Carl Jung on “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
“Love thy neighbour” is wonderful, since we then have nothing to do about ourselves; but when it is a question of “love thy neighbour as thyself” we are no longer so sure, for we think it would be egoism to love ourselves.
There was no need to preach “love thyself” to people in olden times, because they did so as a matter of course.
But how is it nowadays?
It would do us good to take this thing somewhat to heart, especially the phrase “as thyself.”
How can I love my neighbour if I do not love myself?
How can we be altruistic if we do not treat ourselves decently?
But if we treat ourselves decently, if we love ourselves, we make discoveries, and then we see what we are and what we should love.
There is nothing for it but to put our foot into the serpent’s mouth.
He who cannot love can never transform the serpent, and then nothing is changed. ~Carl Jung, Psychological Reflections, Page 249.
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Because I also want my being other, I must become a Christ. I am made into Christ, I must suffer it. Thus the redeeming blood flows. Through the self-sacrifice my pleasure is changed and goes above into its higher principle. Love is sighted, but pleasure is blind. Both principles are one in the symbol of the flame. The principles strip themselves of human form. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 254.
Great is he who is in love, since love is the present act of the great creator, the present moment of the becoming and lapsing of the world. Mighty is he who loves. But whoever distances himself from love, feels himself powerful. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 253.
If you go to thinking, take your heart with you. If you go to love, take your head with you. Love is empty without thinking, thinking hollow without love. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 253.
You say the Christian God is unequivocal, he is love. But what is more ambiguous than love? Love is the way of life, but your love is only on the way of life if you have a left and a right. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 244.
I too was afraid, since we had forgotten that God is terrible. Christ taught God is love. But you should know that love is also terrible. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 235.
It is submission enough, amply enough, if we subjugate ourselves to our self. The work of redemption is always first to be done on ourselves, if one dare utter such a great word. This work cannot be done without love for ourselves. Must it be done at all? Certainly not, if one can endure our given condition and does not feeling need of redemption. The tiresome feeling of needing redemption can finally become too much for one. Then one seeks to rid oneself of it and thus enters into the work of redemption. ~Carl Jung; The Red Book; Page 338.
The beginning of all things is love, but the being of things is life. ~Carl Jung; The Red Book; Page 327.
But the spirit of the depths had gained this power, because I had spoken to my soul during 25 nights in the desert and I had given her all my love and submission. But during the 25 days, I gave all my love and submission to things, to men, and to the thoughts of this time. I went into the desert only at night. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 238.
Whoever is in love is a full and overflowing vessel, and awaits the giving. Whoever is in fore thinking is deep and hollow and awaits fulfillment. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 253.
The prophet loved God, and this sanctified him. But Salome did not love God, and this profaned her. But the prophet did not love Salome, and this profaned him. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 248.
I am no longer alone with myself, and I can only artificially recall the scary and beautiful feeling of solitude. This is the shadow side of the fortune of love. ~Carl Jung; ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Introduction, Page 196.
Not the power of the flesh, but of love, should be broken for the sake of life, since life stands above love. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 326.
Salome loves me, do I love her? I hear wild music, a tambourine, a sultry moonlit night, the bloody-staring head of the holy one—fear seizes me. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 264.
Who exhausts the mystery of love? …
There are those who love men, and those who love the souls of men, and those who love their own soul. Such a one is Philemon, the host of the Gods. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 315.
What seeks to distance you from Christianity and its holy rule of love are the dead, who could find no peace in the Lord since their uncompleted work has followed them. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Pages 297.
However, just as Christ brought back human sacrifice and the eating of the sacrificed, all this happened to him and not to his brother, since Christ placed above it the highest law of love, so that no brother would come to harm as a result, but so that all could rejoice in the restoration. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Pages 297.
I am no longer alone with myself, and I can only artificially recall the scary and beautiful feeling of solitude. This is the shadow side of the fortune of love. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Introduction, Page 196.
Your awe-inspiring life shows how everyone would have to take their own life into their own hands, faithful to their own essence and their own love. ~Philemon to the “Shade” [Christ], The Red Book, Page 356.
Good and evil unite in the growth of the tree. In their divinity life and love stand opposed. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 351.
May love be subject to torment, but not life. As long as love goes pregnant with life, it should be respected; but if it has given birth to life from itself it has turned into an empty sheath and expires into transience. ~Carl Jung to his Ego, Liber Novus, Page 327.
I speak against the mother who bore me, I separate myself from the bearing womb. I speak no more for the sake of love, but for the sake of life. ~Carl Jung to his Ego, Liber Novus, Page 327.
My pleasure is dead and turned to stone, because I did not love Salome. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 250, Draft, Footnote 198.
But who can withstand fear when the divine intoxication and madness comes to him? Love, soul, and God are beautiful and terrible. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 238.
But I loved my God, and took him to the house of men, since I was convinced that he also really lived as a fantasy, and should therefore not be left behind, wounded and sick. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 283.
Since I love the God and do not want to leave him. Only he who loves the God can make him fall, and the God submits to his vanquisher and nestles in his hand and dies in the heart of him who loves him and promises him birth. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 286.
My God, I love you as a mother loves the unborn whom she carries in her heart. Grow in the egg of the East, nourish yourself from my love, drink the juice of my life so that you will become a radiant God. We need your light, oh child. Since we go in darkness, light up our paths. May your light shine before us, may your fire warm the coldness of our life. We do not need your power but life. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 286.
If my God were not overpowering, neither would be my evil. But I want my God to be powerful and beyond all measure happy and lustrous. Only in this way do I love my God. And the luster of his beauty will also have me taste the very bottom of Hell. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 289.
There is a true love that does not concern itself with neighbors. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 244.
I must free my self from the God, since the God I experienced is more than love; he is also hate, he is more than beauty, he is also the abomination, he is more than wisdom, he is also meaninglessness, he is more than power, he is also powerlessness, he is more than omnipresence, he is also my creature. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 339.
I: “How can I love you? How do you come to this question? I see only one thing, you are Salome, a tiger, your hands are stained with the blood of the holy one. How should I love you?” ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 246.
E: “She loved the prophet who announced the new God to the world. She loved him, do you understand that? For she is my daughter.” ~Elijah to Carl Jung on Salome, Liber Novus, Page 246
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.
We must regenerate ourselves. But as the creation of a God is a creative act of highest love, the restoration of our human life signifies an act of the Below. This is a great and dark mystery. Man cannot accomplish this act solely by himself but is assisted by evil, which does it instead of man. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 291.
Great is he who is in love, since love is the present act of the great creator, the present moment of the becoming and lapsing of the world. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 253.
Mighty is he who loves. But whoever distances himself from love, feels himself powerful. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 253.
My God, I love you as a mother loves the unborn whom she carries in her heart. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 286.
Thus I saw that the lover survives, and that he is the one who unwittingly grants hospitality to the Gods. ~Carl Jung to Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 315
But my eyes were opened, and I saw that you are a lover of your soul, who anxiously and jealously guards its treasure. Carl Jung to Philemon, The Red Book, Page 315
Whoever is in love is a full and overflowing vessel, and awaits the giving. Whoever is in fore thinking is deep and hollow and awaits fulfillment. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 253.
Who exhausts the mystery of love? ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 315.
Could the longing for a god be a passion welling up from our darkest, instinctual nature, a passion unswayed by any outside influences, deeper and stronger perhaps than the love for a human person?” ~Carl Jung, CW 7, para 214.
Sooner or later it will be found that nothing really new happens in history. There could be talk of something really novel only if the unimaginable happened : if reason, humanity and love won a lasting victory. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 1356.
Why was that cruel immolation of the Son necessary if the anger of the “deus ultionum” is not hard to appease? One doesn’t notice much of the Father’s goodness and love during the tragic end of his Son. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 1539
Psychoanalysis is in essence a cure through love. ~Sigmund Freud – letter to Carl Jung (1906)
To a man the anima is the Mother of God who gives birth to the Divine Child. To a woman the animus is the Holy Spirit, the procreator. He is at once the light and the dark God — not the Christian God of Love who contains neither the Devil nor the Son. ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Pages 31-32.
Therefore, the very foundation of existence, the biological truth, is that each being is so interested in itself that it does love itself, thereby fulfilling the laws of its existence. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1477.
To love someone else is easy, but to love what you are, the thing that is yourself, is just as if you were embracing a glowing red-hot iron: it burns into you and that is very painful. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1473.
Therefore my formula: for the love of mankind and for the love of yourself-of mankind in yourself-create a devil. That is an act of devotion, I should say; you have to put something where there is nothing, for the sake of mankind. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1322.
A woman is oriented towards the animus because it is the son of the unknown father, the Old Sage, whom she never comes to know. This motive is hinted at in the Gnostic texts where Sophia in her madness loves the Great Father On the other hand a man does not know the mother of the anima. She may be personified, for example, in Sophia or the seven times veiled Isis. ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 30.
To a man the anima is the Mother of God who gives birth to the Divine Child. To a woman the animus is the Holy Spirit, the procreator. He is at once the light and the dark God — not the Christian God of Love who contains neither the Devil nor the Son. ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung; Pages 31-32.
It was then that I dedicated myself to service of the psyche. I loved it and hated it, but it was my greatest wealth. My delivering myself over to it, as it were, was the only way by which I could endure my existence and live it as fully as possible. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 192.
The woman is increasingly aware that love alone can give her full stature, just as the man begins to discern that spirit alone can endow his life with its highest meaning. Fundamentally, therefore, both seek a psychic relation to the other, because love needs the spirit, and the spirit love, for their fulfillment. ~Carl Jung; Contributions to Analytical Psychology; Page 185.
Why is psychology the youngest of the empirical sciences? Why have we not long since discovered the unconscious and raised up its treasure-house of eternal images? Simply because we had a religious formula for everything psychic — and one that is far more beautiful and comprehensive than immediate experience. Though the Christian view of the world has paled for many people, the symbolic treasure-rooms of the East are still full of marvels that can nourish for a long time to come the passion for show and new clothes. What is more, these images — are they Christian or Buddhist or what you will — are lovely, mysterious, and richly intuitive. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Pages 7-8.
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, CW 5, 253.
Love . . . is of fundamental importance in human life and . . . of far greater significance than the individual suspects. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Page 218.
Numerous mythological and philosophical attempts have been made to formulate and visualize the creative force which man knows only by subjective experience. To give but a few examples, I would remind the reader of the cosmogonic significance of Eros in Hesiod, and also of the Orphic figure of Phanes, the ‘Shining One,’ the first-born, the ‘Father of Eros.’ In Orphic terms, Phanes also denotes Priapos, a god of love, androgynous, and equal to the Theban Dionysus Lysios. The Orphic meaning of Phanes is the same as that of the Indian Kama, the God of love, which is also a cosmogonic principle. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, para. 198.
The procreative urge– which is how love must be regarded from the natural standpoint– remains the essential attribute of the God ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 87.
The language of religion defines God as “love,” there is always the great danger of confusing the love which works in man with the workings of God. ~Carl Jung; CW 5, Para. 98.
How am I to be creative? Nature knows only one answer to that: Through a child (the gift of love). ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 76.
