E.1-19: From Babel to Pentecost: When the Spirit Restores Understanding
Season 1: Episode 18
From Babel to Pentecost: When the Spirit Restores Understanding
listen by clicking the audio player here:
In this episode you will learn:
In this episode of The Christian Jung Podcast, we explore the mystery of anamnesis: holy remembering. Through Jung, Scripture, and the Emmaus road, we trace how the Holy Spirit gathers what has been scattered and turns knowledge into revelation.
We talk about:
🔥 How the Spirit awakens what the soul has always known
🧠 Why Jung called the Spirit “the principle that makes knowing become experience”
💬 How memory becomes revelation on the road to Emmaus
✝️ Why wholeness is not achieved — it is recalled
Whether you’ve known about God for years or are yearning to know God, this episode meets you on that road — where the heart begins to burn and the Word becomes flesh again.
Angela Meer takes us into the sacred work of remembering — the moment when truth stops being information and becomes encounter.
Episode Length: 18:00
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Transcript
Before the Word spoke, there was breath.
Before creation took form,
the Spirit moved over the face of the deep —
soundless, patient, waiting to give life.“And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” — Genesis 1:2
Every soul carries an echo of that first breath.
When the Spirit awakens memory,
it is not the past we recall,
but the eternal conversation we were born into.Today, we remember.
We remember the voice that breathed us into being,
the Spirit who has never stopped speaking peace.
speech at pentecost
We are on the 9th episode on a ten episode arc about anima and animus. You are invited to go back to episode 11to get the full picture of what we are exploring today.
There are moments when the Holy Spirit rises in us unannounced —
in stillness that softens our striving,
in tears that arrive without reason,
in understanding that feels like home.
It is not learning; it is remembering.The Spirit is the living memory of God.
She is the breath that brings to life what the soul has forgotten,
the gentle voice that says, “You are still mine.”Jesus promised,
“The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name,
will teach you all things
and remind you of everything I have told you.” — John 14:26This remembering is not backward-looking;
it is forward-beckoning.
The Spirit does not return us to the past —
She draws us deeper into communion.When the Spirit calls, She rarely shouts.
She whispers through conscience,
through beauty, through timing too perfect to ignore.
She gathers what was scattered,
weaves meaning where we saw only fragments,
and turns coincidence into conversation.Jung once observed that what we call inspiration
is often “an old truth rising from the depths” —
the psyche remembering its divine pattern.
The Spirit is that movement within and beyond us —
the breath that re-members the soul,
gathering all its parts back into harmony.“The Spirit helps us in our weakness …
for the Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” — Romans 8:26To live in the Spirit is to live remembering —
not merely what has been,
but Who has always been with us.In Acts 2, the Holy Spirit descends like a rushing wind.
Tongues of fire rest upon the disciples,
and suddenly they begin to speak —
each one hearing in their own language the wonders of God.It was not the birth of religion.
It was the restoration of memory.
The Spirit gave back to humanity
what Babel had fractured —
the ability to understand one another through the language of the heart.“They were all filled with the Holy Spirit
and began to speak in other tongues
as the Spirit gave them utterance.” — Acts 2:4That wind did not come to teach new knowledge.
It came to awaken what was buried in the depths of being:
the remembrance of divine order,
the sound of unity long forgotten.Jung saw this same dynamic within the human psyche.
He wrote that the soul contains ancient truths
waiting to be reawakened —
that anamnesis, holy remembering,
is the return of something timeless to consciousness.When they awaken, we sense eternity stirring within time.
The Holy Spirit works through that awakening.
She breathes upon what was scattered —
the forgotten dreams, the silenced desires,
the shadowed corners of memory —
and gives them voice again.“The Spirit searches all things,
even the deep things of God.” — 1 Corinthians 2:10At Babel, speech collapsed.
At Pentecost, language became revelation.
And still today, the Spirit translates our inner confusions
into the grammar of grace.
Perhaps this is what it means to be filled with the Spirit:
to let the wind that once scattered now gather.
To feel the fire not as judgment, but as illumination.
To remember that wholeness is not achieved —
it is recalled.The Spirit who spoke order into chaos at creation,
who scattered Babel’s tower,
and who descended at Pentecost,
is the same breath now speaking within us —
gathering every broken syllable
into one language of love.
prophetic visions
When the Holy Spirit comes,
It is not always a whisper.
Sometimes, it’s loud enough to break off the old and bring forth the new.
In the winter of 1913,
Carl Jung entered the dark night that would undo him.
He began to dream of floodwaters rising over Europe—
a sea of blood, washing over cities and nations.
He wrote, “I had the certainty that a terrible catastrophe was imminent.”
Months later, the First World War began.
And Jung realized that the apocalypse he had seen
was not only historical.
It was spiritual.
Something had burst from the collective unconscious —
and within him, too, the flood had come.
He left behind the security of theory,
of status, of certainty.
He stopped lecturing at the university,
and began speaking with his own soul.
Not as metaphor — as experience.
Night after night, he recorded visions.
He met Biblical figures who spoke with divine authority —
Elijah, Salome, Philemon —
and he realized they were not inventions.
They were emissaries of the Spirit.
He painted what he saw:
mandalas like stained glass,
cities rising from blood,
serpents and suns,
a man with wings standing on a sphere. This became his most mercurious work: the Red Book it was called.
The Red Book was his testimony of symbolic language —
the record of what happens when the Spirit
open the human psyche
to speak the language of the soul.
Years later, reflecting on this storm,
Jung wrote words that reveal what that descent had truly meant:
“The Holy Spirit is the principle that transforms mere knowing
into the living experience of the divine.” — Psychology and Religion, CW 11, §262
That single sentence holds the weight of his entire theology.
For Jung, knowledge alone could not save the soul.
He had known theory, classification, intellect.
But what erupted through the Red Book
was not knowledge — it was encounter.
The Holy Spirit had turned his knowing into seeing.
Doctrine had become dialogue.
He discovered that truth cannot be possessed;
it must be experienced.
To know God is to participate in God’s life.
This was Jung’s inner Pentecost —
not fire descending on a crowd,
but illumination burning through his own mind.
The same Spirit who descended in Acts 2
had descended in his soul —
translating intellect into revelation,
and chaos into communion.
Angela (softly):
When we speak of the Spirit who reminds,
this is what we mean.
Not sentimental memory,
but divine re-membering —
the return of God’s life to our awareness.
Jung had spent years mastering the world through understanding.
But in that descent,
the Spirit mastered him through meaning.
The intellect he had once wielded
became transparent to grace.
The Spirit, he learned,
is not the end of knowledge,
but its transfiguration —
the breath that makes wisdom alive.
” — John 14:26 “The Helper, the Holy Spirit, will teach you all things,
and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
And so, what Jung discovered through anguish,
the Church has always known through worship:
that the Spirit of God turns study into revelation,
and memory into love.
Listen to how the Holy Spirit brought order into the life of Jesus from this Messainic prophecy out of Isiah 11
“The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him —
the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and might,
the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.” — Isaiah 11:2
When the Spirit of the depths comes,
it comes to awaken divine memory in us.
The ego inside us may resist
but the soul rejoices —
for what was divided begins to sing again.
jesus on the road to emmaus
After resurrection, there is often confusion.
Light comes slowly to eyes still accustomed to grief.
In Luke 24, two disciples walk the road to Emmaus.
They are not unbelievers — they are witnesses.
They know the Scriptures.
They know every prophecy.
They even know the rumors that Jesus has risen.
And yet, as the Gospel says,
“their eyes were kept from recognizing Him.”
They have knowledge,
but not yet illumination.
“While they were talking and discussing together,
Jesus Himself drew near and walked with them.” — Luke 24:15
He walks beside them unrecognized —
Truth itself disguised as a stranger.
He listens to their confusion.
He opens the Scriptures to them,
and their hearts begin to burn.
That burning is not emotion.
It is the Spirit of illumination,
transforming knowing into encounter.
As Jung wrote,
“The Holy Spirit is the principle that transforms mere knowing
into the living experience of the divine.”
And when they arrive at the village,
they invite the stranger to stay.
He takes bread, blesses it, breaks it —
and suddenly their eyes are opened.
Knowledge becomes revelation.
Doctrine becomes intimacy.
The Word they had studied all their lives
becomes flesh again before their eyes.
“Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him;
and He vanished from their sight.
They said to each other,
‘Did not our hearts burn within us
while He talked to us on the road?’” — Luke 24:31–32
Angela (reflective):
This is how the Spirit still moves —
not through new information,
but through holy remembrance.
What was distant becomes near.
What was concept becomes communion.
We all walk our own Emmaus roads.
Moments when we can quote the promise
but cannot feel the presence.
When our theology is right,
but our hearts are still cold.
It is there the Spirit draws near —
not to lecture,
but to listen,
to breathe warmth into truth
until it becomes revelation.
The disciples’ burning hearts
are what Jung described in psychological terms —
that living contact with the numinous,
when knowing becomes experience.
reflect and pray
Perhaps you have walked such a road.
Perhaps you have known about God for years,
and yet find yourself yearning to see.
The Spirit of remembrance does not shame that hunger.
She honors it.
For hunger itself is how the Spirit begins her work.
She is the one who takes the Scriptures,
the symbols, the theology,
and sets them ablaze from within.
So that what was once explanation
becomes encounter.
What was studied
becomes seen.
Call to Action:
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Drive the Jungian aspects home:
As we close today’s episode,
take a few quiet minutes with the Holy Spirit.
Not to analyze, but to remember.
Ask yourself …
When have I known about God—but not yet known God?
When has truth felt distant until the Spirit made it burn within me?
What road am I walking now where Christ might already be beside me, unrecognized?
What bread is the Spirit breaking in my life that could open my eyes again?
Let these questions become prayer.
The Spirit’s work is not to give us more to think about—
but to help us see what has been true all along.
In The Christian Jung Community,
we journey deeper into these mysteries together—
exploring how the Spirit transforms theology into lived experience,
and how psychology becomes prayer.
Through contemplative practices, guided reflections,
and soul-based study,
we learn how to let the Holy Spirit speak through symbol, dream, and Scripture.
Membership opens only a few times each year.
To be notified when doors open again,
visit AngelaMeer.com and sign up for updates.
Come join a community where faith and psyche meet in sacred conversation.
Next week, we’ll move into the final ascent of our Anima–Animus arc
with Episode 10 — “Fire in the Heart: The Union That Creates.”
We’ll explore how the Spirit not only reconciles and remembers,
but empowers — how divine union becomes creative participation in God’s ongoing work.
It’s the movement from illumination to incarnation —
from wisdom to creation.
Join me next week as we conclude this ten-part journey
into the sacred marriage of soul and Spirit.
May that same Spirit breathe upon you this week—
turning what you know into what you behold,
what you study into what you live,
and what you believe into the burning of love.
Let’s close with the words of St. Hildegard,
whose vision of the Spirit burns with the same living light
that turned Emmaus into revelation …
Holy Spirit, making life alive,
moving in all things, root of every creature,
washing them clean, wiping out their mistakes,
healing their wounds,
you are our true life, luminous, wondrous,
awakening heart from its ancient sleep.