Rebirth, Resurrection, Reincarnation Anthology
Nobody knows whether there is reincarnation, and equally one does not know that there is none. Buddha himself was convinced of reincarnation, but he himself on being asked twice by his disciples about it, left it quite open whether there is a continuity of your personality or not. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 103-104.|
…the figures in the unconscious could be explained by a long-lasting primeval matriarchy if only we knew for certain that it ever existed, just as the flood myths could be explained by the myth of Atlantis if only we knew that there ever was an Atlantis. Equally, the contents of the unconscious could be explained by reincarnation if we knew that there is reincarnation. ~ Carl Jung to Baroness Tinti, Letters Volume 1, Pages 208-209.
I . . . have the feeling that this is a time full of marvels, and, if the auguries do not deceive us, it may very well be that . . . we are on the threshold of something really sensational, which I scarcely know how to describe except with the Gnostic concept of [Sophia], an Alexandrian term particularly suited to the reincarnation of ancient wisdom in the shape of ΨA. ~Carl Jung, The Freud/Jung Letters, Page 439
Psychologically, the central point of a human personality is the place where the ancestors are reincarnated. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis, Page 304
The purpose of nearly all rebirth rites is to unite the above with the below. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 259-261
After all the rebirths you still remain the lion crawling on the earth, the Chameleon], a caricature, one prone to changing colors, a crawling shimmering lizard, but precisely not a lion, whose nature is related to the sun, who draws his lof the environment, and who does not defend himself by going into hiding. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 277.
All your rebirths could ultimately make you sick. The Buddha therefore finally gave up on rebirth, for he had had enough of crawling through all human and animal forms. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 277.
The Buddha did not need quite so long to see that even rebirths are vain. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 298, Footnote 94.
I have been baptized with impure water for rebirth. A flame from the fire of Hell awaited me above the baptismal basin. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 304.
It is the mourning of the dead in me, which precedes burial and rebirth. The rain is the fructifying of the earth, it begets the new wheat, the young, germinating God. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 243.
The scarab is a classical rebirth symbol. According to the description in the ancient Egyptian book Am-Tuat, the dead sun God transforms himself at the tenth station into Khepri, the scarab, and as such mounts the barge at the twelfth station, which raises the rejuvenated sun into the morning sky ~Carl Jung, CW 8, §843.
To be that which you are is the bath of rebirth. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 266
The righteous man is the instrument into which God enters in order to attain self-reflection and thus consciousness and rebirth as a divine child trusted to the care of adult man. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Page 739.
The spiritual climax is reached at the moment when life ends. Human life, therefore, is the vehicle of the highest perfection it is possible to attain; it alone generates the karma that makes it possible for the dead man to abide in the perpetual light of the Voidness without clinging to any object, and thus to rest on the hub of the wheel of rebirth, freed from all illusion of genesis and decay. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 856.
Hierosgamos. Sacred or spiritual marriage, union of archetypal figures in the rebirth mysteries of antiquity and also in alchemy. Typical examples are the representation of Christ and the Church as bridegroom and bride (sponsus et sponsa) and the alchemical conjunction of sun and moon. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 395.
The division into four is a principium individuationis; it means to become one or a whole in the face of the many figures that carry the danger of destruction in them. It is what overcomes death and can bring about rebirth. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 372.
Christ’s redemptive death on the cross was understood as a “baptism,” that is to say, as rebirth through the second mother, symbolized by the tree of death… The dual-mother motif suggests the idea of a dual birth. One of the mothers is the real, human mother, the other is the symbolical mother. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, para 494-495.
I am trying to get nearer to the remarkable psychology of the Buddha himself, or at least of that which his contemporaries assumed him to be. It is chiefly the question of karma and rebirth which has renewed my interest in Buddha. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 548.
There are women who are not meant to bear physical children, but they are those that give rebirth to a man in a spiritual sense, which is a highly important function. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 454-456
Flight from life does not exempt us from the laws of old age and death. The neurotic who tries to wriggle out of the necessity of living wins nothing and only burdens himself with a constant foretaste of aging and dying, which must appear especially cruel on account of the total emptiness and meaninglessness of his life.
If it is not possible for the libido to strive forwards, to lead a life that willingly accepts all dangers and ultimate decay, then it strikes back along the other road and sinks into its own depths, working down to the old intimation of the immortality of all that lives, to the old longing for rebirth. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 617
The sun, rising triumphant, tears himself from the enveloping womb of the sea, and leaving behind him the noonday zenith and all its glorious works, sinks down again into the maternal depths, into all-enfolding and all regenerating night. This image is undoubtedly a primordial one, and there was profound justification for its becoming a symbolical expression of human fate: in the morning of life the son tears himself loose from the mother, from the domestic hearth, to rise through battle to his destined heights.
Always he imagines his worst enemy in front of him, yet he carries the enemy within himself—a deadly longing for the abyss, a longing to drown in his own source, to be sucked down to the realm of the Mothers. His life is a constant struggle against extinction, a violent yet fleeting deliverance from ever-lurking night. This death is no external enemy, it is his own inner longing for the stillness and profound peace of all-knowing non-existence, for all-seeing sleep in the ocean of coming-to-be and passing away.
Even in his highest strivings for harmony and balance, for the profundities of philosophy and the raptures of the artist, he seeks death, immobility, satiety, rest. If, like Peirithous, he tarries too long in this abode of rest and peace, he is overcome by apathy, and the poison of the serpent paralyses him for all time.
If he is to live, he must fight and sacrifice his longing for the past in order to rise to his own heights. And having reached the noonday heights, he must sacrifice his love for his own achievement, for he may not loiter. The sun, too, sacrifices its greatest strength in order to hasten onward to the fruits of autumn, which are the seeds of rebirth. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 553
Rebirth is an affirmation that must be counted among the primordial affirmations of mankind. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 207
For thousands of years, rites of initiation have been teaching rebirth from the spirit; yet, strangely enough, man forgets again and again the meaning of divine procreation. Though this may be poor testimony to the strength of the spirit, the penalty for misunderstanding is neurotic decay, embitterment, atrophy, and sterility. It is easy enough to drive the spirit out of the door, but when we have done so the meal has lost its savour—the salt of the earth.
Fortunately, we have proof that the spirit always renews its strength in the fact that the essential teaching of the initiations is handed on from generation to generation. Ever and again there are human beings who understand what it means that God is their father. The equal balance of the flesh and the spirit is not lost to the world. ~Carl Jung, CW4, Para 783
Thus, the sickness of dissociation in our world is at the same time a process of recovery, or rather, the climax of a period of pregnancy which heralds the throes of birth. A time of dissociation such as prevailed during the Roman Empire is simultaneously an age of rebirth. Not without reason do we date our era from the age of Augustus, for that epoch saw the birth of the symbolical figure of Christ, who was invoked by the early Christians as the Fish, the Ruler of the aeon of Pisces which had just begun.
He became the ruling spirit of the next two thousand years. Like the teacher of wisdom in Babylonian legend, Cannes, he rose up from the sea, from the primeval darkness, and brought a world-period to an end. It is true that he said, “I am come not to bring peace but a sword.” But that which brings division ultimately creates union. Therefore his teaching was one of all-uniting love. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 293
The tremendous compulsion towards goodness and the immense moral force of Christianity are not merely an argument in the latter’s favour, they are also a proof of the strength of its suppressed and repressed counterpart —the antichristian, barbarian element. The existence within us of something that can turn against us, that can become a serious matter for us, I regard not merely as a dangerous peculiarity, but as a valuable and congenial asset as well. It is a still untouched fortune, an uncorrupted treasure, a sign of youthfulness, an earnest of rebirth. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 20
At Siegfried’s birth Sieglinde dies, as is proper. The foster-parent who brings him up is not a woman, but a chthonic god, Mime, a crippled dwarf who belongs to a race that has abjured love. Similarly, the god of the Egyptian underworld, the crippled shadow of Osiris (who underwent a sorry resurrection in Harpocrates), brings up the infant Horus to avenge the death of his father. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 566
Even the burial of the dead in consecrated ground (“garden of the dead,” cloisters, crypts, etc.) is a rendering back to the mother with the hope of resurrection which such burials presuppose ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 577
Whoever succeeds in killing the “magic” animal, the symbolic representative of the animal mother, acquires something of her gigantic strength. This is expressed by saying that the hero clothes himself in the animal’s skin and in this way obtains for the magic animal a sort of resurrection ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 503
At the Aztec human sacrifices criminals played the part of gods: they were slaughtered and flayed, and the priests then wrapped themselves in the dripping pelts in order to represent the gods’ resurrection and renewal ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 503
As a zodiacal sign Cancer signifies resurrection, because the crab sheds its shell. The ancients had in mind chiefly Pagurus bernhardus, the hermit crab. It hides in its shell and cannot be attacked. Therefore it signifies caution and foresight, knowledge of coming events ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 604.604
Even the “golden ring,” the “ring of return,” appears to him as a promise of resurrection and life. It is just as if Nietzsche had been present at a performance of the mysteries ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 210.
The Mass is an extramundane and extratemporal act in which Christ is sacrificed and then resurrected in the transformed substances; and this rite of his sacrificial death is not a repetition of the historical event but the original, unique, and eternal act. The experience of the Mass is therefore a participation in the transcendence of life, which overcomes all bounds of space and time. It is a moment of eternity in time. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 209
We have seen him [Wotan] come to life in the German Youth Movement, and right at the beginning the blood of several sheep was shed in honour of his resurrection ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 373
The Leonine Sacramentary (seventh century) interprets the commixtio as a mingling of the heavenly and earthly nature of Christ. The later view was that it symbolizes the resurrection, since in it the blood (or soul) of our Lord is reunited with the body lying in the sepulchre. There is a significant reversal here of the original rite of baptism. In baptism, the body is immersed in water for the purpose of transformation; in the commixtio, on the other hand, the body, or particula, is steeped in wine, symbolizing spirit, and this amounts to a glorification of the body. Hence the justification for regarding the commixtio as a symbol of the resurrection ~Carl Jung, CW 11, 335
The mixing of water and wine in the Roman rite would accordingly signify that divinity is mingled with humanity as indivisibly as the wine with the water. St. Cyprian (bishop of Carthage, d. 258) says that the wine refers to Christ, and the water to the congregation as the body of Christ.
As the water is an imperfect or even leprous substance, it has to be blessed and consecrated before being mixed, so that only a purified body may be joined to the wine of the spirit, just as Christ is to be united only with a pure and sanctified congregation. Thus this part of the rite has the special significance of preparing a perfect body the glorified body of resurrection ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 312
From the human point of view, gifts are offered to God at the altar, signifying at the same time the self-oblation of the priest and the congregation. The ritual act consecrates both the gifts and the givers. It commemorates and represents the Last Supper which our Lord took with his disciples, the whole Incarnation, Passion, death, and resurrection of Christ ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 378
And Gerhard Dorn cries out, “Transform yourselves into living philosophical stones!” There can hardly be any doubt that not a few of those seekers had the dawning knowledge that the secret nature of the stone was man’s own self. This “self” was evidently never thought of as an entity identical with the ego, and for this reason it was described as a “hidden nature” dwelling in inanimate matter, as a spirit, daemon, or fiery spark. By means of the philosophical opus, this entity was freed from darkness and imprisonment, and finally it enjoyed a resurrection.
It is clear that these ideas can have nothing to do with the empirical ego but are concerned with a “divine nature” quite distinct from it, and hence, psychologically speaking, with a consciousness-transcending content issuing from the realm of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, para 154.
The aim of the philosophers was to transform imperfect matter chemically into gold, the panacea, or the elixir vitae, but philosophically or mystically into the divine hermaphrodite, the second Adam, the glorified, incorruptible body of resurrection, or the lumen luminum, the illumination of the human mind, or sapientia. As I have shown, together with Richard Wilhelm, Chinese alchemy produced the same idea, that the goal of the opus magnum, the creation of the “diamond body.” ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 161
For your sakes this cross of light was named by me now Logos, now Nous, now Jesus, now Christ, now Door, now Way, now Bread, now Seed now Resurrection, now Son, now Father, now Pneuma, now Life, now Truth, now Faith], now Grace. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 433
The cult of the dead is rationally based on the belief in the supra-temporality of the soul, but its irrational basis is to be found in the psychological need of the living to do something for the departed. This is an elementary need which forces itself upon even the most “enlightened” individuals when faced by the death of relatives and friends.
That is why, enlightenment or no enlightenment, we still have all manner of ceremonies for the dead. If Lenin had to submit to being embalmed and put on show in a sumptuous mausoleum like an Egyptian pharaoh, we may be quite sure it was not because his followers believed in the resurrection of the body. Apart, however, from the Masses said for the soul in the Catholic Church, the provisions we make for the dead are rudimentary and on the lowest level, not because we cannot convince ourselves of the soul’s immortality, but because we have rationalized the abovementioned psychological need out of existence.
We behave as if we did not have this need, and because we cannot believe in a life after death we prefer to do nothing about it. Simpler-minded people follow their own feelings, and, as in Italy, build themselves funeral monuments of gruesome beauty. The Catholic Masses for the soul are on a level considerably above this, because they are expressly intended for the psychic welfare of the deceased and are not a mere gratification of lachrymose sentiments. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 855
This “Self” was evidently never thought of as an entity identical with the ego, and for this reason it was described as a “hidden nature” dwelling in inanimate matter, as a spirit, daemon, or fiery spark. By means of the philosophical opus, which was mostly thought of as a mental one, this entity was freed from darkness and imprisonment, and finally it enjoyed a resurrection, often represented in the form of an apotheosis and equated with the resurrection of Christ ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 154
… the soul (anima) released at the “death” is reunited with the dead body and brings about its resurrection, or again the “many colours” … or “peacock’s tail” … lead to the one white colour that contains all colours. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 334
It is clear enough from this material what the ultimate aim of alchemy really was it was trying to produce a corpus subtile, a transfigured and resurrected body, i.e., a body that was at the same time spirit. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 511
Alchemy was trying to produce a corpus subtile, a transfigured and resurrected body, i.e., a body that was at the same time spirit. In this it finds common ground with Chinese alchemy, as we have learned from the text of The Secret of the Golden Flower. There the main concern is the “diamond body,” in other words, the attainment of immortality through the transformation of the body ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 511
But Mercurius is a duplex figur ethere’s an upper Mercurius and a lower Mercurius. The lower Mercurius is imprisoned in matter and the upper volatile Mercurius descends and suffers itself to be fixed and imprisoned coagulated which then helps in the rescue of the lower Mercurius, the worm.
The outcome is that the worm, the serpent Mercurius, is crowned or glorified, just as Christ’s resurrection and ascension was a crowning glorification of the worm. This sequence of events is indicated by the frequent image in alchemy of the crowned serpent. It indicates that the upper Mercurius and the lower Mercurius have been brought together. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 478ff.
Khunrath’s “SVI” seems to refer rather to God, in the sense that the filius regius is born on “His” day, the day that belongs to God or is chosen by him. Since the phoenix is mainly an allegory of resurrection, this one day of birth and renewal must be one of the three days of Christ’s burial and descent into hell. ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Para 475
The old masters were wont to call this work their white swan, their albification, or making white, their sublimation, their distillation, their circulation, their purification, their separation, their sanctification, and their resurrection, because the Tincture is made white like a shining silver. It is sublimed or exalted and transfigured by reason of its many descents into Saturn, Mercurius, and Mars, and by its many ascents into Venus and Luna.
This is the distillation, the Balneum Mariae: because the Tincture is purified in the qualities of nature through the many distillations of the water, blood, and heavenly dew of the Divine Virgin Sophia, and, through the manifold circulation in and out of the forms and qualities of nature, is made white and pure, like brilliantly polished silver.
And all uncleanliness of the blackness, all death, hell, curse, wrath, and all poison which rise up out of the qualities of Saturn, Mercury, and Mars are separated and depart, wherefore they call it their separation, and when the Tincture attains its whiteness and brilliance in Venus and Luna they call it their sanctification, their purification and making white.
They call it their resurrection, because the white rises up out of the black, and the divine virginity and purity out of the poison of Mercurius and out of the red fiery rage and wrath of Mars. . .. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 515
Since we are psychic beings and not entirely dependent upon space and time, we can easily understand the central importance of the resurrection idea: we are not completely subjected to the powers of annihilation because our psychic totality reaches beyond the barrier of space and time. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 1572.
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.
If you will conscientiously reread what I have said about individuation you cannot possibly conclude that I mean Nirvana or that I overlook the Resurrection. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 67.
On the cross he [Christ] was deserted by his mission, but he had lived his life with such devotion that, in spite of this, he won through to a resurrected body. ~Barbara Hannah, Jung: His Life and His Work, Page 172
We should go and make our mistakes, for there is no full life without error; no one has ever found the whole truth; but if we will only live with the same integrity and devotion as Christ, he hoped we would all, like Christ, win through to a resurrected body. ~Carl Jung, Jung: His Life and His Work, Pages 172
He [Jung] saw just her [Toni] image, there was no action in the dream, and he was especially impressed by having dreamed it on the night of the Resurrection. ~Barbara Hannah, Jung: His Life and His Work, Page 225
All cults of cremation have an idea in common, to assist the dead person on his way to the hereafter, that is, to assist in resurrection by freeing the soul through destruction of the mortal remains: the soul can thus float into the next world, into heaven. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 154
After death follows the resurrection. It can take place only if the form of the deceased’s body has been preserved by embalming. Ba, the soul, often rendered as a bird, has to be able to visit the embalmed body; its way goes through the tomb shaft, situated in the pyramid. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 153
These are, so to speak, the re-animated souls of the ancestors which have been lying dormant in the unconscious, and the alchemists call these units or souls the sleepers or the dead in Hades who are resurrected by the “holy waters” (that is the miraculous water of alchemy, the fertilising Mercury). ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 230.
The coniunctio in alchemy is a union of the masculine and feminine, of the spiritual and material principles, from which a perfect body arises, the glorified body after the Last Judgement, the resurrection body. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 159.
Then Jung said to his audience-and this is what struck so many of them as last words-that we could only follow Christ’s example and live our lives as fully as possible, even if it is based on a mistake. No one has ever found the whole truth; but if we will only live with the same integrity and devotion as Christ, he hoped we would all, like Christ, win through to a resurrected body. ~Barbara Hannah, Jung by Gerhard Wehr, Page 294.
From this material it appears quite clearly what alchemy was seeking, in the last analysis. It wished to produce a corpus subtile, the transfigured body of the resurrection-a body that is simultaneously spirit. In this it matches Chinese alchemy, as it has become known to us through the text of The Secret of the Golden Flower. This is the “diamond body,” that is immortality, attained through the transformation of the body. Because of its transparency, its brilliance, and its hardness, the diamond is a fitting symbol. ~Carl Jung, “Jung” by Gerhard Wehr, Page 258
What I have tried to do,’ ‘is to show the Christian what the Redeemer really is, and what the resurrection is. Nobody today seems to know, or to remember, but the idea still exists in dreams. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Hesse A Friendship, Page 101
This transformation is a process in the collective psyche, which is a preparation for the new aeon, the Age of Aquarius. This new image of God appears in Jung’s first dream of the underground phallic god-king, awaiting in this hidden form its eventual resurrection. ~Marie Louise Von Franz, C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time, Page 37
Dreams, sickness, or initiation ceremony, the central element is always the same: death and symbolic resurrection of the neophyte. ~Mircea Eliade, C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time, Page 100
Petrus Bonus then further describes the stone as the resurrecting body which is spiritual as well as corporeal and of such subtlety that it can penetrate and pervade anything. ~Marie Louise Von Franz, C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time, Page 221
Certain heretics in early Christianity assumed that at the day of resurrection the soul with its glorified body would be spherical. According to the Symposium of Plato, the original man was round, spherogenous, meaning perfect. ~Carl Jung, Dream Symbols of the Individuation Process, Page 237
She [Marie] asked to be helped [due to Parkinson’s] to sit up in bed and requested that I open the window, and she listened with reverence and joy to what she said was “the song of resurrection . . .. Quails had been the birds of resurrection for the Egyptians.” ~ David Eldred, Homage to MLVF, Pages 228
God is not solemn, he is terrible. Solemnity belongs to you, it is human, not divine. God has no need of theatre. I am the highest of the dead and resurrected. I was dead, you gave me life, my life. ~The Dead One, The Black Books, Vol. V, Page 252
In his 1939 Eranos lecture Jung mentions the corpus glorificationis in connection with the idea of the resurrection: “It may be a carnal body, as in the Christian assumption that this body will be resurrected. On a higher level, the process is no longer understood in a gross material sense; it is assumed that the resurrection of the dead is the raising up of the corpus glorificationis, the ‘subtle body,’ in the state of incorruptibility.” (Jung, 1940, § 202) ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page fn 284
1 Corinthians 15:41-46: “There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.
There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual” [KJV]. On the discussion of this infallible Christian doctrine in eighteenth-century psychology, see Vidal (2011), pp. 325-350. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page Fn 283
