THE WORLD’S GREAT SPIRITUAL TRADITIONS ALL AGREE, with a few exceptions, that the material world is at least unreal, if not fundamentally false and evil. To state the case in overly simplistic generalizations, the spiritual is exalted over the material in Buddhism, in most Hindu traditions, in Daoist spirituality, in Christian theological and mystical traditions, in both Jewish and Muslim mysticism, and even in the spiritual traditions of indigenous tribal peoples across the globe.
As the Age of Reason dawned in the West and grew into modernity and now post-modernity, the continuing rejection of the material world by spiritual institutions and authorities has come into seemingly irreconcilable conflict with the thoroughly materialistic understanding of reality advanced by modern science.
The relatively recent advent of disciplined observation and critical thinking has changed everything. Where spiritual metaphysics see an eternally unchanging and immutable invisible reality behind a veil of material illusion, scientific metaphysics see a constantly evolving and dynamic material reality behind which there is only delusion.
So now, the traditional-spiritual and modern-scientific worldviews form a pair of opposites that stand in an often-extreme state of tension.
If we look at the historical development of these worldviews psychologically, what we see is an example of what C.G. Jung called enantiodromia, which is a compound psychological neologism that uses Greek terms to describe the tendency of a one-sided attitude or position to “run over” to its opposite. More precisely, the term refers to the psychological dynamic in which a rigid position of consciousness is challenged and balanced by the emergence from the unconscious of an opposite and irreconcilable position.
Let’s speculate a little here. Imagine what it might have been like as human consciousness began to emerge from a primordial state of unconscious, instinctual life. Conscious thoughts must have seemed like revelations from some other realm, like gifts from powerful invisible beings. The thoughts were subtle, invisible, forceful, and productive. They provided ways to make life better and meaningful in ways it had not been before.
Developing consciousness brought with it the awareness of duality in the world — spirit-matter, good-evil, this-that, self-other, etc. — the differentiation that is the sine qua non for human consciousness. The magical quality of such thoughts appearing in the mind, seemingly out of thin air, led our ancestors to believe these thoughts were both spiritual in nature (i.e., akin to breath and wind) and worthy to be valued most highly.
Wisdom, therefore, was to be found in pursuing thought as far as one could, that is, in philosophy (the love of wisdom). In the beginning, philosophy was a way of life, a spiritual discipline. Success in the pursuit of wisdom demanded inner concentration, which in turn required at least some withdrawal and detachment from the outer world. Lives devoted to inner concentration and withdrawal from the world inevitably led to a devaluation of matter and the assigning of ultimate value to the spirit. Spirit became true and real. Matter became deceptive and illusory … and the culture’s collective consciousness became decidedly one-sided in its anti-material worldview.
Nowhere is this one-sidedness more clearly seen than in the powerful and pervasive influence of Plato on the thought-world of the ancient Mediterranean, and especially on the theological development of early Christianity. For Plato and the later Platonists, the spiritual realm of the mind — what we might today call the imaginal — was the ultimate reality. Matter had to be thoroughly rejected and transcended, if one were ever to reach the spiritual heights of Truth and Beauty. This Platonic worldview and value system held sway over the West through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, until the materialistic thinking of science broke through.
When we look back at and wonder about the character of ancient thought, we must realize that consciousness, even the most advanced consciousness, was not functioning at the same level of development as it does today. If we accept the notion that individual psychological development recapitulates the psychological evolution of the species, just as biologists suggest happens with physical development, then we must entertain the possibility that ancient texts, including early Christian writings, were written by authors for audiences in cultures that were collectively more unconscious than are contemporary readers and scholarly analysts.
The relatively lower level of ancient consciousness helps explain the compelling appeal of thinking in its early stages of development. Thoughts for ancient thinkers were numinous gifts from unseen powers. They were magical and divine— glorious illuminations, profound experiences of enlightenment, gifts from God.
That’s how creative idea-images emerging from the unconscious always appear to ego consciousness. That’s how consciousness so readily becomes one-sided in its devotion to an upsurge of creativity. That’s also how the new scientific discoveries felt to early scientists, which is why the enantiodromic emergence of science to compensate a one-sided over-valuation of spirit has been both so powerful and so compulsive.
The challenge that seems to confront us now in our post-modern world is to hold the tension between the opposites of spirit and matter long enough for a transcendent and creative third thing to emerge from the unconscious and pull us into the next stage of human development. Perhaps our growing recognition that the soul, what we now call the psyche, both embodies spirit and spiritualizes matter may provide us with an opening to expanded consciousness.
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Soul Spirit Wisdom 
Amazing and informative post✨❤️
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