Psychology - A Psychological Reading of John's Revelation
This is not a theology thread. Shoo!
John's Revelation, describing the destruction of the earth and the ascendance of New Jerusalem, submits to a psychological reading in the following general way:
Chapters 1-3: A plea for self-overcoming, self-transcendence (following Maslow's transpersonal psychology), self-improvement, self-understanding, self-realization. Centers on the word overcome, as in, overcome yourself, better yourself, improve yourself.
Chapters 4-20: The destruction of the earth read as metaphor for the destruction of the mundane, neurotic, self-awarenessless, illucid, or nontranscendent, Self.
Chapters 21-22: The creation of New Jerusalem read as metaphor for the creation of the extraordinary, trans-neurotic, self-aware, lucid, or transcendent, Self.
Thoughts?
John's Revelation, describing the destruction of the earth and the ascendance of New Jerusalem, submits to a psychological reading in the following general way:
Chapters 1-3: A plea for self-overcoming, self-transcendence (following Maslow's transpersonal psychology), self-improvement, self-understanding, self-realization. Centers on the word overcome, as in, overcome yourself, better yourself, improve yourself.
Chapters 4-20: The destruction of the earth read as metaphor for the destruction of the mundane, neurotic, self-awarenessless, illucid, or nontranscendent, Self.
Chapters 21-22: The creation of New Jerusalem read as metaphor for the creation of the extraordinary, trans-neurotic, self-aware, lucid, or transcendent, Self.
Thoughts?
Comments (113)
I would make the story about an accidental fall into authenticity by way of a catastrophe.
I can't speak to authenticity writ large, but there's no question the catastrophic has played a decisive role in my personal quest for the authentic self. It was the catastrophic that awakened my heart and mind to the need for revolt (against neurotic parents; against a neurotic society); and to the need for deeper and deeper self-probing and self-evaluation: the chief precursors of psychic change.
Can we see the Book of Revelation a.k.a. Apocalypse as an explanation for the evolution of Earth consciousness?
:chin: Fractal?
Destruction occurs at all scales - what is an apocalypse but death albeit at a grander scale, people die every day!
Rorschach test!
What do you mean by the evolution of Earth consciousness?
Glad I was helpful! Not sarcasm I hope.
This may sound like a flip and supercilious comment (and I don't mean it to be) but why bother? Why apply psychological readings to anything and to what end? Do you need to be 'overcome' or be 'improved' in some way?
https://youtu.be/LYi19-Vx6go
I do: more inspiration, more insight, more compassion, more agape, more self- and world-illumination, more wisdom...
[quote=Goethe] MORE LIGHT! [/quote]
... increased creative prowess, more passion, more focus, more energy...
[quote=William Blake] Energy is Eternal Delight. [/quote]
...to live at a fever pitch... To be - inoculated with lightning...
[quote=Zarathustra] Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the frenzy with which ye should be inoculated?[/quote]
Do you need any of these things (genuinely curious)?
It happened by accident. I connected John's Revelation to Campbell's take on the hero myth.
Descent to the underworld followed by rebirth and dissemination of insight gained.
Texts/Speech
1. What the writer/speaker wants to convey (thoughts)
2. What was conveyed (text/speech)
3. What the reader/listener understands (hermeneutics)
Sometimes [math]1 \neq 2 \neq 3[/math].
The Biblia Sacra could be a text-based Rorschach test. The writer (the apostles) don't want to pass on to us the word of god; instead, the idea is to assess our mindset and diagnose underlying pathologies. :snicker:
Do you mind if I continue with some questions? I'm a crass methodological naturalist, with no sensus divinitatis. I spent a year studying Campbell and Jungian archetypes in the 1980's. Not that this was of any use, but I have some idea of the content. Ideas of rebirth or underworld are not meaningful to me. But I'm interested in those for whom it is.
How do you relate a book with this kind of material to your own life?
Don't mind at all.
At work at the moment but I may attempt a rough draft of an answer. My prose is better when I'm on my couch. :smile:
Stage one and two:
1. Recognition and revolt.
2. The encounter with the will to self-transcendence.
The first stage is recognition and revolt. Recognition and revolt against some kind of darkness. "Darkness" can mean different things. Immersion in a neurotic culture. Unconscious submission to a neurotic family structure. Or it could be a self-destructive habit like alcoholism.
The second stage is the will to transcend. It may mean rejecting one's family, or overcoming alcoholism. It may mean total rejection of a culture viewed as neurotic and thereat an attempt to find a new way to live - a new country or a new career.
This first stage of recognition and revolt is where the resonance of John's command to overcome takes hold. Overcome your past, overcome the - always addictive - comfortable but self-stifling patterns of the past; break (typically in anguish) the homey mold you've grown accustomed to. Set out into the unknown.
To be continued...
Stage 3: destruction of the old self.
Stage 4: creation of the new self
Stage 3 is the process of breaking the mold: the destruction of the old self. The descent into the underworld or unknown. Reflected in the destruction of the Earth in chapters 3-20 of Revelation. The symbological details are of little account, apart from conveying the fear and anguish of this sort of self-revision and the suggestion of the need for courage.
Stage 4 arrives when new patterns of thought and behavior have taken hold. The subject feels, quite literally, like a new person inhabiting a new world. The old self, the destroyed self, no longer holds any recidivistic allure. The old habits and addictions are defeated. This is the stage of (in some cases, mystical) insight. Reflected in chapters 21-22.
Taking action is the next step.
Can you say some more about how an old book provides succor? Is it more in the realm of a mystical process or something that can be articulated? How does the book provide any kind of foundation to the rebuilding process you are describing? I understand how a 'self-help' book works - there are specific tasks to follow. But I guess I am lost in the symbolic aspects of the process in this instance - it that makes sense.
The fear and anguish arise from the fact that the old self must be destroyed before a new self can be created. There's no way I'm aware of to create the new self from the safety of the old self and then, so to speak, step into the new self in the manner of a costume change. Hence, fear, uncertainty, profound anxiety.
Is this symbolic language, or do you take it more literally? Is the old self 'destroyed' as such or is it superseded?
As a poet, I take Revelation to be a work of poetic genius. The atmosphere is one of superlative spiritual intensity, the height of inspiration. This height, this inspiration, conveys an almost divine authority, which gives the anxious seeker a refuge, a locus of encouragement and a suggestion of future self-confidence.
A bit exaggerated, but literal in the sense that the desired, future patterns of mind are incompatible with the present undesired darkness-laden patterns of mind.
If the self is the mind you might say the old mind has to be destroyed to make a place for the new.
But, sure, it's something of an exaggeration.
Yeah, it is.
I find this particularly interesting. I like language but prose, not poetry. I have always found poetry to be like a foreign language. But I really like the idea of it. I find music more useful when it comes to contemplation and inspiration.
So this is where I fail to connect. This last sentence is especially intriguing. It sounds like you are describing an emotional reaction to the text rather than a cerebral one. Like listening to music?
You call transpersonal psychology theology because you have an agenda.
An influx of encouraging, transformative inspiration is emotional. Sure.
So you're saying the prose inspires/encourages you. What is it about the prose that does this? Is it any different than me being swept away by the writing of Saul Bellow?
Only different in the sense that John is encouraging, even demanding, self-transformation. (Not so much with Bellow, for what I've read from him.) And then provides an internalizable Utopian vision - New Jerusalem - to compound encouragement with inspiration.
In the realm of music you have folks like Jimi Hendrix who had a desire to open the minds of his compeers. And so many others.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
So it sounds as if part of your process is making an assessment that the artist or work in question has the right intentional underpinning.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
This is sounding more theological now.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
How do you make that assessment - does the work say this or does is it implied? Or is this inherent in any work that has a religious purpose?
The work states explicitly - in spiritualized poetic language - what will happen if one "overcomes."
The Utopian vision understood as inspiration for self-transformation can have a theological or non-theological context. From Marxism to Jonestown. It's wide-ranging.
Is there a reference? I haven't read any religious texts in three decades.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
Perhaps it is messianic then?
Open chapters one and two of Revelation in a browser and ctrl-F the word overcome. It's a kind of refrain.
Conventional Christianity has taken it to be. My psychological reading is a bit eccentric.
For what it's worth, I'm far from Christian. :smile:
That's cool. And thank you for answering all my rather blunt questions.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
I think that is significant (to me anyway).
Anytime. Helps me clarify my thoughts...
I should have mentioned I'm looking at the KJV. I noticed the NIV uses "he who is victorious" not "who overcometh".
Same idea.
I have trouble with the notion of collective consciousness, as the range of ideologies, cultures, behaviors, propensities of thought is vast and baffling. I think almost exclusively in terms of a personal evolution.
This is mirrored in the shift from the Utopianism of the 1960s to the self-improvement trends of the 1970s.
From levitating the Pentagon to Esalen.
In the case of deriving transformational inspiration from an abstract poem like Revelation, you have to (so to speak) write your own self help book. This requires self-probing and self-reliance, patience and accumulating insight.
I have other beings to lick me with their tongues. :)
We Have All the Time in the World!
:snicker:
:ok:
I wonder, is not the ordinary, neurotic, oblivious, lackluster, or mediocre, or Other, to prefer...?
I'm not sure I understand what you are referring to when you say 'this concept'. Can you explain? Can you provide an example from your popular culture of it being taught so I can see what you mean in action?
Not sure I understand... Do you mean these things are preferable?
But dramas involving mothers and fathers are much bigger and older. My persona is tiny by comparison.
If you see a symbol of one of those cosmic sized beings and find yourself arrested by it, it's good to pay attention.
I agree archetypes are important. It's a good idea to take them to heart when they appear - typically in dreams. Or literature.
I think Kevin and I were talking about another sort of collective consciousness. Not sure. Maybe he can clarify.
I put my finger on it: That's the collective UNconscious. Jung's idea.
They can be detected while you're awake. Wars break out between them. It's bad joo joo.
That's my experience anyway. They aren't two dimensional. They're living aspects of you.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
Right.
An archetype-infused conception of reality. Sure. The mythic mystique of the Fuhrer. And so on. That's a good point. I've been focused on dreams and literature lately. I'd forgotten about that. Thanks for the reminder. :smile:
I think of the archetypes as playing a critical role in the creation of mystique. Various kinds of mystique. The mystique of the mother or of the priest, king, or nation. Yes, very problematic. Again, thanks for the reminder.
Introspective and solitary by nature, I can forget to extrospect.
You might want to avoid a theological discussion, but I do not see how the text can be read that way without ignoring what is actually said:
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
What evidence of this do you see? I see a good deal about repentance, but nothing about self-transcendence. To the contrary:
Rather than self-overcoming and self-transcendence it appears to be about obedience and being saved in what is and will happen. The scope here is not the individual but the world.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
What does this mean other than to impose an interpretation on the text that is not faithful to it?
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
To read it as a metaphor is to render it impotent. One might still find it inspiring, but the force and magnitude of what is claimed is lost.
Already addressed above.
I elide the hyper-Christy bits and read it as a poem written by some dude. Not concerned about John's intentions.
You don't have to be faithful to a poem. You can dissect it and twist it until it's something useful to you.
I know more about transpersonal psychology than John.
In a sense, John didn't know what he was saying.
By dissecting and twisting you end of with something that no longer resembles the thing you started with.
A "psychological reading" is ambiguous. Your reading seems to reflect more on you and your preoccupations then on John's experience or the psychological impact of his vision on centuries of readers.
Quite obviously - and transparently - so.
Quoting Fooloso4
Not 'seems': it's precisely the thing I said thrice:
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
Quoting Fooloso4
It's had some pretty silly impacts: like folks who take it literally.
If your preoccupations are theological, I refer you to the OP:
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
So far this thread has been free of theological fluff and indignation.
So,rorschach test?
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm.
No, my interest is hermeneutical. Why start a thread on an influential theological text only to deform it and try to make it into something it is not?
It interests me.
Quoting Fooloso4
This interpretation is reasonable, but not how I see it. Defending my elisions doesn't interest me.
It is clear that you have no idea what my view is.
I would ask the same question with regard to any text. It is not a matter of theology, but of how you read a text and the relationship between them. Does the text get lost when reading becomes a form of writing?
You might say that a strictly psychological interpretation requires the elision of constrictive theological and mythological content.
But the bare fact is the interpretation I've set out has been useful to me, and that's that.
It's not my master's thesis in divinity. Just an interesting and useful aside.
Your view that my interpretation is a deformation is clear to me. You just said it.
If you like: I've rewritten John's Revelation. That doesn't trouble me.
Ok, thanks. So you just mean public awareness of an issue/phenomenon. I thought you were using it in a more technical way.
Open up chapters two and three of the KJV and ctrl-F the word overcometh. His chorus of overcomeths I take to be a call to self-overcoming.
This is a claim with no factual basis.
My contact with John's Revelation, read psychologically and interpreted metaphorically, has altered the course of my psychospiritual development.
When the content is theological and mythological an interpretation that ignores them is empty.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
That is not my view. My view of what is at issue is not limited to the problems I see in your interpretation.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
That does not trouble me either. As long as there is clarity regarding what is going on.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
These statements are not about self-overcoming. I found four mentions of overcoming in Chapter 2.The first (2:7)refers to the Nicolaitans (2:6), who were a revel Christian sect. The second (2:11) refers to (2:11) the devil (2:10). The third (2:17) also refers to the Nicolaitans (2:15). The last (2:26) Satan (2:24).
To read it as a metaphor is to render it impotent.
— Fooloso4
This is a claim with no factual basis.
A metaphor about the Apocalypse does not have the same psychological consequences believing what is foretold. People do not fear a metaphor or change their life because of something that they do not believe will actually happen.
I get it. We disagree. Take care. :smile:
If my interpretation isn't useful to you.... It's okay.
It's not accurate to call what is useful empty.
People change their lives for all kinds of reasons.
Thanks for dropping in.
I'm not interested in a hermaneutic agon.
I'm interested in sharing something I found useful with other people who might find it useful.
Again: you obviously don't find it useful, so....
Take care. :smile:
The question is, what is it that is overcome? It is not the self, but rather external forces.
We may regard it as simple-minded and perhaps as a matter of avoidance -"the devil made me do it", but have we gone too far in the other direction by making the self the locus?
Not interested. Take care. :smile:
Mine barely functions inside a body, so I am damn sure there will be nothing when I die. :razz:
I wouldn't know where to start.
The heart ignores flaws (+).
The mind focuses on flaws (-).
[quote=Richard Dawkins]The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.[/quote]
Thank you. :smile:
A fresh slant, I hope, on this astonishing poem.
Quoting ArielAssante
I'm not shy.
Whether you like it or not, Revelation 5:1-4 explains why it is impossible to understand the revelation.
first 3 chapters are self explanatory, the rest is "sealed".
How much does it make sense to ignore this fact, I don't know.
That's John's opinion. It isn't a fact that the Revelation is ununderstandable.
The book may be understandable and for certain portions of it there is official interpretation, but you can't fulfill it, such as going trough personal psychological stages according to the book which is what you seem to be aiming for.
You can pretend only.
All of the 7 seals are unsealed (or fulfilled) by Jesus (ex. see Revelation 6:1), otherwise anyone could claim it has been fulfilled and destroy Christianity.
You can take the role of Jesus ofc. and suffer, but are you willing to take that psychological stress and suffering?
This is theology. Not what this thread is for. Take care. :smile: