Carl Jung: Memories and his own subjectivity
To Cary F. Baynes
Dear Cary, 24 January 1958
Thank you very much for your kind and beautiful letter.
As I am continuously in doubt about my subjective material it has given me a bit more confidence in my actual work: it consists in the most peculiar and to me unexpected fact that I try to work out the history of my early days, seen as I have seen it in my youth without knowing what it meant and unable then to express it in words.
Now I have the memories and the words but I am continuously disturbed by my own subjectivity.
It is curious how one has an absolutely certain feeling of value on the one side and on the other an equally certain doubt about its value.
Hoping you all right,
I remain,
Yours very cordially,
C.G. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 410-411
Introduction to Memories, Dreams and Reflections
The first words to the Introduction to Memories, Dreams and Reflections:
He looked at his own Soul
with a Telescope. What seemed
all irregular, he saw and
shewed to be beautiful
Constellations; and he added
to the Consciousness hidden
worlds within worlds. ~Coleridge, Notebooks
Carl Jung: Memories and his own subjectivity
To Cary F. Baynes
Dear Cary, 24 January 1958
Thank you very much for your kind and beautiful letter.
As I am continuously in doubt about my subjective material it has given me a bit more confidence in my actual work: it consists in the most peculiar and to me unexpected fact that I try to work out the history of my early days, seen as I have seen it in my youth without knowing what it meant and unable then to express it in words.
Now I have the memories and the words but I am continuously disturbed by my own subjectivity.
It is curious how one has an absolutely certain feeling of value on the one side and on the other an equally certain doubt about its value.
Hoping you all right,
I remain,
Yours very cordially,
C.G. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 410-411
Memories, Dreams, and Reflections – Quotations
Carl Jung and “Memories, Dreams and Reflections’ – YouTube
Carl Jung: Memories, Dreams and Reflections
To Western man, the meaninglessness of a merely static universe is unbearable. He must assume that it has meaning. The Oriental does not need to make this assumption; rather, he himself embodies it. Whereas the Occidental feels the need to complete the meaning of the world, the Oriental strives for the fulfilment of the meaning in man, stripping the world and existence from himself (Buddha). I would say that both are right. Western man seems predominantly extraverted, Eastern man predominantly introverted. The former projects the meaning and considers that it exists in objects; the latter feels the meaning in himself. But the meaning is both within and without. ~Carl Jung; MDR; Page 317.
Then, to my intense confusion, it occurred to me that I was actually two different persons. One of them was the schoolboy who could not grasp algebra and was far from sure of himself; the other was important, a high authority, a man not to be trifled with, as powerful and influential as a manufacturer. The ‘other’ was an old man who lived in the eighteenth century, wore buckled shoes and a white wig and went driving in a fly with high, concave rear wheels between which the box was suspended on springs and leather straps. ~Carl Jung; MDR; Pages 33-34.
Leaving aside the rational arguments against any certainty in these matters, we must not forget that for most people it means a great deal to assume that their lives will have an indefinite continuity beyond their present existence. They live more sensibly, feel better, and are more at peace. One has centuries, one has an inconceivable period of time at one’s disposal. What then is the point of this senseless mad rush? ~Carl Jung; MDR; Page 301.
I do not know for what reason the universe has come into being, and shall never know. Therefore I must drop this question as a scientific or intellectual problem. But if an idea about it is offered to me – in dreams or in mythic traditions – I ought to take note of it. I even ought to build up a conception on the basis of such hints, even though it will forever remain a hypothesis that I know cannot be proved. ~Carl Jung; MDR; Pages 301-302.
It is the individuals’ task to differentiate himself from all the others and stand on his own feet. All collective identities…interfere with the fulfillment of this task. Such collective identities are crutches for the lame, shields for the timid, beds for the lazy, nurseries for the irresponsible… ~Carl Jung; MDR
Our age has shifted all emphasis to the here and now, and thus brought about a daemonization of man and his world. The phenomenon of dictators and all the misery they have wrought springs from the fact that man has been robbed of transcendence by the shortsightedness of the super-intellectuals. Like them, he has fallen a victim to unconsciousness. But man’s task is the exact opposite: to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious
. Neither should he persist in his unconsciousness, nor remain identical with the unconscious elements of his being, thus evading his destiny, which is to create more and more consciousness. As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. It may even be assumed that just as the unconscious affects us, so the increase in our consciousness affects the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 326.
Wherever there is a reaching down into innermost experience, into the nucleus of personality, most people are overcome by fright, and many run away. Such was the case with this theologian. I am of course aware that theologians are in a more difficult situation than others. On the one hand they are closer to religion, but on the other hand they are more bound by church and dogma.
The risk of inner experience, the adventure of the spirit, is in any case alien to most human beings. The possibility that such experience might have psychic reality is anathema to them. All very well if it has a supernatural or at least a “historical” foundation. But psychic? Face to face with this question, the patient will often show an unsuspected but profound contempt for the psyche. ~Carl Jung; MDR; Pages 141-142.
Archetypal statements are based upon instinctive preconditions and have nothing to do with reason; they are neither rationally grounded nor can they be banished by rational arguments. They have always been part of the world scene representations collectives, as Levy-Bruhl rightly called them. Certainly the ego and its will have a great part to play in life; but what the ego wills is subject in the highest degree to the interference, in ways of which the ego is usually unaware, of the autonomy and numinosity of archetypal processes. Practical consideration of these processes is the essence of religion, insofar as religion can be approached from a psychological point of view. ~Carl Jung MDR; Page 353
When I was working on the stone tablets, I became aware of the fateful links between me and my ancestors. I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family, which is passed on from parents to children.
It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished. It is difficult to determine whether these questions are more of a personal or more of a general (collective) nature. It seems to me that the latter is the case. A collective problem, if not recognized as such, always appears as a personal problem, and in individual cases may give the impression that something is out of order in the realm of the personal psyche.
The personal sphere is indeed disturbed, but such disturbances need not be primary; they may well be secondary, the consequence of an insupportable change in the social atmosphere. The cause of disturbance is, therefore, not to be sought in the personal surroundings, but rather in the collective situation. Psychotherapy has hitherto taken this matter far too little into account. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams, Reflections; Pages 233-234.
Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 4.
This expression, “God’s world,” may sound sentimental to some ears. For me it did not have this character at all. To “God’s world” belonged everything superhuman dazzling light, the darkness of the abyss, the cold impassivity of infinite space and time, and the uncanny grotesqueness of the irrational world of chance. “God,” for me, was everything and anything but “edifying.” ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 72.
Jung’s visions not in Memories
