Jung and Jordan Peterson are both mystics

I am too, though possibly my experience of Gnosis, of pure internal knowledge, wasn't powerful enough.

Gno•sis nō′sĭs​

• Intuitive apprehension of spiritual truths, an esoteric form of knowledge sought by the Gnostics.
• Science; knowledge; knowledge of the highest kind; specifically, mystical knowledge. See Gnostic.
• The deeper wisdom; knowledge of spiritual truth, such as was claimed by the Gnostics.

The reason I say it might not have been powerful enough is because I took a very low dose of LSD, and had only racing thoughts of a very philosophical/literary nature. I did come away with the understanding that it had been a conversation with God, or with some inner teacher that a primitive tribe or an ancient society would definitely call a god, but I didn't make it all the way to the level of hallucinations.

As was said in the video I posted 3 entries back now, it's apparently necessary to experience some level of psychedelic hallucinations in order to get the lasting benefits of wellbeing and enlightenment and the physical benefits like cessation of smoking (and possibly other bad habits?) But I definitely got some of that stuff. I said in my previous post that I fit most of the criteria for a mystic but I don't believe in magic and have what I'd call a strong interest in spirituality, but not a literalist spirituality. Both Jung and Peterson said they know there's a god, but they weren't talking about any of the general notions of what God is.

They both seem to see God as something that dwells within the collective unconscious, or at the very least some avatar does that puts you in contact with God. Biblical ideas about God of course were framed in the language and understanding of the people of the time, who didn't understand the nature of the unconscious and called it by many names in many lands. But it was always the magical other realm, the hidden world where the laws are different, where magic exists and miracles happen, and the gods and mythical figures are what we today know as archetypes. I definitely know this (in the Gnostic sense), because I've encountered a few archetypes in dreams, and it has all the power and glory of a genuine religious revelation.

I don't really know where I'm going with this, but here's an article I just found while looking into the idea of Jung and Peterson both being mystics: Jordan Peterson and the Black Tide of Mysticism

A few interesting/relevant quotes:

"My sense is that this same Freudian fear and loathing of mysticism — a certain terror of the irrational, the dark, and the unknown — is what people fear in Jordan Peterson, who is a scientist but also a Jungian mystic."

"Jordan Peterson is a student of Jung, and like his teacher has genuine mystical qualities. This may be one of the reasons why he is quite threatening to those rationalists like Freud, and now Sam Harris, and others who believe that we need to outgrow religion. And Peterson is doubly threatening to extreme scientific reductionists because he is highly empirical, and a scientist to boot. It should be pointed out that Jung was also a scientist and more empirical than many people give him credit for."

"These days Jung is taboo almost everywhere in official circles — while being loved by independent minds and all kinds of artists and storytellers."

"My own professors warned me against Jung, which just made me more curious about him. Jung himself said that he would have been burned at the stake in the middle ages — that his view didn’t fit into orthodox theology. He freely studied ‘heretical texts’, from the gnostic gospels, to Kabbala and Nietzsche."


This video is embedded in the article. Just posting it here because it really goes deeper into the same subject matter.​