Religions, Myths and Philosophy

Carl G Jung

Source: The Wisdom of Carl Jung

I always think of psychology as
encompassing the whole of the psyche,
and that includes philosophy and theology and 
many other things besides.
For underlying all philosophies and 
all religions are the facts of the human soul,
which may ultimately be the arbiters of truths and errors.

Every theologian speaks simply of "God,"
by which he intends it to be understood that his "god" is the God.

So long as religion is only faith and outward form,
and the religious function is not experienced in our own souls,
nothing of any importance has happened.

We are, surely, the rightful heirs of Christian symbolism,
but somehow we have squandered this heritage.
We have let the house of our fathers built fall into decay,
and now we try to break into
Oriental palaces that our fathers never knew.

Everything has its history,
everything has "grown," and Christianity,
which is supposed to have appeared suddenly 
as a unique revelation from heaven,
undoubtedly also has its history.

We Europeans are not the only people on earth.
We are just a peninsula of Asia,
and on that continent there are old civilizations where
people have trained their minds in 
introspective psychology for thousands of years,
whereas we began our psychology not
even yesterday but only this morning.

What are religions?
Religions are psychotherapeutic systems.
What are we doing, we psychotherapists?
We are trying to heal the suffering of the human mind,
of the human psyche or the human soul,
and religions deal with the same problem.