The Journey East - Oil on Linen - 20x16" - 2019
My inspiration for this piece came from "The Red Book" by philosopher and psychologist, Carl Jung. Jung's biggest question that he pondered was left by his predecessor, Nietzsche who famously wrote, "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him." This was referring to the realty that science has taken the position of God and that all of our governing systems throughout human history were founded on religion (Egyptian > Greek > Judaism > Catholicism).
With science taking everything that was originally contributed to God, God has died. With God dead there are only two alternatives: 1.) Except that life has no meaning and that there is no purpose. 2) Give the power of God to the State. The catastrophic effect of the second resulted the rise of the Nazi Party. Jung believed that there had to be a third option. As a creative thinker, most of his ideas came in the form of dreams or visions. This painting depicts the beginning into his vision and creation of the new God:
In his dream, Western society was dark and hopeless. There was no God and nothing holy only science. The far East was the other extreme: The gods thrived but society was still undeveloped. Jung ventured to the East in hopes of conversing with the gods to ask them how get them to come back to Western society. During his journey, he comes to the edge of the West, at the end of the darkness. From the distance he sees a figure running directly toward him from the Eastern light. It was the great god Izdubar. Izdubar was leaving the East in order to touch the sun which set in the West. Jung told Izdubar that the sun did not rest in the West but that the earth was round and moved around the planet. This instantly crippled the god. The most powerful being was now in agony by the poison of science. Seeing this, Jung knew that he could not step foot into the light or else he would be blinded.
We cannot become blind to science nor paralyzed by the confines of it. We must stay right in the middle, where we can communicate with our God and exist in Harmony. •
This is only part of the vision and does not include the rebirth of God. Perhaps another painting...