Les autres dispositions

Analytical psychology has been related to many forms of non-institutional, de-traditionalised, and implicit spirituality (see, e.g., Corbett 1996; Shorter 1996; Sandner and Wong 1997; Smith 1997; Casement 1998: 11; Young-Eisendrath and Miller 2000; Schlamm 2000, 2001; Samuels 2001: 122–34; Tacey 2001). However, the connections between analytical psychology and the spiritual revolution, and especially between synchronicity and the spiritual revolution, are clearest in the case of New Age spirituality. We can approach these connections by illustrating the extent to which New Age spirituality, like analytical psychology and the theory of synchronicity, emerged as a response to tensions between traditional religion and modern science.

Religion, science and the New Age

In Chapter 4 we noted that the complex interactions between religion and science provide one of the major contexts within which we can understand late twentieth- century and early twenty-first-century manifestations of religion. Most of the implications that we mentioned there concerned the more public, institutionalised forms of religion. However, the interactions between religion and science are no less important for the more private, often non-affiliated forms of contemporary spirituality, which for convenience I am calling ‘New Age spirituality’. There is a great deal of controversy about the use of the phrase ‘New Age’. Many of those to whose beliefs and practices it is applied repudiate it, insisting that the New Age needs to be clearly distinguished from Wicca, neo-paganism, and other new or revived religious movements with which it tends to be conflated. Others who formerly embraced the label ‘New Age’ now prefer such alternative descriptions as ‘holistic spirituality’ (e.g., Bloom 2003). Again, it is possible to distinguish between a strict sense and a wider sense of the phrase ‘New Age’ – the former referring to ‘the movement born in the context of the post-Second World War UFO

cults and flowering in the spiritual utopianism of the 1960s and 1970s’, the latter to ‘the general “cultic milieu” of alternative religion which flourished after the 1970s and has become increasingly “mainstream” since’ (Hanegraaff 2002: 261). In the following discussion I use the phrase in the wider sense as an umbrella term that includes neo-paganism, Wicca and other differentiated categories within contemporary alternative spirituality. When the need arises later in the chapter I will introduce and discuss a more precise and detailed definition.

First, in order to bring this topic into focus as well as to prepare the ground for the comparison with Jung’s theories later in the chapter, we will look at a number of salient features of New Age spirituality and consider how they may relate to interactions between traditional religion and modern science. To anticipate, we will find that many features of the New Age stem from the same kind of tension between religion and science as gave rise to synchronicity. In other words, in at least some important respects, synchronicity and the New Age arose from similar historical and cultural contexts. The list of features that we will discuss is not meant to be either definitive or exhaustive but simply useful for the purposes of this study.

Ambivalence towards science

Overall, the New Age is ambivalent towards modern science. On the one hand, there is sharp criticism of the rationalising and reductive tendencies of modern science and a corresponding celebration of whatever promotes a more intuitive and spiritually uplifting outlook. As Heelas observes: ‘the New Age is largely opposed to the rational outlook of the philosopher and the verificationist approach of the scientist, rejecting “the head” in favour of “the heart” and relying on “intuition” or “inner wisdom” ’ (1996: 5). On the other hand, there are scientists who have been specially adopted by the New Age because the emphasis of their work seems to support some of the underlying holistic assumptions of New Age spirituality: Fritjof Capra (1976), David Bohm (1980) and Rupert Sheldrake (1981) are prominent examples. We could formulate this ambivalence by saying that, in general, New Agers react against the reductive tendencies of modern science while at the same time selectively appropriating ideas from modern science. Sometimes, as in the cases of Bohm and Sheldrake, the New Age-friendly features of their work reflect or build on areas of genuine uncertainty and ambivalence within science itself. At other times, images of the development and present state of religion, science, and their relationship are elaborated with little regard for the realities and complexities of history. The historians of science John Brooke and Geoffrey Cantor have taken Capra to task on this point in their essay ‘Against the Self-Images of the New Age’ (1998: 75–105). Even more commonly, New Agers speak and write about science, whether drawing on or denigrating it, with very little understanding of actual scientific theories or methodologies (York 1995: 52).

Psycho-spiritual transformation

Another salient feature of the New Age is its interest in psycho-spiritual trans- formation. Michael York goes so far as to suggest that ‘What unites all New Agers . . . is the vision of radical mystical transformation on both the personal and collec- tive levels’ (1995: 39). This interest in transformation may relate to interactions between religion and science in several ways. For instance, the transformation is often promoted by application of spiritual techniques that, as Robert Wuthnow notes, ‘bear the distinctive imprint of the prevailing technological worldview’ (1985: 46). As well as providing the means of psycho-spiritual transformation (or at least the rhetoric for enhancing the attractiveness of these means), science ironically has also been largely responsible for the mindset from which New Agers seek transformative liberation. Heelas characterises the transformation that New Agers seek as an attempt to liberate the Self through letting go of ‘ego- attachments’ (1996: 20). These ego-attachments include the ways in which a person internalises and conforms to social standards, but they may also more specifically refer to the kind of rational modes of thought involved in science (ibid.: 36). Again, New Age interest in psycho-spiritual transformation may, in some cases, be an attempt to claim for personal spirituality a potential for the kind of ‘progress’ and ‘evolution’ vaunted by science (Wilber 1998). Observes Heelas: ‘Modernity, in many respects, has to do with evolutionary notions of perfectibility . . . . The New Age belongs to modernity in that it is progressivistic . . . . [O]ne can go on events, to change for the better’ (1996: 169).

Modernisation, secularisation and globalisation

At a general level, we can see New Age spirituality, like other twentieth-century manifestations of religion, as a response (or set of responses) to modernisation, secularisation and globalisation. There is much debate about the range and kind of influence these processes have had on contemporary religion as well as about the connections among them (see Berger 2002; Lehmann 2002), and it would certainly be problematic to claim that modern science has straightforwardly caused the processes. For instance, as Brooke notes with reference to secularisation:

The replacement of spiritual by material values would seem to owe more to the security of modern medicine, to the seduction of urban comforts and economic prosperity than to any scientific imperative. And insofar as the social functions once performed by religion have been taken over by secular groups and institutions, it is to their social and political origins one must look for insights into the redistribution of power.

(Brooke 1991: 340) Nevertheless, as we shall see, modernisation, secularisation and globalisation undoubtedly have contributed enormously to the milieu in which contemporary

religions, and especially New Age spirituality, exist in the West, and the processes would be extremely unlikely to have occurred without modern science.

Primarily, the New Age has responded to – indeed has defined itself in relation to – these tendencies by resisting them. As Heelas notes, ‘The New Age . . . runs counter to many of the great canons and assumptions of modernity’, including ‘the faith that has been placed in obtaining progress by way of scientific expertise’ (1996: 135–6). Rather than secularisation, Heelas argues, the New Age promotes the reverse process of sacralisation (‘making sacred’) (ibid.: 106). Michael York concurs that the New Age provides a counterbalance to the rationalism and scientific methodology of modernity (1995: 14). However, Heelas’s analysis explores ways in which the New Age not only breaks with but also continues many of the cultural trajectories of modernity (1996: 153–77). He refers to ‘those processes – the “fall of public man”, the construction of the expressivist self, the internalisation of religion, and so on – which have been completed by the [New Age] Movement’ (ibid.: 154). In other words, we need to recognise romantic as well as rationalist currents as constitutive of modernity. While opposing the rationalist currents, the New Age in many ways furthers the romantic currents. As we shall discuss more fully later, Wouter Hanegraaff stresses the complex relationship of the New Age to secularisation throughout his study, as indicated by its subtitle: New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought (1998).

Again, consider globalisation – the increasing worldwide link-up of political, economic and cultural systems. This has accelerated under the impact of scientific and technological developments, particularly in the areas of transport and commu- nications. Globalisation has had various frequently noted effects on traditional religions. In some cases, it has arguably strengthened fundamentalist attitudes as religious groups entrench themselves in an attempt to preserve their beleaguered identities. In other cases, increasing exposure to alternative world-views has resulted in a liberalisation of attitudes and the growth of tolerance, interfaith dialogue, and, for some, a more perennialist outlook (e.g., Wilber 1998). However, globalisation also provides the context for understanding some specific features of the New Age movement. David Spangler, co-director in the 1970s of the New Age community at Findhorn, Scotland, remarked that ‘The New Age deals with issues of planetization and the emergence of an awareness that we are all one people living on one world that shares a common destiny’ (in York 1995: 35). Other representatives of the New Age express the same sentiment: Marilyn Ferguson speaks of the ‘global consciousness’ to which the New Age aspires (in ibid.; see Ferguson 1982) and William Bloom notes that one of the major fields comprising the New Age is ecology, which, as York puts it, ‘through inter- dependence and interpenetration, accepts responsibility for the planetary state’ (1995: 89).

Non-western, pre-modern and esoteric traditions

Another significant feature of the New Age is eclectic engagement with non- western, pre-modern and esoteric traditions. According to York, ‘New Age is a blend of pagan religions, Eastern philosophies, and occult-psychic phenomena’ (1995: 34). According to Heelas, ‘From the detraditionalized stance of the New Age what matters is the “arcane”, the “esoteric”, the “hidden wisdom”, the “inner or secret tradition”, the “ageless wisdom” ’ (1996: 27). These traditions – including Yoga, Taoism, Gnosticism, divination, magic, alchemy and much else – may appeal partly because in them the problematic relationship between religion and science is assumed not to exist as it does in the modern western mainstream. The traditions operate before (pre-modern), distant from (non-western), or in secrecy from (esoteric) the rise of modern science. Accordingly, so it can be argued, they have been able to avoid the catastrophic splitting off of the emotional and intuitive functions that took place in modern western consciousness. We can therefore turn to these traditions in order to reconnect with a more holistic outlook. Here, then, modern science and traditional religion have influenced the New Age by presenting a picture of problematic relations in contrast to which other traditions seem, often unrealistically, more attractive.

Myth

A further, closely related feature is that New Agers often frame contemporary experience in terms of myth. Of course, there is a mythical dimension to most if not all religions, traditional and modern (Smart 1997: 10, 130–64). I refer here to the particular salience of myth in New Age spirituality. This is especially the case with neo-paganism. Beliefs and stories about Egyptian, Graeco-Roman and northern European gods and goddesses, among many others, play a major role in neo-pagan rituals and world-views. Above all, the myth of the Great Goddess is invoked both to interpret and to encourage further the rise of feminine conscious- ness and spirituality, as in Starhawk [Miriam Simos]’s The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess (1979). New Age uses of myth presuppose that it is not a primitive form of explanation of the physical world now superseded by science. Rather, it is a valid alternative form of cognition, with a different subject matter (the psycho-spiritual rather than the physical world) and a different function (to disclose spiritual meaning rather than to explain physical processes). This revived appeal of myth can be partly accounted for if we consider that myth, because it does not make the same claims to explanatory adequacy as religious doctrines traditionally have, is less vulnerable to direct criticism from science and so can survive better as a container of spiritual meaning (Segal 1999b: 21–35).

Personal experience

Even more salient is that New Agers generally prioritise personal experience over institutionalised beliefs. As York observes, ‘New Age is a decentralized movement – one built around not doctrines or particular belief systems but an experiential vision’ (1995: 39). New Agers would mostly agree with Carl Rogers when he says, ‘Experience for me is the highest authority’ (1967: 24). New Age appeals to experience may partly be an attempt to appropriate some of the charisma of science, for it is possible to see a loose analogy between experiencing and experimenting, inasmuch as both involve testing things for oneself rather than accepting traditionally sanctioned pronouncements. In any case, the tendency among New Agers is to move beyond socialised beliefs to the authenticity of the inner realm (Heelas 1996: 19). Indeed, New Agers actively work to achieve liberation from social conditioning (ibid.: 25). Largely, this shift from the external and social to the inner and individual can be accounted for in terms of various institutional failures:

The institutional fabric, whose basic function has always been to provide meaning and stability for the individual, has become incohesive, fragmented and thus progressively deprived of plausibility. Institutions then confront the individual as fluid and unreliable, in the extreme case as unreal. Inevitably, the individual is thrown back upon himself, on his own subjectivity, from which he must dredge up the meaning that he requires to exist.

(Berger et al. 1974: 85) More specifically, many women have felt that the authoritarian and patriarchal structure of the Church is irredeemably obstructive to them; people seeking healing have felt that conventional allotropic medicine fails to respect the whole- ness of their personality; and political activists, disillusioned about significantly changing the outer structures of society, have retreated to working at inner change (Heelas 1996: 141–2). This suspicion of and disillusionment with institutions may also stem from an increased awareness of the actual workings of institutions fostered by historical and social scientific analyses.

Authority of the self

Finally, and perhaps most important of all, New Agers tend to locate spiritual and ethical authority within the individual self. The prominent New Age teacher Sir George Trevelyan advises his listeners: ‘Only accept what rings true to your Inner Self ’ (reported in Heelas 1996: 21). Starhawk likewise emphasises ‘self- responsibility and the individual as final arbiter for the meaning and direction of life’ (York 1995: 113). Indeed, Heelas identifies ‘Self-spirituality’ as the defining and unifying feature of the New Age. ‘Self-spirituality’ involves ‘the monistic assumption that the Self itself is sacred’ (1996: 2) and an outlook where ‘[t]he

“individual” serves as his or her own source of guidance’ (ibid.: 23). According to Heelas, this notion is responsible for a ‘remarkable consistency’ beneath ‘much of the heterogeneity’ of the New Age (ibid.: 2). He even proposes that ‘[t]he New Age shows what “religion” looks like when it is organised in terms of what is taken to be the authority of the Self ’ (ibid.: 221). This is not to deny that New Agers sometimes recognise other sources of authority besides the inner spiritual self – e.g., more traditional teachers and external systems of thought (ibid.: 34–5) – or that there is a strong social current within the New Age – e.g., in its associa- tion with the Green movement (York 1995: 22). However, as Heelas again summarises: ‘Overall, the New Age has become more detraditionalized; the shift in emphasis has been from cosmologies to experiences; from beliefs to spiritual technologies; from heeding Mahatmas to heeding the Self ’ (1996: 67). The influence on this of interactions between religion and science can probably be detected among several of the considerations that have already been mentioned. For emphasis on the self is likely to be encouraged by institutional failure, by the loose equation of experience with experiment, by concern with spiritual meaning rather than physical explanation, by retreat to a domain not so dominated by science (a domain where human subjectivity can better flourish), and by the goal of psycho-spiritual transformation.

Jung and the New Age

Although Jung died before the New Age movement emerged as a distinctive socio-cultural force and, in any case, arguably would have repudiated much of what goes under the New Age banner (Tacey 1999), there are several good reasons for studying his work in relation to New Age spirituality.

Affinities between Jung and the New Age

If we scan the shelves of a New Age or Mind/Body/Spirit section in any major bookshop, we are likely to find not only many books by and on Jung himself but also books on a wide range of subject matter that closely reflects the scope of Jung’s interests. We will probably find books on western esotericism, including magic and alchemy; divination, including astrology and the I Ching; eastern religions from India and China; indigenous religions of Africa and North America; myths from all over the world; and reinterpretations of Christianity from a mythic or perennialist point of view. There will be books on holistic science and on healing by creative visualisation, by connecting with one’s higher self, and by various other kinds of spiritually oriented therapy. Other books will be about paranormal phenomena, including hauntings, communications supposedly channelled from discarnate spirits, and UFOs. Jung, more perhaps than any other twentieth-century thinker, engaged seriously with all these subjects. Such close parallels suggest either influence or common origins and concerns.

In fact, there can be little doubt that in many cases the parallels do represent actual influences. In a survey conducted in the late 1970s, Marilyn Ferguson asked her New Age-inclined subjects to name those who had most influenced them. Among the 185 responses, Jung’s name was the second most frequently cited (Ferguson 1982). In a more recent 1994 survey of subscribers to Kindred Spirit, the largest-selling New Age magazine in Britain, Stuart Rose asked the same question. Among over 900 responses Jung’s name was again the second most frequently cited (Rose 1997). Indeed, Jung’s name was the only one to appear among the top ten in both surveys (Heelas 1996: 126). This finding is supported by indications from many other sources. To name a few: the parallels between Jung and the New Age have been considered worthy of special comment by Jungians themselves, such as David Tacey (1999, 2001) who worries that the simi- larities between Jung and the New Age may obscure their important differences; by biographers such as Frank McLynn (1996) who entitled the penultimate chapter of his life of Jung ‘New Age Guru’; by scholars of religion such as Paul Heelas