Carl Jung on God and the Mystery of Existence

How did the great mythopoetic psychiatrist, Carl Jung, view God and the Mystery of Existence?

When Jung was asked whether or not he believed in God in a now-famous 1959 BBC interview near the end of his life, he mused, “I don’t believe, I know.” But what did he mean by that? What view of God does a lifetime of inquiry into medicine, the psyche, and the esoteric lead to? As we’ll see in In this transmission, Jung’s view on the great mystery existence is both compelling and cryptic. A way of seeing that opens the door to massive philosophical questions.

Jung’s letter to The Listener:

Carl Jung’s letter to The Listener, January 21, 1960
Sir, – So many letters I have received have emphasized my statement about ‘knowing’ (of
God) [in ‘Face to Face’, THE LISTENER, October 29]. My opinion about ‘knowledge of God’ is
an unconventional way of thinking, and I quite understand if it should be suggested that I am no
Christian. Yet I think of myself as a Christian since I am entirely based upon Christian concepts.
I only try to escape their internal contradictions by introducing a more modest attitude, which
takes into consideration the immense darkness of the human mind. The Christian idea proves its
vitality by a continuous evolution, just like Buddhism. Our time certainly demands some new
thought in this respect, as we cannot continue to think in an antique or medieval way, when we
enter the sphere of religious experience.

I did not say in the broadcast, ‘There is a God’, I said ‘I do not need to believe in God; I
know’. Which does not mean: I do know a certain God (Zeus, Jahwe, Allah, the Trinitarian God,
etc.) but rather: I do know that I am obviously confronted with a factor unknown in itself, which
I call ‘God’ in consensu omnium (‘quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditur’). I
remember Him, I evoke Him, whenever I use His name overcome by anger or by fear, whenever
I involuntarily say: ‘Oh God’.

That happens when I meet somebody or something stronger than myself. It is an apt name
given to all overpowering emotions in my own psychical system subduing my conscious will and
usurping control over myself. This is the name by which I designate all things which cross my
willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans, and
intentions and change the course of my life for better or worse. In accordance with tradition I call
the power of fate in this positive as well as negative aspect, and inasmuch as its origin is beyond
my control, ‘god’, a ‘personal god’, since my fate means very much myself, particularly when it
approaches me in the form of conscience as a vox Dei, with which I can even converse and
argue. (We do and, at the same time, we know that we do. One is subject as well as object.)
Yet I should consider it an intellectual immorality to indulge in the belief that my view of
a god is the universal, metaphysical Being of the confessions or ‘philosophies’. I do neither
commit the impertinence of a hypostasis, nor of an arrogant qualification such as: ‘God can only
be good’. Only my experience can be good or evil, but I know that the superior will is based upon
a foundation which transcends human imagination. Since I know of my collision with a superior
will in my own psychical system, I know of God, and if I should venture the illegitimate
hypostasis of my image, I would say, of a God beyond good and evil, just as much dwelling in myself as everywhere else: Deus est circulus cuius centrum est ubique, cuis circumferentia vero
nusquam.

Yours, etc.,

Carl Gustav Jung