Return to the Living God

Religion, in its original sense, means the conscientious observance of the numinous—that mysterious, dynamic reality that seizes hold of humankind without being dependent on our will.

1. Religion as a Relationship to the Numinous

The sacred is not an invention, but an experience that transcends and transforms humanity. C. G. Jung describes the numinous as an active force that grasps, shakes, and also heals people. It is the primal ground of religious experience and the source of spiritual wholeness.

Human beings are not the creators of the sacred, but its bearers. When they lose this relationship, they lose their inner support—and the unconscious forces that were once bound up in symbols and rituals erupt.

2. Neurosis as a Sign of Loss of Trust

According to Jung, neurosis is the visible symptom of inner alienation. The neurotic person has lost trust in themselves and in the higher order. The unconscious reacts to this with autonomous complexes that turn against the ego—like inner gods that have been overthrown but not destroyed.

What is not brought into consciousness returns as fate. (C. G. Jung)

Where religious ties are lacking, these forces surge into consciousness—as anxieties, compulsions, or collective hysteria. What was once ordered by ritual and dogma now erupts unchecked.

3. The Collective Regression of Society

In the crowd, individuals easily sink below their own moral and intellectual level. Collective consciousness loses its differentiation; emotions and projections take over. Where meaning is lost, people become susceptible to manipulation—not by truth, but by noise. Thus, society transforms into moral theater, politics into a substitute religion, and the individual loses their soul.

4. The Protective Function of the Church

For centuries, the Church acted as a spiritual vessel. Their dogmas, rituals, and sacraments were not relics of ancient times, but rather psychological structures of order that bound and healed the unconscious. The Mass, confession, the rite—they formed a bridge between the divine and the human. Faith was not opinion, but participation in the mystery.

With the Reformation, these collective forms began to crumble. Human beings suddenly stood alone before their inner experience, without symbol, without mediator, without protection. What appeared to be liberation was, in truth, an exposure. The result was a religion of feeling—sentimental, subjective, moral, but without depth.

Thus arose what Jung called a sentimental religion: no longer an encounter with the sacred, but a projection of one's own ego onto heaven.

5. Dogma as a Living Form

Dogma is not a rigid system of doctrine, but the formed language of the unconscious. It translates psychological processes into symbols: sin, penance, sacrifice, and redemption. Dogma protects humanity from the disintegration caused by intellect and arbitrariness. Science describes consciousness—but dogma shapes the depths of the soul.

Therefore, the return to dogma is not a backward movement, but a forward step: a conscious resumption of those spiritual tools that anchor humanity in inner chaos.

Dogma expresses the living process of the unconscious—in the form of the drama of sin, repentance, sacrifice, and redemption. (C. G. Jung)

6. Christ as a Symbol of Transformation

At the center of this spiritual movement stands Christ. He is not merely a historical figure, but the eternal symbol of the dying and transforming God. In him, the old divine power dies—and is reborn in love and consciousness. Christ embodies the union of God and humanity, of spirit and matter, of shadow and light.

The return to God is therefore not a nostalgic look back, but a forward step into the living becoming of God within humanity. Christ is the sign that the divine is not finished, but continues to work in history—through transformation, sacrifice, and new beginnings.

Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. John 14:9

7. The Feminine and the Masculine—Healing Through Opposite Tension

The feminine represents relationship, devotion, and soul; the masculine represents order, judgment, and spirit. Wholeness arises only in the tension between the two. Where the masculine is suppressed, the feminine becomes shadowy: sentimental, boundless, and wavering. Where the feminine is absent, the masculine becomes hard, dogmatic, and heartless.

Our time suffers from the division of these principles. One no longer sees the other as an opposite, but as an adversary. Therefore, religion becomes either emotional and soft—or technical and empty. Only the reunification of opposites can heal the spiritual space in which humanity encounters God.

8. Why the Path to God Is Not a Step Backward

The return to God is not a step backward.

Nostalgia for old forms. It is a conscious progression, a step into the future, because God is alive—transforming, revealing himself, reborn in us. Christ is the sign of this process: He dies to be transformed; and he is transformed to redeem humanity.

In this sense, religion is a continuous creation: not a relapse into the past, but ongoing incarnation. The sacred happens today, in every soul that opens itself to transformation.

9. The Loss of the Sacred and False Substitute Religions

Where the sacred is lost, humanity seeks a substitute. Today, this occurs in ideologies, activism, and so-called moral revival—what appears as 'wokeism' is, psychologically, a religionless religiosity: compassion without truth, guilt without redemption, sacrifice without meaning. These are religious forms without God. They repeat the liturgy—but without grace.

Thus, repentance is replaced by outrage, devotion by control, and love by moral self-promotion. But humanity is not redeemed by morally perfecting itself, but by recognizing the sacred—within itself, beyond itself, in all things.

10. The Path to Healing

Healing begins with the individual. The collective can only be changed when the individual changes. Jung wrote:

The person who heals themselves heals the world within themselves. (C.G. Jung)

This requires religion:

Insight: Taking the unconscious seriously—not fighting it, but integrating it.
Symbolic practice: Prayer, ritual, meditation—forms that order the inner self.
Community: Places where truth, silence, and service are lived.

Sacrifice: Renouncing one's own ego in favor of living meaning.

The return to God is thus the path to wholeness—a path of becoming conscious, of acceptance, and of transformation.

11. The Living Father in the Son

When the Father rises again, it is in the Son—not in authority, but in truth.

Christ is the bridge through which the divine re-enters the world. He reveals the Father as the eternal light that manifests itself in the darkness.

Where this spirit awakens, the feminine is also redeemed—because it rests once more in the mind. And the masculine is healed—because it is once more in service.

Thus begins the true renewal of culture: not through revolution, but through incarnation. For God is not a relic of the past, but the ever-becoming origin, reborn in every soul.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. —John 1:5

12. The Unleashed Powers of the Underworld

It is not difficult to see that the powers of the underworld—one might even say, of hell—are once again in motion today. Forces that were once contained and harnessed within a spiritual edifice—the order of faith and the Church—are now seeking new paths.

They no longer build cathedrals, but instead create a soulless state prison, a mechanical world order that transforms all living things into mere function.

What was once tamed in divine symbols is now replaced by ideologies. Reason believes it can tame the fires of the underworld, without realizing that it has long since been consumed by them. Thus, a world is created that is outwardly ordered but inwardly empty—a system without grace, without mystery, without transcendence.

Modern man has lost the walls that, since the days of Rome, protected him from the powers of the unconscious. —C. G. Jung

The fire that once rose in the sacrificial flame of the altar now burns as embers in technology, in greed, in power. But fire itself is not evil; rather, it is the eternal energy of transformation that calls humanity to enlightenment.

Only when it is returned to the spiritual realm—through ritual, prayer, and awareness—does it become a blessing instead of a judgment.

Fire is sacred. But whoever steals it without offering sacrifices will be burned.

13. The Shadow, the Anima, and the Collapse of Consciousness

If Protestantism continues to disintegrate as a church, it signifies a psychological exposure. Humanity loses the symbols, rituals, and images that protected it from the force of the unconscious.

In psychiatry, it is known that a person ruled by fear is more dangerous than one driven by hatred. For fear is formless—the chaos of the unconscious that has found no voice.

The anima, the feminine figure of the unconscious, points to the possibility of reconciliation between spirit and matter, man and woman. But the man resists her,
because she brings him everything he has excluded from his life: feeling, weakness, longing, grace.

What is repressed returns—as a shadow. And the shadow is not evil, but rather the undeveloped, the unlived. Only when consciousness and shadow come together can healing occur.

One is not enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by becoming aware of the darkness. – C. G. Jung

14. Sacrifice and the Shadow

Be merciful to yourself while you are still on the path. For whoever does not treat themselves with kindness will not be able to show mercy to others.

It is a vital, yet dangerous problem of modern civilization that it no longer knows why human life, in a higher sense, should be a sacrifice. Sacrifice is not destruction, but transformation—the surrender of the lower to the higher, of the self to meaning, of self-will to the divine whole.

Without sacrifice, there is no sanctification. For whoever seeks only self-realization loses the sacred.

In the shadow dwells what we have never lived: unfinished love, missed opportunities for good, unrecognized talent. Therefore, sacrifice does not consist of killing the shadow, but of accepting and purifying it.

Take up your cross—not to suffer, but to become.

This is the true return to the living God: that humanity offers itself as a whole, not only its virtues, but also its wounds.

15. The Transformation of the Individual

Insofar as collectives are nothing other than accumulations of individuals, their problems are also accumulations of individual problems. Every societal crisis is ultimately a spiritual crisis of many individuals.

One part identifies with the higher self within and cannot descend. The other part identifies with the lower self within and only wants to ascend. Thus arises the rift that manifests itself in the collective as division and ideology.

Such problems are never solved by legislation or artifice. They can only be solved by a general transformation of inner attitude. And this transformation does not begin with propaganda or mass rallies, but solely with the transformation of the individual.

Only when a person begins to transform their inclinations, their values, and their perspective can the whole change. For only the sum of such inner transformations
is capable of bringing about true collective healing.

The collective can only be changed by redeeming the individual. – C. G. Jung

The Kingdom of God does not grow through systems, but through souls that have come to know themselves and found God within.

The Kingdom of God is within you. – Luke 17:21

16. The Shadow and Self-Reflection

The educated person tries to suppress the lower self within, without realizing that this forces it to become rebellious. They fail to recognize that the unconscious is not destroyed, but only repressed—and that what is repressed returns, stronger than before.

The union of God and humanity in the symbol of the cross is the image of the integration of opposites. Religion, in its deepest essence, is humanity's relationship to the highest and most powerful value, whether positive or negative. This relationship is both voluntary and involuntary—for it cannot be created by will, but only grasped through experience.

Why did the ancient gods lose their prestige? Because the Olympian gods had fulfilled their purpose, and a new mystery began: God became human.

The solution to the religious conflict lies in humanity making peace with God—by subordinating its own will to the divine will.

But beware: Whoever believes they possess the shadow completely will be consumed by it.

Therefore, the path of self-reflection is also a path of humility. It leads to the house of inner contemplation, where one recognizes that the evil in the world also resides within oneself.

When one learns to live with one's shadow, then one has done something truly meaningful for the world.

For the world only changes where the individual recognizes their own darkness.

How can someone see clearly if they don't even see the darkness
that they unconsciously carry into all their actions? Therefore, self-reflection is not a retreat, but a spiritual service to the whole. For in everyone who accepts their darkness, the light takes shape.

17. The Return of the Gods to the Soul

At first, the gods lived in superhuman power and beauty—on the snow-covered mountain peaks, in the darkness of caves, forests, and seas. Then they merged into one god, and this god became human.

But in our time, even the god-man seems to be descending from his throne and dissolving into everyday humanity. Therefore, his seat is empty. But modern humanity suffers from a hubris of consciousness that borders on pathology.

For the development of consciousness demands the withdrawal of all projections—and thus, no doctrine of gods in the old sense of an extrapsychic existence can be maintained.

If the historical process of the world's dehumanization, the retraction of projections,
progresses as it has been, then everything that once bore a divine or demonic character in the outside world must return to the human soul—to the inner being of the unknown human being, from where it all originated.

Materialism was probably the first inevitable consequence. Since the throne of God could not be found among the galaxies, it was concluded that God did not exist at all. The second error was psychologism: if God existed at all, then he must be an illusion—a product of the will to power or repressed sexuality.

Thus, especially in large cities, the neurosis of atheism arose—a spiritual emptiness that people try to fill with noise, technology, and ideologies. But whoever loses God loses not just a concept, but the inner center that sustains consciousness as a whole.

He to whom God dies will fall victim to inflation. – C. G. Jung

For when the divine disappears from within, the ego becomes an idol.

It swells up—and in its ridiculous wretchedness, rises to become the lord of the universe.

But God is not created—he is chosen. Our choice, our highest value, determines which God reigns within us. Nietzsche said, “God is dead.” But it would be more accurate to say: He has cast aside our image. And where will we find him again? Not in the stars, not in the machines, but in the soul that grows still again, that knows the shadow
and calls upon the Father.

The interregnum in which we live is fraught with danger. For where God is absent,
the forces of nature rise up in new masks—in the -isms of our time:
Materialism, nationalism, nihilism, even to the point of moral and political hubris.

All these forces are divinely distorted energies that yearn for a new vessel.

Only when humanity recognizes that the divine must be reborn not outside, but within itself, will the time of anarchy end. The return of the gods to the soul is not the end of faith, but its new beginning.

What was once outside becomes inside; and what was inside becomes manifest.

18. The Life of Christ as an Archetype of Transformation

The Church understands the life of Christ as both a historical and an eternally existing mystery—a concept particularly evident in the doctrine of the Mass.

The life of Christ is no exception in this regard, but rather the highest realization of an archetypal event that has become more or less clearly visible in many great figures of history: the heroic life with its characteristic trials, falls, and rebirths.

But even ordinary people live—mostly unconsciously—according to the same archetypal patterns. What happens in the life of Christ happens always and everywhere, in every single person who inwardly walks the path of transformation.

In other words, in the Christian archetype, all life of this kind is prefigured and expressed once and for all. Therefore, the question of God's death and God's renewal in humanity is already fully contained within the mystery of Christ.

Christ is the archetype of the dying and transforming God. He is the living symbol of the eternal movement between death and resurrection, between God and humanity, between light and darkness, between sacrifice and renewal.

I address myself to those for whom the light has gone out, the mystery has sunk, and God seems dead.

For most, there is no going back—and one doesn't even know if the return path would be the better one. For every return must pass through the darkness in which the soul encounters itself.

It is a difficult undertaking to rebuild the bridge that connects the concept of dogma with the immediate experience of the psychological archetype.

Yet the exploration of the natural symbols of the unconscious provides us with the necessary building blocks. For these symbols are the language in which the divine speaks within the soul.

Thus, by reinterpreting the ancient images, humanity itself becomes a place of incarnation. Within, one experiences what once happened in Christ:

the death of the old God and the birth of the new, living Spirit.

See, I am making all things new. —Revelation 21:5

19. The Death of God and the Return of Value

The death of God, or the disappearance of God, is by no means merely a Christian symbol. It signifies the experience that the highest, life-giving, and meaning-giving value has been lost.

This process is not a one-time occurrence, but a frequently recurring event—an archetype that is constantly repeated in history and within the human soul.

That is why it is expressed in a central position in the Christian mystery. The death or loss of the divine must be repeated again and again: Christ always dies, as does the divine.

He is always reborn.

In our time, we are once again experiencing such a period of divine death—an era of God's disappearance. The myth recounts that he is no longer found in the place where his body was laid.

The body corresponds to the outward, visible form of the divine—the previous, but temporary, manifestation of the highest value. The myth goes on to say that this value miraculously re-emerges, transformed. It appears as a miracle because a lost value always seems irretrievably lost. That it nevertheless returns is the mystery of the resurrection of meaning.

The three days of Christ's death and his descent into hell symbolically describe the sinking
of the lost value into the unconscious. There, in the darkness, the old value is tested, transformed, and purified. It triumphs over the powers of darkness and establishes a new order.

From there he ascends again—from hell to heaven, that is, from the deepest unconscious to the highest clarity of consciousness. Yet only a few see the Risen One. This means that it is difficult to rediscover and recognize the transformed value. For he appears in a new form, no longer as the old faith, but as a new experience of the sacred in the depths of the soul.

Thus, the death of God is not the end, but the hidden beginning of renewal. For every disappearance of God is the preparation for his return in humanity.

For unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. —John 12:24

With this chapter, the circle is complete. The work begins with alienation from the numinous and ends with the rebirth of the divine in the soul. What seems lost rises anew.

This is the true return to the living God: not a retreat into the past, but a return to the heart of creation, where God and humanity, shadow and light, death and resurrection become one.

20. The Redeemer from the Depths

The Redeemer does not descend from heaven, but from the depths of the earth—that is, from what lies beneath consciousness. Divine rebirth does not spring from the spirit alone, but from the descent into the unconscious, where the repressed, the forgotten, the darkness of the soul resides.

The protective walls of faith and order serve to prevent the personality from erupting or disintegrating. They preserve the whole by protecting the inner self from dissolution.

In this sense, the cross signifies the exclusive focus on the center,
on the self. This state is anything but egocentric—it signifies quite the opposite: a highly necessary self-restraint to avoid inflation and dissociation.

The enclosure, symbolized by the cross, also signifies a temple precinct,
a sacred space where the divine reveals itself. This space is not external,
but internal: the human heart, opening itself to the mystery.

Religious experience is absolute. It cannot be debated, proven, or disproven. One can only say that one has not had it.

It is irrelevant what the world thinks about religious experience—for those who experience it
possess the great treasure of something that becomes a source of life, meaning, and beauty, and that bestows a new radiance upon the world and humanity.

The spiritual adventure of our time is the surrender of human consciousness to the indeterminate and the indeterminable. And yet it seems as if even in the boundless realm,
those spiritual laws prevail which no human being devised, but whose knowledge was granted to them through Gnosis—in the symbolism of Christian dogma, which only imprudent fools shake, but not lovers of the soul.

The kingdom of God is within you. —Luke 17:21

Epilogue

Thus the work is completed. It ends where it began—in the encounter with the numinous, which dwells not outside, but within.

The return to the living God is not an ascent to heaven, but a descent into the depths, where the divine transforms itself and is reborn in humanity.

Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord.—Psalm 130:1