In his scholarly book THE SEARCH FOR ROOTS: C. G. JUNG AND THE TRADITION OF GNOSIS, translated by Don Reneau (2013; or. German ed. 1999), Alfred Ribi, M.D. (born 1931), draws extensively on Gnostic texts that were not available to C. G. Jung, M.D. (1875-1961), when he was studying the Gnostic tradition of thought. Ribi is an expert in the Gnostic tradition of thought and in Jung's thought.
However, after the original German edition of Ribi's scholarly study was published in German in 1999, the full text of Jung's RED BOOK: LIBER NOVUS, edited and introduced by Sonu Shamdasani, translated by Mark Kyburz, John Pick, and Shamdasani, was published by Norton in 2009 as an oversized book, with Jung's paintings handsomely reproduced. But Ribi did not undertake to revise the text of his scholarly study because making such revisions would have required producing an extensively revised text.
As a result, Lance S. Owens, M.D., has undertaken to draw on Ribi's scholarly study and on Jung's RED BOOK in his perceptive foreword (pages 1-33).
Jung understood his visual and auditory hallucinations to have emerged from the mythopoetic depths underlying his personal ego-consciousness. After he had experienced those visual and auditory hallucinations, it remained for him to work through and process the material he had received. Owens claims that Jung in 1915 read the 1910 German edition of Wolfgang Schultz's book DOCUMENTS OF GNOSIS (Owens, pages 18-19). According to Owens (page 19), Jung subsequently in 1915 studied G.R.S. Mead's book FRAGMENTS OF A FAITH FORGOTTEN (1900; German ed. 1902).
According to Owens (page 19), "Jung frequently cited Gnostic material preserved by Hippolytus." Owens claims that "there are two key Gnostic myths related by Hippolytus that strikingly reflected Jung's experiences up until 1915. The first is the story of Simon Magus ["the Magician"] and his consort Helena; the second the story of Sophia and the demiurge" (page 20).
According to Owens, those two myths, or stories, enabled Jung to align certain material he had received in his visual and auditory hallucinations with the events recounted in the two myths. By employing reasoning by analogy with those two myths, Jung was able to construct his way of understanding the meaning of his hallucinatory experiences.
Toward the end of his foreword, Owens says that Jung "worked the redemptive task of giving birth to the old [Gnostic tradition of thought] in a new time" (page 33).
In making this summative characterization of Jung's task in life as supposedly redemptive in some way, Owens does not attempt to explain on his own what exactly is supposed to be redemptive about Jung's task - or for whom.
For example, was Jung's supposedly redemptive task redemptive for him alone? In some sense, perhaps his task was redemptive for him alone.
But if Jung's supposedly redemptive task is supposed to be redemptive in some sense for other people in the world today, then exactly how is it supposedly redemptive for other people? Owens does not explain this. Instead, he invokes the conceptual constructs that Jung himself created.
On the one hand, in Jung's conceptual construct, ancient Gnosis emerged from the mythopoetic depths underlying ego-consciousness in the dawning of a then-new era - roughly, the Christian era. Owens says, "The two millennia long Christian age . . . was coming to an end. A new God-image was seeking constellation in human consciousness" (page 30). It is quite true that Jung wrote the polemical book ANSWER TO JOB to argue with certain aspects of Christian theology.
On the other hand, in Jung's conceptual construct, a new era was supposedly dawning in the 20th century. But is this expected new era supposed to be based on the new God-image that Jung advances in his book ANSWER TO GOD?
Now, Owens quotes Jung as saying in 1923 that "Christianity was one of the products of Gnosticism" (quoted on page 279, note 10). For the sake of discussion, let's say that Christianity may indeed have been one of the products of Gnosticism, as Jung says it was.
But does Christianity contain all of the key aspects of Gnosticism? Or are there aspects of Gnosticism that are not found in Christianity? But if all of the key aspects of Gnosticism are contained in Christianity, then would the dawning of a new era that Jung claims was supposedly emerging in the 20th century involve the dawning of a supposed new age, or the dawning of the renewal of Christianity?
In addition, we can wonder if there are indeed certain aspects of the Christian tradition of thought that Jung perhaps was not familiar with.
Now, Owens quotes Jung as telling Aniela Jaffe that "[t]he main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neurosis, but rather with the approach to the numinous" (quoted on page 7).
In an endnote, Owens provides a lengthier version of this quote, taken from Jaffe: "The main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neurosis, but rather with the approach to the numinous. But the fact is that the approach to the numinous is real therapy, and in as much as you attain to the numinous experience, you are released from the curse of pathology. Even the very disease takes on a numinous character" (quoted on page 280, note 14).
But is Jung speaking from his own experience when he says that "[e]ven the disease takes on a numinous character"? He may be. If he is, then we should be mighty careful about how we interpret the various figures in Jung's RED BOOK because certain figures may represent Jung's disease at the time of his mid-life crisis.
Now, Christian mystics over the centuries have approached and experienced the numinous, as Jung surely knew. No doubt many other Christians over the centuries have desired to approach the numinous and have profound mystical experiences. Moreover, there is a well-established practice of spiritual direction in the Christian tradition.
So if the main interest of Jung's work was with the approach to the numinous, then we should also note that this the main interest of spiritual direction in the Christian tradition.
Of course the possibility of approaching and experiencing the numinous has been open and available to all people at all times.
But did Jung himself actually experience the numinous? I would say that he did experience the numinous late in his long life - to be precise, in 1944. Here's how Owens describes the events on page 30:
"[I]n February of 1944, at age sixty-eight, Jung slipped in the snow and broke his ankle. This modest injury and associated immobilization led to the development twelve days later of a life-threatening pulmonary embolism and heart attack. For three weeks he hung between life and death. And in that twilight, he was immersed in a prolonged series of visions. They seemed the end of his journey, the conclusion to the story he had lived. [Jung said] `It is impossible to convey the beauty and intensity of emotion during those visions. They were the most tremendous things I have ever experienced.'"
Jung also described his experience at that time as involving "`the ecstasy of a non-temporal state'" (quoted on page 30).
In my estimate, Jung's mid-life crisis that involved his self-experimentation in self-inducing hallucinations culminated more than three decades later in his experience of the numinous.
If Jung is right about the healing power of the experience of the numinous, then we should conclude that he was healed of his curse of pathology, his disease, through his experience of the numinous in 1944.
Of course he then lived to 1961.
Now, concerning the text of Alfred Ribi's detailed scholarly study of Jung and the tradition of Gnosis, I should point out that Ribi does not set forth a single serious criticism of Jung's thought. But perhaps Ribi has published a critique of Jung's thought elsewhere. If he has, perhaps this is the reason why he did not set forth a single serious criticism in this book of Jung's thought. However, if Ribi has not set forth a considered critique elsewhere of Jung's thought, then Ribi's uncritical use of Jung's thought appears to be a closed system of thought (based on Jung's thought).
At first blush, it may not sound like a problem if indeed Ribi is working with a closed system of thought based on Jung's thought.
However, Ribi himself constructs and works with a contrast that he does not attribute to Jung (see esp. pages 81 and 121). In effect, Ribi sets up a contrast between closed-system thought and open-systems thought.
Ribi says that "a simple form of [Christian] belief (devotio)" regards [Christian] revelation to be closed (pages 81). He contrasts this closed-system of thought with "the creative tendencies that do not regard revelation to be closed (Gnosis)" (page 81). As is well known, orthodox Christianity regards the Christian revelation as closed.
Next, Ribi borrows Jung's terminology about introversion and extraversion to characterize the two positions in this contrast. Ribi says that "a more extraverted attitude attitude takes the revelation of its founder as a point of departure and established fact, and on that basis begins to elaborate a doctrine and build an organization, that is, a church" (page 81).
However, in Ribi's book, he himself takes Jung's thought in effect as a kind of "revelation" and point of departure. Indeed, Jung is considered to be the founder of Jungian theory and of the Jungian movement.
Please do not misunderstand me here. I am merely pointing out a difficulty that may arise for Ribi if he has not else where published a critique of anything Jung says.
But my carefully qualified criticism of Ribi's uncritical use on Jung's thought in this does not necessarily negate anything Ribi says about Jung or about Gnostic writings in this book. My criticism is directed primarily at the contrast that Ribi himself sets up and works with in this book.
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