Carl Jung: It is much more needful to teach people the art of seeing.
Carl Jung Depth Psychology
Psychology and Alchemy (Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.12)
We do not devalue statements that originally were intended to be metaphysical when we demonstrate their psychic nature; on the contrary, we confirm their factual character.
But, by treating them as psychic phenomena, we remove them from the inaccessible realm of metaphysics, about which nothing verifiable can be said, and this disposes of the impossible question as to whether they are “true” or not.
We take our stand simply and solely on the facts, recognizing that the archetypal structure of the unconscious will produce, over and over again and irrespective of tradition, those figures which reappear in the history of all epochs and all peoples, and will endow them with the same significance and numinosity that have been theirs from the beginning. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 558
It would be blasphemy to assert that God can manifest himself everywhere save only in the human soul.
Indeed the very intimacy of the relationship between God and the soul precludes from the start any devaluation of the latter.
It would be going perhaps too far to speak of an affinity; but at all events the soul must contain in itself the faculty of relation to God, i.e., a correspondence, otherwise a connection could never come about. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 1
1 did not attribute a religious function to the soul, I merely produced the facts which prove that the soul is natitraliter religiosa, i.e., possesses a religious function.
I did not invent or insinuate this function, it produces itself of its own accord without being prompted thereto by any opinions or suggestions of mine.
With a truly tragic delusion theologians fail to see that it is not a matter of proving the existence of the light, but of blind people who do not know that their eyes could see.
It is high time we realized that it is pointless to praise the light and preach it if nobody can see it.
It is much more needful to teach people the art of seeing.
For it is obvious that far too many people are incapable of establishing a connection between the sacred figures and their own psyche: they cannot see to what extent the equivalent images are lying dormant in their own unconscious.
In order to facilitate this inner vision we must first clear the way for the faculty of seeing.
How this is to be done without psychology, that is, without making contact with the psyche, is, frankly, beyond my comprehension. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 14
