When Religion, Philosophy and Psychology Meet in Reality

"My body and will are one." Schopenhauer

Schopenhauer tells us to renounce the will, not unlike traditional religion. Nietzsche tells us to celebrate the will but then goes on to say that the will has no goal other than an amoral power drive. Freud combined these views and changed the will to the sex drive, but found no real Godhood goal to the sex drive.

Freud was on the right track in attempting to figure out a way for humans to adjust to his sex drive (will), but he missed as did Schopenhauer and Nietzsche the deepest adjustment to the human life-drive, or the Spirit-Will or Will-Spirit, which is the adjustment to the ongoing future evolution of life toward Godhood, which is the ultimate religious, philosophical and psychological path seen in theological materialism.

As I wrote in this blog several years ago (Toward Evolutionary Therapy): "Take the temperament theorists or the personality psychology of Cattell and Eysenck, and combine them with sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, and you have a good theory of personality.  But then moving beyond that I hypothesize a new kind of religious evolutionary therapy in the following way:

"Alfred Adler (who positively acknowledged Nietzsche) postulated a single drive: “striving for perfection,” which is transposed in the theological materialism of the Theoevolutionary Church (TC) as the Spirit-Will, or the Spirit-Will-to-Godhood, the activating force within life, which is also shaped by outside evolution.

Rather than the “will to meaning” of Dr Viktor Frankl, or the “will to pleasure” (pleasure principle) of Freud, or the “will to power” of Nietzsche, or “striving for perfection” in Adlerian psychology, or the renunciation of Schopenhauer, theological materialism and TC psychology say that the primary motivational force in man is the material Spirit-Will-to-Godhood.

The interesting psychology comes in relating this primary drive socially as well as individually. All people, all groups have this drive to “perfection,” but how do we socially integrate them? Our answer, unlike Adler's socialism, is seen in the Ordered Evolution, Revitalized Conservatism, or ethnopluralism suggested in the theological materialism of the TC.

Toward Evolutionary Therapy

The leadership role in theological materialism and the Evolutionary Church would be to understand the intentionality of the Spirit-Will, which the person is often unable to clearly comprehend, whereas, say, in Jungian psychology, the therapist's role is to represent the intentions of the psyche and to help see or understand the “Self”. The philosopher or Priest needs to take the side of the Spirit-Will, whereas the psychoanalyst takes the side of the Unconscious.

In “Evolutionary Therapy,” the philosopher and Priest would need to mediate a deal or balance between the Spirit-Will and the Soul-mind-body which the person can live with. “Befriending” the Spirit-Will could be a task which might involve uncomfortable insights. Egotistical human life and modern values may seem limited in the face of the long evolution of the Spirit-Will-to-Godhood which activates life, beyond man, beyond superman, beyond angels all the way to Godhood.

When the Spirit-Will is blocked, It turns away from its central path. The leadership “art” in theological materialism and the EC is to help “release” the natural Spirit-Will into the energy of the person and society, making the energy of the Spirit-Will available for the individual and for society---we can learn to use or turn the powerful force of the material Spirit-Will away from profanely hurting ourselves into helping ourselves, and helping our societies evolve, not devolve toward the profane, but evolve toward the sacred.

Meanwhile the Soul, which is the Zenith of the Mind and the ego, having seen or experienced the symbolic Father Within in the Inward Path, must maintain its task to intelligently help guide or “ride the tiger” of the Spirit-Will toward evolving to real Godhood in the Outward Path, the God first seen in the Inward Path---the Soul of the Inward Path needs to stop blocking the Spirit-Will. This is the desired balance. 

We need to befriend, not only the unconscious, but the Spirit-Will which activates the unconscious, and we need to correctly define the Spirit-Will and its direction.  The Spirit-Will is like a "Super-Id," which is a good thing, not a primitive thing.

We are not merely looking for the opposite of the ego, the contrary elements of our psyche, because Jungian androgynous balance is not the goal. The great goal of the Spirit-Will, the Super-Id, is the goal that lies beyond us, beyond the human unconscious, at the Zenith of Evolution to Godhood. Whatever parts of our psyche that seem opposed to the direction of the Spirit-Will need to be understood and synthesized and balanced..."