Fore thinking also comes before thought.
[Note: Dr. Jung was lecturing on The Red Book as early as 1925. Evidence that The Red Book was not the “Secret” and “Hidden” book that is often erroneously asserted]
In layer two of Liber Novus, Jung interpreted the figures of Elijah and Salome respectively in terms of fore thinking and pleasure:
“The powers of my depths are predetermination and pleasure. Predetermination or fore thinking is Prometheus, who, without determined thoughts, brings the chaotic to form and definition, who digs the channels and holds the object before pleasure.
Fore thinking also comes before thought.
But pleasure is the force that desires and destroys forms without form and definition.
It loves the form in itself that it takes hold of, and destroys the forms that it does not take.
The fore-thinker is a seer, but pleasure is blind. It does not foresee, but desires what it touches. Forethinking is not powerful in itself and therefore does not move.
But pleasure is power, and therefore it moves” (p. 247).
In later commentaries written probably sometime in the 1920s, Jung commented on this episode and noted: “This configuration is an image that forever recurs in the human spirit.
The old man represents a spiritual principle that could be designated as Logos, and the maiden represents an unspiritual principle of feeling that could be called Eros” (p. 362). Footnote 8, 1925 Seminar, Page 97
What do you think of the essence of Hell?
The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition (Philemon)
What do you think of the essence of Hell?
He!l is when the depths come to you with all that you no longer are or are not yet capable of He!l is when you can no longer attain what you could attain.
He!l is when you must think and feel and do everything that you know you do not want. He!l is when you know that your having to is also a wanting to, and that you yourself are responsible for it.
He!l is when you know that everything serious that you have planned with yourself is also laughable, that everything fine is also brutal, that everything good is also bad, that everything high is also low, and that everything pleasant is also shameful.
But the deepest Hell is when you realize that He!l is also no He!l, but a cheerful Heaven, not a Heaven in itself, but in this respect a Heaven, and in that respect a !. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 244.
We may like to think that all psyches are single psyches,
We may like to think that all psyches are single psyches, that no such thing as a collective psyche exists, in other words that the psyche is nothing more thanconsciousness, for consciousness is an individual phenomenon.
But can we really be so very sure of this?
Primitives, on the other hand, are not at all certain that they are distinct from each other or from their surroundings; when you are among them you hardly dare to kill a crocodile, for the primitive says: “I am also that crocodile.”
It is only single illuminated points that we are clearly conscious of; the whole is dark. I am reminded of the savant who said : ” If I knew all that Ihave forgotten I would b e the most learned of all men.” ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, 27 Oct. 1933.
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog