I began my career with repudiating everything that smelt of belief.
Jung: 142. In LN, Jung added here the following reflections:
“Since what my soul spoke about referred to nothing that I could see, nor could I see what my I suffered from (since this happened two months before the outbreak of the war.
I wanted to understand it all as personal experiences within me, and consequently I could neither understand nor believe it all, since my belief is weak.
And I believe that it is better in our time if belief is weak.
We have outgrown that childhood where mere belief was the most suitable means to bring men to what is good and reasonable.
Therefore if ·we wanted to have a strong belief again today, we would thus return to that earlier childhood.
But we have so much knowledge and such a thirst for knowledge in us that we need knowledge more than belief.
But the strength of belief would hinder us from attaining knowledge.
Belief certainly may be something strong, but it is empty, and too little of the whole man can be involved, if our life with God is grounded only on belief.
Should we simply believe first and foremost?
That seems too cheap to me.
Men who have understanding should not just believe, but should wrestle for knowledge to the best of their ability.
Belief is not everything, but neither is knowledge. Belief does not give us the security and the wealth of knowing.
Desiring knowledge sometimes takes away too much belief. Both must strike a balance. / But it is also dangerous to believe too much, because today everyone has to find his own way and encounters in himself a beyond full of strange and mighty things .
He could easily take everything literally with too much belief and would be nothing but a lunatic.
The childishness of belief breaks down in the face of our present necessities.
We need differentiating knowledge to clear up the confusion which the discovery of the soul has brought in.
Therefore it is perhaps much better to await better knowledge before one accepts things all too believingly” (pp. 470- 71).
In Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, he wrote: “I think, belief should be replaced by understanding” (CW B, § 356) .
On October 5, 1945, he wrote to Victor White:
“I began my career with repudiating everything that smelt of belief” (Ann Conrad Lammers and Adrian Cunningham, eds., The Jung-White Letters [London: Routledge/ Philemon Series, 2007], p. 6). 228-229
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog