ApostateAbe

There is a significant difference, unless you would think that the Hindu and Christian afterlives are essentially the same?

Horatio Parker

I don't think he was using the term as a metaphysical definition but as a term of convenience.

DCHindley

IIUC, Julian Jaynes, in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (or via: amazon.co.uk), never even mentions Carl Jung or his unconscious Archetypes.

He attributes the origin of the idea of gods as a rationalization of auditory hallucinations produced by the bicameral mind prior to the development of human consciousness. Triggered in reaction to stress, the ancient bicameral mind projects unconscious solutions learned in everyday life:

The Release of the Gods

If we are correct in assuming that schizophrenic hallucinations are similar to the guidances of gods in antiquity, then there should be some common physiological instigation in both instances. This, I suggest, is simply stress. In normal people, as we have mentioned, the stress threshold for release of hallucinations is extremely high; most of us need to be over our heads in trouble before we would hear voices.

But in psychosis-prone persons, the threshold is somewhat lower; …. This is caused, I think, by the buildup in the blood of breakdown products of stress-produced adrenalin which the individual is, for genetical reasons, unable to pass through the kidneys as fast as a normal person.

During the eras of the bicameral mind [through about 1200 BCE], we may suppose that the stress threshold for hallucinations was much, much lower than in either normal people or schizophrenics today. The only stress necessary was that which occurs when a change in behavior is necessary because of some novelty in a situation. Anything that could not be dealt with on the basis of habit, any conflict between work and fatigue, between attack and flight, any choice between whom to obey or what to do, anything that required any decision at all was sufficient to cause an auditory hallucination. (pg 93)

Once the human mind developed consciousness as we know it after ca. 1200 BCE, these gods were objectified.

On the other hand, "Carl Gustav Jung developed an understanding of archetypes as being "ancient or archaic images that derive from the collective unconscious".

Collective unconscious "is a term of analytical psychology, coined by Carl Jung. It is proposed to be a part of the unconscious mind, expressed in humanity and all life forms with nervous systems, and describes how the structure of the psyche autonomously organizes experience. Jung distinguished the collective unconscious from the personal unconscious, in that the personal unconscious is a personal reservoir of experience unique to each individual, while the collective unconscious collects and organizes those personal experiences in a similar way with each member of a particular species. ...

For Jung, “My thesis then, is as follows: in addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents.”

Jung linked the collective unconscious to 'what Freud called "archaic remnants" - mental forms whose presence cannot be explained by anything in the individual's own life and which seem to be aboriginal, innate, and inherited shapes of the human mind'.

You can see, these two psychologists conceive of the problem completely differently. For Jayne, it is a projection of unconscious learning. For Jung, it is the result of instinctive problem resolving processes with a genetic origin.

DCH

ApostateAbe

Hmm, I get the sense you may have misunderstood. Earl Doherty doesn't think and I don't think Earl Doherty thinks that the ancient "world of myths" objectively existed. That isn't an issue. The debate is all about determining what the ancients believed.

aa5874

You do not at all seem to be interested in what ancients believed. You are directly interested in what Doherty writes.

Let me show you again what ancients BELIEVED.

Welcome to a World of Myth.

1. Ancients Believed Jesus was born After his mother was made Pregnant by a Ghost. See Matthew 1.18 and Luke 1.

2. Ancients Believed Jesus was God the Creator. See John 1

3. Ancients Believed Jesus Walked on the sea. See Mark 6.48.

4. Ancients Believed Jesus Transfigured. See Mark 9.

5. Ancients Believed that Satan took Jesus on the Pinnacle of the Jewish Temple. See Matthew 4.

6. Ancient Believed Jesus Resurrected. See Galatians 1.

7. Ancients Believed Jesus Ascended. See Acts 1.

8. Ancients BELIEVED Jesus was God and produced by a Ghost. See Ignatius Epistles.

9. Ancients Believed Jesus was procuded without sexual union. See Justin's "First Apology".

10. Ancient Believed God lived in Mary and produced Jesus. See Aristides' "Apology"

11. Ancients Believed Jesus had NO human father. See Tertullian's "On the Flesh of Christ"

12. Ancients Believed Jesus was born of a Ghost and a Virgin. See Irenaeus "Against Heresies".

13. Ancient Believed Jesus was miraculously conceived by a Ghost. See Origen's "Against Celsus".

14. Ancients Believed Jesus was Divine. See Eusebius' "Church History" 1.

Iskander

The world of myth “objectively” exists for people who consider the content of the myth a reality.

Further, I claim that the world of myth “objectively” exists also for those who do not consider the content of the myth to be a reality,but happen to live under the authority of the believers

Gods and their cosmic enemies only exist in the mind of some men and women, but the servants, troopers, executioners and legislators at service of the invented do really exist for all of us in the very real sense of translating into physical consequence.

That is why the world of myth cannot be ignored. I will now invite everybody to join in a prayer of thanks to Saint Doherty and Saint Acharya.:devil1:

Horatio Parker

So what is the significance of "worlds of myth" as opposed to "world of myth"? What issue could it be but metaphysical.

MrMacSon

and as a literal term - a "world of myth" is an umbrella term that includes all 'worlds of myth' and also includes 'world of myths'

Arguing over semantics around myth and other fiction, and pluralism & subsets of it, seems silly.

EarlDoherty

It certainly is. But when all you've got is silly, hair-splitting technicalities that don't mean anything, I guess that's what you go with. They're a specialty of a lot of anti-mythicists such as GDon.

And trying to make a distinction between "world" and "worlds" is also a meaningless technicality. The singular simply refers to the topic collectively, the principle of the thing, the plural (if it has any practical use at all) could be used to refer to different cultures' and religions' set of mythical events. (One hardly needs to differentiate between "nations often go to war" and "nations often go to wars".) Every religion and culture has relegated its myths to a "world of myth", we hardly need to pluralize it.

"World of myth" simply refers to a perceived dimension lying beyond the earthly material historical one. Call it supernatural, call it mythical, call it mythological. The latter word is almost a technical term in some NT studies. As I say in Endnote 8 in both The Jesus Puzzle and Jesus: Neither God Nor Man,

One can virtually interchange "mythical" and "mythological" in our context. "World of myth" simply refers to any perceived dimension which lies outside an earthly historical one, and in which mythical activities have taken place. I suppose one could extend it also to the more primitive concept of primordial, sacred time in which originating activities of the gods took place, a dimension lying prior to historical time.

But let's not try to pinpoint exact meanings in the minds of the ancients for things which bore no relation to reality and could not be verified or illuminated by empirical or scientific means.

Earl Doherty

MrMacSon

Cheers, Earl.

Arguments over semantics are a classic strawman red-herring: a common 'loop' of those immersed in religion.