Carl Jung: Even the saints cast a Shadow
Letters of C. G. Jung: Volume 2, 1951-1961
Dear Fraulein Kiener, 14 May 1955
In the Christ symbol the conquest of evil is suggested by the descent into hell and the breaking open of its gates.
But nobody has ever heard that the devil departed this life afterwards; on the contrary, the authentic New Testament view is that after the thousand-year reign of Christ he shall be loosed again on earth in all his youthful freshness, in the form of Antichrist.
Also, as you rightly point out, a strong light is the best shadow-projector, provided that there is something to cast a shadow.
Even the saints cast a shadow.
We do not know whether there is more good than evil or whether the good is stronger.
We can only hope that the good will predominate.
If good is identified with constructiveness, there is some probability that life will go on in a more or less endurable form; but if destructiveness were to prevail, the world would surely have done itself to death long ago.
As that hasn’t happened yet, we may suppose that the positive exceeds the negative.
Hence the optimistic assumption of psychotherapy that conscious realization accentuates the good more than the overshadowing evil.
Becoming conscious reconciles the opposites and thus creates a higher third.
With best regards,
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 253-254.
Carl Jung on Saint Paul
Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self
The idea of angels, archangels, “principalities and powers” in St. Paul, the archons of the Gnostics, the heavenly hierarchy of Dionysius the Areopagite, all come from the perception of the relative autonomy of the archetypes. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Page 66, Para 104.
Please give X. my best greetings and tell him-because his love is all too easily injured-he should meditate on Paul’s words in the Epistle to the Corinthians: “Love endureth all things.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 120-121.
These signs appear in Gnosticism, St. Paul’s sayings are undoubtedly connected with Gnosticism. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8March1935, Pages 199.
I don’t believe in the tiger who was finally converted to vegetarianism and ate only apples. My solace was always Paul, who did not deem it beneath his dignity to admit he bore a thorn in the flesh. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 276-277.
Paul for instance was not converted to Christianity by intellectual or philosophical endeavor or by a belief, but by the force of his immediate experience. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 183.
Paul for instance was not converted to Christianity by intellectual or philosophical endeavor or by a belief, but by the force of his immediate experience. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 183.
The Christian Church has hitherto. . . [recognized] Christ as the one and only God-man.
But the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, the third Divine Person, in man, brings about a Christification of many, and the question then arises whether these many are all complete God-men. . . .
It is well to remind ourselves of St. Paul and his split consc iousness: on one side he felt he was the apostle directly called and enlightened by God, and, on the other side, a sinful man who could not pluck out the “thorn in the flesh” and rid himself of the Satanic angel who plagued him.
That is to say even the enlightened person remains what he is, and is never more than his own limited ego before the One who dwells within him, whose form has no knowable boundaries, who encompasses him on all sides, fathomless as the abysms of the earth and vast as the sky. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 470.
St. Paul’s concept of ayvoia (ignorantia) may not be too far removed from dyiwia, since both mean the initial, unconscious condition of man. ~Carl Jung, Aion, Pages 191-192.
As St. Paul said, “I am redeemed and am freed from the law.”
The earliest source about the Resurrection is St. Paul, and he is no eyewitness, but he strongly emphasizes the absolute and vital importance of resurrection as well as the authenticity of the reports. (Cf. I Cor. 15:14 and 15:5″.)
Saint Hildegard of Bingen.
Psychology and Religion: West and East (The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 11)
Hildegarde von Bingen, a significant personality quite apart from her mysticism, expresses herself about her central vision in a quite similar way.
“Since my childhood,” she says, “I always see a light in my soul, but not with the outer eyes, nor through the thoughts of my heart; neither do the five outer senses take part in this vision. . . . The light I perceive is not of a local kind, but is much brighter than the cloud which bears the sun. I cannot distinguish in it height, breadth, or length. . . . What I see or learn in such a vision stays long in my memory.
I see, hear, and know at the same time, and learn what I know in the same moment. … I cannot recognize any sort of form in this light, although I sometimes see in it another light that is known to me as the living light. . . . While I am enjoying the spectacle of this light, all sadness and sorrow disappear from my memory …”
I know a few individuals who are familiar with this phenomenon from personal experience.
As far as I have ever been able to understand it, the phenomenon seems to have to do with an acute condition of consciousness as intensive as it is abstract, a ” detached ” consciousness (see below), which, as Hildegarde pertinently remarks, brings up to consciousness regions of psychic events ordinarily covered with darkness.
The fact that, in connection with this, the general bodily sensations disappear, shows that their specific energy has been withdrawn from them, and has apparently gone toward heightening the clearness of consciousness.
As a rule, the phenomenon is spontaneous, coming and going at its own initiative.
Its effect is astonishing in that it almost always brings about a solution of psychic complications, and thereby frees the inner personality from emotional and imaginary entanglements, creating thus a unity of being, which is universally felt as a ” release
.
The achievement of such a symbolic unity is beyond the power of the conscious will because, in this case, the conscious is partisan.
Its opponent is the collective unconscious which does not understand the language of the conscious.
Therefore it is necessary to have the “magically” effective symbol which contains those primitive analogies that speak to the unconscious.
The unconscious can only be reached and expressed by the symbol, which is the reason why the process of individuation can never do without the symbol.
The symbol is, on the one hand, the primitive expression of the unconscious, while, on the other hand, it is an idea corresponding to the highest intuition produced by consciousness.
The oldest mandala known to me, is a Paleolithic so-called ” sun-wheel recently discovered in Rhodesia.
It is likewise founded on the principle of four.
Things reaching so far back in human history naturally touch upon the deepest layers of the unconscious and make it possible to grasp the latter where conscious speech shows itself to be quite impotent.
Such things cannot be thought out but must grow again from the forgotten depths, if they are to express the supreme presentiments of consciousness and the loftiest intuitions of the spirit.
Coming from these depths they can unite the uniqueness of present-day consciousness with the age-old past of life. ~Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower.
Image: St. Hildegard of Bingen
