European philosophy must take into account the existence of feminine psychology. ~Carl Jung, , Letters Vol. 1, Pages 69.
The hero is the protagonist of God’s transformation in man; he corresponds to what I call the “mana personality.” The mana personality has such an immense fascination for the conscious mind that the ego all too easily succumbs to the temptation to identify with the hero, thus bringing on a psychic inflation with all its consequences. For this reason the repugnance felt by certain ecclesiastical circles for the “inner Christ” is understandable enough, at least as a preventive measure against the danger of psychic inflation which threatens the Christian European ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 612
Just as we tend to assume that the world is as we see it, we naively suppose that people are as we imagine them to be. When fate, for four whole years, played out a war* of monumental frightfulness on the stage of Europe—a war that nobody wanted—nobody dreamt of asking exactly who or what had caused the war and its continuation. Nobody realized that European man was possessed by something that robbed him of all free will. And this state of unconscious possession will continue undeterred until we Europeans become scared of our “god-almightiness.” The catastrophe of the first World War and the extraordinary manifestations of profound spiritual malaise that came afterwards were needed to arouse a doubt as to whether all was well with the white man’s mind. The change of character brought about by the uprush of collective forces is amazing. A gentle and reasonable being can be transformed into a maniac or a savage beast. One is always inclined to lay the blame on external circumstances, but nothing could explode in us if it had not been there. As a matter of fact, we are constantly living on the edge of a volcano, and there is, so far as we know, no way of protecting ourselves from a possible outburst that will destroy everybody within reach. It is certainly a good thing to preach reason and common sense, but what if you have a lunatic asylum for an audience or a crowd in a collective frenzy? There is not much difference between them because the madman and the mob are both moved by impersonal, overwhelming forces. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Pars 23ff
There are doctrines which suit the Indians themselves very well but which one cannot even mention to a European because they provoke the most violent misunderstandings. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 160.
Buddha would settle our account too early, and then it would go with us as it did when we European barbarians had that sudden arid shattering collision with the ripest fruit of antiquity-Christianity-not to the advantage of our inner development. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 538.
While I stood before the bed of the Old Man, I thought and felt: “I am not worthy Lord.” I know Him very well: He was my “guru” more than 30 years ago a real ghostly guru-but that is a long and-I am afraid-exceedingly strange story. It has been since confirmed to me by an old Hindu. You see, something has taken me out of Europe and the Occident and has opened for me the gates of the East as well, so that I should understand something of the human mind. ~Carl Jung on his vision of Philemon, Letters Vol. 1, Page 491.
European philosophy must take into account the existence of feminine psychology. ~Carl Jung, , Letters Vol. 1, Pages 69.
…nowadays far too many Europeans are inclined to accept Oriental ideas and methods uncritically and to translate them into the mental language of the Occident. ~ Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 39
Our present state of civilization becomes more and more unable to understand what a religion means. Europe has already lost half of its population to a mental state worse than ancient paganism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 597.
I cannot complain, though, about academic honours bestowed upon me in Europe, America and even in remote India, but I am more than doubtful about the effect my books had upon those who were responsible for the bestowal of such honours. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 497.
A good example is Albert Schweitzer, who is urgently needed in Europe but prefers to be a touching saviour of savages and to hang his theology on the wall. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 85.
You are Christians and run after heroes, and wait for redeemers who should take the agony on themselves for you, and totally spare you Golgotha. With that you pile up a mountain of Calvary over all Europe. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 254.
Because the European does not know his own unconscious, he does not understand the East and projects into it everything he fears and despises in himself. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 1253.
The Christian missionary may preach the gospel to the poor naked heathen, but the spiritual heathen who populate Europe have as yet heard nothing of Christianity. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 12.
The mental education necessary for Zen is lacking in the West. Who among us would place such implicit trust in a superior Master and his incomprehensible ways? This respect for the greater human personality is found only in the East. Could any of us boast that he believes in the possibility of a boundlessly paradoxical transformation experience, to the extent, moreover, of sacrificing many years of his life to the wearisome pursuit of such a goal? And finally, who would dare to take upon himself the authority for such an unorthodox transformation experience—except a man who was little to be trusted, one who, maybe for pathological reasons, has too much to say for himself? Just such a person would have no cause to complain of any lack of following among us. But let a “Master” set us a hard task, which requires more than mere parrot-talk, and the European begins to have doubts, for the steep path of self-development is to him as mournful and gloomy as the path to hell. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 902
The West is always seeking uplift, but the East seeks a sinking or deepening. Outer reality, with its bodiliness and weight, appears to make a much stronger and sharper impression on the European than it does on the Indian. The European seeks to raise himself above this world, while the Indian likes to turn back into the maternal depths of Nature. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 936
The European invasion of the East was an act of violence on a grand scale, and it has left us with the duty —noblesse oblige—of understanding the mind of the East. This is perhaps more necessary than we realize at present. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 84
The Indian can forget neither the body nor the mind, while the European is always forgetting either the one or the other. With this capacity to forget he has, for the time being, conquered the world. Not so the Indian. He not only knows his own nature, but he also knows how much he himself is nature. The European, on the other hand, has a science of nature and knows astonishingly little of his own nature, the nature within him. For the Indian, it comes as a blessing to know of a method which helps him to control the supreme power of nature within and without. For the European, it is sheer poison to suppress his nature, which is warped enough as it is, and to make out of it a willing robot. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 867
I do not know, for instance, just what kind of mental (or perhaps climatic?) background or preparation is necessary before one can form any completely clear idea of what is meant by the Buddhist “kamma.” Judging by all we know of the nature of Zen, here too we are up against a central conception of unsurpassed singularity. This strange conception is called “satori,” which may be translated as “enlightenment.” “Satori is the raison d’être of Zen without which Zen is not Zen,” says Suzuki. It should not be too difficult for the Western mind to grasp what a mystic understands by “enlightenment,” or what is known as such in religious parlance. Satori, however, designates a special kind and way of enlightenment which it is practically impossible for the European to appreciate ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 877
The European seeks to raise himself above this world, while the Indian likes to turn back into the maternal depths of Nature. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 396.
The horror which the dictator States have of late brought upon mankind is nothing less than the culmination of all those atrocities of which our ancestors made themselves guilty in the not so distant past. Quite apart from the barbarities and blood baths perpetrated by the Christian nations among themselves throughout European history, the European has also to answer for all the crimes he has committed against the coloured races during the process of colonization. In this respect the white man carries a very heavy burden indeed. It shows us a picture of the common human shadow that could hardly be painted in blacker colours. The evil that comes to light in man and that undoubtedly dwells within him is of gigantic proportions. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 571
There are many people who are only partially conscious. Even among absolutely civilized Europeans there is a disproportionately high number of abnormally unconscious individuals who spend a great part of their lives in an unconscious state. They know what happens to them, but they do not know what they do or say. They cannot judge of the consequences of their actions. These are people who are abnormally unconscious, that is, in a primitive state. What then finally makes them conscious? If they get a slap in the face, then they become conscious; something really happens, and that makes them conscious. They meet with something fatal and then they suddenly realize what they are doing. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 6