Religion, Religious. – Anthology
Our age wants to experience the psyche for itself. It wants original experience and not assumptions, though it is willing to make use of all the existing assumptions as a means to this end, including those of the recognized religions and the authentic sciences. .” Carl Jung, Civilization in Transition, Page 85.
But fanaticism is always a compensation for hidden doubt. Religious persecutions occur only where heresy isa menace. Carl Jung, Analytical Psychology and Education, Page 81.
Until now it has not truly and fundamentally been noted that our time, despite the prevalence of irreligiosity, is so to speak congenitally charged with the attainment of the Christian epoch, namely with the supremacy of the word, that Logos which the central figure of Christian faith represents. The word has literally become our God and has remained so. Carl Jung; Present and Future, CW 10, §554.
You see, if you are duly initiated, you surely lose all desire to found a religion because you then know what re- ligion really is. Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 503.
Rightness is not a category that can be applied to religion anyway. Religion consists of psychic realities which one cannot say are right or wrong. Are lice or elephants right or wrong? It is enough that they exist. Carl Jung, Letters Volume 1, Page 327.
Matter is an hypothesis. When you say “matter,” you are really creating a symbol for something unknown, which may just as well be “spirit” or anything else; it may even be God. Religious faith, on the other hand, refuses to
give up its pre-Weltanschauung, in contradiction to the saying of Christ, the faithful try to remain children instead of becoming as children. Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion, Page 477, Para 762.
But religious statements without exception have to do with the reality of the psyche and not with the reality of physis. Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion, Page 464.
At the Reformation two things happened which upset the absolute attitude of that day: (a) Crucifixes were found in Mexico, which undermined the belief in the uniqueness of the Christian religion where the crucifixion was the central teaching, (b) The rediscovery of Gnosticism, the Dionysian myth and so forth, which showed that teachings similar to Christianity had been prevalent before the birth of Christ. Carl Jung; Cornwall Seminar; Page 15.
So long as religion is only faith and outward form, the religion’s function is not experienced in our souls, noth- ing of any importance has happened. Carl Jung, CW 12, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 12.
A religious life presupposes a conscious connection of the inner and outer worlds and it requires a constant, meticulous attention to all circumstances to the best of our knowledge and our conscience. We must watch what the gods ordain for us in the outer world, but as well as waiting for developments in the outer world we must listen to the inner world; both worlds are expressions of God. Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 36.
I want to make clear, that by the term “religion” I do not mean creed. Carl Jung, CW 8, Psychology and Religion, Page 30.
It is the role of religious symbols to give meaning to the life of man. Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols.
Myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche, involuntary statements about unconscious psychic happenings… But religion is a vital link with psychic processes independent of and beyond consciousness, in the dark hinterland of the psyche. Carl Jung CW 9i, para. 261.
Why is psychology the youngest of the empirical sciences? Why have we not long since discovered the uncon- scious and raised up its treasure-house of eternal images? Simply because we had a religious formula for everything psychic — and one that is far more beautiful and comprehensive than immediate experience. Though the Christian view of the world has paled for many people, the symbolic treasure-rooms of the East are still full of marvels that can nourish for a long time to come the passion for show and new clothes. What is more, these images — are they Christian or Buddhist or what you will — are lovely, mysterious, and richly intuitive. Carl Jung; The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious; Pages 7-8.
Our psychology is a science . . . Plenty of unqualified persons are sure to push their way in and commit the greatest follies . . . Our aim is simply and solely scientific knowledge . . . If religion and morality are blown to pieces in the process, so much the worse for them . . . Knowledge is a force of nature that goes its way irresistibly from inner necessity. Carl Jung; Essay Included in CW 18; Page 314.
All religions are therapies for the sorrows and disorders of the soul.” Carl Jung; “Commentary to The Secret of the Golden Flower”, 1929.
The language of religion defines God as “love,” there is always the great danger of confusing the love which works in man with the workings of God. Carl Jung; Symbols of Transformation; para. 98.
The God-image is a complex of ideas of an archetypal nature, it must necessarily be regarded as representing a certain sum of energy (libido) which appears in which creates the attributes of divinity is the father-imago, while
in the older religions it was the mother imago… In certain pagan conceptions of divinity the maternal element is strongly emphasized. Carl Jung; Symbols of Transformation; para. 89.
Wherever there is a reaching down into innermost experience, into the nucleus of personality, most people are overcome by fright, and many run away. Such was the case with this theologian. I am of course aware that theologians are in a more difficult situation than others. On the one hand they are closer to religion, but on the other hand they are more bound by church and dogma. The risk of inner experience, the adventure of the spirit, is in any case alien to most human beings.
The possibility that such experience might have psychic reality is anathema to them. All very well if it has a supernatural or at least a “historical” foundation. But psychic? Face to face with this question, the patient will often show an unsuspected but profound contempt for the psyche. Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Pages 141-142.
Archetypal statements are based upon instinctive preconditions and have nothing to do with reason; they are neither rationally grounded nor can they be banished by rational arguments. They have always been part of the world scene representations collectives, as Levy-Bruhl rightly called them. Certainly the ego and its will have a great part to play in life; but what the ego wills is subject in the highest degree to the interference, in ways of which the ego is usually unaware, of the autonomy and numinosity of archetypal processes. Practical consideration of these processes is the essence of religion, insofar as religion can be approached from a psychological point of view. Carl Jung Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 353
The psychic fact “God” is a typical autonomism, a collective archetype…It is therefore characteristic not only of all higher forms of religion, but appears spontaneously in the dreams of individuals. Carl Jung; CW 8; fn 29.
I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life – that is to say, over 35 – there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given their followers, and none of them has really been healed who did not regain his religious outlook. Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul
This is certainly not to say that what we call the unconscious is identical with God or is set up in his place. It is the medium from which the religious experience seems to flow. As to what the further cause of such an experience may be, the answer to this lies beyond the range of human knowledge. Knowledge of God is a transcendental problem. Carl Jung; The Undiscovered Self.
How are we to explain religious processes, for instance, whose nature is essentially symbolical? In abstract form, symbols are religious ideas; in the form of action, they are rites or ceremonies. They are the manifestation and expression of excess libido. At the same time they are stepping-stones to new activities, which must be called cultural in order to distinguish them from the instinctual functions that run their regular course according to natural law. Carl Jung; On Psychic Energy; CW 8, par. 91.
The seat of faith, however, is not consciousness but spontaneous religious experience, which brings the individual’s faith into immediate relation with God. Here we must ask: Have I any religious experience and immediate relation to God, and hence that certainty which will keep me, as an individual, from dissolving in the crowd? Carl Jung; The Undiscovered Self; Page 85
In science I missed the factor of meaning; and in religion, that of empiricism. Science met, to a very large ex- tent, the needs of No. i personality, whereas the humane or historical studies provided beneficial instruction for No.
2. Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams, Reflections; Page 72
. . . there are millions . . . who have lost faith in any kind of religion. Such people do not understand their religion any longer. While life runs smoothly without religion . . . when suffering comes, it is another matter. That is when people seek a way out and to reflect about the meaning of life and its bewildering and painful experiences. Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols; Page 75
I did not attribute a religious function to the soul, I merely produced the facts which prove that the soul is naturaliter religiosa, i.e., possesses a religious function. Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 14.
I had to understand that I was unable to make the people see what I am after. I am practically alone. There are a few who understand this and that, but almost nobody sees the whole….I have failed in my foremost task: to open people’s eyes to the fact that man has a soul and there is a buried treasure in the field and that our religion and philosophy are in a lamentable state. Quoted by Gerhard Adler in “Aspects of Jung’s Personality,” in Psychological Perspectives 6/1 (Spring 1975), p. 14.
The religion of love was the exact psychological counterpart to the Roman devil-worship of power. Carl Jung, CW 17, Pages 180-181, Paras 308-309.
My subjective attitude is that I hold every religious position in high esteem but draw an inexorable dividing line between the content of belief and the requirements of science. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 124-125.
If our religion is based on salvation, our chief emotions will be fear and trembling. If our religion is based on wonder, our chief emotion will be gratitude. Carl Jung Thus for me religious statements are not opinions but facts that one can look at as a botanist at his Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 327-328.
Religion consists of psychic realities which one cannot say are right or wrong. Carl Jung,Letters Vol. 1,Page 328.
Thus the fact that there is a genuine religiosity in the Catholic Church proves the existence of a need for fixed and immovable ideas and forms. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 395-398.
In religious instruction, we more and more refrain from making children acquainted with these images, and in- stead offer them moral teaching, in which the devil is ignored altogether. Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 369.
At the founding of the great religions there was to begin with a collective disorientation which everywhere constellated in the unconscious an overwhelming principle of order (the collective longing for redemption.) Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 59-63.
With the rise of certain religious movements, when general consciousness soars, the curve will reach Right V. To give an historical example I will mention the wave of ecstasy which swept over the ancient world with the rise of Islam. Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 68.
Go not outside, return into thyself: truth dwells in the inner man.” Augustine, Liber de vera religione. Motto to: “A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity.” Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 466-467.
So long as religion is only faith and outward form, and the religious function is not experienced in our own souls, nothing of any importance has happened. Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 12.
Has it not yet been observed that all religious statements contain logical contradictions and assertions that are impossible in principle, that this is in fact the very essence of religious assertion? Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 15.
The archetypes of the unconscious can be shown empirically to be the equivalents of religious dogmas. Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 17.
Yet it is unquestionably true that not only Buddha and Mohammed, Confucius and Zarathustra, represent reli- gious phenomena, but also Mithras, Attis, Cybele, Mani, Hermes, and the deities of many other exotic cults. Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion, Page 9
I only wish the Christians of today could see for once that what they stand for is not Christianity at all but a god-awful legalistic religion from which the founder himself tried to free them by following his voice and his vocation to the bitter end. Had he not done so there would never have been a Christianity. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 518-522.
A genuine and proper ethical development cannot abandon Christianity but must grow up within it, must bring to fruition its hymn of love, the agony and ecstasy over the dying and resurgent god the mystic power of the wine, the awesome anthropophagy of the Last Supper-only this ethical development can serve the vital forces of religion. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 17-19.
One deceives oneself completely when one assumes, that a religious service in the East, taking place before a statue of Buddha, is addressed to Buddha. Buddha no longer exists, but in Christianity, on the contrary, Christ always exists. Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 28.
Confucianism was the recognised state religion in China, it subordinates the interests of the individual to those of the state, whereas Taoism is essentially a religion for the individual. Carl Jung, ETH, Page 142.
Our true religion is a monotheism of consciousness, a possession by it, coupled with a fanatical denial that there are parts of the psyche which are autonomous. Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 110.
In this respect our time is caught in a fatal error: we believe we can criticize religious facts intellectually; we think, for instance, like Laplace, that God is a hypothesis which can be subjected to intellectual treatment, to affirmation or denial. Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 110.
Religious experience is numinous, as Rudolf Otto calls it, and for me, as a psychologist, this experience differs from all others in the way it transcends the ordinary categories of time, space and causality. Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking, Page 230.
Through diligent study and religious exercises, one can attain an art or knowledge which exists somehow be- side Christianity. Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V. Page 161.
As Buddha and his teaching are still recognised within the frame of the Hindu religion, you find traces of him everywhere; but his achievement, amazing consciousness and highest integrity are no longer to be found in India today, though Rishis and Yogins still make private efforts to reach its illumination. Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27Jan1939, Pages 68.
There is one tribe in Central Australia which spends two thirds of its time in religious ritual and how much do we? We look down on them as primitives, but their way is far more meaningful than ours. Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27Jan1939, Pages 69.
I do not know why India was not able to keep Buddhism, but I think probably its present polytheistic religion is a better expression of the Indian soul today than the one perfect Buddha. Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27Jan1939, Pages 69.
As the Yogin is a man his conscious is masculine, so the male Devatas represent his conscious thoughts, religious, philosophical and personal. He has already been freed from his masculine conscious, but to be really freed he must also externalize his feminine unconscious. Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 72.
We could say that it was owing to Al-Gazzali that Islam became a mystical religion, though we in the West know very little today of this mystical side. Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 10Nov1939, Page 178.
It is common for very infantile people to have a mystical, religious feeling, they enjoy this atmosphere in which they can admire their beautiful feelings, but they are simply indulging their auto-eroticism. Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 11Jan1935, Pages 171.
It was the anticipatory quality in dreams that was first valued by antiquity and they played an important role in the ritual of many religions. Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V 23Nov1934 Page 156.
In earlier days the healing of the psyche was regarded as Christ’s prerogative, the task belonged to religion, for we suffered then only as part of a collective suffering. It is a new point of view to look up on the individual psyche as a whole with its own individual suffering. Carl Jung, ETH Lecture I, 20Oct1933, Page 12
The unconscious is the only available source of religious experience. This in certainly not to say that what we call the unconscious is identical with God or is set up in his place. It is simply the medium from which religious experience seems to flow. As to what the further cause of such experience might be, the answer to this lies beyond the range of human knowledge. Knowledge of God is a transcendental problem. Carl Jung; The Undiscovered Self.
When the medical psychologist takes an interest in symbols, he is primarily concerned with “natural” symbols, as distinct from “cultural” symbols. The former are derived from the unconscious . . . the cultural on the other hand . . . used to express “eternal truths”, and . . . still used in many religions. Page 83.
. . . we constantly use symbolic terms to represent concepts that we cannot define or fully comprehend. This is one of the reasons why all religions employ symbolic language or images. Carl Jung; Man and His symbols; P. 4
Religion means dependence on and submission to the irrational facts of experience. Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 505
Religions are psychotherapeutic systems in the truest sense of the word, and on the grandest scale.
They [Religions] express the whole range of the psychic problem in mighty images; they are the avowal and recognition of the soul, and at the same time the revelation of the soul’s nature. Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 367
A creed gives expression to a definite collective belief, whereas the word religion expresses a subjective relationship to certain metaphysical, extra-mundane factors.
A creed is a confession of faith intended chiefly for the world at large and is thus an intramundane affair, while the meaning and purpose of religion lie in the relationship of the individual to God (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) or to the path of salvation and liberation (Buddhism).
From this basic fact all ethics are derived, which without the individual’s responsibility before God can be nothing more than conventional morality. Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 507
A creed coincides with the established Church or, at any rate, forms a public institution whose members include not only
true believers but vast numbers of people who can only be described as “indifferent” in matters of religion and who belong to
it simply by force of habit.
Here the difference between a creed and a religion becomes palpable. Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 508.
When, through mass rule, the individual becomes social unit No. so-and-so and the State is elevated to the supreme principle, it is only to be expected that the religious function too will be sucked into the maelstrom. Religion, as the careful observation and taking account of certain invisible and uncontrollable factors, is an instinctive attitude peculiar to man, and its manifestations can be followed all through human history. Its evident purpose is to maintain the psychic balance, for the natural man has an equally natural “knowledge” of the fact that his conscious functions may at any time be thwarted by uncontrollable happenings coming from inside as well as outside.
For this reason he has always taken care that any difficult decisions likely to have consequences for himself and others shall be rendered safe by suitable measures of a religious nature. Offerings are made to the invisible powers, formidable blessings are pronounced, and all kinds of solemn rites are performed. Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 512
Western psychology knows the mind as the mental functioning of a psyche. It is the “mentality” of an individual.
An impersonal Universal Mind is still to be met with in the sphere of philosophy, where it seems to be a relic of the original human “soul.”This picture of our Western outlook may seem a little drastic, but I do not think it is far from the truth. At all events, something of the kind presents itself as soon as we are confronted with the Eastern mentality.
In the East, mind is a cosmic factor, the very essence of existence; while in the West we have just begun to understand that it is the essential condition of cognition, and hence of the cognitive existence of the world.
There is no conflict between religion and science in the East, because no science is there based upon the passion for facts, and no religion upon mere faith; there is religious cognition and cognitive religion. With us, man is incommensurably small and the grace of God is everything; but in the East, man is God and he redeems himself. Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 768.
The strange antithesis between East and West is expressed most clearly in religious practice.
We speak of religious uplift and exaltation; for us God is the Lord of the universe, we have a religion of brotherly love, and in our heaven-aspiring churches there is a high altar. The Indian, on the other hand, speaks of dhyana, of self-immersion, and of sinking into meditation; God is within all things and especially within man, and one turns away from the outer world to the inner.
In the old Indian temples the altar is sunk six to eight feet deep in the earth, and what we hide most shame- facedly is the holiest symbol to the Indian. We believe in doing, the Indian in impassive being. Our religious exercises consist of prayer, worship, and singing hymns. The Indian’s most important exercise is yoga, an immersion in what we would call an unconscious state, but which he praises as the highest consciousness. Yoga is the most eloquent expression of the Indian mind and at the same time the instrument continually used to produce this peculiar attitude of mind. Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 911.
The goal of Eastern religious practice is the same as that of Western mysticism: the shifting of the center of gravity from the ego to the self, from man to God. This means that the ego disappears in the self, and man in God. Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 958
Religion appears to me to be a peculiar attitude of mind which could be formulated in accordance with the original use of the word religio, which means a careful consideration and observation of certain dynamic factors that are conceived as “powers”: spirits, daemons, gods, laws, ideas, ideals, or whatever name man has given to such factors in his world as he has found powerful, dangerous, or helpful enough to be taken into careful consideration, or grand, beautiful, and meaningful enough
to be devoutly worshipped and loved. Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 8.
Religion, as the Latin word [religio] denotes, is a careful and scrupulous observation of what Rudolph Otto aptly termed the numinosum, that is, a dynamic agency or effect not caused by an arbitrary act of will. On the contrary, it seizes and controls the human subject, who is always rather its victim than its creator. The numinosum, whatever its cause may be, is an experience of the subject independent of his will.
At all events, religious teaching as well as the consensus gentium [general consensus] always and everywhere explain this experience as being due to a cause external to the individual. The numinosum is either a quality belonging to a visible object or the influence of an invisible presence that causes a peculiar alteration of consciousness. Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 6
There is religious sentimentality instead of the numinosum of divine experience. This is the well-known characteristic of a religion that has lost its living mystery. It is readily understandable that such a religion is incapable of giving help or of having any other moral effect. Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 52
Religion is the fruit and culmination of the completeness of life, that is, of a life which contains both sides. Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 71.
Among all my patients in the second half of life—that is to say, over 35—there has been not one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost what the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook. This of course has nothing to with a particular creed or membership of a church. Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 509
Religion is a “revealed” way of salvation. Its ideas are products of a pre-conscious knowledge which, always and everywhere, expresses itself in symbols. Even if our intellect does not grasp them, they still work, because our unconscious acknowledges them as exponents of universal psychic facts. For this reason faith is enough—if it is there. Every extension and intensification of rational consciousness, however, leads us further away from the sources of the symbols and, by its ascendancy, prevents us from understanding them. That is the situation today. Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 293
What is ordinarily called “religion” is a substitute to such an amazing degree that I ask myself seriously whether this kind of “religion,” which I prefer to call a creed, may not after all have an important function in human society. The substitute has the obvious purpose of replacing immediate experience by a choice of suitable symbols tricked out with an organized dogma and ritual. Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 75.
Creeds are codified and dogmatized forms of religious experience. The contents of the experience have become sanctified and are usually congealed in a rigid, often elaborate structure of ideas. The practice and repetition of the original experience have become a ritual and an unchangeable institution. This does not necessarily mean lifeless petrification. On the contrary, it may prove to be a valid form of religious experience for millions of people for thousands of years, without there arising any vital necessity to alter it.
Although the Catholic Church has often been accused of particular rigidity, she nevertheless admits that dogma is a living thing and that its formulation is therefore capable of change and development. Even the number of dogmas is not limited and can be multiplied in the course of time. The same holds true of the ritual. Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 10
How are we to explain religious processes, for instance, whose nature is essentially symbolical? In abstract form, symbols are religious ideas; in the form of action, they are rites or ceremonies. They are the manifestation and expression of excess libido. At the same time they are stepping-stones to new activities, which must be called cultural in order to distin- guish them from the instinctual functions that run their regular course according to natural law. Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 91
The ego keeps its integrity only if it does not identify with one of the opposites, and if it understands how to hold the balance between them. This is possible only if it remains conscious of both at once. However, the necessary insight is made exceedingly difficult not by one’s social and political leaders alone, but also by one’s religious They all want decision in favour of one thing, and therefore the utter identification of the individual with the necessarily one-sided “truth.” Even if it were still a question of some great truth, identification with it would still be a catastrophe, as it arrests all further spiritual development. Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 425.
The unconscious is the only available source of religious experience. This is certainly not to say that what we call the unconscious is identical with God or is set up in his place. It is simply the medium from which religious experience seems to flow. As to what the further cause of such experience might be, the answer to this lies beyond the range of human knowledge. Knowledge of God is a transcendental problem. Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 565
Love has more than one thing in common with religious faith. It demands unconditional trust and expects absolute surrender. Just as nobody but the believer who surrenders himself wholly to God can partake of divine grace, so love reveals its highest mysteries and its wonder only to those who are capable of unqualified devotion and loyalty of feeling.
And because this is so difficult, few mortals can boast of such an achievement. But, precisely because the truest and most devoted love is also the most beautiful, let no man seek to make it easy. He is a sorry knight who shrinks from the difficulty of loving his lady. Love is like God: both give themselves only to their bravest knights. Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 232
The unconscious is the only available source of religious experience. This is certainly not to say that what we call the unconscious is identical with God or is set up in his place. It is simply the medium from which religious experience seems to flow. As to what the further cause of such experience might be, the answer to this lies beyond the range of human knowledge. Knowledge of God is a transcendental problem. Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 565.
I know people who feel that the strange power in their own psyche is something divine, for the very simple reason that it has
given them an understanding of what is meant by religious experience. Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 312.
But many of them are religious people, only incapable of agreeing with the existing forms of belief. Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 34.
Here each of us must ask: Have I any religious experience and immediate relation to God, and hence that certainty which will
keep me, as an individual, from dissolving in the crowd? Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 564
It may not be quite clear why I call certain dogmas “immediate experiences,” since in itself a dogma is the very thing that precludes immediate experience. Yet the Christian images I have mentioned are not peculiar to Christianity alone (although in Christianity they have undergone a development and intensification of meaning not to be found in any other religion). Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 46.
Amplification: A method of association based on the comparative study of mythology, religion and fairy tales, used in the interpretation of images in dreams and drawings. Daryl Sharp, Jung Lexicon.
Anthropos: Original or primordial man, an archetypal image of wholeness in alchemy, religion and Gnostic phi- losophy. There is in the unconscious an already existing wholeness, the “homo totus” of the Western and the Chên-yên (true man) of Chinese alchemy, the round primordial being who represents the greater man within, the Anthropos, who is akin to God. Carl Jung, CW 14, par. 152.
Until now it has not truly and fundamentally been noted that our time, despite the prevalence of irreligiosity, is so to speak congenitally charged with the attainment of the Christian epoch, namely with the supremacy of the word, that Logos which the central figure of Christian faith represents. The word has literally become our God and has remained so” Carl Jung, CW 10, §554.
Arrangement in triads is an archetype in the history of religion, which in all probability formed the basis of the Christian Trinity. Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 113.
A genuine and proper ethical development cannot abandon Christianity but just grow up within it, must bring to fruition its hymn of love, the agony and ecstasy over the dying and resurgent god/ the mystic power of the wine, the awesome anthropophagy of the Last Supper-only this ethical development can serve the vital forces of religion. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 18.
I positively do not believe that Christianity is the only and the highest manifestation of the truth. There is at least as much truth in Buddhism and in other religions too. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 127.
I am strongly convinced that the evil principle prevailing in this world leads the unrecognized spiritual need into perdition if it is not counteracted either by real religious insight or by the protective wall of human community. Carl Jung, Jung/ Bill Wilson Letters.
You see, “alcohol” in Latin is spiritus, and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison. . Carl Jung, Jung/ Bill Wilson Letters.
His [Christ’s] religious leaders and teachers are still hypnotized by the beginning of a then-new aeon of con- sciousness instead of understanding them and their implications. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 436.
Consciousness is only possible if a spark of the essence becomes detached from the unconscious, religiously one could say from God. Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 9
A religious life presupposes a conscious connection of the inner and outer worlds and it requires a constant, meticulous attention to all circumstances to the best of our knowledge and our conscience. Carl Jung, Jung- Ostrowski, Page 39.
Christian dogma brought immense advances in religious comprehensions. Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 42.
The question of religion is not so simple as you see it: it is not at all a matter of intellectual conviction or phi- losophy or even belief, but rather a matter of inner experience. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 183-184.
I am afraid I cannot conceive of any religious belief which is less than a violation of my ego-consciousness. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 50-51.
I do not feel called upon to found a religion, nor to proclaim my belief in one. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 69-71
My personal religious convictions are not shaken in the slightest by the fearful contradictions in the Biblical texts. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 86-87.
God may be everywhere, but this in no way absolves believers from the duty of offering him a place that is declared holy, otherwise one could just as well get together for religious purposes in the 3rd class waiting-room of a railway station. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 128-129.
Unfortunately the so-called religions have never proved to be vehicles of general human understanding, since with few exceptions they suffer from totalitarian claims and in this respect at least hardly differ from any other -ism, and actually disrupt human relationships at the critical point. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 189-191
The German edition [Answer to Job] over here has already upset the representatives of three religions, not be- cause it is irreligious but because it takes their statements and premises seriously. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 192-193
Every religion makes use of two feet: faith on one side and ritual on the other. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 208-210.
As religious assertions never make sense when understood concretely, they needs must be comprehended as a symbolic psychic phenomenon. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 214-215.
If you discuss religious problems and you bring in a psychological point of view, you instantly collide with the concretism of religious belief. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 227-229
My special interest besides my psychiatric work is research in the field of comparative psychology of religious symbolism.
Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 243-244.
It was the tragedy of my youth to see my father cracking up before my eyes on the problem of his faith and dying an early death. This was the objective outer event that opened my eyes to the importance of religion. Subjective inner experiences prevented me from drawing negative conclusions about religion from my father’s fate, much as I was tempted to do so. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 257-264.
Individuation is ultimately a religious process which requires a corresponding religious attitude = the ego-will submits to God’s will. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 265.
Analytical psychology only helps us to find the way to the religious experience that makes us whole. It is not this experience itself, nor does it bring it about. But we do know that analytical psychology teaches us that attitude which meets a transcendent reality halfway. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 265.
My education offered me nothing but arguments against religion on the one hand, and on the other the charisma of faith was denied me. I was thrown back on experience alone. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 257-264.
You see, I have no religious or other convictions about my symbols. They can change tomorrow. They are mere allusions, they hint at something, they stammer and often they lose their way. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 291.
He answered that f.i. I used the term hierosgamos, which is a very usual term in comparative religion, and there is nothing esoteric about it. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 296-297.
Naturally he [Freud] assumed that my more positive ideas about religion and its importance for our psycholog- ical life were nothing but an outcrop of my unrealized resistances against my clergyman father, whereas in reality my problem and my personal prejudice were never centred in my father but most emphatically in my mother. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 295-296.
Christianity has envisaged the religious problem as a sequence of dramatic events, whereas the East holds a thoroughly static view, i.e., a cyclic view. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 312-316.
It should be added that the religions, so long as they are alive, have never ceased to foster the relation to the unconscious in one form or another. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 319-320.
Now as ever I am of the opinion that Protestant theologians would have every reason to take my views seri- ously, for otherwise the same thing could happen here as has already happened in China and will happen in India: that the traditional religious ideas die of literal-mindedness, or are spewed out en masse because of their indigestibility. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 322.
Mediterranean culture is founded on a three- to four-thousand-year-old rule of order, both political and reli- gious, which had long outgrown the locally conditioned, semi-barbarian forms of society. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 336-338.
Our Christianity with its Summum Bonum conception has entirely forgotten that one of the main aspects of real religion is fear. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 362-363.
As experience shows, the figure one sees is not necessarily identical with the person one identifies with it, just as the picture by an artist is not identical with the original; but it is obvious that the vision of Christ was a most important religious experience to St. Paul. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 380.
On the one hand the anima is an allurement to an intensification of life, but on the other she opens our eyes to its religious aspect. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 423-424
Our Christian theology is obviously not based “on the total religious experience.” It does not even consider the ambivalent experience of the Old Testament God. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 422-423.
It has happened to me more than once that educated East Asians rediscovered the meaning of their philoso- phy or religion only through reading my books. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 438-439
I fully agree with it, only I would ask you to state explicitly that in my psychology the ” mythological” aspect means “religious attitude.” Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 468
You will surely have noticed in reading my writings that I do not mince my words and clearly and expressly point out that the regard for mythological parallels is conducive to a religious attitude. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 468
To the psychologist it is a most noteworthy fact that the religious emphasis has shifted from the triune pater panton [Father of Everything] to the Son and Soter [Savior] and historical man, who was originally one third of the Godhead and is now the central and almost unique feature of the Protestant’s religion. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 471-473
I distinguish between “religion” and “creed”; the one is generic, the other specific. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488
The Jewish conception of the religious relationship with God as a legal contract (covenant!) gives way in the Christian conception to a love relationship, which is equally an aspect of the marriage with God. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488
By “religion,” then, I mean a kind of attitude which takes careful and conscientious account of certain numi- nous feelings, ideas, and events and reflects upon them; and by “belief” or “creed” I mean an organized community which collectively professes a specific belief or a specific ethos and mode of behaviour. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488
But if the believer without religion now thinks that he has got rid of mythology he is deceiving himself: he cannot get by without “myth.” Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488
It [Myth] gives the ultimately unimaginable religious experience an image, a form in which to express itself, and thus makes community life possible, whereas a merely subjective religious experience lacking the traditional mythic imagery remains inarticulate and asocial, and, if it does anything at all, it fosters a spiritually anchoritic life. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488
The old myth, which always holds within it something yet older and more aboriginal, remains the same, this being an essential quality of all forms of religion; it only undergoes a new interpretation. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488
You can easily find out from my books what I think about religion (e.g., “Psychology and Religion”). I profess no “belief.” I know that there are experiences one must pay “religious” attention to. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 517-518
I don’t see where you get the impression that I might be discouraged in this respect, since I was the first to emphasize the enormous role religion plays particularly in the individuation process, as I was the first to raise the question of the relation between psychotherapy and religion in its practical aspects. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 566
We can hardly predict today what the artist is going to bring forth, but always a great religion has gone hand in hand with a great art. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 61
If people who have no views of life catch hold of an archetypal idea, say a religious idea, they become efficient. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 99
In itself this religion [Mithraic] is as antiquated as can be. It is only relatively important as being the brother of Christianity, which has assimilated some elements from it. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 112
For example, you can run across people who think themselves born without a religious sense, and this is just as absurd as if they said they were born without eyes. It simply means they have left all that side of themselves in the unconscious. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 114
I am concerned with phenomenal religion, with its observable facts, to which I try to add a few psychological observations about basic events in the collective unconscious, the existence of which I can prove. Beyond this I know nothing and I have never made any assertions about it. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 570-573
I assure you it was precisely through my analytic work that I arrived at an understanding not only of the Chris- tian religion but, I may say, of all religions. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 631-632
The Freudian idea that religion is nothing more than a system of prohibitions is very limited and out of touch with what is known about different religions. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 631-632
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, Pages 597-598
Religions are like plants which belong to a particular soil and a particular climate. Outside of their vital condi- tions their existence can be maintained only artificially. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 597-598
I would like to emphasize that it very often does not depend upon the use one makes of an image, but rather upon the use the archetypes make of ourselves, which decides the question whether it will be artistic creation or a change of religious attitude. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 625-626
I am strongly convinced that the evil principle prevailing in this world leads the unrecognized spiritual need into perdition, if it is not counteracted either by a real religious insight or by the protective wall of human community. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 623-624
You see, alcohol in Latin is spiritus and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 623-624
Religion means dependence on and submission to the irrational facts of experience. Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 505.
The religious attitude, it is quite different, and above all it is not conscious. You can profess whatever you like consciously while your unconscious attitude is totally different. Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 41.
The real purpose of the religious ceremonial is to revivify. It was created to lift man out of the ordinary, to disturb his habitual ways, that he may become aware of things outside. Carl Jung, Dreams Seminar, Page 399.
Religious statements without exception have to do with the reality of the psyche. Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 752.
A true religion is exceedingly simple. It is a revelation, a new light. Carl Jung, Dream Seminar, Page 419.
You may have, say, a religious attitude, which means an attitude of great totality, so that you receive the next leaf that falls from the tree as a message from God, and it works. Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 919.
The religious myth is one of man’s greatest and most significant achievements, giving him the security and inner strength not to be crushed by the monstrousness of the universe. Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 343.
Here each of us must ask: Have I any religious experience and immediate relation to God, and hence that certainty which will keep me, as an individual, from dissolving in the crowd? Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 564.
Only the mystics bring creativity into religion. That is probably why they can feel the presence and the workings of the Holy Ghost, and why they are nearer to the experience of the brotherhood in Christ. Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 530.
A creed coincides with the established Church or, at any rate, forms a public institution whose members in- clude not only true believers but vast numbers of people who can only be described as “indifferent” in matters of religion and who belong to it simply by force of habit. Here the difference between a creed and a religion becomes palpable. Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 508
Here each of us must ask: Have I any religious experience and immediate relation to God, and hence that certainty which will keep me, as an individual, from dissolving in the crowd? Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 564.
There is religious sentimentality instead of the numinosum of divine experience. This is the well-known char- acteristic of a religion that has lost its living mystery. It is readily understandable that such a religion is incapable of giving help or of having any other moral effect. Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 52.
Healing may be called a religious problem. Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 523.
A religious conversation is inevitable with the devil, since he demands it, if one does not want to surrender to him unconditionally. Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 261
Although the devil very much abhors religion for its particular solemnity and candor, it has become apparent, however, that it is precisely through religion that the devil can be brought to an understanding. Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 261
The relationship between religion and the unconscious is everywhere obvious: all religions are full of figures from the unconscious. Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1351.
The religious attitude, it is quite different, and above all it is not conscious. You can profess whatever you like consciously while your unconscious attitude is totally different. Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 41
You may have, say, a religious attitude, which means an attitude of great totality, so that you receive the next leaf that falls from the tree as a message from God, and it works. Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 919.
This symbolic process within us, or that need to express unknown, unknowable, inexpressible facts, culminates in religion. Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 742-743
The religious and moral and philosophical confusion, even the confusion in our art, is due to the World War. Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 77
We could not possibly judge this world if we had not also a standpoint outside, and that is given by the symbolism of religious experiences. Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 27
Only the mystics bring creativity into religion. That is probably why they can feel the presence and the workings of the Holy Ghost, and why they are nearer to the experience of the brotherhood in Christ. Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 530
The religious myth is one of man’s greatest and most significant achievements, giving him the security and in- ner strength not to be crushed by the monstrousness of the universe. Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 343
People accuse psychology of dealing in squalid fantasies, and yet even a cursory glance at ancient religions and the history of morals should be sufficient to convince them of the demons hidden in the human soul. Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 106
This disbelief in the devilishness of human nature goes hand in hand with the blank incomprehension of religion and its meaning. Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 106
The same is true of the religious attitude: it must be fully conscious of itself and of its foundations if it is to signify anything more than unconscious imitation. Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 106
The religious interest, which ought normally to be the greatest and most decisive factor, turned away from the inner world, and great figures of dogma dwindled to strange and incomprehensible vestiges, a prey to every sort of criticism. Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 113.
The reformers and great religious geniuses were heretics. It is there that you find the footprints of the Holy Spirit, and no one asks for him or receives him without having to pay a high price. Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 1539
Christianity, like every closed system of religion, has an undoubted tendency to suppress the unconscious in the individual as much as possible, thus paralyzing his fantasy activity. Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 80
Wherever we can observe a religion being born, we see how the doctrinal figures flow into the founder him- self as revelations, in other words, as concretizations of his unconscious fantasy. Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 80
The deposit of man’s whole ancestral experience—so rich in emotional imagery—of father, mother, child, husband and wife, of the magic personality, of dangers to body and soul, has exalted this group of archetypes into the supreme regulating principles of religious and even of political life, in unconscious recognition of their tremendous psychic power. Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 337
“Religions are the great-healing systems for the ills of the soul. Neuroses and similar Illnesses Arise, one and all, from psychic complications. But once the dogma is disputed and Questioned, it has lost its healing power. A person who in it nger Believes que a God who knows suffering will have mercy on him, will help and comfort him and give his life a meaning, is weak and a prey to his own weakness and passe neurotic. ” Carl Jung, CW 4, Paragraph 751
