Carl Jung: This seems to be a particularly critical moment.
C.G. Jung Letters, Vol. 1: 1906-1950
To Alwine von Keller
Dear Frau von Keller, 21 August 1944
Best thanks for your long letter. I have heard nothing from Frau X. for a long time.
I only hope things are going better with her. She is indeed a problem, like all Germans today.
I am very grateful to you for news about Zimmer I for have had but little.
Like the physician who attended me,Dr. Haemmerl. he died on the eve of his fame.
This seems to be a particularly critical moment.
There is indeed a great danger in being praised before the eve.
That is why one’s fate always strives for posthumous recognition.
It would almost have done away with me too, for the sole reason that I was appointed professor in Basel.
I am extremely glad that this year’s Eranos meeting went off very well without me.
By the beginning of winter I hope to have got my wits together again so that I can also think of other people. Meanwhile with best thanks and friendly greetings,
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 344-345.
Man as the Eternal Moment of the World
Diahmon answered, saying, “These dead believed in the transformation and development of man.
They were convinced of human nothingness and transitoriness.
Nothing was clearer to them than this, and yet they knew that man even creates its Gods, and so they knew that the Gods were of no use.
Therefore they had to learn what they did not know, that man is a gateway through which crowds the train of the Gods and the coming and passing of all times.
He does not do it, does not create it, does not suffer it, since he is the being, the sole being, since he is the moment of the world, the eternal moment.
Whoever recognizes this stops being flame; he becomes smoke and ashes.
He lasts and his transitoriness is over. He has become someone who is.
You dreamed of the flame, as if it were life. But life is duration, the flame dies away.
I carried that over, I saved it from the fire. That is the son of the fire flower.
You saw that in me, I myself am of the eternal fire of light. But I am the one who saved it for you, the black and golden seed and its blue starlight.
You eternal being-what is length and brevity? What is the moment and eternal duration? You, being, are eternal in each moment.
What is time? Time is the fire that flares up, consumes, and dies down.
I saved being from time, redeeming it from the fires of time and the darkness of time, from Gods and devils.” ~Philemon to Dr. Jung; The Red Book; Page 354.
In this moment, you need evil.
The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition (Philemon) The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition (Philemon)
Man stands between emptiness and fullness.
If his strength combines with fullness, it becomes fully formative.
There is always something good about such formation.
If his strength combines with emptiness, it has a dissolving and destructive effect, since emptiness can never be formed, but only strives to satisfy itself at the cost of fullness.
Combined thus human force turns emptiness into evil.
If your force shapes fullness, it does so because of its association with fullness. But to ensure that your formation continues to exist, it must remain tied to your strength.
Through constant shaping, you gradually lose your force, since ultimately all force is associated with the shapeliness that has been given form.
Ultimately, where you mistakenly imagine that you are rich, you have actually become poor, and you stand amidst your forms like a beggar.
That is when the blinded man is seized by an increasing desire to give shape to things, since he believes that manifold increased formation will satisfy his I desire.
Because he has spent his force, he becomes desirous; he begins to compel others into his service and takes their force to pursue his own designs.
In this moment, you need evil.
When you notice that your strength is coming to an end and desire sets in, you must withdraw it from what has been formed into your emptiness; through this association with the emptiness you will succeed in dissolving the formation in you.
You will thus regain your freedom, in that you have saved your strength from oppressive association with the object.
So long as you persist with the standpoint of the good, you cannot dissolve your formation, precisely because it is what is good.
You cannot dissolve good with good.
You can dissolve good only with evil.
For your good also leads ultimately to death through its progressive binding of your force by progressively binding your force.
You are entirely unable to live without evil. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, The Opening of the Egg, Page 287.
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