Resurrection
… if a solution is described as taking place after death, it
means that the conscious
means for realization have not yet been found in this reality.
That is why in
Christianity victory over evil and the
union of the opposites
is
projected into the time after the
Day of
Judgment.
This is also the ominous background of our present-day problem, in connection with which I would like to quote a saying of Rabelais to which Jung drew my attention: La verité dans sa matière brute est plus fausse que la faux (Truth in its prima materia, in its first appearance, is falser than falseness itself.) And that is very true of what we have just experienced. But in spite of it all, these are attempts to bring forth a new creative religious attitude and also a renewal of cultural creativity – which can only manifest in a psychological and individual form. The trouble is that it comes up with such a disgustingly false political twist that it is more false than falseness itself. In spite of this, however, we must turn toward it and discriminate the seeds in it. Otherwise, we are stuck, forever, building light, “rosy-colored” buildings upon burnt-out ruins. TPoPA 274
It’s
my belief that St. Paul’s great insight on the road to Damascus was that the
death of Jesus Christ on the cross could be interpreted in terms of the mystery
religions’ understanding of the death and the resurrection of the savior – that
is, as the death of one’s purely material, animal existence and the birth, then,
of the spiritual life. This is symbolized in Christian
terminology by the transformation of the old Adam into the new Adam.
Then we have the refrain of O felix culpa, “O happy fault” –
original sin – and the notion that the fall of man into the field of time out of
the timeless rapture of Eden was followed by the coming of the Savior, who
represented a sublimation – a higher manifestation of the
consciousness of humanity than that which had been represented in the garden
– and so, without the fall, there would have been no savior.
Well, all of this is really mystic language from the Greek mysteries.
TMTT 190