Here’s another really interesting quote from Marie Louise Von Franz’s excellent On Divination and Synchronicity:

We can therefore say that those people who nowadays do not reasonably appreciate the calculus of probability and statistics as useful and reasonable tools of the human mind, but who believe secretly that we can master nature and find the truth about everything, have fallen into such an inflation, into a secret identification with the Sungod. They are therefore punished by inflation. What is worse, inflation always means sterilization of the mind, for if one is inflated one is both sterile and stupid, and that, to a great extent, is the situation of modern natural science. I will not say that all are like that. There are many outstanding scientists with whom one can discuss these facts and who are fully aware that through statistics and the calculus of probability we only reconstruct an abstract model of nature in our minds, and that that does not cover the whole reality, ie., we have only useful partial knowledge, and there are still an infinite number of secrets, and an infinite number of other possible ways in which to explore reality. (p. 24-35)

Very similar to what Robert Anton Wilson calls “model agnosticism“:

The agnostic principle refuses total belief or total denial and regards models as tools to be used only and always where appropriate and replaced (by other models) only and always where not appropriate. It does not regard any models, or any class of models, as more “profound” than any other models, or any class of models but asks only how a model serves, or fails to serve, those who use it.

She also mentions the Jungian term, “inflation” which is worth illuminating further. A site with Jungian definitions says:

Inflation: identifying with a nonpersonal part of the psyche as though it were acquired individually. A regression into unconsciousness. Positive and negative inflation supercharge the collective unconscious and can alternate. Inflation causes dissolution of the ego into its paired opposites (inferiority/megalomania, good/evil, etc.).

Culturally, our identification with reason and will is an inflation, particularly because with the breakdown of religious and spiritual symbols we can’t experience nonpersonal forces as out there, in the realm of the spirits. Ego assimilated by Self or Self by ego both lead to inflation. The solution is a dialog between the two separated entities.

Archetypes that lose their containing symbols also become identified with and reshape the conscious mind, thereby inflating it.

I think there’s really a ton of interesting stuff to be gained from this. She applies it in her example to the bad side of science, but I’d just as easily apply it to religions which have been stripped of their mystery and symbolism in favor of easy-to-swallow logic. More on this…