the previous lecture. Just as all opposites come together (e.g., good and bad, love and hate, faith and doubt), the misery that tends to accompany this opening can pave the way for a tremendous joy that can change our life.

Having now seen you confronting the many different miseries and joys that each of us faces, I can attest first hand that many of you have expressed a deep need for what I believe only God can ultimately provide -namely, forgiveness. In religious terms, forgiveness is a spiritual force that breaks down the barrier of sin, depicted as a wall in Figure II.1. Like love, it is a higher-dimensional ideal that we can experience. Without forgiveness in its most profound form, I can see no way of coping with life in a world where our dreams of wholeness remain unrealized and perhaps even unrealizable. If they are mere dreams (i.e., "illusions"), as Freud would have us believe, then we should "wake up" and realize that life is ultimately absurd, as some existentialists claim. But if our dreams of wholeness ground us in a reality that makes life meaningful even though we have no guarantee (and perhaps even no reasonable grounds for hope) that such wild dreams will ever become real, then this life can be not only tolerated, but enjoyed!

Our ability to love is, in fact, directly linked to our ability to give and receive forgiveness. As Jesus puts it in Luke 7:47, just after being criticized for allowing a sinful woman (probably a prostitute) to kiss him, "her many sins have been forgiven-for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little." The link here appears to work in both directions. That is, an unforgiving spirit prevents a person from giving and receiving love, while an unwillingness to love blocks the ability to give and receive forgiveness. Jesus' death has the power to convey God's universal forgiveness to mankind because it was an expression of the highest form of self-sacrificial (agape) love (see e.g., John 3:16-17). But we cannot receive God's forgiveness simply by an act of intellectual assent; we enable ourselves to receive that forgiveness only as we learn to love others (1 John 4:7-21). Jesus exemplifies this by calling his disciples "friends" the night before his crucifixion (John 15:13-15). Such friendship is therapeutic (see Lecture 30) because the spiritual communion of friends encourages the cycle of love and forgiveness to grow deeper and deeper all the time.

Freud explicitly objects to the Christian ideal of love and universal forgiveness, as "the highest standpoint which man can reach", on the grounds that "not all men are worthy of love" (CID 49). Arguing against Jesus' "great commandment", he reveals his inability to see any form of love that goes beyond eros (56):

If I love someone, he must deserve it in some way.... I can love myself in him; ... But if he is a stranger to me and if he cannot attract me by any worth of his own ..., it will be hard for me to love him. Indeed, I should be wrong to do so ...

What Freud fails to understand is that love has different perspectives: what is true for eros is unlikely to be true for agape. He does later admit that the "commandment to love one's neighbour as oneself ... is really justified by the fact that nothing else runs so strongly counter to the original nature of man" (59)-this "nature" being our natural aggressiveness. But he adds (61) that a community of love cannot be universal, for it always requires that "there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness." Thus he asserts (90): "The commandment is impossible to fulfil; such an enormous inflation of love can only lower its value, not get rid of the difficulty."

Freud's inability to accept the Gospel (i.e., the "good news" that Jesus' self-sacrificial death conveys God's absolute forgiveness to all human beings) is closely related to his reductionism. As we have seen throughout this course, many religious concepts have close parallels to psychological concepts. Freud always insists on interpreting the psychological side of each parallel as more real or legitimate than the religious side. But in this case, when the question transcends our personal self-identity and attempts to unlock the highest and most ultimate questions of life and meaning (love and death, forgiveness and eternal life), psychology leaves us empty-handed. Religion alone can come to our aid, with its unique offer of ultimate forgiveness. Jesus' message, after all, was not that "being perfect" (or becoming a "whole person") will happen to everyone who believes in some traditional church dogma or performs some prescribed ritual. His message was simple: "Your sins are forgiven" (e.g., Luke 7:48), so love God and your neighbor (10:27). This unconditional acceptance is one thing God offers that psychotherapy cannot.

At the end of Lecture 33 I quoted a spiritual principle that is sometimes used to cast doubt on the legitimacy of any attempt to increase self-knowledge through psychological insight (Luke 17:33): "Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it." Jesus also encourages us (Matt. 6:33) to "seek first [God's] kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." Such maxims warn us that personal growth can actually be obstructed by the tendency to pay too much attention to personal growth! Over-emphasizing the dream of wholeness (whether it be a psychological search for self-understanding or a religious search for moral flawlessness) is dangerous because ultimately, wholeness is not a prize we win by trying harder and harder to understand ourselves, but a gift that is given when we allow ourselves to be open to the higher calling of the God-in-us (our true identity). This profound truth-the essence of what I have been calling "genuine" or "authentic" religion-has been understood by mystics and great religious leaders in many different traditions, yet it is all-too-often misunderstood by those who seek to follow their examples. The religious version of this misunderstanding produces fundamentalism (i.e., an over-emphasis on rigid adherence to rules); the psychological version produces a cult of self-worship (i.e., a tendency to treat oneself as God).

Do you think Jung was guilty of promoting self-worship in place of a genuine worship of God? Recall the words Jung wrote about himself at the end of his autobiography, referring to the paradoxical loss of self-knowledge he experienced toward the end of his life (quoted at the end of Lecture 33). Is this evidence that he had wasted his life chasing an illusion? To be fair, I should provide you with more of the context for that concluding sentence. Some of the text I previously omitted from this passage (MDR 391-392) is as follows:

... it was as it had to be; for all came about because I am as I am.... I am disappointed and not disappointed.... I cannot form any final judgment because the phenomenon of life and the phenomenon of man are too vast....

... I exist on the foundation of something I do not know....

... Probably, as in all metaphysical questions, both are true: Life is-or has-meaning and meaninglessness. I cherish the anxious hope that meaning will ... win the battle....

... This is old age ... Yet there is so much that fills me: plants, animals, clouds, day and night, and the eternal in man. The more uncertain I have felt about myself, the more there has grown up in me a feeling of kinship with all things.

This added context suggests that Jung's loss of self-knowledge may actually have been a natural expression of what it means to experience wholeness. His intentionally contradictory statements (e.g., "disappointed and not disappointed", "meaning and meaninglessness") indicate a union of opposites has taken place. His "feeling of kinship with all things" reveals an increasing awareness of the collective unconscious: as his ego-attachments subsided (creating surface uncertainty), Jung experienced nature as part of his Self. Moreover, his reference to a deeper, unknown "foundation" suggests an awareness that his true Self is in God, and so also in the higher-dimensional spiritual reality that permeates the entire universe). The problem is that, not wanting to appeal to any traditional religious categories, he was left with no way of speaking about this reality. He could not take the extra step of regarding wholeness as salvation.

Naming God as both the goal and context of all personal growth gives rise to a new (but I believe, more tolerable) paradox. On the one hand, we shall recognize that the goal remains forever beyond our reach, so we'll never come to the point of melancholy aimlessness that Jung's confession seems to illustrate. On the other hand, we can recognize that in a sense we have already reached the goal: God is the wholeness into which we have been accepted by the absolute forgiveness conveyed by Jesus. We might say, then, that the goal of a Christian's religious individuation is not merely to become a "whole person", but to become a "whole part" of a higher-dimensional person, called the "body of Christ" (i.e., the Church). By submitting our personal growth to God's guiding care, we can recognize our incomplete completeness in God. Thomas Merton expresses this well when he says (TS 33-34):

Real self-conquest is the conquest of ourselves not by ourselves but by the Holy Spirit. Self-conquest is really self-surrender.

Yet before we can surrender ourselves we must become ourselves. For no one can give up what he does not possess.

More precisely-we have to have enough mastery of ourselves to renounce our own will into the hands of Christ-so that He may conquer what we cannot reach by our own efforts.

In his book, A Place for You, Paul Tournier makes a similar point, arguing that psychology and religion ought properly to be regarded as two complementary "movements" (see e.g., PY 99): the former helps us understand what it really means to find ourselves, and thus prevents religiously motivated self-sacrifice from being a dangerous and unhealthy form of compensation for one's own lack of self-identity; the latter requires us to lose ourselves as an expression of love for God and our fellow human beings, and thus guards against psychology's tendency to be too egocentric. Psychology can be a great assistance in helping us recognize false forgiveness, false sacrifice, false humility, etc.; but we cannot learn to practice the true (or "genuine") alternative to these without the help of the spiritual standpoint provided by religion. As Tournier suggests over and over (e.g., 92,143), psychology shows us the proper starting line on the path of personal growth (i.e., self-awareness), whereas religion shows us the proper finishing line (i.e., self-sacrifice).

The Christian vision of individual wholeness, as a form of incomplete completeness in God, requires us to accept the gift of ultimate forgiveness. Only in this way can we make sense out of the various weaknesses revealed in our dreams, without going to either of two extremes: losing all hope in the possibility of wholeness, or claiming we have "arrived" at complete wholeness. Accepting divine forgiveness requires us to acknowledge our fundamental incompleteness, but also enables us to see ourselves as complete in God. The power wielded by guilt, shame and bitterness, the main psychological effects of wrong-doing, is thereby broken, and we are set free to forgive ourselves, as well as those who have hurt us. Without a deep awareness of being forgiven, we risk being overwhelmed by the heavy burdens of our own dark side. But Jesus' declaration, "You are forgiven", can cut into such burdens and restore wholeness in the midst of our pain. Thus, my tendency to reject authority can be transformed into my greatest strength, just as can any and every negative personality trait you have discovered during this course. By becoming part of the whole (i.e., a member of Christ's Body here on earth-the church), we also have access to the greatest possible community of loving friends to help us live out our newfound wholeness.

This is more than just an illusory dream. Christianity reconciles the ultimate opposites: God becomes human in Jesus, so that every human has a chance to become divine. The one who knew no guilt becomes guilty, so that all who are guilty can be forgiven. This is a spiritual transformation that transcends everything psychological. And its result, for those who accept the gift of becoming whole by participating in a greater wholeness, is peace and freedom. Of the many biblical passages that dwell on these themes, none is more expressive than Ephesians 2:4-5,14-17:

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions ... For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.

Here we see one of the most important aspects of the Christian Gospel: that the barrier of sin, "the dividing wall of hostility" (cf. Figure II.1), can be overcome only when the power of self-sacrificial love restores the wholeness that was lost by our reliance on rules instead of relationships.

As Torrey points out (WP 89; see also 93), the main reason western psychotherapists rarely make use of concepts such as "confession, atonement, and absolution ... is that they are part of religion.... In the West, psychotherapy and religion are distinct entities." Most primitive societies, by contrast, do not have such a clear distinction between therapy and religion. For instance, "with Australian aborigines" (104), "the systems of medical healing, psychotherapy, law, religion, and social sanction are found to interlock closely." One of the goals of this course has been to encourage you to see the potential for a re-interlocking of these now separate elements of modern societies. In particular, I hope to have persuaded you that religion and psychology, though distinct, can function as two sides of the same coin, working together toward the same goal of wholeness through personal growth and transformation. Just as our personal individuation begins with a primitive, undifferentiated state and proceeds through a stage of strong oppositions to a newly integrated unity-in-diversity, so also we can regard this as the natural pattern for cultures to take: first therapy and religion are identical; then the two become distinguished and even alienated from each other; finally, they are reunited in a higher-level unity.

As Freud himself predicts (CID 39), "Future ages will bring with them new and probably unimaginably great advances in this field of civilization and will increase man's likeness to God still more." But "present-day man does not feel happy in his Godlike character." This is the crucial difference between living in the second stage (as represented by Freud) and living in the third stage (as represented by Jung). In the latter, we must learn that happiness is not the measure of our wholeness; there is a joy that surpasses the happiness-through-instinctual-satisfaction that Freud seems to think is necessary. This is a divine joy, the joy of creativity and communion that can coexist with suffering and hardship.

In conclusion, let's return again to the subject of your dream diary project. Since individuation is a life-long project, twelve-weeks of dreamwork cannot be expected to accomplish very much in the way of personal growth. In fact, I would be disappointed if any of you, upon completing your dream diary, were to conclude: "Now I'm really a whole person!" At best, you may have experienced a key psychological transformation. But like a religious conversion, this is just the beginning of a long path of struggle. Rather than teaching you how to be a whole person, my main purpose in asking you to write dream diaries was to teach you a skill. Regardless of the grade you receive on your project, I hope you will all come away from this course with an increased awareness of how to carry out a meaningful dialogue with your unconscious. Having this skill will enable you to use it when necessary throughout your life, sharing dreams and dream interpretations more openly with your family and friends. You may even wish to continue writing down very impressive dreams when they occur, so that you can reread them occasionally and see how you have grown. Most of you will probably have neither the time nor the desire to continue keeping a dream diary on a long term basis. But this is as it should be. For we should all keep in mind the words of Ecclesiastes 5:7: "Much dreaming and many words are meaningless. Therefore stand in awe of God."

36. Am I Who I Am?

As we come now to the end of this course, let's reconsider the question we discussed in Lecture 1: Who am I? After rejecting some obvious answers, we have devoted much attention to the task of investigating more subtle ways of answering this question, suggested by depth psychologists. Peeling away layer after layer of the "onion" of your self-identity may have left you in a state of confusion, not unlike the profound uncertainty Jung expressed at the end of his life when facing the same question (see MDR 391-392). One particularly interesting sentence in those last two pages of his autobiography is the one that says "all came about because I am as I am." This may be nothing more that a melancholy sigh of resignation, expressing Jung's willingness to live out his own destiny. But it may also be an allusion to something more meaningful.

Of all the names and descriptions of God given in the Bible, one of the most profound comes in the story of Moses and the burning bush (Ex. 3:1-4:17). Moses is tending sheep in the desert when he notices a bush that is burning without being consumed. When he comes closer to get a better look, God calls out to him, telling him to take off his sandals, because he is standing on holy ground. God then tells Moses that the Israelites are to be released from their captivity in Egypt, under Moses' leadership. Somewhat doubtful of his own leadership capabilities, Moses asks God a series of questions, beginning with "Who am I that I should go ...?" (3:11), and including the following exchange (3:13-14):

Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?"

God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you."

This has often been taken as a straightforward reply from God, telling Moses that God's name is "I AM". Indeed, the Israelites came to regard the Hebrew word "YHWH" (meaning "I am") as being so holy that they would not speak it, but would only write it. (The spoken version, "Yahweh", sounds slightly different from the normal way of saying "I am" in Hebrew. But written Hebrew originally had no vowels, so the two are identical. Most English translations conceal this identity by printing "Yahweh" as "LORD", using capitals to distinguish it from other ways of referring to God.) But put yourself in Moses' position. Do you think God's answer clarified his question, or did it just confuse him more?

On the surface, "I AM WHO I AM" is like saying "Dr. Palmquist is Dr. Palmquist" or "you are you"; it conveys no new information about the person's identity. As such, I think a certain amount of humor can be detected in God's answer-as if God were telling Moses with a chuckle, "It's none of your business what my name is!" Remember that having God's name would presumably have given Moses power over God (see Lecture 25). So God replies by giving himself a name that refers to everything and nothing at the same time: "I am" can be applied to everything that exists; yet "I AM WHO I AM" also suggests that God, as the Supreme Individual, transcends any particular existence. Existentialist philosophers such as Paul Tillich have taken this to mean God is "being itself" (see TP, Chs.14,23). That is, God is not only in the burning bush, but in everything and indeed is everything that exists-and more. As Augustine put it, God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and circumference is nowhere. With this in mind, I prefer to translate the name "Yahweh" as "the Presence".

From a psychological point of view, the confusion Moses probably experienced in hearing God's reply indicates his awareness of his own incompleteness when coming into the presence of Wholeness. We needn't be ashamed to admit such confusion; for as Oscar Wilde once said (SM 60), "Only the shallow know themselves." By contrast, only a whole person can utter the words "I AM WHO I AM" and really understand what this means. Most of us are largely unaware of who we are-and might not be too anxious to admit certain aspects, if we suddenly came to know them! Instead, we try to pretend like we are somebody else, adopting various personas according to the situation. As we begin to find our Self in the depths of Yahweh, the Presence that religion calls "God", we find we are able to be present more fully, not only to ourselves, but to others, loving them for who they are rather than for who we are not. We then become all too aware of the fact that our "wholeness" is not something we can grasp, but something we are to enjoy, like a dream we are in the midst of dreaming.

That God tells Moses to use the name "I AM" is perhaps most remarkable in view of how often we use these same two words to describe aspects of ourselves. We use them to identify ourselves as members of a specific national or racial group ("I am an American"; "I am Chinese"), to notify others of our social or professional status ("I am a university student"; "I am a doctor") and to claim adherence to a particular belief system or worldview ("I am a Christian"; "I am an idealist"). These and the many other uses of "I am" that could be cited tend to put pressure on us to conform to the standards that are normally associated with whatever we are claiming to be. This is particularly true when the "I am" we claim to be on the outside does not conform entirely to the "I am" we know ourselves to be on the inside. Our goal should be to become more and more like God, who simply says: "I AM WHO I AM."

Adding yet another connotation to this way of thinking about God's relation to human beings, Merton suggests: "I am myself a word spoken by God" (CP 68). This does not imply that God determines the whole meaning of our life. Rather, the word that I am is a word spoken in freedom, calling me to work with God in the creation of my life's meaning. To be unfaithful to this call (the call to be myself) is the source of the existential dread that blocks spiritual growth (97). And yet to some extent, this is inevitable, for the butterfly must have its cocoon! As Merton exclaims (68): "I cannot discover my 'meaning' if I try to evade the dread which comes from first experiencing my meaninglessness!" Christians are called to "imitate Christ"; but this "can degenerate into mere impersonation" (69) if we merely play the role of the "good Christian"; this can end up making "evasion possible where a direct confrontation of our nothingness is demanded." When reduced to this point of emptiness, "the self ... no longer knows itself apart from God" (76). Finding our identity in God enables us instead to approach our lives in the humble, soft-hearted way Jesus demonstrated. Because "the 'nothing' ... of the mystic is paradoxically also the all ... of God" (90), we then find that we know God only "in so far as we become aware of ourselves as known through and by him" (83).

As we have seen throughout this course, the ultimate goal of healthy religion and of the best forms of psychology (especially when assisted by careful attention to the meaning of our dreams) is, in the words of Kierkegaard, to become what we are-i.e., to recognize the difference between the two types of "I am" (at first, the persona versus the ego; then the ego versus the Self and its archetypes; finally, the Self versus God). Philosophy, psychology, and religion all encourage us to take a close look at the "I AM" in the depths of our soul, to identify it, and to seek to live in such a way that our outward beliefs and actions are fully compatible with this inner (yet transcendent) wholeness. To do this is to reconcile the "butterfly" of our dreams with the "Chuang Chou" of our waking existence.

Sadly, churches and other religious groups often serve only to worsen the situation by focusing their attention on the uniformity and certainty of prescribed beliefs and actions ("the law"). Living an authentic life requires a fundamental recognition of ignorance (concerning ultimately true beliefs) and a fundamental recognition of weakness (concerning ultimately right actions). Encouraging these humble attitudes has been one of the main purposes of The Tree of Philosophy and of Dreams of Wholeness, respectively. The lessons we have learned could best be applied to organized religion by recognizing that churches have tended to emphasize the wrong aspect of each of these. Instead of requiring members to affirm their belief in dogmas and confess their sins, churches should encourage members to confess their ignorance of ultimate reality and affirm their holiness in light of God's forgiving grace.

Did your dream diary reveal to you the "I AM" in the depth of your soul? In most cases, probably not. Many of you may realize that you have merely shown me your "dream diary persona"-the "you" that you think I want to see. I must admit that the grades I assign for students' dream diaries are inevitably based largely on this "persona". What this means is that students who earn high marks are not necessarily the ones who have experienced the most personal growth, or who have come closest to the ideal of being a "whole person", as a result of the project. On the contrary, it may well be that the students who feel the most confused are the ones who are coming closest to a genuine self-understanding. For to be whole, we must be able to affirm both sides of the many oppositions that affect our lives and in each case say I am like this. This is true not only for the "mental" side of our nature, but also for the "physical" side.

In Lecture 34 I pointed out the ultimate identity of the unconscious with the body, whereby the personal unconscious is to my body as the collective unconscious is to the landscape around me. This brings us full circle. For in our initial discussion of the "Who am I?" question, we passed off as insignificant the suggestion that I am simply my physical appearance. Now that we have traveled the long and winding road through the unconscious, however, we have come to the new and somewhat startling awareness that "I" am my body in a very deep sense!

At an even deeper level, some recent writers have developed arguments that suggest the whole physical world-including, perhaps, the "spiritual" world, if it is but a higher dimension of the physical-can be regarded as God's "Body"! Perhaps the best example is Grace Jantzen's book, God's World, God's Body; she argues in great detail that the natural world is God's body in much the same sense that our soul is our body. Matthew Fox explores similar themes in his book, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, calling for a "deep ecumenism" (CCC 7), based on

the wisdom of all the world's religions. Part of its work might be to declare an ancient but forgotten doctrine: the Cosmic Christ, the 'pattern that connects' all the atoms and galaxies of the universe, a pattern of divine love and justice that all creatures and all humans bear within them.

Numerous less religiously-oriented books, such as J.E. Lovelock's Gaia and Gregory Bateson's Mind and Nature, develop the view that the earth is itself a living organism, with a specific pattern that connects all things together. Instead of discussing such works in detail here, I'd like to tell you a little story from my own experience as a college student. I'll use the present tense, like a dream text, to enhance its potency.

Evening is quickly changing into night. Most of my classmates at Westmont College have gone to bed. The campus is quiet and peaceful. Not ready to sleep, but wanting to be alone, I stroll around the beautiful campus for awhile. I come to the large rock that juts out above the lawn across the walkway from the library. The building behind me is all dark, the walkway is quiet, and the stars are shining brightly overhead. I sit down on the grass with my back against the rock, facing east.

Relaxing, I gaze up at the stars for awhile, admiring their intensity on this moonless night. Soon my eyes become fixed on the pine tree that towers above its neighbors, just opposite me on the other side of the lawn. As my eyes concentrate on the top half of the tree, I gradually forget about the cares that vexed my mind just moments before. The distance between myself and the tree diminishes.

Soon my perception of the tree changes in ways that cannot be put into words without misrepresenting what is happening. The sky all around the tree is pitch black. No longer am I aware of the presence of the stars. Nor of the grass under me. Nor of the rock behind me. Nor do the other trees fall into my field of vision. Only the lone pine fills my awareness.

As I sit in this position, time seems to stand still. The space between myself and the tree seems to disappear. My heart is at rest and I feel that I belong. I do not notice how long I sit there; but as I do, the tree shimmers as if with delight at my presence. The tree and I speak in a language that defies translation. We are friends. Secrets previously unfathomable are communicated. I am aware of being part of a Reality that transcends both myself and the tree and yet is us both.

Eventually, the stars begin to come back into view. I sit for awhile longer, impressed with the majesty of what I have been privileged to experience. God is with me.... After that night, every time I pass by that pine, I recall that special sense of belonging. A secret oneness.

This profound experience of Wholeness left me with a new awareness of God's presence with me, and of myself as simply being who I am in God. It gave me a deep sense of kinship with nature, a new appreciation for trees, and helped me understand the writings of mystics from many traditions. Consider, for example, this passage from the Bhagavad Gita (6.29): "The person whose Self is disciplined with yoga, whose perception is everywhere the same, sees himself in all creatures and all creatures in himself." Although I could not claim-then or now-to have mastered spiritual discipline to the extent of seeing all things in this way, this and other similar experiences have at least given me glimpses of what it is like to see God in the world and the world as whole.

There is, however, a twist to my story. After graduating, I would visit my tree-friend every time I returned to the campus. Years later, on one of these visits, I discovered to my dismay that the tree had been cut down. The grass and rock remained as before. But now there was a conspicuous hole, leaving bare a much larger portion of sky than before, where once my friend the tree stood tall. To me this illustrates the incompleteness of any and every vision of wholeness. And it reminds me of the need for communion with a rather different sort of tree.

Jesus declares in Mark 8:34 that each of his followers must "deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." The cross, of course, was a tree-a dead tree. The death of my old tree-friend therefore reminds me that the reason for becoming more and more aware of my Self is so that more and more of it can be given away. Jung's claim that the Self is the proper center of our psyche has a similar connotation, as is evident when we add the Self onto Figure VI.2, as shown in Figure XII.3. Putting our Self onto the cross in this way is not a fixed rule, but a calling that each individual must work out privately with God. Though each calling is unique, the call itself is universal. It is for everyone. If you do not hear it, you are probably not listening carefully enough. The call to take up the

Figure XII.3:

Putting the Self on the Cross

cross is the call to overcome evil with the power of love. In so doing, we touch eternity and glimpse the wholeness of God's grace.

A vision of wholeness is, I suspect, what motivated Nietzsche to develop his shocking theories of the death of God, Superman, etc. (see TP, Ch.19). We can now see how, as has so often happened with great philoso-

phers down through history, his views were partly correct, but wrong only in that they were taken to an unjustifiable extreme. The notion that God died is actually central to the Christian faith, as is the claim that our proper response to this news is to rise up and become God-like (i.e., "children of God") ourselves. As I explained in Lecture 35, to be "Christian" really means to become Christs-i.e., to reach the wholeness inherent in our own individuality. This shows why Nietzsche's writings, that imitate these views so closely in his efforts to transcend both philosophy and psychology (in the form of what I have come to call "philopsychy"), are so powerful and yet so deceptive.

As Nietzsche's life illustrates, "greatness" may often be a sign/result of psychological illness. Ellenberger describes how both Freud and Jung had periods of intense "creative illness" (DU 448-450,670-673,889-891). Very creative persons are usually people whose superego is actively transforming deep sexual repressions and/or past (repressed) guilt feelings into new cultural artifacts or values, etc. Although Freud viewed this as an indication that we are destined to be unhappy, the truth (as we have seen) may be that Freud himself never broke out of the "cocoon" of his own self-induced suffering.

Here in Stage Four we have been discovering how those who do succeed in breaking out can experience a unique kind of joy-the joy of a butterfly in flight! Just as Chuang Tzu eventually had to wake up from his butterfly dream (see Lecture 1), so also must we eventually wake up from the dream of wholeness. But when we do, we can still enjoy the incomplete completeness it brings to us. The "I AM WHO I AM" is at one and the same time the most realistic and the most idealistic statement that could possibly be made about personal (human and divine) self-identity.

Regarding God as the Great "I AM", the Ever-Present One, should enable us to appreciate how all our affirmations of "I am" are expressions of the deepest of all inner truths, that "God is with us" ("Immanuel"). This insight should make us take great care in how we speak about ourselves. We should affirm only what is true about ourselves with these words. Moreover, these reflections should make us aware of the danger of labeling ourselves at all. As we have seen, God's "I AM WHO I AM" seems at one level to be a way of avoiding Moses' attempt to label the transcendent. The danger of allowing ourselves to be labeled is that we thereby subject ourselves to someone else's interpretation of what that label implies. In the same way, I sometimes feel reluctant to tell people "I am a Christian" or "I am a philosopher", because I know they may have quite a different understanding of what this means than I do. Instead, when someone asks me, for instance, if I am a Christian, I like to reply: "I hope so". The point is that, once we realize that when we say "I am ..." we are actually speaking the name of God, we must be filled with awe-indeed, with fear and trembling-lest we say something unworthy of The One Who Is.

As we come now to the end of this course, let each of us, therefore, ask ourselves before God: Am I who I am? Just to ask this question requires us to recognize the possibility of our own incompleteness; to answer it, as we saw in Lecture 35, we must acknowledge our need for a savior. For "salvation" really means the conferring of "wholeness" on us in our incompleteness, of "perfection" on our imperfection, and of joy and peace ("shalom" in Hebrew) where there is despair and misery. A savior is one who shows us the true limits of our own self-identity. In some ancient traditions, as Jung points out (DA 13), "the definition of savior is 'the maker of boundary lines', the one that gives us a clear idea of where we begin and where we end." Immanuel Kant, himself the guardian of philosophical boundary lines (see TP, Chs.7,18,24), expresses the essence of this mystical dream of wholeness when he exclaims (RO 76):

To all creatures, who do not make themselves unworthy of that name, I cry: "Happy are we-we exist!" And the Creator is pleased with us. Measureless spaces and eternities will probably only disclose the wealth of the creation in all its extent to the eye of the Omniscient Being alone. I, however, from my viewpoint and armed with the insight which has been conferred upon my puny understanding, shall gaze around me as far as my eye can reach, ever more learning to understand that the whole is the best, and everything is good for the sake of the whole.

QUESTIONS/TOPICS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION

1. Why is the question "Who am I?" so difficult to answer?

2. Discuss the pros and cons of believing in a "fifth dimension". If it exists, do you think this higher dimension is spiritual?

3. Share a story about how forgiveness (or the lack of forgiveness) has affected you (positively or negatively).

4. Describe a mystical experience (or any strange, mysterious event) you have experienced, and explain how you prefer to interpret it.