Transformation starts not with the knowledge of who but with what you are.
Visions : Notes of the seminar given in 1930-1934 (2 Volume Set) (Bollingen)
[Transformation starts not with the knowledge of who but with what you are.] Visions Seminars, C.G. Jung, page 321:
“She sees an old man on the other side of the wall. “I looked into his eyes and saw therein a great river full of writhing bodies.
A few men stood upon the bank and called with a loud voice to the struggling masses in the rushing water.
The water cast a few souls upon the bank. Then the men who stood there lifted them up and showed them a star and a sun.
This I saw in the eyes of the old man. The old man said, “you have perceived” and he sank into the earth. ”
The bodies are the individual lives, twisting and turning and writhing themselves into a sort of pattern that dissolves and reforms again and again. It is the river time, of life, in other words.
The men on the bank are the people of detached consciousness, people who are conscious of themselves and of life. And that they call to the struggling masses in the rushing water produces the effect that a few souls are cast upon the bank, they wake up and leave the great river.
Then the men who stand there lift them up and show them a star and a sun.
The star is the individual fate, and the sun means the light of day, and it is also the symbol of the deity.
Consciousness of the individual life and of the deity is the idea.”
