Some Great Carl Jung Quotations XXXII
We know that the mask of the unconscious is not rigid—it reflects the face we turn towards it. Hostility
lends it a threatening aspect, friendliness softens its features. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 29
The experience of the unconscious is a personal secret communicable only to very few, and that with
difficulty. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 61
The archetype is, so to speak, an “eternal” presence, and it is only a question of whether it is
perceived by the conscious mind or not. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 329
There is always an attraction between conscious mind and projected content. Generally it takes the form
of a fascination. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 436.
So long as a content remains in the projected state it is inaccessible. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 555.
I may define “self” as the totality of the conscious and unconscious psyche, but this totality
transcends our vision; it is a veritable lapis invisibilitatis [stone of invisibility]. In so far as the
unconscious exists it is not definable; its existence is a mere postulate and nothing whatever
can be predicated as to its possible contents. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 247.
As a doctor it is my task to help the patient to cope with life. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 32
The patient must be alone if he is to find out what it is that supports him when he can no longer support himself.
Only this experience can give him an indestructible foundation. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 32
The labours of the doctor as well as the quest of the patient are directed towards that hidden and
as yet unmanifest “whole” man, who is at once the greater and the future man. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 6
But no matter how much the parents and grandparents may have sinned against the child, the
man who is really adult will accept these sins as his own condition which has to be
reckoned with. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 152
Our psychic prehistory is in truth the spirit of gravity, which needs steps and ladders because, unlike
the disembodied airy intellect, it cannot fly at will. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 79
Experience of the opposites has nothing whatever to do with intellectual insight or with
empathy. It is more what we would call fate. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 23.
Without the experience of the opposites there is no experience of wholeness and hence no inner
approach to the sacred figures. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 24.
Since the psychological condition of any unconscious content is one of potential reality, characterized
by the polar opposites of “being” and “non-being,” it follows that the union of opposites must play
a decisive role in the alchemical process. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 557
It has yet to be understood that the Mysterium magnum [the great mystery] is not only an actuality but is
first and foremost rooted in the human psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 13.
The man who does not know this from his own experience may be a most learned theologian, but he has no idea of
religion and still less of education. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 13.
Hence a religion becomes inwardly impoverished when it loses or waters down its paradoxes; but
their multiplication enriches because only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending
the fullness of life. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 18
Non-ambiguity and non-contradiction are one-sided and thus unsuited to express
the incomprehensible. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 18
The alchemist related himself not only to the unconscious but directly to the very substance
which he hoped to transform through the power of imagination. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 394
However remote alchemy may seem to us today, we should not underestimate its cultural
importance for the Middle Ages. Today is the child of the Middle Ages and it cannot
disown its parents. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 432
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
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
Since all the essentials [in Alchemy] are expressed in metaphors they can be communicated only to the intelligent, who possess the gift of
comprehension. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 423.
They [Alchemists] rarely have pupils, and of direct tradition there seems to have been very
little, nor is there much evidence of any secret societies or the like. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 422