[Carl Jung’s mother and the “Sorcerer’s Box.”]
I always thought my mother’s reaction to the telephone was quite right.
She was born in a time when there were not telephones, and I was already a young student when I became acquainted with it.
She never would go to the sorcerer’s box, as she called it, but once we persuaded her to come when her cousin was telephoning, and she put her ear to the receiver looking hard into that hole, and said, “Yes, yes, I hear you but I cannot see you.!”
Her cousin wanted to tell her something, but my mother wouldn’t listen, and finally she smashed the receiver into the box and said she never would telephone again.
This is a sound, natural reaction: it is not right that we should hear somebody speaking and not see them: that is organized madness.
We call those people crazy who suggest that they hear voices out of objects, but that is what we are doing; it is unnatural.
Man is not up to it and so he loses himself sure enough. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 589-590.
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