C. G. Jung suggested that a living religion for the future would accent the embodiment by all humans of their divine nature. He anticipated that the Christian projections of a redeemer, a God/man “out there” who carries the weight of the human shadow would evolve into an internalized divinity reckoning with its own humanness.
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
In shamanic terms, this would represent the awakening of the energy body to live alongside the human body. Experientially, this is the appreciation and cultivation of the energy body in dreaming, as well as in waking life. Presently, the energy body is dominated by the mental plane with its centralized leitmotif of reason. The mental plane is actually part of the energy body, though our physical focus and reason would have us locate it only in the brain and central nervous system. However, there are other ideas on the matter.
A preponderance of documented traumatic out-of-body experiences—remote viewing of one’s body or another’s body on the other side of the room or the other side of the world—clearly demonstrate that the mind operates independently from the physical body.
The Hindus have long pointed out that the outermost shell of the energy body is the mental body. When we leave our body for good, at physical death, we leave as mental beings, as consciousness. This mental spirit, as we experience it in everyday life, is monopolized by our ego as it uses its powers to uphold and reinforce the validity of the solid physical world we live in for the duration of our physical lives. Only that which is solid is real, the ego says.
However, if we willingly or unwillingly undergo the crucifixion of that fixated hold on the solid world and move from ego consciousness to energy consciousness, the world softens. And as the world softens we move into the greater ability of our energy body to broaden our knowledge of life beyond the ego’s familiar boundaries. As we move into an enhanced energy body perspective, what the shamans call a shift in the assemblage point, all that once bound us, like our petty resentments and our fears, melt away as we move into a state of transcendent awe. We simply can’t stay attached to a personal solid world once we’ve experienced its total lack of solidity; we leave that nailed to the cross as we experience a far more interconnected world of energy.
This dissolving of solidity allows for the erasing of personal history, the state of detachment that the shamans describe as being one of the most important aspects of an evolutionary life. It’s not unfeeling detachment; it’s utter love for everything, all beings equal. Whereas once, in solid form, we held so tightly to our personal love, our personal family, our personal tribe, we are now totally detached and yet totally loving of all that is. This detachment is not a sacrifice of those we love, but an evaporation of the boundaries of our separate love, for all, we discover, is love.
And we can continue to walk upon the earth calmly owning our dual nature: as spirit/energy beings living in, in relation with, a physical body that temporarily houses this spirit self. We can indeed continue to fulfill all the human roles we have been in, but we must now also learn greater cohesion when in our spirit state, which gives us the fluidity to maintain our calmness as we experience the expanded awe of our interconnectedness and living oneness with all that is.
We can learn to playfully flit between the two awarenesses, solid and energy, but it’s really all preparation for the moment when the exclusive personal ego accepts its final crucifixion, when the relativity of personal human life is reconciled with the greater expanded view, and the energy body is finally set to more fully explore beyond the limits of space and time.
Jung’s suggestion as to where religion might find itself in the future is well prepared. Perhaps Eastern religions, shamanic practices, and modern science may eventually find their rightful places in redeeming the God/human schism of our time.
Prayerfully,
Chuck
