Carl Jung on why Prayers are very necessary

C.G. Jung Letters, Vol. 1: 1906-1950

Anonymous

Dear N. N., 10 September 1 943

Here I send you merely a greeting to tell you that I have understood your letter.

I have thought much about prayer.

It-prayers-are very necessary because it makes the Beyond we conjecture and think about an immediate reality, and transposes us into the duality of the ego and the dark Other.

One hears oneself speaking and can no longer deny that one has addressed “That.”

The question then arises:

What will become of Thee and of Me? of the transcendental Thou and the immanent I?

The way of the unexpected, not-to-be expected, opens, fearful and unavoidable, with hope of a propitious turn or a defiant “I will not perish under the will of God unless I myself will it too.”

Then only, so I feel, is God’s will made perfect.

Without me it is only his almighty will, a frightful fatality even in its grace, void of sight and hearing, void of knowledge for precisely that reason.

I go together with it, an immensely weighty milligram without which God had made his world in vain.

Best wishes,

Yours ever,

Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 338.