The psyche as such cannot be explained in terms of physiological chemistry, if only because, together with “life” itself, it is the only “natural factor” capable of converting statistical organizations which are subject to natural law into “higher” or “unnatural” states, in opposition to the rule of entropy that runs throughout the inorganic realm. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Pages 178-181, Paras 371-381
How life produces complex organic systems from the inorganic we do not know, though we have direct experience of how the psyche does it. Life therefore has a specific law of its own which cannot be deduced from the known physical laws of nature. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Pages 178-181, Paras 371-381
Just as, in its lower reaches, the psyche loses itself in the organic-material substrate, so in its upper reaches it resolves itself into a “spiritual” form about which we know as little as we do about the functional basis of instinct. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Pages 178-181, Paras 371-381.
If you want to be quite accurate, both statements, viz. that the psyche is founded upon an organic process of the body, or that the psyche is independent of the body, are unanswerable. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 159-161.
An exclusively causal view is permissible only in the realm of physical or inorganic processes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 310-311.
We distinguish an organic and an inorganic world, for example. The one is alive, the other is dead; the one has psyche, the other not. But who can guarantee that the same vital principle which is at work in the organic body is not active in the crystal? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 341-343.
Empirically considered, however, the archetype did not ever come into existence as a phenomenon of organic life, but entered into the picture with life itself. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 222
Miss Wolff: Two things. The plant is rooted to the spot and able to move in growth only, and then the respiratory system of the plant is different from that of the warm-blooded animals.
Prof Jung: Yes, a tree is unable to move in space except for the moment of growth, whereas the animal can move about. And all animals are parasites on plants, while the tree lives on the elements.
Or one can say that the plant is the kind of life which is nearest to the elements, a transition as it were, or the bridge, between the animal and inorganic nature. Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 1432-1434.