Carl Jung on Belief – Anthology.

Carl Jung on Belief – Anthology.

I believe that we have the choice: I preferred the living wonders of the God. I daily weigh up my whole life and I continue to regard the fiery brilliance of the God as a higher and fuller life than the ashes of rationality. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 339.

Men who have understanding should not just believe, but should wrestle for knowledge to the best of their ability. Belief is not everything, but neither is knowledge. Belief does not give us the security and the wealth of knowing. Desiring knowledge sometimes takes away too much belief. Both must strike a balance. ~Carl Jung; The Red Book; Page 336.

I believe I have learned that no one is allowed to avoid the mysteries of the Christian religion unpunished. I repeat: he whose heart has not been broken over the Lord Jesus Christ drags a pagan around in himself who holds him back from the best. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 260.

Believe me: It is no teaching and no instruction that I give you. On what basis should I presume to teach you? I give you news of the way of this man, but not of your own way. My path is not your path therefore I cannot teach you. The way is within us, but not in Gods, nor in teachings, nor in laws. Within us is the way, the truth, and the life. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 231.

Is there anyone among you who believes he can be spared the way? Can he swindle his way past the pain of Christ? I say: “Such a one deceives himself to his own detriment. He beds down on thorns and fire. No one can be spared the way of Christ, since this way leads to what is to come. You should all become Christs. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 235.

The spirit of this time of course allowed me to believe in my reason. He let me see myself in the image of a leader with ripe thoughts. But the spirit of the depths teaches me that I am a servant, in fact the servant of a child: This dictum was repugnant to me and I hated it. But I had to recognize and accept that my soul is a child and that my God in my soul is a child. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 234.

I believe that we have the choice: I preferred the living wonders of the God. I daily weigh up my whole life and I continue to fiery brilliance of the God as a higher and fuller life than the ashes of rationality. The ashes are suicide to me. I could perhaps put out the fire but I cannot deny to myself the experience of the God. Nor can I cut myself off from this experience. I also do not want to, since I want to live. My life wants itself whole. ~Carl Jung; The Red Book; Page 339.

The spirit of this time has condemned us to haste. You have no more futurity and no more past if you serve the spirit of this time. We need the life of eternity. We bear the future and the past in the depths. The future is old and the past is young. You serve the spirit of this time, and believe that you are able to escape the spirit of the depths. But the depths do not hesitate any longer and will force you into the mysteries of Christ. It belongs to this mystery that man is not redeemed through the hero, but becomes a Christ himself. The antecedent example of the saints symbolically teaches us this. ~Carl Jung; The Red Book; Page 253.

What a thinker does not think he believes does not exist, and what one who feels does not feel he believes does not exist. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 248.

My master and my brother, I believe you have completed your work…. What one individual can do for men, you have done and accomplished and fulfilled. The time has come when each must do his own work of redemption. Mankind has grown older and a new month has begun. ~Christ to Dr. Jung, The Red Book, Page 356.

Just as the old prophets [ancients] stood before the Mysterium of Christ, I also stand as yet before the [this] Mysterium of-Christ, [insofar as I reassume the past] although I live two thousand years after-him [later] and at one time believed I was a Christian. But I had never been a Christ. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 253, Footnote 228.

The spirit of the depths is pregnant with ice, fire, and death. You are right to fear the spirit of the depths, as he is full of horror. You see in these days what the spirit of the depths bore. You did not believe it, but you would have known it if you had taken counsel with your fear. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 238.

You serve the spirit of this time, and believe that you are able to escape the spirit of the depths. But the depths do not hesitate any longer and will force you into the mysteries of Christ. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 253.

You’re stubborn. What I mean is that it’s hardly a coincidence that the whole world has become Christian. I also believe that it was the task of Western man to carry Christ in his heart and to grow with his suffering, death, and resurrection. ~Carl Jung to The Red One, Liber Novus, Page 260.

One used to believe that one could murder a God. But the God was saved, he forged a new axe in the fire, and plunged again into the flood of light of the East to resume his ancient cycle. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 283.

The God suffers because you continue to suffer from loving evil. You do not suffer from evil because you recognize it, but because it affords you secret pleasure, and because you believe it promises the pleasure of an unknown opportunity. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 287.

A free man knows only free Gods and devils that are self-contained and take effect on account of their own force. If they fail to have an effect, that is their own business, and I can remove this burden from myself. But if they are effective, they need neither my protection nor my care, nor my belief. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 307.

May man rule in the human world. May his laws be valid. But treat the souls, daimons, and Gods in their way; offering what is demanded. But burden no man, demand and expect nothing from him, with what your devil-souls and God-souls lead you to believe, but endure and remain silent and do piously what befits your kind. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 343.

In the garden it had to become apparent to me that I loved Salome. This recognition struck me, since I had not thought it. What a thinker does not think he believes does not exist, and what one who feels does not feel he believes does not exist. You begin to have a presentiment of the whole when you embrace your opposite principle, since the whole belongs to both principles, which grow from one root. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 248.

God is a mystery, and everything we say about Him is said and believed by human beings… when I speak of God I always mean the image man has made of him… ~Carl Jung, Letters II, 384

People go on blithely organizing and believing in the sovereign remedy of mass action, without the least consciousness of the fact that the most powerful organizations can be maintained only by the greatest ruthlessness of their leaders and the cheapest of slogans. ~Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self, Page 40.

The problem of my destiny goes back a hundred and fifty years. Indeed it appeared as early as the twelfth century, as I have now discovered. Formerly I believed it only went back to Goethe’s Faust. (Jung now told the dream of his ancestors in which the last was only able to move his little finger.) The problem that appeared as a question in the twelfth century became my extremely personal destiny. Already Goethe had found an answer a hundred and fifty years ago. My father was so tormented by it that he died at the age of fifty-four. ~ Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 67.

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.

The belief, the self-confidence, perhaps also the devotion with which the analyst does his work, are far more important to the patient (imponderabilia though they may be), than the rehearsing of old traumata. ~Carl Jung; CW 4; par. 584.

There are analysts who believe that they can get along without self-analysis. This is Munchausen psychology, and they will certainly remain stuck. They forget that one of the most important therapeutically effective factors is subjecting you to the objective judgment of another. As regards ourselves we remain blind, despite everything and everybody. Carl Jung; “The Theory of Psychoanalysis”; CW 4: Freud and Psychoanalysis; Page 449.

It is hard to believe that this teeming world is too poor to provide an object for human love – it offers boundless opportunities to everyone. It is rather the inability to love which robs a person of these opportunities. The world is empty only to him who does not know how to direct his libido towards things and people, and to render them alive and beautiful. What compels us to create a substitute from within ourselves is not an external lack, but our own inability to include anything outside ourselves in our love. Certainly the difficulties and adversities of the struggle for existence may oppress us, yet even the worst conditions need not hinder love; on the contrary, they often spur us on to greater efforts. Carl Jung; Symbols of Transformation (1952). CW 5: Page 253.

Observance of customs and laws can very easily be a cloak for a lie so subtle that our fellow human beings are unable to detect it. It may help us to escape all criticism; we may even be able to deceive ourselves in the belief of our obvious righteousness. But deep down, below the surface of the average man’s conscience, he hears a voice whispering, “There is something not right,” no matter how much his rightness is supported by public opinion or by the moral code. ~Carl G. Jung, in the introduction to Frances G. Wickes’ “Analysis der Kinderseele” (The Inner World of Childhood), 1931.

Christian civilization has proved hollow to a terrifying degree: it is all veneer, but the inner man has remained untouched, and therefore unchanged. His soul is out of key with his external beliefs; in his soul the Christian has not kept pace with external developments. Yes, everything is to be found outside-in image and in word, in Church and Bible-but never inside. Inside reign the archaic gods, supreme as of old. ~Carl Jung; Psychology and Alchemy, Page 11.

I could not say I believe. I know! I have had the experience of being gripped by something stronger than myself, something that people call God. ~Carl Jung; “The Old Wise Man” published in Time, 1955. [Note: Dr. Jung’s clarification of this quotation may be read at this link: http://carljungdepthpsychology.blogspot.com/2012/11/dr-jung-said-i-dont-believe-i-know.html%5D

It was universally believed in the Middle Ages as well as in the Greco-Roman world that the soul is a substance. Indeed, mankind as a whole has held this belief from its earliest beginnings, and it was left for the second half of the nineteenth century to develop a “psychology without the soul.” ~Carl Jung; CW 8.

Whereas I formerly believed it to be my bounden duty to call other persons to order, I now admit that I need calling to order myself. ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul.

It is commonly assumed that on some given occasion in prehistoric times, the basic mythological ideas were “invented” by a clever old philosopher or prophet, and ever afterward “believed” by a credulous and uncritical people. But the very word “invent” is derived from the Latin invenire, and means “to find” and hence to find something by “seeking” it. ~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols; Page 69.

All ages before ours believed in gods in some form or other. Only an unparalleled impoverishment in symbolism could enable us to rediscover the gods as psychic factors, which is to say, as archetypes of the unconscious. No doubt this discovery is hardly credible as yet. ~Carl Jung; The Integration of the Personality p. 72

If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 423.

The majority of my patients consisted not of believers but of those who had lost their faith. The ones who came to me were the lost sheep. Even in this day and age the believer has the opportunity, in his church, to live the “symbolic life.” ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 140.

…it is plain foolishness to believe in ready-made systematic guides to dream interpretation, as if one could simply buy a reference book and look up a particular symbol. ~Carl Jung, Man and his Symbols, Page 53.

We find in Gnosticism what was lacking in the centuries that followed: a belief in the efficacy of individual revelation and individual knowledge. This belief was rooted in the proud feeling of man’s affinity with the gods. ~Carl Jung, Psychological Types, Page 242.

The word “belief” is a difficult thing for me. I don’t believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it—I don’t need to believe it. ~Carl Jung; Interview in Hugh Burnett; Face to Face (1959); Page 51.

It was universally believed in the Middle Ages as well as in the Greco-Roman world that the soul is a substance. Indeed, mankind as a whole has held this belief from its earliest beginnings, and it was left for the second half of the nineteenth century to develop a “psychology without the soul.” ~Carl Jung; CW 8; Page 338

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.

It seems to me, however, that when belief enters into practical life we are entitled to the opinion that it should be coupled with the Christian virtue of modesty, which does not brag about absoluteness but brings itself to admit the unfathomable ways of God which have nothing to do with the Christian revelation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 124-125.

We shall also see that belief in the body cannot tolerate an outlook that denies the body in the name of the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Pages 218-220.

The mistake, it seems to me, is that these critics actually believe only in words, without knowing it, and then think they have posited God. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 486-489.

If Christ in Gethsemane had no fear, then his passion is null and void and the believer can subscribe to docetism! ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 398-400.

As I see it, the psyche is a world in which the ego is contained. Maybe there are fishes who believe that they contain the sea. We must rid ourselves of this habitual illusion of ours if we wish to consider metaphysical assertions from the standpoint of psychology. ~Carl Jung, Alchemical Studies; Page 76, Para 51.

Freud and Adler believe that the unconscious consists only of contents which have once been conscious; for me it is a thing in itself, it is my belief and in fact I know that dreams are exactly what they say. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 2, Page 162.

I sincerely hope you don’t believe what people say about me. If I did, I should have buried myself long ago. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 503-505.

The Essenes were a sect of people who lived in a monastery by the Dead Sea, they practiced a kind of mental healing, or therapy, and believed in the interpretation of dreams. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 2, Page 166.

The essential thing is not what the dreamer believes but what he is; it is not my creed that matters, but what I am, every gesture betrays me. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 199.

If the theologian really believes in the almighty power of God on the one hand and in the validity of dogma on the other, why then does he not trust God to speak in the soul? ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 17.

Death is psychologically as important as birth, and like it, is an integral part of life. … As a doctor, I make every effort to strengthen the belief in immortality, especially with older patients when such questions come threateningly close. For, seen in correct psychological perspective, death is not an end but a goal, and life’s inclination towards death begins as soon as the meridian is passed. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para. 68.

The analysis of older people provides a wealth of dream symbols that psychically prepare the dreams for impending death. It is in fact true, as Jung has emphasized, that the unconscious psyche pays very little attention to the abrupt end of bodily life and behaves as if the psychic life of the individual, that is, the individuation process, will simply continue. … The unconscious “believes” quite obviously in a life after death. ~Marie-Louise von Franz (1987), ix.

Often, indeed, a false ambition survives, in that an old man wants to be a youth again, or at least feels he must behave like one, although in his heart he can no longer make believe. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Pages 74-75.

The unbeliever knows as well as anybody else that this world is in a frightful mess and always was. This knowledge alone has probably never yet prompted any modern man to believe. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 216-217.

This book [I Ching] lies just under the threshold of Chinese consciousness, it is rationally despised under European influence, but every Chinese believes in it at bottom and is perfectly right to do so, for it is an extraordinarily intelligent book. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 109.

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.

I make a great effort to fortify the belief in immortality as far as I can, especially in my older patients, for whom such questions are crucial. ~Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 124.

The meditation on the syllables of the mantra leads to identification with the highest Self. This condition, sometimes reaching ecstasy, is dangerous to the Yogin, for if the human being believes that he is the absolute he may explode. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 55.

In India it has given way to Hinduism, in which Buddha is merely the ninth, that is the last, incarnation or avatar of Vishnu. The Hindus believe that the time of Buddha has passed and that a tenth avatar of Vishnu in the form of a white horse will soon appear. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27Jan1939, Pages 68.

Youth has to build many walls in order to shut off the background from the ego, so that it may believe in the outer world; for to remain under the fascination of the inner images causes hesitation and lack of accomplishment, and to live, to be wholly devoted to something, is also an art which must not be despised. ~Carl Jung, Lecture X, 12Jan1934, Pages 45.

If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 423.

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 don’t believe in the tiger who was finally converted to vegetarianism and ate only apples. My solace was always Paul, who did not deem it beneath his dignity to admit he bore a thorn in the flesh. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 276-277.

I don’t believe, I know. ~Carl Jung, BBC Interview, Face to Face.

People speak of belief when they have lost knowledge. Belief and disbelief in God are mere surrogates. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 2, Page 4.

The naïve primitive doesn’t believe in God, he knows, because the inner experience rightly means as much to him as the outer. He still has no theology and hasn’t yet let himself be befuddled by booby trap concepts. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 2, Page 4.

The unconscious has first to be activated; then we must extricate ourselves, doubting all the things we have hitherto believed; then we can turn back and resume our place in the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 10.

There are women who believe that man will deflect them from their goals and men who often believe that women want to keep them from their work; yet the real causes are either fear of the other sex or of one’s own unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 51.

We believe we are playing with equations and suddenly it transpires that certain equations express the laws of electric currents. God played and formulated currents. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 55.

The question of religion is not so simple as you see it: it is not at all a matter of intellectual conviction or philosophy or even belief, but rather a matter of inner experience. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 183-184.

St. Paul for instance was not converted to Christianity by intellectual or philosophical endeavour or by a belief, but by the force of his immediate inner experience. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 183-184.

Actually after this vision Nicholas should have preached: “God is terrible.” But he believed his own interpretation instead of the immediate experience. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 375-379.

We have blotted it out with so-called “spiritual development,” which means that we live by self-fabricated electric light and-to heighten the comedy-believe or don’t believe in the sun. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 4-5.

I’m inclined to believe that something of the human soul remains after death, since already in this conscious life we have evidence that the psyche exists in a relative space and in a relative time, that is in a relatively non-extended and eternal state. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 29-30.

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 consider it unfortunate that most theologians believe they have named God when they say “God.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 65-68.

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

I am dealing with psychic phenomena and I am not at all concerned with the naive and, as a rule, unanswerable question whether a thing is historically, i.e., concretely, true or not. It is enough that it has been said and believed. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 95-98.

The characteristic difference is that God’s incarnation is understood to be a historical fact in the Christian belief, while in the Jewish Gnosis it is an entirely pleromatic process symbolized by the concentration of the supreme triad of Kether, Hokhmah, and Binah in the figure of Tifereth. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 91-93.

Sure enough, we must believe in Reason. But it should not prevent us from recognizing a mystery when we meet one. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 87-91.

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.
The Protestant is not even granted a quiet, pious place where he can withdraw from the turmoil of the world. And nowhere does there exist for God a sanctified temenos which serves only one and a sacred purpose. No wonder so few people attend church. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 128-129.

Most of your [American] psychologists, as it looks to me, are still in the XVIIIth century inasmuch as they believe that the human psyche is tabula rasa at birth, while all somewhat differentiated animals are born with specific instincts. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 148-150.

As no animal is born without its instinctual patterns, there is no reason whatever to believe that man should be born without his specific forms of physiological and psychological reactions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 151-154.

But theologians suffer from the fact that when they say “God,” then that God is. But when I say “God,” I know I have expressed my image of such a being and I am honestly not quite sure whether he is just like my image or not, even if I believe in God’s existence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 151-154.

As no animal is born without its instinctual patterns, there is no reason whatever to believe that man should be born without his specific forms of physiological and psychological reactions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 151-154.

But theologians suffer from the fact that when they say “God,” then that God is. But when I say “God,” I know I have expressed my image of such a being and I am honestly not quite sure whether he is just like my image or not, even if I believe in God’s existence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 151-154.

I do not write for believers who already possess the whole truth, rather for unbelieving but intelligent people who want to understand something. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 197-199.

An American pupil of mine, Dr. Progoff (New York), has tried to adapt and to explain synchronicity to the average reader but he landed his ship on the rocks because he could not free his mind from the deep-rooted belief in the Sanctissima Trinitas of the axiomata time, space, and causality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 215-216.

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

Analytical psychology unfortunately just touches the vulnerable spot of the church, viz. the untenable concretism of its beliefs, and the syllogistic character of Thomistic philosophy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 227-229

“Astrology” is another of those “random phenomena” wiped off the desk by the idol of the average, which everybody believes to be reality itself while it is a mere abstract. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 230-232.

Analytical psychology unfortunately just touches the vulnerable spot of the church, viz. the untenable concretism of its beliefs, and the syllogistic character of Thomistic philosophy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 227-229

People still believe that they can posit or replace reality by words, or that something has happened when a thing is given a different name. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 257-264.

No matter whether it was a Jewish or a Christian or any other belief, he [Freud] was unable to admit anything beyond the horizon of his scientific materialism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 295-296.

I have always wondered how it comes that just the theologians are often so particularly fond of the Freudian theory, as one could hardly find anything more hostile to their alleged beliefs. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 295-296.

Nothing is thereby asserted, nothing denied, and this is just what Buber doesn’t understand; for he is a theologian who naively thinks that what he believes must necessarily be so. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 367-368

I do not believe and do not disbelieve in the existence of UFOS. I simply do not know what to think about their alleged physical existence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 403-404

If I don’t know it, it looks to me like an usurpation to say “I believe it,” or the contrary. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 445

But for those people not possessing the gift of belief it may be helpful to remember that science itself points to the possibility of survival. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 445

And this is the problem that is raised in our days: where do we land if we believe in the almightiness of our will and in the absolute freedom of our choice? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 471-473

By “religion,” then, I mean a kind of attitude which takes careful and conscientious account of certain numinous 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

Clearly the anti-mythological trend is due to the difficulties we have in clinging on to our previous mythological tenets of belief. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488

I don’t believe that man, as he is today, is capable of evading the vicious circle in which he moves, as long as he is as immature as he actually is. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 512-513

If you don’t feel self-sufficient, give yourself the chance to take yourself as self-sufficient even if you don’t believe it, but make an effort to allow such kindness to yourself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 515-516

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

When I say that I don’t need to believe in God because I “know,” I mean I know of the existence of God-images in general and in particular. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 520-523

Mind you, I didn’t say “there is a God.” I said: “I don’t need to believe in God, I know.” Which does not mean: I do know a certain God (Zeus, Yahweh, Allah, the Trinitarian God, etc.) but rather: I do know that I am obviously confronted with a factor unknown in itself, which I call “God” in consensu omnium (quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditur). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 525-526

Individuals who believe they are masters of their fate are as a rule the slaves of destiny. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 520-523

Yet I should consider it an intellectual immorality to indulge in the belief that my view of a God is the universal, metaphysical Being of the confessions or “philosophies.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 525-526

The fear the introvert feels rests on the unconscious assumption that the object is too much animated, and this is a part of the ancient belief in magic. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 65

I see that many of my pupils indulge in a superstitious belief in our so-called ” free will” and pay little attention to the fact that the archetypes are, as a rule, autonomous entities, and not only material subject to our choice. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 625-626

The theologian, the only person besides the psychotherapist to declare himself responsible for the cura animarum, is afraid of having to think psychologically about the objects of his belief. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 628-630

All that I have learned has led me step by step to an unshakeable conviction of the existence of God. I only believe in what I know. And that eliminates believing. Therefore I do not take His existence on belief— I know that He exists. ~Carl Jung, C. G. Jung Speaking, p. 251.

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

I believe we have the choice: I preferred the living wonders of the God. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 339.

But your attitude to it matters, how you will take it, whether you believe in immortality or not, how you react to such and such an event, that matters to the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 903.

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

For desire only burns in order to burn itself out, and in and from this fire arises the true living spirit which generates life according to its own laws, and is not blinded by the shortsightedness of our intentions or the crude presumption of our superstitious belief in the will. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 192

You must believe in this world, make roots, do the best you can, even if you have to believe in the most absurd things—to believe, for instance, that this world is very definite, that it matters absolutely whether such-and-such a treaty is made or not. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 29

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.

We believe in doing, the Indian in impassive being. Our religious exercises consist of prayer, worship, and singing hymns. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 911.

If I can help it, I never preach my belief. If asked I shall certainly stand by my convictions, but these do not go beyond what I consider to be my actual knowledge. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 79.

I did not say in the broadcast, “There is a God.” I said, “I do not need to believe in a God; I know.” ~Carl Jung, The Listener, 21 Jan. 1960

It is for this reason that the alchemists believed in the truth of “matter,” because “matter” was actually their own psychic life. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking, Page 228

Belief as a religious phenomenon cannot be discussed. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 125.

It seems to me, however, that when belief enters into practical life we are entitled to the opinion that it should be coupled with the Christian virtue of modesty, which does not brag about absoluteness but brings itself to admit the unfathomable ways of God which have nothing to do
with the Christian revelation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 125.

With her cunning play of illusions the soul lures into life the inertness of matter that does not want to live. She makes us believe incredible things, that life may be lived. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Pages 26-27

I don’t believe [in a personal God], but I do know of a power of a very personal nature and an irresistible influence. I call it “God.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 274-275

I profess no “belief.” I know that there are experiences one must pay “religious” attention to. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 517

Therefore I speak of the beatipossidentes [those blessed with being able to believe] of belief, and this is what I reproach them with: that they exalt themselves above our human stature and our human limitation and won’t admit to pluming themselves on a possession which distinguishes them from the ordinary mortal. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 375-376.

I confess with the confession of not knowing and not being able to know; believers start with the assertion of knowing and being able to know. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 375-376.

We have children and grandchildren and even if we don’t believe in immortality for ourselves, we can believe in the right to live of future people. ~Carl Jung, J.E.T., Pages 90-95

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. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Page 112

A man likes to believe that he is master of his soul. ~Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, Page 83.

The Pueblo Indians believe that they are the sons of Father Sun, and this belief endows their life with a perspective (and a goal) that goes far beyond their limited existence. ~Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, Page 89.

The “duality” of the ruler is based on the primitive belief that the placenta is the brother of the new-born child, which as such often accompanies him throughout life in ghostly fashion, since it dies early and is ceremonially buried. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 259-261

The spirit of the depths has subjugated all pride and arrogance to the power of judgment. He took away my belief in science, he robbed me of the joy of explaining and ordering things, and he let devotion to the ideals of this time die out in me. He forced me down to the last and simplest things. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 229

If the miracle of the Assumptio is not a living and present spiritual event, but consists of a physical phenomenon that is reported or only believed to have happened some 2000 years ago, then it has nothing to do with the spirit, or just as little as any parapsychological stunt of today. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 566-568

If we designate the Assumptio as a fact in time and space we ought to add that it happens really in eternity and everywhere, and what we perceive of it through our senses is corruptible matter, i.e., we don’t see it, but we infer or believe in the idea. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 566-568

And do you believe that the homo sapiens is sapiens? I have never seen one yet. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 10th Nov 1939

The question is not why did our Christian ancestors believe things which are absurd, but how is it that humanity knows these things and prizes them so highly? ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture

He [Jung] doesn’t believe in using a couch, but looks on patients as healthy people interfered with by their neurosis. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 74

This man also asked C.G. if he believed in astrology because he had mentioned it; but, said C.G., it is not necessary to ‘believe’ in such concepts – he simply observes that they are sometimes relevant. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 102

He [Jung] said that even at school he had always been suspected of being a fraud – as when the teacher refused to believe he had written his essay; there was so much in it the teacher had never heard of that he concluded C.G. had got someone else to write it for him. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 146