(no subject)
I am reading Jung’s book, Dreams. I just ran across a passage that was so incredibly fascinating to me, that it has begun to make me shiver. I feel tense and shaky, because a truth has just hit me with such a sudden impact, that I feel that the shadow of darkness is dissolving with the light of this truth. The dream passage reads:
“In a conscious process of reflection it is essential that, so far as possible, we should realize all the aspects and consequences of a problem in order to find the right solution. This process is continued automatically in the more or less unconscious state of sleep, where, as experience seems to show, all those aspects that occur to the dreamer (at least by way of allusion) that during the day were insufficiently appreciated or even totally ignored-in other words, were comparatively unconscious.”
After reading this passage, I realized how I came to believe in God. The first religious books that I read were by the author C.S. Lewis, and it was through the writings of Lewis that I became acquainted with the works of the more classic theologians. I used to read Lewis’s arguments of the existence of God all day long at work, and then I would go to sleep still thinking about them. Every night after I began to question if there was a God or not, I would wake up in the middle of the night, and my mind would be in the midst of an argument with itself. Two distinct voices (one for God and one against God) would be having a very lucid, logical conversation-I could actually make out the words of these conversations while they were happening. I can’t believe that I never questioned my sanity…these were actual voices, speaking words inside of my head.
(However, I no longer hear the voices, so I can’t limit my experience to any form of mental deficiency.) I often wonder (and this is probably going to offend the materialist) if it were two spirits battling over my soul within the confines of my mind. I would be in a sleepy haze; standing over the toilet, peeing in the dark, and listening to these voices assail one another with their differing modes of logic. This went on for weeks, until one day…the voices were gone. I woke up in the middle of the night to use the restroom, and as I stood there peeing in the darkened bathroom, I believed in God.
I felt like a rigorous argument had finally come to its end. I felt drained, but whole. It is strange that I read so much and thought so much about God in my waking life, but I didn’t come to believe in God consciously, but unconsciously. My process of logical debate, just like Jung said, continued while I slept. The question that plagued me more than any other, answered itself in a dream. I guess it shouldn’t be a great surprise, the history of religion and philosophy is filled to the brim with stories of dreamers being brought to peace by the ideas and facts manifested to them in their dreams. I have read that some of the inventors of great scientific theories and inventions have received solutions to their intellectual problems within the realm of dreams. As I collect and analyze my own dreams, I have been finding symbolic indications of right and wrong ethical choices that I have been making, and also symbols and reflections of my desires, my guilt, and my happiness. I can’t believe that I’ve only just now come to recognize the cognitive importance of dreams and their analysis. It should have been blatantly obvious to me what an integral role that my dreams were playing in my overall moral constitution, and I should have know that while my conscious sleeps, my unconscious is always percolating through the deepest parts of my psyche.
“In a conscious process of reflection it is essential that, so far as possible, we should realize all the aspects and consequences of a problem in order to find the right solution. This process is continued automatically in the more or less unconscious state of sleep, where, as experience seems to show, all those aspects that occur to the dreamer (at least by way of allusion) that during the day were insufficiently appreciated or even totally ignored-in other words, were comparatively unconscious.”
After reading this passage, I realized how I came to believe in God. The first religious books that I read were by the author C.S. Lewis, and it was through the writings of Lewis that I became acquainted with the works of the more classic theologians. I used to read Lewis’s arguments of the existence of God all day long at work, and then I would go to sleep still thinking about them. Every night after I began to question if there was a God or not, I would wake up in the middle of the night, and my mind would be in the midst of an argument with itself. Two distinct voices (one for God and one against God) would be having a very lucid, logical conversation-I could actually make out the words of these conversations while they were happening. I can’t believe that I never questioned my sanity…these were actual voices, speaking words inside of my head.
(However, I no longer hear the voices, so I can’t limit my experience to any form of mental deficiency.) I often wonder (and this is probably going to offend the materialist) if it were two spirits battling over my soul within the confines of my mind. I would be in a sleepy haze; standing over the toilet, peeing in the dark, and listening to these voices assail one another with their differing modes of logic. This went on for weeks, until one day…the voices were gone. I woke up in the middle of the night to use the restroom, and as I stood there peeing in the darkened bathroom, I believed in God.
I felt like a rigorous argument had finally come to its end. I felt drained, but whole. It is strange that I read so much and thought so much about God in my waking life, but I didn’t come to believe in God consciously, but unconsciously. My process of logical debate, just like Jung said, continued while I slept. The question that plagued me more than any other, answered itself in a dream. I guess it shouldn’t be a great surprise, the history of religion and philosophy is filled to the brim with stories of dreamers being brought to peace by the ideas and facts manifested to them in their dreams. I have read that some of the inventors of great scientific theories and inventions have received solutions to their intellectual problems within the realm of dreams. As I collect and analyze my own dreams, I have been finding symbolic indications of right and wrong ethical choices that I have been making, and also symbols and reflections of my desires, my guilt, and my happiness. I can’t believe that I’ve only just now come to recognize the cognitive importance of dreams and their analysis. It should have been blatantly obvious to me what an integral role that my dreams were playing in my overall moral constitution, and I should have know that while my conscious sleeps, my unconscious is always percolating through the deepest parts of my psyche.