Carl Jung on Three and Time.
Children’s Dreams: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936-1940
Participant: The three Fates represent the coming into being and the fading away of what happens.
Professor Jung: In Mahayana Buddhism, you will find the Three as the center of the carnal world: a cock, a snake, and a pig.
The cock is lust, the snake envy, and the pig ignorance.
These three are the roots of the world, these are the three causes of what happens in the world.
This can be found in the so-called Kilkor Mandala, which has these three figures at its center.
At Friday’s lecture you heard about the visions of Mahasukha, and that he had three eyes to see the past, the present, and the future.
This shows that the Three stands in connection with time.
The Three is time, and time is always identical with the flow of energy.
We can conceive time only on the basis of movement.
There must be change to make time possible.
Proclus says: “Wherever there is creation, there is also time.”
The Neoplatonic god of creation is Chronos, that is, time.
This is the original form of Bergson’s idea of the durée créatrice.
Time has these two aspects: that which lies behind us, and that which lies ahead. Certain [American] Indians have only one word for time: day.
Pointing forward means tomorrow, pointing backward yesterday, and a movement downward today.
Threeness designates the course things take.
Time is identical with the course things take.
Time, as such, does not exist at all.
There is only the course things take, which we measure with the notion of time.
For primitive man, who is close to nature, the course of time is no abstraction.
For him there is only a then, a now, and a before.
He doesn’t have a watch, does he, on whose numbers he could read the time.
He completely exists in that stream of events, which is permanently flowing into a dark hole, which comes to us from a dark future, which flows through us, and sinks into eternal darkness behind us.
Primitive man has no history; there is no history before the grandfather, prehistory lies only about three generations back.
The primitive is most deeply impressed by this strange stream of events, however, coming from the tomorrow, flowing through the today, and sinking into the yesterday.
For him this is a directly experienced fact of life.
This continuity of events is also at the basis of the Chinese concept of nature, according to which everything happening at a given moment is happening exactly as it has to.
You will find this idea in the Book of Changes, the I Ching.
When I throw a handful of peas, they will roll in all directions.
Try to interpret this, and you will understand the importance of the moment.
If you practice such a method to some extent, you will see how remarkably well the meaning of the I Ching matches the psychological situation.
It is more than a façon de parler.
It is a highly remarkable fact that can also be proven by data from astrology—which is not just superstition, provided you have the necessary experience.
Astrology has to do with stars only insofar as the course of events is measured with the help of them.
Telepathic experiences also belong here.
Some smart alecks say it’s all nonsense, but most often they have never heard of such experiences, simply because this does not fit into their worldview.
All these phenomena of synchronicity—which are really striking once we pay attention to them—only mean that corresponding things are happening at the same moment.
This points to the substantiality of events in time.
It is an archaic experience such as that of expanded space.
We have seen that time has three aspects: past, present, and future.
The three snakes in our dream are probably a reference to time.
Originally time itself was depicted as a snake, as in the Zodiacal snake.
Religious heroes were often portrayed in connection with time.
In the Upanishads, too, Prajapati is the year, is Chronos, the creator of the world.
Christ is also the ecclesiastical year; in certain early Christian drawings he was depicted as a snake carrying the stars on its back—twelve stars representing the twelve disciples.
It is the time, the year with its twelve months.
Time symbolism also played a great role in the Mithras cult.
The figure of Aion usually stood at the main altar of the Mithras cult—he is a man with a lion’s head, enveloped by the Zodiacal snake, Zrvan akarana, meaning “boundless time.”
As you can see, there is ample evidence for the snake as a symbol of the passing of time.
In our dream, the child is told to go into this circle of snakes to transform herself.
The transformation is inevitable because she is stepping into the fire with the corruptible body.
In our rational thinking this would equal self-destruction, but the irrational meaning is: transformation to immortality. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dream Seminar, Pages 203-207.
The spirit of this time ~Carl Jung
If I speak in the spirit of this time, I must say:
no one and nothing can justify what I must proclaim to you.
Justification is superfluous to me, since I have no choice, but I must. I have learned that in addition to the
spirit of this time there is still another spirit at work, namely that which rules the depths of everything contemporary:
The spirit of this time would like to hear of use and value. I also thought this way, and my humanity still
thinks this way. But that other spirit forces me nevertheless to speak, beyond justification, use, and meaning.
Filled with human pride and blinded by the presumptuous spirit of the times, I long sought to hold that other
spirit away from me. But I did not consider that the spirit of the depths from time immemorial and for all the future
possesses a greater power than the spirit of this time, who changes with the generations.
The spirit of the depths has subjugated all pride and arrogance to the power of judgment. He took away my
belief in science, he robbed me of the joy of explaining and ordering things, and he let devotion to the ideals of this
time die out in me.
He forced me down to the last and simplest things.
The spirit of the depths took my understanding and all my knowledge and placed them at the service of the
inexplicable and the paradoxical.
He robbed me of speech and writing for everything that was not in his service, namely the melting together
of sense and nonsense, which produces the supreme meaning.
“This supreme meaning, this image of God, this melting together of the hot and the cold, that is you and only
you.”
But the spirit of the depths spoke to me:
“You are an image of the unending world, all the last mysteries of becoming and passing away live in you. If
you did not possess all this, how could you know?”
For the sake of my human weakness, the spirit of the depths gave me this word. Yet this word is also superfluous,
since I do not speak it freely; but because I must. I speak because the spirit robs me of joy and life if I do not
speak.
I am the serf who brings it and does not know what he carries in his hand. It would burn his hands if he did
not place it where his master orders him to lay it.
The spirit of our time spoke to me and said: “What dire urgency could be forcing you to speak all this?”
This was an awful temptation. I wanted to ponder what inner or outer bind could force me into this, and because
I found nothing that I could grasp, I was near to making one up.
But with this the spirit of our time had almost brought it about that instead of speaking, I was thinking again
about reasons and explanations.
But the spirit of the depths spoke to me and said:
“To understand a thing is a bridge and possibility of returning to the path. But to explain a matter is arbitrary
and sometimes even murder. Have you counted the murderers
among the scholars?”
But the spirit of this time stepped up to me and laid before me huge volumes which contained all my knowledge.
Their pages were made of ore, and a steel stylus had engraved inexorable words in them, and he pointed to
these inexorable words and spoke to me, and said: “What you speak, that is madness.”
It is true, it is true, what I speak is the greatness and intoxication and ugliness of madness.
But the spirit of the depths stepped up to me and said:
“What you speak is. The greatness is, the intoxication is, the undignified, sick, paltry dailiness is. It runs in all
the streets, lives in all the houses, and rules the day of all humanity. Even the eternal stars are commonplace. It is
the great mistress and the one essence of God. One laughs about it, and laughter, too, is. Do you believe, man of
this time, that laughter is lower than worship? Where is your measure, false measurer? The sum of life decides in
laughter and in worship, not your judgment.”
I must also speak the ridiculous. You coming men! You will recognize the supreme meaning by the fact that
he is laughter and worship, a bloody laughter and a bloody worship.
A sacrificial blood binds the poles. Those who know this laugh and worship in the same breath.
After this, however, my humanity approached me and said:
space, which had turned every living thing into ice. There stood a leaf-bearing but fruitless tree, whose leaves had
turned into sweet grapes full of healing juice through the working of the frost. So I picked some grapes and gave
them to a great waiting throng.
In reality; now, it was so: At the time when the great war broke out between the peoples of Europe, I found
myself in Scotland, compelled by the war to choose the fastest ship and the shortest route home. I encountered
the colossal cold that froze everything, I met up with the flood, the sea of blood, and found my barren tree
whose leaves the frost had transformed into a remedy. And I plucked the ripe fruit and gave it to you and I do not
know what I poured out for you, what bitter-sweet intoxicating drink, which left on your tongues an aftertaste of blood.
Believe me: It is no teaching and no instruction that I give you. On what basis should I presume to teach your
I give you news of the way of this man, but not of your own way. My path is not your path therefore I / cannot teach
you. The way is within us, but not in Gods, nor in teachings, nor in laws. Within us is the way, the truth, and the life.
Woe betide those who live by way of examples! Life is not with them. If you live according to an example,
you thus live the life of that example, but who should live your own life if not yourself. So live yourselves.
The signposts have fallen, unblazed trails lie before us.
Do not be greedy to gobble up the fruits of foreign fields. Do you not know that you yourselves are the fertile
acre which bears everything that avails you.
Yet who today knows this? Who knows the way to the eternally fruitful climes of the soul? You seek the way
through mere appearances, you study books and give ear to all kinds of opinion. What good is all that? There is only
one way and that is your way.
You seek the path. I warn you away from my own. It can also be the wrong way for you.
May each go his own way. I will be no savior, no lawgiver, no master teacher unto you. You are no longer
little children.
Giving laws, wanting improvements, making things easier, has all become wrong and evil. May each one seek
out his own way. The way leads to mutual love in community.
Men will come to see and feel the similarity and commonality of their ways.
Laws and teachings held in common compel people to solitude, so that they may escape the pressure of undesirable
contact, but solitude makes people hostile and venomous.
Therefore give people dignity and let each of them stand apart, so that each may find his own fellowship and
love it.
Power stands against power, contempt against contempt, love against love.
Give humanity dignity, and trust that life will find the better way.
The one eye of the Godhead is blind, the one ear of the Godhead is deaf, the order of its being is crossed by
chaos.
So be patient with the crippledness of the world and do not overvalue its consummate beauty. Carl Jung,
The Red Book, The Way of What is to Come, Pages 229-231.