Encounters with famous contemporaries?

Encounters with famous contemporaries?

True Encounters

May 23, 1958

I enjoy meeting people. Many come to me with concerns that I cannot or may not discuss with others.

But if subsequently people are seized by an idea that they cannot drop or that leads to failure, it has nothing to do with me.

Encounters with famous contemporaries? I met with Toynbee twice and told him something about my ideas.

But he gave away nothing about himself And I never heard whether the conversation had any effect on him … I got to know Lowell, the famous astronomer, in my younger years – he was my sponsor when I received the doctorate

… My relationship with Pauli? Would I be able to talk about that … ?

(After a long period of silent reflection)

You’d think I had no friends and no relationships.

Not true! I have very individual relationships with each of my children, children-in-law and grandchildren.

But the decisive encounters in my life were those with quite ordinary people – or people we do the disservice of calling “patients.”

They were the encounters from which I learned something.

The same is true of my meetings with Mountain Lake and with a simple pandit in India.

The significance of these “insignificant people” is that they are human beings who gave of their essence in the encounter. It was revealed

or became obvious without them wanting it to; I encountered their true selves.

You only find this when people fully experience their life and events.

It has nothing to do with particular achievements in the outer world. That is only the foreground.

I always wanted the background. That was decisive, what I looked for.

And I found people with whom I could have such a relationship. I have numerous relationships, many with people I count as friends.

My true encounters are so profound that it is hardly possible to speak of them.

Others would not be able to understand why certain people were important to me, what they meant to me and why they were so significant.

There are stones with gold hidden inside – nobody knows about it because they look like quite ordinary stones, apparently of no use to anyone.

But with the right methods it is possible to extract the gold.

Encounters were most important to me when they illuminated the hidden depths of the soul.

I could also put it like this: when I can access what is in the background, I can relate to others – if not, they do not really interest me. I was and am able to find access to people where one would least expect it, to unusual and wondrous people.

That was the case with Babette for example.

I can be in an intense relationship with the most unlikely people, an inner relationship.

I know people who interest me greatly because they are seized by these background processes or because these dynamics and influences shine through them.

This enables me to relate to them. Then nothing about a person can be trivial or ugly or repulsive enough to frighten me off.

Carl Jung Depth Psychology

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