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Carl Jung: Children’s Dreams Seminar
Around the eighth year there is a transition to ego consciousness, as we have already seen in previous children’s dreams. The child breaks away from the extremely close relatedness with the familial milieu; he has already acquired a certain experience of the world, and the libido, which had up to then been tied to the parents, detaches itself from them and often is introverted. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 323.
We must not think that dreams necessarily have a benevolent intention. Nature is kind and generous, but also absolutely cruel. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Pages 159-160.
This is the secret of dreams—that we do not dream, but rather we are dreamt. We are the object of the dream, not its maker. – Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 159.
The mental state of the first years of life does not differ from the collective unconscious; it is a world rich of images. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 182.
The child has to step out of this primordial world, to be able to really enter into life. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 184.
I am all for sending kids to public elementary schools, therefore, by no means to exclusive private schools, so that they can ingest the necessary dirt. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 213.
The latter [Madame de Guyon] a woman of the highest spiritual eroticism and of a strangely deep wisdom. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Pages 320-32
Men are rarely split off from sexuality, because it is too evident for them, but what they lack is Eros, the relational function. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 313.
Around the eighth year there is a transition to ego consciousness, as we have already seen in previous children’s dreams. The child breaks away from the extremely close relatedness with the familial milieu; he has already acquired a certain experience of the world, and the libido, which had up to then been tied to the parents, detaches itself from them and often is introverted. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 323.
The mental state of the first years of life does not differ from the collective unconscious; it is a world rich of images. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 182.
The child has to step out of this primordial world, to be able to really enter into life. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 184.
Men are rarely split off from sexuality, because it is too evident for them, but what they lack is Eros, the relational function. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 313.
The relational function with the unconscious must not be transformed into a relational function with the conscious world! ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 317.
In the Old Testament it says: “Your old men shall dream dreams.” They had a wise anima who could open their inner ears. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 319.
Moreover, the unconscious has a different relation to death than we ourselves have. For example, it is very surprising in which way dreams anticipate death. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 343.
The four always expresses the coming into being of what is essentially human, the emergence of human consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 367.
Around the birth of Christ, there follows the Age of Pisces. Pisces is a water sign. That is probably why we have to look for the spirit in the water, in life’s flow of images, and in the unconscious. And now we are on the threshold of the sign of Aquarius. The air element is assigned to it, and it is symbolized by an angel or a human being, instead of an animal. Here the spirit is meant to become something subtle again, and man to become who he is. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Pages 354-355.
But there’s absolutely no way around it, because we can be sure: the simpler a dream is, the more we are confronted with general and fundamental problems. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 368.
In religious instruction, we more and more refrain from making children acquainted with these images, and instead offer them moral teaching, in which the devil is ignored altogether. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 369.
The infantile soul is no tabula rasa at all, as presumed by modern psychology, but the ancient images are always already there a priori. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 369.
Thus the devil is a preliminary stage of individuation, in the negative it has the same goal as the divine quaternity, namely, wholeness. Although it is still darkness, it already carries the germ of light within itself. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 372.
If a primordial image forces itself onto consciousness, we have to fill it with as much substance as possible to grasp the whole scope of its meaning. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 368.
The division into four is a principium individuationis; it means to become one or a whole in the face of the many figures that carry the danger of destruction in them. It is what overcomes death and can bring about rebirth. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 372.
Nobody will ever become conscious if he does not hit his head on something. Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 377.
Only when we bear our situation and accept our depression will it be possible for us to change internally. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 373.
As the unconscious has a tendency to project itself into the outer world, there is a danger that one might get dissipated in the environment, instead of staying with oneself. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 373.
In the process of individuation, too, new contents can announce themselves in this devouring form and darken consciousness; this is experienced as a depression, that is to say, as being pulled downward. – ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 373.
When the unconscious intrudes into spaces of consciousness, it is automatically split into its pairs of opposites. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 408.
The fact that deity and devil belong together also plays a great role in alchemy. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 373.
The real purpose of the religious ceremonial is to revivify. It was created to lift man out of the ordinary, to disturb his habitual ways, that he may become aware of things outside. ~Carl Jung, Dreams Seminar, Page 399.
Children also contain a future personality within themselves, the being that they will be in the following years. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 50.
There are good circumstances when a good smack, morally or physically, is the most effective way to counter the great fascination of the images. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 184
Four flows emanate from the navel, two air- and two blood-vessels, so to speak, through which the growing child receives its food, the blood, and the pneuma. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Pages 365-366.
The children already live in a tomorrow, only they are not aware of it. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 50.
It is no sign of culture if a woman is only a daughter, or only a pregnant mother, or only a whore. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 321
The dream represents that tendency of the unconscious that aims at a change of the conscious attitude. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 5.
The color blue cannot be found in alchemy, but it is found in the East, where it takes the place of black and actually represents a color of the underworld. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 366.
The more we busy ourselves with dreams, the more we shall see such coincidences–chances. Remember that the oldest Chinese scientific book is about the possible chances of life. ~Carl Jung, Dreams Seminar, Page 45
When someone is able to perform the art of touching on the archetypal, he can play on the souls of people like on the strings of a piano. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dream Seminar, Page 150
For there is no coming into being and dying but in time. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dream Seminar, Page 101.
Nature itself speaks in such dreams. The wisdom of the child is the wisdom of nature, and it needs the utmost cunning to follow nature. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dream Seminar, Page 136.
The snake touches on the deepest instincts of man, so that from time immemorial one thought it to be in possession of great secrets. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dream Seminar, Pages 248-251.
When you dream of a savage bull, or a lion, or a wolf pursuing you, this means it wants to come to you. You would like to split it off, you experience it as something alien, but it just becomes all the more dangerous. The best stance would be: ‘Please, come and devour me.” ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 19.
The flow of creation and destruction never ends. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 328.
Indians have no thoughts that would prevent consciousness from functioning, no devils that could devastate consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 409.
Thus, the alchemical process also begins with such a division into the four elements, by which the body is put back into its primordial state and so can undergo transformation. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams, Page 367.
If a fatal destiny is awaiting us, we are already seized by what will lead us to this destiny in the dream, in the same way it will overcome us in reality. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams, Page 159.
The human soul is something we only educate, but we are not interested at all in what it is! —Well, this is a critical age insofar as the child approaches school between the age of five and six. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 432
Yes, the lice are vampires, often also spirits. When a child is born in the Caucasus Mountains, they take a louse from the grandfather’s head and plant it on the head of the grandchild. By this the soul has been transferred, because in the primitive view the spirits always accompany us, buzz around us like bats or like vampires; they suck the blood from us. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 465
It is surely her duty to feed the little pigs, to take care, that is, of these very primitive needs, or, in other words: sacrifices have to be made also to Aphrodite and the chthonic gods in the hierarchy of the soul powers, because otherwise they can make themselves felt in a very unpleasant way. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 459
Yes, this is the deity. Ignatius of Loyola, too, had such visions in which a globe appeared. This is the all-round, cosmic being, the world soul, the rotundum, the round one. And what would you say about the fact that the ball in the dream is red? ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 441
A first step toward that has already been made; nevertheless, the child is still detained by a force effective in the unconscious, which probably does not originate in the child’s own soul alone but creates an oppressive situation around him. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 428
Such events do not take place naturally but are caused by the atmosphere resulting from the unresolved unconscious of the parents. A thick wall separates these persons from their own souls, and the child then falls into it, is born out of this atmosphere and then bewitched by it, possessed by the darkness of which the parents have never wanted to be aware—and also have not been able to. Such dreams result from such conditions. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 422-423
An anima type would probably develop, a woman who always knows how to twist the father round her little finger so that he opens his fatherly arms and protects the poor little soul from the world. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 418-419
What has happened by this? Well, look for us the child is actually unity par excellence. With the eaten tiger, however, conflict moves into the soul of the child. The conflict had hitherto still been in the unconscious, but now it jumps at the child’s consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 416
Above there is the anima rationalis, to use the medieval term, and below the anima vegetativa, only life as such. The moment it becomes conscious, the two aspects will reveal themselves. So what enters into the soul of the child? A whole tiger or a half tiger? ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 416
In his book The “Soul” of the Primitive, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl gives a number of examples as evidence of the mystical view of primitives that certain humans and animals are actually one and the same. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 399
The child has been told a truth, the absolute, basic truth of humankind, for which there is no proof, of course. The proof lies in the truth itself. It is expressed by the soul and by what human beings have thought since time immemorial. These are the truths that live forever. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 378.
Thus our dream not only concerns the soul of this single child, but it pertains to much more, namely, to her parents, siblings, and the whole environment. I have to add that the child is from a German family, and that the father was very active politically. So there is no doubt that there is a great emphasis on the environment, and when exciting things happen there the child will be forced to take part in the emotional state of the family. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 371-372
The infantile soul is no tabula rasa at all, as presumed by modern psychology, but the ancient images are always already there a priori ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 369
The ancient historical images, so immensely attractive to children’s fantasy, no longer play any role at all today. This is a loss for our souls, because we don’t give the soul a language to give expression to its contents. In religious instruction, we more and more refrain from making children acquainted with these images, and instead offer them moral teaching, in which the devil is ignored altogether. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 369
Snakes, and particularly red ones, are not only spirits of the dead, but can also represent emotional states, as you have heard in the paper. They stand for the heat of the soul, the fire of passion, and thus represent a more intense stage of development. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 365
The gray mouse is, as Mrs. Brunner has mentioned, an animal that stands in connection to the darkness of the soul; it represents that fleetingly glimpsed, dark nature of man that makes itself unpleasantly felt from time to time, above all at night. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 363
Mrs. Brunner has given you enough evidence that the mouse is a soul animal. She has also quite correctly pointed to the transparency of the mouse and interpreted it as spirituality. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 363
We can assume that the closeness of death has already cast its shadow on the soul of the child, and has raised questions in her such as: “Why did it come into being in the first place, if it will end anyway?” Or: “Why did it come into being? For what reason?” ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 361
We can perhaps draw only one conclusion from the amplification for the inner situation of the girl: that her soul is thirsty—thirsty for living water. And this dream originates in the living water, only she is not able to grasp it. That is why she confides in the father: maybe he can grasp it. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 357
In our amplifications to the mouse we have heard that the soul leaves the body at night in the form of a mouse, to quench its thirst; it is said that in most cases this is the soul of a girl, and that if the mouse does not come back, the girl will die. In our dream, the girl sees her soul mouse, but it does not turn toward her. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 356
Although all the animals that appear in it are considered souls of the dead, they stand in logical connection with the inner development. What is alarming is only the absolute completeness of the archetypal vision, and this at an age when the archetypal images should be covered and suppressed by her own perceptions and experiences. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 356
We know that the little girl died one year after this dream. The dream does not reveal anything pathological to me, it has a lysis. Although all the animals that appear in it are considered souls of the dead, they stand in logical connection with the inner development. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 356
So this is a reversed Bardo Thödol, beginning with what is lowest and smallest, to bring all creatures home to the blessedness of the soul. The Tibetan teachings about the dead, however, incessantly remind us: “Realize that you are looking at yourself. This is you. Everything depends on your reality and that image becoming one.” ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 356
Through greed the soul becomes entangled in the world, it becomes earthen, dark, and evil. It is touched by the objects and the humans, and everything is gray and dark. Page 355
And about the final transformation: “When the soul has to realize that no creature at all can come into the Kingdom of God, it begins to feel itself, goes its own way and no longer seeks God. Only then does it die its highest death. In this death the soul loses all desire, all capability of thinking, all form, and is deprived of all essence. Now at last it finds itself in the highest primordial image, in which God lives and is active, where He is His own kingdom.” Here the soul has found out that it itself is the “Kingdom of God.” ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 355
The lowest of these mandalas is the earth lotus. It corresponds to the gray mouse. It is the place of the world-bound souls. In its center there is the lingam, colored like a fresh sapling, perhaps reminiscent of a worm. Coiled around the lingam, the Kundalini serpent sleeps. In it sleeps the essence of the highest experience. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 355
Where previously there was fighting and activity, now there is also feeding and passivity. In the blue mouse the soul becomes the anima, which mirrors the contents. Life flows in and assumes a solid form. The thoughts become cool and clear. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 352
Blue coats are worn by the wise women who, as swan virgins, are linked to the water, to the mist, and to the sky. Mist rises from the water, rises up into the blue sky, to fall back on earth as rain. In alchemy and tarot, blue is the color of the moon, of silver, and of the soul. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 351
Let us have a look at their mythology: In the fairy tale “The Fisherman and His Wife,” the flounder appears as a wish-fish. It fulfills all the wishes of Ilsebill.155 But when she wants to be God Himself, she plunges back into her old misery. In Hofmannsthal’s Woman without a Shadow, seven little fish are the souls of unborn children. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 350
The snake symbolizes the freeing of the energy, the aim at an object, aggressiveness, and drive. The turning red of the mouse shows that the heat of the soul develops out of the material soul, so that passionate wishing is no longer experienced as imposed by the outside, but as an inner compulsion. Before, the shadow entered into the mouse, now the animus is revived; the male instinctual force is awakened, which wants to conquer the world to possess it. And each new conquest feeds the fire and the heat. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 349
Regarding the appearance of the snake in mythology: you remember what Ms. von Franz told us about the snake as an earth demon, as soul of the dead or the heroes, as a dark god of the Ophites, as the snake of the river bed, as movement, as vital force, as time, and as the snake of salvation ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 348
The entering worms are the soul of the matter; they take their element, matter, into the transparent mouse. This means that the soul, driven by greed, begins to “eat the world,” to get entangled in the world. The subtle mouse becomes a real, gray mouse. Darkness, impurity, the gray shadow enter into the pure vessel. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 347
As to the interpretation: for a naive observer, the worms eat earth and transform earth into life, into movement, into greed. They transform matter into soul. They are life originating in death. Worms symbolize the first, unreflected movements of the soul—contents that are still colorless, still completely undifferentiated and incoherent, without feeling, without reason, the stirrings of the blind life instinct. Worms are the most primitive forms of psychical reality, hidden in matter. They belong to an unconscious level, in which the soul is still completely projected onto the outside, onto objects, and in which we experience the world only by blind devouring, by the resistance of the matter, and by involuntary innervation. Soul is here still little more than a physical-chemical substrate. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 347
We may probably interpret the transparent mouse, therefore, as the subtle body of the dreamer. The girl sees her own, still hardly born soul. Transparent brings to mind glassy. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 346.
While the girl witch is dancing with Faust on the Brocken, a little red mouse jumps out of her mouth. Innocent children’s souls and the souls of the just appear as white mice, those of the godless as red ones. The souls of unborn children, too, appear as white mice. There is a very widespread notion that the soul leaves the human body during sleep in the form of a mouse, sometimes to quench its thirst, sometimes to cause nightmares in people, animals, and trees— in that case, it is usually the soul of a girl. If the mouse does not return, the girl will die. To whistle after mice means to lure the souls into the afterworld. Mice are often signs of death. Gray and black mice generally indicate disaster. They spread the Black Death and other diseases. The white mouse appears as a fever demon but, on the other hand, also attracts fever. It is said that mice are created out of earth or putrefaction or are made by witches. Because of their gray color they are seen as tempest animals, coming from the clouds or the fog, or being brought by the wind. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 345
Yes, it’s the old story of the nixie or the mermaid who gets caught in his net. It is the being that has no soul and therefore strives after it. And that’s where the problem begins. In the dream, too, the boy’s fishing is a playful occupation with something of which he is not yet aware that this is an adventure and involves danger. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 333.
As Jung has explained in the definitions in Psychological Types, the soul, our inner attitude, is represented in the unconscious by certain persons who show the characteristics that are commensurate with the soul. The character of the soul would in general complement the outer character and contain all those attributes missing in the conscious attitude. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 329
In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, this transitional stage is expressed by the symbolic forty-nine days, which is the period of time between death and rebirth. It is significant that the greatest chance of salvation occurs in the direct process of dying. So here we have to conceive of the dead body as the direct expression and the symbol of the magical transformational capacity of the soul, the anima. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 329
This nixie-elf-anima represents the soul in its entirety, uniting the good and the bad; it is moving, iridescent like a butterfly. The soul is a life-giving demon and plays its elfish game beneath and above human existence. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 326
It is the world of water, where all life floats in suspension; where the realm of the sympathetic system, the soul of everything living, begins; where I am indivisibly this and that; where I experience the other in myself and the other-than-myself experiences me. . .. Our concern with the unconscious has become a vital question, a question of spiritual being or non-being. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 325
Many anima types have something masculine about them. But then, it is after all the soul image of a man. It is probably the unconscious feminine side in man which, however, does not completely lack maleness. That’s why a man projects his anima onto a suitable woman who shows some male characteristics. For then she can also be a friend; the relationship is not just a heterosexual experience, but also friendship, and this is very important. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 321
It is strange that there are not many kinds of anima in a man’s soul, but only one anima. Women, on the other hand, have a multiplicity of animuses. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 317
The fatefulness of the soul image announces itself very early. Whenever the anima figure appears in a boy’s dream we have to be careful, because she represents life as such: that which moves herself as well as the dreamer. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 313
Yes, this girl has actually all the advantages of a soul image, and the noblest feelings have been associated with her. So it was impossible for him to associate her with the other side—his anima image would have been soiled. This is also the deeper reason for the anima to wash her hands. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 312
I have to point out that we have to be very cautious in the case of little children, when we think in terms of the personality and try to find a rational explanation. We must never forget that the infantile soul is no tabula rasa—this would be the greatest misconception—but we always have to keep a door open—to what? ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 311
We have to consider the claim, therefore, that the prima materia, that earth of paradise, that primordial chaos, is hidden in the fecal matter, as a significant contribution to the psychology of this place. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 308
He wanted to teach them how to pray and said to them: “Our Father which art in heaven . . .” They said, however: “Our Father which art not in heaven . . .”—They simply could not repeat it otherwise. So he had to dismiss them again. And that is why they never received immortal souls. We have to imagine the girl in the dream as such an elfish being. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 305
We have shown the connection between the nature of the girl and the elves. Elves don’t have souls. In her playful way, the girl now does something very significant: she washes her hands. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 302
Yes, there is a split. The dreamer has never really known who he is, where he actually belongs. You will find such a doubleness in those numerous people in whose soul prenatal remnants still exist. These may rise in visions or dreams, but mostly sink back into the unconscious again. It is only in a psychological treatment that these images are again remembered. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 298
The dreamer has never really known who he is, where he actually belongs. You will find such a doubleness in those numerous people in whose soul prenatal remnants still exist. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 298
When he was told the meaning of the dream, both currents flowed together. Up to then they had never come together, and he had never really known: am I in this one or in the other one? Now he became a whole. He had found his soul. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 298
In India the sweating corresponds to the tapas. This is a kind of self-brooding. By the concentration of the soul powers on this one point, on the central point of the self, it is hatched like an egg. One is enclosed in it oneself, as in the retort or in the uterus. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 298-299
Thus we may hope that this tension between the two souls will lead the dreamer—or has led him already—to the place where he will be able to tolerate the dichotomy, that is, to himself. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 290
Then, in the revealing look up to the high ego on the pyramid, however, he will be fascinated like a Narcissus by his own mirror image and by inner reality, blinded by the boundless possibilities of the soul. In fantasies and daydreams he will, for instance, climb heights that are denied to him by reality. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 290
From the image, in which he sees this soul out there, far away, split off from him, and nearly unreachable, we might conclude that later on in life he will identify too one-sidedly with the conscious ego. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 290
When, in the development of this child, the great amnesia will have obscured the Bardo world with its primeval images, such a dream will shine like a spark from the lost paradise, and remind him that he, who lives down on earth, also has an immortal, versatile soul of divine nature. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 290
Basically, however, his adaptation to reality is only superficial, a pseudo-adaptation, because his soul is somewhere else entirely. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 289
The result is an image of the insoluble tension between limitedness and eternity, reality and dream, actuality and ideal, body and soul, mortality and immortality. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 287
When we apply this to our dream we could say that the Ka soul, the sidereal or subtle body of the child, sits on top of the pyramid: in general terms, the desire for perfection and boundlessness, for salvation and immortality, embodied in the dreamer. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 287
“The soul is an example of this: it too imagines many things [ . . .] outside the body, just as God does.” ~Carl Jung citing Ruland, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 287
The Egyptians, according to whose belief the soul consisted of about fourteen parts or forces, know a part of the soul they called the Ka soul. It was immortal and its body, conceived as half physical and half spiritual, was absolutely identical with the person, even after his death. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 286
In fairy tales this vessel also appears as a glass casket, in which the soul slumbers, waiting for salvation (Snow White in the casket of glass). In the Visio Arislei, an alchemical text, a triple glass house is the place where the heroes are condemned to death in great heat, only to find new life again. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 284
To conclude, the symbol of the pyramid provides the following indications for our dream: it is an archetypal image, a body mandala, in whose depths the body of the king rests as a mummy, and at whose summit the glorification of the soul takes place. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 282
Often the tops of Egyptian pyramids were gilded or made of a specially gleaming stone. It was assumed that after the Pharaoh’s death his soul, that is, his image, the Ka soul, would travel through the underworld and then be transformed into the god Osiris, or rise to Atum, the highest god of light, exactly at this top of his grave. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Pages 281-282
When this part of the soul becomes conscious it can cause immense disturbance. That is why one may touch this encapsulated world only with utmost caution, because otherwise there is the danger that all of a sudden a second personality erupts. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 254
It was also generally assumed that the souls of the dead would live on as chthonic snake gods, as inhabitants of the underworld where they became guardians of a treasure. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 244
The author goes on to say that the name lion was chosen because of the soul substance, and that dog or camel could have been chosen just as well, just as any other name of an animal, simply because it represents that living being which is drawn out of the first matter. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 226
One alchemical passage reads: “In this way the stone has been compared to the animals, because of the blood being their life substance, for the soul of each animal is in the blood.” ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 226
This snake simply replaces the source; it symbolizes the water of life. It is an alchemical idea that dragons or serpents—serpens mercurii—live in the middle of the earth, the imperfect metal, and are, so to speak, the anima, the soul of the metal. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 216
The child had a premonition of the instinctual hell into which she will enter. In alchemy, this state of instinctual hell is represented as a snake with three heads, the so-called serpens mercurii. It leads the soul into the afterworld and is identical with the Gnostic Nous. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 203
This means in our own nature, in the unconscious, in the natural soul, there is such a figure, and it is clearly expressed in our dream. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 198
Without doubt, the fairy is the superior, enigmatic, magical being, a kind of helpful spirit. Fairies, like elves, are beings of nature; they do not have Christian souls but are beings of nature who come from nature and live in nature. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 198
In the visions of Zosimos, too, the philosopher is only a bystander, watching. There, too, the figure of the guide burns himself, to show the alchemist the
way. The soul guide appears in the dream and shows him: this will have to happen to bring about what you are looking for. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 197
A very little child who dies before baptism is not condemned, not stigmatized as some hellish brute, but simply deprived of the Visio Dei. It is up to the mercy of God what to do with this unfinished soul. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 188
The Bardo lifespan is forty-nine days. The souls live, so to speak, in a collective world, and are confronted with spirits and other images of life, “images of all creatures,” as Goethe says in Faust. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 183
And if she lets herself be seized, and suffers the fire’s heat, the soul will be formed out of the unconscious body and spirit, the soul that is able to float, as the body’s essence of light, between heaven and earth with the wings of the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 178
In the mirror we see our true nature, the image of our soul; reflection brings about insight and knowledge. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 176
In the hidden fire above heaven, all things are preserved. Through fire, which consumes the material form, the soul becomes the pure image, godlike and immortal. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 175
In Heraclitus we find the idea that the souls turn into water. In recent years, one Gurdjieff claimed that the moon was so fertilized by the many souls of soldiers killed during the last World War that a green spot appeared on it. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 167
The moon actually is sometimes the place of departed souls, absorbing the souls. If it absorbs many souls, it is said to become humid. The psyche is, after all, the humid breath— “psychros” is cold, and is related to “to blow.” ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 167
And it may come to mind that the same idea is found in Egypt, the idea of the burial chambers, above which there is the Ka, the semi-material soul of the Egyptian. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 165
The motif of multiplicity indicates a splitting of the soul. We find this motif particularly often in the dreams of schizophrenics. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 156
All cults of cremation have an idea in common, to assist the dead person on his way to the hereafter, that is, to assist in resurrection by freeing the soul through destruction of the mortal remains: the soul can thus float into the next world, into heaven. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 154
After death follows the resurrection. It can take place only if the form of the deceased’s body has been preserved by embalming. Ba, the soul, often rendered as a bird, has to be able to visit the embalmed body; its way goes through the tomb shaft, situated in the pyramid. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 153
The pyramid [ . . .] is entirely based on the Egyptians’ ideas on life after death: man is composed of at least three parts, the body, the soul (Ba), and the Ka, a being of its own, for whom it is hard to find a translation. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 153
At noon the shadow is shortest, giving rise to the fear that it might disappear altogether. This would be uncanny, for then one would have lost the shadow, the connection to the earth; one has suffered a loss of soul. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 129
The dream shows a typical process in the infantile soul that is so subtle, however, that the usual education does not notice it at all. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 123
For the monster is actually the soul of the doll/pupa in herself, the primal being, the dark abyss in man, which playfully creates life and creation. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 122
We also find this triad in the development of Goethe’s Faust: the boy charioteer, the homunculus, and Euphorion. The boy charioteer is the soul-guiding function. Here we find the motif of “puer aeternus.” ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 120
Just like a primitive man, the child brings the doll to life with the images of her unconscious, and so animates, “en-souls,” it. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 113
The problem is how to fill him with soul and thus make him into a real human being. But the vial of the homunculus is smashed to pieces on Galatea’s chariot and pours out into the sea waves, whereupon the homunculus rises again as a living man out of the waters of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 113
The notion of the soul is connected to the fur, the skin, the shirt, the outer form, for shirt (e.g., the swan shirt) and fur stand for a great potential of transformation in the Teutonic tradition. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 106
The staff represents guidance; it will become a guide as an inner law when someone came into the inner ring of fire and remains suspended in the soul fire. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 102
The soul oscillates between air and water. It is always the go-between for the two principles marking the extremes: below there is earth, the material matter; above there is pneumatikos (spirit), air, and fire. Dry, hot air—this is the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 101
The word “psyche” (soul) is connected to “physein” (Greek, to blow); psychos corresponds with psychros (Greek, cold, damp). “The soul of a drunkard is moist,” says Heraclitus. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 100-101
Here Hermes also has to be mentioned, the thief of the sun cattle of Helios, also the escort of the souls in the underworld. So the man mentioned in the dream can probably be interpreted as a fatherly archetype. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 93
A Celtic legend tells of a bridge of horrors, not broader than a string. Moreover, in a Persian collection of legends there appears the so-called Chinvat bridge, on which angels and demons fight over the souls of the people crossing it. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 90
If consciousness is weak, it can get into the wake of that content from the collective unconscious and be towed away by it. This is possession, “the peril of the soul. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 80
When you have pictures from your ancestors, you can single out parts of your face and detect them in the various pictures of the ancestors. The same is true for the whole body, and likewise with the soul. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 73
The student from Prague, who sells his own reflection to the devil, no longer has any image, that is, the soul has left the body, and this means disaster. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 67
That is why the primitives do not want to be photographed, out of fear that their double, their soul image, be taken away from them, thus causing a loss of soul. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 67
The ancient Greeks, too, found the mirror, when it appeared in a dream, uncanny. It meant the death of a person; this is so because the image one sees in the mirror is one’s own double. It is the Ka of the Egyptians. It is an image of the soul. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 67
That is why one avoids speaking about certain things or thinking of something particular—because then one can be robbed of one’s soul or devoured by the fantasies. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 66
We feel it may be justified to assume that this problem is not a conscious problem of the infantile soul, but rather a general one that finds expression in this dream: the fight of the spirit against physical matter, the longing of the creature to be saved from the bonds of the flesh, the fight of the higher against the lower powers. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 62
In Goethe’s poem Erlking, the king tries to lure the soul of a boy away from his real father, to become a playmate for his own daughters! In the end, he takes it with force. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 55-56
In Persia, the dog is the companion of the dead. To give it bread is a ceremony: one gives it bread instead of the body, meaning, don’t tear me apart, don’t tear my soul apart, but guide it to the destination through the desert of Hades. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 52
The inevitable inner growth of the animal soul creates the big, dark spots in human life: “To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us, To guilt ye let us heedless go.” ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 52
This is the great difficulty: that we have to reach, from the completely unconscious animal soul, the stairs on which we can ascend to the heights. The Pueblo Indians have a mythical image for this: in the development of mankind, one cave on top of the other has to be reached. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 52
We do not have to look far to find such universal images. They are already found in language, not to mention those that probably rest at the bottom of our souls. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 27
As to the interpretation: for a naive observer, the worms eat earth and transform earth into life, into movement, into greed. They transform matter into soul. They are life originating in death. Worms symbolize the first, unreflected movements of the soul—contents that are still colorless, still completely undifferentiated and incoherent, without feeling, without reason, the stirrings of the blind life instinct. Worms are the most primitive forms of psychical reality, hidden in matter. They belong to an unconscious level, in which the soul is still completely projected onto the outside, onto objects, and in which we experience the world only by blind devouring, by the resistance of the matter, and by involuntary innervation. Soul is here still little more than a physical-chemical substrate. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 347
Carl Jung: Kundalini Seminar
In Sahasrara there is no difference. The next conclusion could be that there is no object, no God, there is nothing but Brahman. There is no experience because it is One, without a second. It is asleep, it is not, and that is why it is nirvana. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminars, Page 59.
We are entangled in the roots, and we ourselves are the roots. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 29
Energy is not to be observed in nature; it does not exist. What exists in nature is natural force, like a waterfall, or a light, or a fire, or a chemical process. ~Carl Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, Page 7.
There we apply the term energy, but energy in itself does not exist, despite the fact that you can buy it at the electrical works. But that is merely a metaphorical energy. Energy proper is an abstraction of a physical force, a certain amount of intensity. ~Carl Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, Page 7.
For in reality energy is not substantial: it is a conformity of things, say, or the intensity of various physical or material processes. ~Carl Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, Page 8.
We make roots, we cause roots to be, we are rooted in the soil, and there is no getting away for us, because we must be there as long as we live. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 29
It is most important that you should be born; you ought to come into this world—otherwise you cannot realize the self, and the purpose of this world has been missed. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 28
It is utterly important that one should be in this world, that one really fulfills one’s entelechia, the germ of life which one is. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 28
You see, the shoot must come out of the ground, and if the personal spark has never gotten into the ground, nothing will come out of it; no linga [creative core] or Kundalini will be there, because you are still staying in the infinity that was before. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 29
For you should leave some trace in this world which notifies that you have been here, that something has happened. If nothing happens of this kind you have not realized yourself; the germ of life has fallen, say, into a thick layer of air that kept it suspended. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 28
Everything that has life is individual—a dog, a plant, everything living—but of course it is far from being conscious of its individuality. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 5
Individuation only takes place when you are conscious of it, but individuation is always there from the beginning of your existence. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 5
The instinct of individuation is found everywhere in life, for there is no life on earth that is not individual. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 4
The world itself becomes a reflection of the psyche. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 50
There are plenty of people who are not yet born. They all seem to be here, they walk about—but as a matter of fact, they are not yet born, because they are behind a glass wall, they are in the womb. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 28
They are in the world only on parole and are soon to be returned to the pleroma [fullness] where they started originally. They have not formed a connection with this world; they are suspended in the air; they are neurotic, living the provisional life. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 28.
You must believe in this world, make roots, do the best you can, even if you have to believe in the most absurd things—to believe, for instance, that this world is very definite, that it matters absolutely whether such-and-such a treaty is made or not. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 29
You see, the shoot must come out of the ground, and if the personal spark has never gotten into the ground, nothing will come out of it; no linga [creative core] or Kundalini will be there, because you are still staying in the infinity that was before. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 29
Today, instead of the sea or leviathan, we say analysis, which is equally dangerous. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 17
We could not possibly judge this world if we had not also a standpoint outside, and that is given by the symbolism of religious experiences. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 27
Small children are very old; later on we soon grow younger. In our middle age we are youngest, precisely at the time when we have completely or almost completely lost contact with the collective unconscious, the samskaras. We grow older again only as with the mounting years we remember the samskaras anew. ~Carl Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, Page 74.
Individuation is not that you become an ego—you would then become an individualist. You know, an individualist is a man who did not succeed in individuating; he is a philosophically distilled egotist. ~Carl Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, Pages 39-40.
If you succeed in remembering yourself, if you succeed in making a difference between yourself and that outburst of passion, then you discover the self; you begin to individuate. ~Carl Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, Pages 39-40.
Without personal life, without the here and now, we cannot attain to the supra-personal. Personal life must first be fulfilled in order that the process of the supra-personal side of the psyche can be introduced. ~Carl Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, Page 66.
001 The klesas are urges, a natural instinctive form in which libido first appears out of the unconscious; that is the psychological energy, or libido, in its simplest form of manifestation.
Now, according to tantric teaching, there is an urge to produce a personality, something that is centered, and divided from other beings, and that would be the klea of discrimination.
It is what one would describe in Western philosophical terms as an urge or instinct of individuation. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 4
002 Hatred is the thing that divides, the force which discriminates.
It is so when two people fall in love; they are at first almost identical. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 5
003 You see, the analytical process tears up hatred by the roots by explaining the suksma aspect, namely, the aspect on the level of understanding, of abstraction, theory, wisdom. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 8
004 You see the Eastern mind is concretistic—when it arrives at a conclusion or builds up an abstraction, the latter is already a substance; it is almost visible or audible—one can almost touch it. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 8
005 If we assume that Muladhara, being the roots, is the earth upon which we stand, it necessarily must be our conscious world, because here we are, standing upon this earth, and here are the four corners of this earth.
We are in the earth mandala.
And whatever we say of muladhara is true of this world.
It is a place where mankind is a victim of impulses, instincts, unconsciousness, of participation mystique, where we are in a dark and unconscious place. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 15
006 Therefore, the very first demand of a mystery cult always has been to go into water, into the baptismal fount. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 16
007 At all events, the moon is always understood as the receptacle of the souls of the dead.
They migrate to the moon after death, and the moon gives birth to the souls in the sun.
She first gets quite full of dead souls—that is the pregnant full moon—and then she gives them to the sun, where the souls attain new life (a Manichean myth).
So the moon is a symbol of rebirth. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 22
008 So, to put it on a psychological level, it seems evident that even in our consciousness, of which we believe that it is “nothing but,” and perfectly clear and self evident and banal—even in that field there is the spark of something that points to another conception of life. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 25
009 On the one side the personal aspect, in which all the personal things are the only meaningful things; and another psychology in which the personal things are utterly uninteresting and valueless, futile, illusory. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 26
010 Now, if the yogin or the Western person succeeds in awakening Kundalini, what starts is not in any way a personal development, though of course an impersonal development can influence the personal status, as it does very often and very favorably. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 27
011 That is one of the great difficulties in experiencing the unconscious—that one identifies with it and becomes a fool.
You must not identify with the unconscious; you must keep outside, detached, and observe objectively what happens. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 27
012 Even if we must recognize that there is a non-ego experience, it is a long way until
we realize what it might be.
That is the reason why these experiences are secret; they are called mystical because the ordinary world cannot understand them, and what they cannot understand they call mystical—that covers everything.
But the point is that what they call mystical is simply not the obvious. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 28
013 Therefore the yoga way or the yoga philosophy has always been a secret, but not because people have kept it secret.
For as soon as you keep a secret it is already an open secret; you know about it and
other people know about it, and then it is no longer a secret. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 28
014 But if you touch the reality in which you live, and stay for several decades if you leave your trace, then the impersonal process can begin.
You see, the shoot must come out of the ground, and if the personal spark has never gotten into the ground, nothing will come out of it; no linga or Kundalini will be there, because you are still staying in the infinity that was before. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 29
015 One sees all that very beautifully in the Catholic rite of baptism when the godfather holds the child and the priest approaches with the burning candle and says: Dono tibi lucem eternam” (I give thee the eternal light)—which means, I give you relatedness to the sun, to the God. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 31
016 If you succeed in remembering yourself, if you succeed in making a difference between yourself and that outburst of passion, then you discover the self; you begin to individuate. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 39
017 We are allowed to behold only the purusha, to behold his feet up there.
But we are not the purusha; that is a symbol that expresses the impersonal process.
The self is something exceedingly impersonal, exceedingly objective.
If you function in your self you are not yourself—that is what you feel.
You have to do it as if you were a stranger: you will buy as if you did not buy; you will sell as if you did not sell. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 40
018 The concept of the five elements is a part of the Samkhya philosophy, which is pre-Buddhistic, belonging to the seventh century B.C. at the latest.
All subsequent Hindu philosophies, like the Upanishads, took their origin in the Samkhya philosophy. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 43
019 So you could really say that the kitchen is a digestive tract projected from the human body.
And it is the alchemistic place where things are transformed. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 44
020 You see, values, convictions, general ideas are psychical facts that are nowhere to be met with in natural science.
One cannot catch them with a butterfly net, nor can one find them under microscopes.
They become visible only in Anahata. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 45
021 Now according to tantric yoga, the purusha is first seen in anahata: the essence of man, the supreme man, the so-called primordial man then becomes visible.
So purusha is identical with the psychical substance of thought and value, feeling.
In the recognition of feelings and of ideas one sees the purusha. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 45
022 For instance, the great war has taught practically everybody that the things that have the greatest weight are the imponderabilia, the things you cannot possibly weigh, like public opinion or psychical infection.
The whole war was a psychical phenomenon. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 46
023 We have not yet found the bridge between the ideas of physics and psychology.
Therefore collectively we have not crossed the distance between Anahata and visuddha. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 46-47
024 For in visuddha we reach beyond our actual conception of the world, in a way we reach the ether region. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 47
025 It [Visuddha] is the world of abstract ideas and values, the world where the psyche is in itself, where the psychical reality is the only reality, or where matter is a thin skin around an enormous cosmos of psychical realities, really the illusory fringe around the real existence, which is psychical.
The concept of the atom, for instance, might be considered as corresponding to the abstract thinking of the visuddha center. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 47
026 For visuddha means just what I said: a full recognition of the psychical essences or
substances as the fundamental essences of the world, and by virtue not of speculation but of fact, namely as experience. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 47
027 You see, that is a picture of psychical existence over or beyond the manipura form.
It is nothing but a thought—nothing has changed in the visible world; not one atom is in a different place from before.
But one thing has changed: the psychical substance has entered the game. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 48
028 But to cross from avatar to visuddha one should unlearn all that.
One should even admit that all one’s psychical facts have nothing to do with
material facts.
For instance, the anger which you feel for somebody or something, no matter how justified it is, is not caused by those external things. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 49
029 We are perhaps identical even with our own worst enemy.
In other words, our worst enemy is perhaps within ourselves.
If you have reached that stage, you begin to leave avatar, because you have succeeded in dissolving the absolute union of material external facts with internal or psychical facts. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 49
030 You begin to consider the game of the world as your game, the people that appear outside as exponents of your psychical condition.
Whatever befalls you, whatever experience or adventure you have in the external world, is your own experience.
For instance, an analysis does not depend upon what the analyst is.
It is your own experience.
What you experience in analysis is not due to me; it is what you are. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 50
031 You know that the series of animals begins in muladhara with the elephant that supports the earth, meaning that tremendous urge which supports human consciousness, the power that forces us to build such a conscious world.
To the Hindu the elephant functions as the symbol of the domesticated libido,
parallel to the image of the horse with us.
It means the force of consciousness, the power of will, the ability to do what one wants to do. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 51
032 So in crossing from muladhara to svadhisthana, the power that has nourished you hitherto shows now an entirely different quality: what is the elephant on the surface
of the world is the leviathan in the depths. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 51
033 So the makara is just the reverse: the water elephant, the whale dragon that devours you, is the thing that has nourished and supported you hitherto—just as the benevolent mother that brought you up becomes in later life a devouring mother that swallows you again. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 51
034 In manipura the ram is the symbolic animal, and the ram is the sacred animal of Agni, the god of fire. That is astrological.
The ram, Aries, is the domicilium of Mars, the fiery planet of passions, impulsiveness, rashness, violence, and so on. Agni is an apt symbol. It is again the elephant, but
in a new form. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 51
035 The next animal is the gazelle, again a transformation of the original force.
The gazelle or antelope is not unlike the ram, living upon the surface of the earth—the difference being that it is not a domesticated animal like the male sheep, nor is it a sacrificial animal. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 51
036 It is an animal of earth, but it is almost liberated from the power of gravity.
Such an animal would be apt to symbolize the force, the efficiency, and the lightness of psychical substance—thought and feeling.
It has already lost a part of the heaviness of the earth.
Also, it denotes that in avatar the psychical thing is an elusive factor, hardly to be caught. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 52
037 And you know that when the psyche manifests itself in reality, it is usually against us.
For inasmuch as it is not against us, it is simply identical with our consciousness.
Our consciousness is not against us, and we consider everything to be our own conscious doing, but the psychic factor is always something that we assume to be not our doing. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 53
038 That is, we meet there [Visuddha] all the power which led us into life, into this conscious reality.
But here it is not supporting muladhara, this earth.
It is supporting those things which we assume to be the most airy, the most unreal, and the most volatile, namely, human thoughts. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 55
039 That is only the fifth cakra, and we are already out of breath—literally so—we are beyond the air we breathe; we are reaching, say, into the remote future of mankind, or of ourselves. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 56
040 The ajna center, you remember, looks like a winged seed, and it contains no animal.
That means there is no psychical factor, nothing against us whose power we might feel. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 57
041 But in the ajna center the psyche gets wings—here you know you are nothing but psyche.
And yet there is another psyche, a counterpart to your psychical reality, the non-ego reality, the thing that is not even to be called self, and you know that you are going to disappear into it.
The ego disappears completely; the psychical is no longer a content in us, but we
become contents of it. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminar, Page 57
042 The cakras however, are symbols.
They bring together in image form complex and manifold ideas of ideas and facts. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 60
043 They symbolize highly complex psychic facts which at the present moment we could not possibly express except in images.
The cakras are therefore of great value to us because they represent a real effort to give a symbolic theory of the psyche. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 61
044 Muladhara is localized in the pelvis and at the same time represents our world, and this paradox can be expressed only by a symbol.
It is the same with the apparent contradiction contained in the fact that we think of consciousness as located in our heads, and nonetheless we live in the lowest cakra, in Muladhara. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 62
045 In our consciousness we sit enthroned on high and look down upon nature and animals.
To us archaic man is Neanderthal man, little better than an animal.
We do not see in the very least that God appears as an animal also. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 62
046 But by means of psychology or tantric philosophy we can achieve a standpoint from which we can observe that suprapersonal events do take place within our own psyche.
To look at things from a suprapersonal standpoint is to arrive at the suksma aspect. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 63
047 The cakra system manifests itself in culture, and culture can therefore be divided into various levels such as that of the belly, heart, and head centers. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 63
048 When we clothe our knowledge in words, we are in the region of visuddha, or the throat center. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 63
049 The more primitive the conditions of life, the more valuable the psychic manifestations of this level.
We could say it is the first speech of nature.
Psychic manifestations belonging to svadhisthana are therefore often present in our dreams, and certain witticisms and the broad jokes of the Middle Ages are full of them. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 64
050 But the Indian concept of life understands humanity under the suksma aspect, and looked at from that standpoint everything becomes completely reversed.
Our personal consciousness can indeed be located in anahata or even in ajna, but nonetheless our psychic situation as a whole is undoubtedly in Muladhara. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 65
051 And as long as the ego is identified with consciousness, it is caught up in this world, the world of the Muladhara cakra.
But we see that it is so only when we have an experience and achieve a standpoint that transcends consciousness.
Only when we have become acquainted with the wide extent of the psyche, and no
longer remain inside the confines of the conscious alone, can we know that our consciousness is entangled in Muladhara. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 67
052 Our Ajna is caught in this world.
It is a spark of light, imprisoned in the world, and when we think, we are merely
thinking in terms of this world.
But the Hindu thinks in terms of the great light.
His thinking starts not from a personal but from a cosmic Ajna. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 67
053 Our culture represents the conscious held prisoner in Muladhara.
Looked at from the suksma aspect, everything is still in Muladhara.
Christianity also is based on the suksma aspect.
To it, too, the world is only a preparation for a higher condition, and the here and now, the state of being involved in this world, is error and sin. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 67
054 The sacraments and rites of the early church all meant freeing man from the merely personal state of mind and allowing him to participate symbolically in a higher
condition.
In the mystery of baptism—the plunge into svadhisthana —the “old Adam” dies and the “spiritual man” is born. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 67
055 Kundalini, which is to be awakened in the sleeping Muladhara world, is the suprapersonal, the non-ego, the totality of the psyche through which alone we can attain the higher cakras in a cosmic or metaphysical sense.
For this reason Kundalini is the same principle as the Soter, the Saviour Serpent of the Gnostics. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 68-69
056 The sastkvra are inherited germs, we might say—unconscious determinants, preexisting qualities of things to be, life in the roots.
But the puer aeternus is the sprout that buds from the roots, the attempt at synthesis and at a release from Muladhara.
Only by synthesizing the preexisting conditions can we be freed from them. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 69
057 With a sudden shock the child passes from this marvelous world of the collective unconscious into the sthula aspect of life or, expressed in another way, a child goes
into svadhisthana as soon as it notices its body, feels uncomfortable, and cries.
It becomes conscious of its own life, of its own ego, and has then left Muladhara. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 69-70
058 Citta is simply our organ of knowledge, the empirical ego into whose sphere Kundalini breaks.
Kundalini in essence is quite different from Citta. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 70
059 To meditate on the cakras we first have to extricate the original experience; hence we cannot adopt the readymade figures of yoga, and the question still remains whether our experiences fit into the tantric forms altogether. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 79
060 Ten or fifteen years ago, when patients brought me the first “mandalas,” I did not yet know anything about tantra yoga. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 79
061 Also, the religious exercises of Ignatius of Loyola are Christian counterparts
to the Indian meditations or to our fantasies from the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 80
062 This detachment of consciousness is the freeing from the tamas and rajas, a freeing from the passions and from the entanglement with the realm of objects. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 83
063 Ego consciousness is, so to speak, like an animal that can speak and move freely.
The tree, however, signifies the not being-able-to-make-way and the rootedness of the plant. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 83
064 Individual problems cannot be understood in uniqueness; thus one is thankful for all references, such as Zimmer’s book Artistic Form and Yoga in the Sacred Images of India, or the translation of the tantric texts by Avalon, which show that there have always been people with such problems. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 84
065 She came to see me because of this serpent, for she thought that it should be awakened.
Her problem was that she was not on earth.
She was only intuitive, entirely without a sense of reality. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 85
066 One day she came and said that the serpent in her belly had moved; it had turned around.
Then the serpent moved slowly upward, coming finally out of her mouth, and she
saw that its head was golden.
This is the shortest Kundalini path of which I have heard.
To be sure, it was not experienced but only intuited; but already this had a curing effect for the time being. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 85
067 I got to know about the cakras only later, but even then I did not say anything about it, so as not to disturb the process in my patients. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 85
068 We believe ourselves to live in the ajna center; we are convinced that we are masters in our own home.
But if we believe that our thoughts are our epiphenomenology and that we have had them, we all too easily forget how often our thoughts have us.
By thinking that psyche and brain are identical we become godlike, but our emotions bring the lower centers in us again into effectiveness. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 85
069 The visuddha center expresses the word, and what surpasses this would be the center of abstraction. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 86
070 In all cases which involve such symbols, we may not forget the course of the sun as a main motive.
The analogy to Kundalini is the sun serpent, which later in Christian mythology is identified with Christ. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 86
071 The greatest difficulties for my comprehension were caused by the god in Bindu and Sakti.
With us, the anima always first appears so grotesque and banal that it is difficult to recognize the Sakti in it.
But then, what is God?
He is the pale reflection of the ever-invisible central god in bija, which one cannot grasp, who is like the rabbit which the hunter never hunts down. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Page 86
Zarathustra Seminar
A revelation always means a revealing will, a will to manifest which is not identical with your own will and which is not your activity. You may be overcome by it; it falls upon you. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 876.
It is also possible that it was a new invention, for the circle is an archetypal image that can occur anywhere without a direct tradition. For instance, you find it used very beautifully in Emerson’s Essays, in that chapter called Circles. Of course he was aware of St. Augustine, he quoted him, yet the use he made of it is not at all what St. Augustine would have made, which shows that it was a living archetypal fact in Emerson’s case. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 11-12
In our prejudiced age, our late Christianity, we only must say the word love, assuming that it is something very wonderful, and nobody asks who loves, who is doing the loving. But that is what we really want to know, because love is nothing in itself. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages
It is always a special human being who loves and the love is worth just as much as that individual. People think that they can apply love with no understanding, think love is only an emotional condition, a sort of feeling. Yes, it is a feeling, but what is the value of the feeling if it is not coupled with a real understanding? ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 995-996
On the idea that the moment of creation, whether a work of art or person, carries the uniqueness of the moment in its character: This is substantiated in a way by the very awkward fact that the uniqueness of the particular moment in time in which a thing is created is characterized by certain qualities, as is proved by the fact that the horoscope can give the character of an individual. If it were impossible to deduce a human character from a horoscope, then of course that whole idea of the identity of the uniqueness of the self with the uniqueness of the moment when a thing comes into existence would not be valid; but as a matter of fact you can deduce from a horoscope, you can show the character of an individual to an amazing extent. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 75
So the first science was astrology. That was an attempt of man to establish a line of communication between the remotest objects and himself. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1496.
For as soon as you cannot call an affect by a certain name – for instance, Cupid – it is in yourself. If you cannot say it is somewhere in space, in the planet Mars perhaps, it must be in yourself, and cannot be anywhere else. That causes a psychological disorder. We are apparently pretty far from these old facts because we don’t realize the power of the archetypes; and we don’t realize the mentality of a time when there were many gods, don’t know what it would be like to be surrounded by divine, superior, demoniacal powers. We have the poetic conception, but that is nothing like the reality. So we don’t know what it means to have lived in a time when these old gods descended upon man, when they became subjective factors, immediate magic. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminars, Page 1519
Yet individuation is not achieved without the body, it is born out of the body; but the body has to pay for it, it means that life is spent. Therefore when people go through the process of individuation, they don’t come out of it looking younger; as a rule they look very much older, they may get grey hair from the experience. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 839
Every light, every fire, comes to an end, and there would be utter darkness, but there is still left the light of the self, which is the supreme light. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 792.
So the self is not only an unconscious fact, but also a conscious fact: the ego is the visibility of the self. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 977.
The self would be the preceding stage, a being that is more than man and that definitely manifests; that is the thinker of our thoughts, the doer of our deeds, the maker of our lives, yet it is still within the reach of human experience. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 977-978
The term self is often mixed up with the idea of God. I would not do that. I would say that the term self should be reserved for that sphere which is within the reach of human experience, and we should be very careful not to use the word God too often. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 977-978.
It [Self] is a restricted universality or a universal restrictedness, a paradox; so it is a relatively universal being and therefore doesn’t deserve to be called “God.” ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 977-978
One man alone cannot reach the self. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 787
The unconscious is that which we do not know, therefore we call it the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1348
Nobody has ever known what this primal matter is. The alchemists did not know, and nobody has found out what is really meant by it, because it is a substance in the unconscious which is needed for the incarnation of the god. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 886
You cannot be redeemed without having undergone the transformation in the initiation process. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 502.
The term self is often mixed up with the idea of God. I would not do that. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 977-978.
You could think of it [Self] as an intermediary, or a hierarchy of ever-widening-out figures of the self-till one arrives at the conception of a deity. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 977-978.
You can never get to yourself without loving your neighbour—that is indispensable; you would never arrive at yourself if you were isolated on top of Mt. Everest, because you never would have a chance to know yourself. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1020
And if you lose yourself in the crowd, in the whole of humanity, you also never arrive at yourself; just as you can get lost in your isolation, you can also get lost in utter abandonment to the crowd. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1020
You cannot individuate if you are a spirit; moreover, you don’t even know how spirit feels because you are in the body. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 202
So if you speak of individuation at all, it necessarily means the individuation of beings who are in the flesh, in the living body. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 202
It is just an illusion when you think the right thought in your head means a reality; it is a reality as far as a thought reality reaches; the thought itself is real, but it has not become a reality in space. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 202
If you fulfil the pattern that is peculiar to yourself, you have loved yourself, you have accumulated and have abundance; you bestow virtue then because you have luster. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 502
But if you hate and despise yourself—if you have not accepted your pattern— then there are hungry animals (prowling cats and other beasts and vermin) in your constitution which get at your neighbours like flies in order to satisfy the appetites which you have failed to satisfy. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 502
You see, life wants to be real; if you love life you want to live really, not as a mere promise hovering above things. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 508
Life inevitably leads down into reality. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 508
Life is of the nature of water: it always seeks the deepest place, which is always below in the darkness and heaviness of the earth. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 508
If you carefully sterilize everything that you do you make an extract the impurity and leave it at the bottom, and once the water of life is poisoned, it doesn’t need much to make everything wrong. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1058
There is no morality, no moral decision, without freedom. There is only morality when you can choose, and you cannot choose if you are forced. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 262
The self would be the preceding stage, a being that is more than man and that definitely manifests; that is the thinker of our thoughts, the doer of our deeds, the maker of our lives, yet it is still within the reach of human experience. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1348
Therefore it is absolutely necessary that, in the process of individuation, everybody should become aware of his creative instinct, no matter how small it is. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 667
And mind you, the animus is as terrible a reality as the anima. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 295
Through being creative one creates the thing that has come into existence in this moment, that was in a potential existence before. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 73
Inasmuch as you say these creative forces are in Nietzsche or in me or anywhere else, you cause an inflation, because man does not possess creative powers, he is possessed by them. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 57.
There is little difference between Nietzsche’s life and the life of a saint; he forsook his ordinary life and went into the woods. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 57
You see that quite clearly in the moment when you check the creative impulse; nothing is more poisonous to the nervous system than a disregarded or checked creative impulse. It even destroys people’s organic health. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 654.
All people who claim to be spiritual try to get away from the fact of the body; they want to destroy it in order to be something imaginary, but they never will be that, because the body denies them; the body says otherwise. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 64.
I could say just as well that you could never attain the self without isolation; it is both being alone and in relationship. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 797.
The spirit can easily be anything, but the earth can only be something definite. So remaining true to the earth would mean maintaining your conscious relationship to the body. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 66
Don’t run away and make yourself unconscious of bodily facts, for they keep you in real life and help you not to lose your real way in the world of mere possibilities where you are simply blindfolded. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 66
You don’t see the archetypal world but live like a pressed flower in the pages of a book, a mere memory of yourself. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 972.
The great lure of the archetypal situation is that you yourself suddenly cease to be. You cease to think and are acted upon as though carried by a great river with no end. You are suddenly eternal. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 240.
The indispensable condition is that you have an archetypal experience, and to have that means that you have surrendered to life. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 972
If your life has not three dimensions, if you don’t live in the body, if you live on the two-dimensional plane in the paper world that is flat and printed, as if you were only living your biography, then you are nowhere. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1343.
The archetype itself is an exaggeration and it reaches beyond the confines of humanity. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1343.
Man’s greatest triumph was that God himself incarnated in man in order to illumine the world; that was a tremendous increase of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 967
It is a general truth that one can only understand anything in as much as one understands oneself. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 742
It does not matter whether you do a thing or whether it happens to you; whether it reaches you from without or happens within, fate moves through yourself and outside circumstances equally. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 896
Inasmuch as the living body contains the secret of life, it is an intelligence. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 360.
Thought is a disembodied something because it has no spatial qualities. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 360.
What is light without shadow? What is high without low? You deprive the deity of its omnipotence and its universality by depriving it of the dark quality of the world. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 967
Our shadow is the last thing that has to be put on top of everything, and that is the thing we cannot swallow; we can swallow anything else, but not our own shadow because it makes us doubt our good qualities. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1090.
The extension [of the body] in space, therefore, creates a pluralistic quality in the mind. That is probably the reason why consciousness is possible. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 360.
To ascribe infinite evil to man and all the good to God would make man much too important: he would be as big as God, because light and the absence of light are equal, they belong together in order to make the whole. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 929
If you yourself can provide for it, then you are the whole mystery of the church: you are the transubstantiation. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 1012-1013
Do you think that somewhere we are not in nature, that we are different from nature? No, we are in nature and we think exactly like nature. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1277
So “I” is as if it were something abstract, yet in a vague way it coincides with your body; when you say “I” you beat your chest for instance, to emphasize the “I.” ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 361.
So whatever comes from behind comes from the shadow, from the darkness of the unconscious, and because you have no eyes there, and because you wear no neck amulet to ward off evil influences, that thing gets at you, possesses and obsesses you. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1265.
You see, it is as if the self were trying to manifest in space and time, but since it consists of so many elements that have neither space nor time qualities, it cannot bring them altogether into space and time. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 977.
And those efforts of the self to manifest in the empirical world result in man: he is the result of the attempt. So much of the self remains outside, it doesn’t enter this three-dimensional empirical world. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 977.
The self is a fact of nature and always appears as such in immediate experiences, in dreams and visions, and so on; it is the spirit in the stone, the great secret which has to be worked out, to be extracted from nature, because it is buried in nature herself. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 977.
It is even very important that the anima is projected into the earth, that she descends very low, for otherwise her ascent to the heavenly condition in the form of Sophia has no meaning…She is the one that is rooted in the earth as well as in the heaven, both root and branch of the tree. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 533.
We suffer very much from the fact that we consist of mind and have lost the body. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 251.
For the archetype is nothing human; no archetype is properly human. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1343.
Nietzsche’s idea is that out of that lack of order, a dancing star should be born. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 106
The relationship between religion and the unconscious is everywhere obvious: all religions are full of figures from the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1351.
That center, that other order of consciousness which to me is unconscious, would be the self, and that doesn’t confine itself to myself, to my ego: it can include I don’t know how many other people. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 783.
If they are physicians they should treat their own neurosis, otherwise they are just vampires and want to help other people for their own needs. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 824-825
If you can stand yourself, then you might be capable of loving somebody else; otherwise, it is a mere excuse, just a lie. And that cannot be repeated often enough. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminars, Page 699
The part of the unconscious which is designated as the subtle body becomes more and more identical with the functioning of the body, and therefore it grows darker and darker and ends in the utter darkness of matter. Somewhere our unconscious becomes material, because the body is the living unit, and our conscious and our unconscious are embedded in it: they contact the body. Somewhere there is a place where the two ends meet and become interlocked. And that is the [subtle body] where one cannot say whether it is matter, or what one calls “psyche. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 441.
For what is the body? The body is merely the visibility of the soul, the psyche; and the soul is the psychological experience of the body. So it is really one and the same thing. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 355.
You see, somewhere our unconscious becomes material, because the body is the living unit, and our conscious and our unconscious are embedded in it: the contact the body. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 441.
The substance is always the same, but a new value is given to it, and the new value is the treasure. That is the secret of alchemy for instance. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 653.
The ego says, “I will,” the self says “thou shalt.” ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 568.
We cannot do away with the living man by making him spirit-he must live here-and we must really assume that inasmuch as there is life it makes sense, and that life in not properly lived when we deny half of life. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 539.
God never was invented, it was always an occurrence, a psychological experience-and mind you, it is still the same experience today. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 916.
We know quite well that no man can ever become the self; the self is an entirely different order of things. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 925.
You see, in the actual functioning of the psyche, it does not matter whether you do a thing or whether it happens to you; whether it reaches you from without or happens within, fate moves through yourself and outside circumstances equally. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 896.
You can never come to your self by building a meditation hut on top of Mount Everest; you will only be visited by your own ghosts and that is not individuation: you are all alone with yourself and the self doesn’t exist. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 805.
Half of the psychogenetic diseases occur where it is a matter of too much intuition, because intuition has this peculiar quality of taking people out of their ordinary reality. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 808.
Our unconscious is surely located in the body, and you mustn’t think this a contradiction to the statement I usually make, that the collective unconscious is everywhere; for if you could put yourself into your sympathetic system, you would know what sympathy is-you would understand why the nervous system is called sympathetic. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 749-751.
It is the idea that the self is not identical with one particular individual. No individual can boast of having the self: there is only the self that can boast of having many individuals. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 782.
So the first science was astrology. That was an attempt of man to establish a line of communication between the remotest objects and himself. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1496.
Nature herself is unconscious and the original man is unconscious; his great achievement against nature is that he becomes conscious. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1286.
There is no real life without archetypal experiences. The ordinary life is two-dimensional-it consists of pieces of paper-but the real life consists of three dimensions, and if it doesn’t it is not real life, but is a provisional life. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 970.
Zeus was director of Olympus, but he was responsible to the great board of directors of the world, the moira, an invisible influence, the “Faceless Corporation” of Olympus, so even Zeus could not do what he wanted. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 917.
…You can dream other people’s dreams, can get them through the walls. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1259.
For life comes to a man through the anima, in spite of the fact that he thinks it comes to him through the mind. He masters life through the mind, but life lives in him through the anima. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1105.
Individuation is only possible with people, through people. You must realize that you are a link in a chain, that you are not an electron suspended somewhere in space or aimlessly drifting through the cosmos. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 103.
Therefore my formula: for the love of mankind and for the love of yourself-of mankind in yourself-create a devil. That is an act of devotion, I should say; you have to put something where there is nothing, for the sake of mankind. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1322.
Life that doesn’t overcome itself is really meaningless: it is not life; only inasmuch as life surpasses itself does it make sense. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1105.
In the shadow we are exactly like everybody; in the night all cats are grey-there is no difference. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1090.
But in reality God is not an opinion. God is a psychological fact that happens to people. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1037.
One could say that the stratification of our population was historical; there are certain people living who should not live yet. They are anachronistic. They anticipate the future. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1037.
The self is a fact of nature and always appears as such in immediate experiences, in dreams and visions, and so on; it is the spirit in the stone, the great secret which has to be worked out, to be extracted from nature, because it is buried in nature herself. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 977.
If your life has not three dimensions, if you don’t live in the body, if you live on the two-dimensional plane in the paper world that is flat and printed, as if you were only living your biography, then you are nowhere. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 972.
Just as you cannot see the atomic world without applying all sorts of means to make it visible, so you cannot enter the unconscious unless there are certain synthesized figures. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 1431-32.
Nature is awful, and I often ask myself, should one not interfere? But one cannot really, it is impossible, because fate must be fulfilled. It is apparently more important to nature that one should have consciousness, understanding, than to avoid suffering. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1416.
Voluptuousness, the lust principle, is Freud; passion for power is Adler; and selfishness-that is myself, perfectly simple. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1451.
You live inasmuch as these Mendelian units are living. They have souls, are endowed with psychic life, the psychic life of that ancestor; or you can call it part of an ancestral soul. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1401.
Therefore intuitives develop all sorts of physical trouble, intestinal disturbances for instance, ulcers of the stomach or other really grave physical troubles. Because they overleap the body, it reacts against them. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 1391-1392.
Fire is the artificial light against nature, as consciousness is the light which man has made against nature. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1286.
Our mind is the scene upon which the gods perform their plays, and we don’t know the beginning and we don’t know the end. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1306.
What is meant is, that you should be with yourself, not alone but with yourself, and you can be with yourself even in a crowd. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1484.
Therefore, the very foundation of existence, the biological truth, is that each being is so interested in itself that it does love itself, thereby fulfilling the laws of its existence. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1477.
To love someone else is easy, but to love what you are, the thing that is yourself, is just as if you were embracing a glowing red-hot iron: it burns into you and that is very painful. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1473.
If a complete or divine consciousness were possible, there would be no projection, which means that there would be no world, because the world is the definiteness of the divine projection. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 132.
Of course you really don’t make projections: they are it is a mistake when one speaks of making a projection, because in that moment it is no longer a projection, but your own property. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1493.
Such things can happen: a projection is a very tangible thing, a sort of semi-substantial thing which forms a load as if it had real weight. It is exactly as the primitives understand it, a subtle body. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1495.
Of course you really don’t make projections: they are it is a mistake when one speaks of making a projection, because in that moment it is no longer a projection, but your own property. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1493.
…Wolves occasionally eat human beings if they are very hungry, but we also eat animals and by the millions, so we have absolutely no ground for blaming those animals for eating a man occasionally. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 538.
Life inevitably leads down into reality. Life is of the nature of water: it always seeks the deepest place, which is always below in the darkness and heaviness of the earth. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 508.
You see, if you are duly initiated, you surely lose all desire to found a religion because you then know what religion really is. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 503.
The collective unconscious is the foundation of life, the eternal truth of life, the eternal basis and the eternal goal. It is the endless sea from which life originates and into which life flows back, and it remains forever the same. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 380.
Go and preach Christ to yourself: You being to preach to yourself-you are the very first. For the man who wants to preach is one who wants to run away from his own problem by converting other people. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 254.
We cannot say the side of the spirit is twice as good as the other side; we must bring the pairs of opposites together in an altogether different way, where the rights of the body are just as much recognized as the rights of the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 235.
To love someone else is easy, but to love what you are, the thing that is yourself, is just as if you were embracing a glowing red-hot iron: it burns into you and that is very painful. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminars, 1472-1474
Soul and body are not two things. They are one. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 355
Even a ghost, if he wants to make an effect on this earth, always needs a body, a medium; otherwise he cannot ring bells or lift tables or anything that ghosts are supposed to do. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 168
You [the Self] should not storm at me. If you kill me, where are your feet?” That is what I (the ego) am. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 977-978.
The forest philosophers didn’t go out into the forests in the beginning to try to find the self. They first live a full human life in the world and then comes the wood life. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 797.
And that was the case in Buddha’s own existence; he was a prince, a man of the world, and he had a wife, he had concubines, he had a child —then he went over to the saintly life. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 797.
As long as you can explain yourself to a human being you are not crazy.” C.G Jung, The Zarathustra Seminars Volume 1. Page 297
We have become participants in the divine nature. We are the vessel…of the deity suffering in the body of the “slave” (Phil. 2:5). ~ ~Carl Jung, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, 336, 409, Letters II, 314ff.
Individuation and individual existence are indispensable for the transformation of God. Human consciousness is the only seeing eye of the Deity. ~Carl Jung, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, 336, 409, Letters II, 314ff.
Schiller is to me a philosopher. I think little of his poetry, but I think a great deal of his philosophy. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminars, Page 117
Sensitive, thinking people were tremendously shaken by all those events in France, and it was under the immediate impression of those events that Schiller discovered that problem of the pairs of opposites: the problem that man, on the one side, is a fairly civilized being, and on the other, quite barbarous. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminars Page 118
After Schiller, the line goes through Schopenhauer, but Schopenhauer was entirely pessimistic as to its solution; also he did not see it in just such a light. He was convinced that the world was a tremendous error. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminars, Page 118
In Schiller, it was a sort of aesthetic solution, very weak, as if he had not realized the length and the depth of the problem. To try to solve it by the vision of beauty is like trying to put out a great fire with a bottle of lemonade. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminars, Page 120
In Schiller’s “Hymn to Joy,” you find this idea of the compensation of the small misery of man through the greatness of the completely unconscious state of the Dionysian enthusiasm. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminars, Page 143
There is a story that Schiller could not write unless he smelt the peculiar odor of rotting apples, so he always had apples in a drawer of his writing table. And peculiar habits can take the place of such a fetish. We belittle these things because they are so utterly banal; we think it is merely curious, but if we look at them from the functional standpoint, we see that they plan an important part in the functioning of the psyche of those people. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminars, Page 528
Prof Jung: He was a great artist, but he was also a philosopher and we expect a philosopher to think. His work ran away with him and that was his weakness. Such a thing would not have happened to Goethe, or Schiller, or Shakespeare. That was his weakness: he was a genius with a big hole in him. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminars, Page 1255
Also those Evangels which were not accepted by the church, and therefore mostly destroyed, contained Gnostic teaching; we can substantiate this from the knowledge of the fragments which we still possess, the Gospel of the Egyptians, for instance, and among the Apocrypha of the New Testament, the Acts of St. Thomas, where the Holy Ghost is called Sophia and where she is the blessed mother. So already in its origins, Christianity was so closely surrounded by Gnostic and by Alexandrian wisdom that it is more than probable that Christ received a Gnostic initiation and possessed a rather profound understanding of the human soul and the peculiarities of spiritual development. 1031-1032.
If I don’t know whether I should assume the human soul to be immortal, I simply take it in: I eat immortality, and see what the influence is on my digestion. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 980
It [Human Body] becomes the divine cradle, the womb, the sacred vase in which the deity itself will be locked in, carried and born. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 981
Prometheus stealing the fire from the immortal gods has become a savior of mankind, and man’s greatest triumph was that God himself incarnated in man in order to illumine the world; that was a tremendous increase of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 967
I know nothing truer than that fact that something wants to live, to exist, to unfold: the tiger wants to be a tiger, the flower wants to be a flower, and the
snake, a snake, and man, a man. They all want to exist and to appear. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 979
So if you want me to do something for you, if you want me to help you to manifest, you must be reasonable and wait. You should not storm at me. If you kill me, where are your feet?”7 That is what I (the ego) am. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 978
The old prophets and philosophers say nothing is greater than man, but on the other side nothing is more miserable than man, for the ego consciousness is only a little spark of light in an immense darkness. Yet it is the light, and if you pile up a thousand darknesses you don’t get a spark of light, you don’t make consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 965
Having ego consciousness means that you have a certain amount of disposable willpower, which of course means arbitrary feelings and decisions, disobedience of natural laws and so on; and that gives you a terrible feeling of being lost, cursed, isolated, and wrong altogether. And of course this causes feelings of shame. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 966
So the dawn of consciousness was naturally a tremendous problem to man; he had to invent a new law-abiding world of obedience, the careful observance of rules; instead of the herd or the natural animal state, he had to invent an artificial state. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 966
But we know that we can break out at any time and destroy as no volcano and no epidemic ever destroyed, and we chiefly injure our own species; we would not dream of making an international war against flies or microbes or against whales or elephants-it isn’t worthwhile but it is worthwhile when it is against man. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 966
Of course we have the idea that the original condition was a wonderful paradise, but as a matter of actual fact man has always tried to move away from that unconsciousness. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 967
The body is the original animal condition; we are all animals in the body, and so we should have animal psychology in order to be able to live in it. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 967
But archetypes are much worse than human beings; you cannot put the blame on them because they are not visible and they have the most disagreeable quality of appearing in your own guise. They are somewhat of your own substance, so you feel how futile that would be. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 968
But though you need water for your life, you can also be drowned in a surplus of water; you need the sun yet the sun can scorch you to death; you need fire yet you can be destroyed by fire. So the archetypes naturally work both good and evil, and it all depends upon your skill whether you can manage to navigate through the many elementary dangers of nature. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 969
Therefore, you so often have the ship as a symbol: even religions are called ships or vehicles. You remember the Christian allegory where Christ is at the tiller of the church, and in German the word Schiff means the nave of the church-the church is a ship. It is the same in the East, the Hinayana and the Mahayana, the little and the great vessel, designate the two forms of Buddhism. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 970
All these different personifications are always one and the same thing, the revelation of the thought that existed before man had the thought; and inasmuch as this thought is helpful, inasmuch as it reconciles a vital need of man to the absolute conditions of the archetypes, one could usefully say, “This is the Holy Ghost.” ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 971
The Holy Ghost creates that symbol, that situation, or that idea or impulse, which is a happy solution of the postulates of the archetypes on the one side, and the vital needs of man on the other side. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 971
So the Holy Ghost is like a devil and can fill the air with devils if you don’t obey, but the moment you obey, all the spooks collapse. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 972
If your life has not three dimensions, if you don’t live in the body, if you live on the two-dimensional plane in the paper world that is flat and printed, as if you were only living your biography, then you are nowhere. You don’t see the archetypal world but live like a pressed flower in the pages of a book, a mere memory of yourself. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 972
Most people live like that in our time, an entirely artificial two-dimensional existence, and therefore they have no archetypal experience; for instance, a personal psychology, like that of Adler or Freud or any other educational experiment, is all two-dimensional. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 972
So if I seem to avoid speaking of the Holy Ghost, it is not that I dis miss that idea entirely, but that we are living in this two-dimensional world where people are not up to archetypal experiences and therefore, instead of that language of the real life, one can only use the language of the two-dimensional paper life. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 972-973
But if you live in a world where there is no neighbor but the eternal deity, you cannot blame a neighbor. Then you know that your neighbors are ghosts, archetypes, the elements of life. You cannot complain of neighbors when you are in a boat on the sea-there are no neighbors: you are then in an archetypal condition. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 973
For the soil of our consciousness dries up and becomes sterile if we don’t let in the flood of the archetypes; if we don’t expose the soil to the influence of the elements, nothing grows, nothing happens we simply dry up. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 974
We are always a bit between the devil and the deep sea, and therefore we always need the intervention of the Holy Ghost to tell us how to reconcile the most irrational and the most paradoxical. For man is a terror in that respect, the highest principle on the one side and a perfect beast on the other. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 974
You see, archetypes mean archaic elements because they are forms of psychical life which have an eternal existence. They have existed since times immemorial and will continue to exist in an indefinite future. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 976
So much of the self remains outside, it doesn’t enter this three-dimensional empirical world. The self consists, then, of the most recent acquisitions of the ego consciousness and on the other side, of the archaic material. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 977
The self is a fact of nature and always appears as such in immediate experiences, in dreams and visions, and so on; it is the spirit in the stone, the great secret which has to be worked out, to be extracted from nature, because it is buried in nature herself. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 977
Therefore the term self is often mixed up with the idea of God. I would not do that. I would say that the term self should be reserved for that sphere which is within the reach of human experience, and we should be very careful not to use the word God too often. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 977-978
So we should reserve that term God for a remote deity that is supposed to be the absolute unity of all singularities. The self would be the preceding stage, a being that is more than man and that definitely manifests; that is the thinker of our thoughts, the doer of our deeds, the maker of our lives, yet it is still within the reach of human experience. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 978
The self makes terrible demands and really can demand too much. For it is the next manifestation of the unconscious creator that created the world in a marvelous dream. He tried for many millions of years to produce something that had consciousness, something like a human being. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 978
So you can say everything of the self; you can say it is a devil, a god, nothing but nature. It is your worst vice, or your strongest conviction, or your greatest virtue. It is just everything-the totality. You can even say it is the Holy Ghost. It is the victory of the divine life in the turmoil of space and time. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 979
Yet if we look on his works which we can observe through millions of years in the study of paleontology and anthropology, we see that the whole thing has gone on in an irregular way. It never had much system in spite of being exceedingly clever, so we assume that the creation was no systematic attempt but was just dabbling and experimenting and finally falling right, more or less. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 980
Now under those conditions we are allowed to make the speculation that because the creator is blind he needs a seeing consciousness, and therefore he finally made man who was the great discovery. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 981
, Z
But in psychology the self is a scientific concept with no assumption as to its metaphysical existence. We don’t deal with it as an existence and we don’t postulate an existence, but merely form a scientific psychological concept which expresses that totality, the nature. ~Carl Jung Zarathustra Seminar, Page 983
We do not know what matter is: matter is the term for an idea used in physics which formulates the presumable nature of things; and so spirit is a peculiar quality or idea of something which is immaterial and in its essence perfectly unknown. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 984
So the Holy Spirit is a formulation of certain phenomena which have nothing to do with the self directly, though you may naturally connect the two and say that wherever the self manifests, you. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 985
Moreover one should not omit mentioning that the Christian dogma makes a very clear distinction between the aspect of the Son and the Holy Spirit. The latter is the divine breath and not a person. It is the life breath that flows from the Father into the Son. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 986
You see, spirit to me is not an experience which I could substantiate in any way; it is a quality, like matter. Matter is a quality of an existence which is absolutely psychical. For our only reality is psyche, there is no other reality; all we say of other realities are attributes of psychological contents. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 986
Now, Dr. Harding says the Holy Spirit is one and indivisible; yet it is part of the Trinity and thus only One inasmuch as it is God. The self, on the other hand, is per definitionem really one and indivisible; therefore, it is called historically “the Monad” and is therefore like Christ, the Monogenes the Unigenitus, etc. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 986
Now, if it is true that our time and space are relative, then the psyche, being capable of manifesting beyond time and space-at least its part in the collective unconscious is beyond individual isolation; and if that is the case, more than one individual could be contained in that same self. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 987
You see, it is quite possible that our collective unconscious is just the evidence for the transcendent oneness of the self; since we know that the collective unconscious exists over an extraordinary area, covering practically the whole of humanity, we could call it the self of humanity. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 987
People think that they can apply love with no understanding, think love is only an emotional condition, a sort of feeling. Yes, it is a feeling, but what is the value of the feeling if it is not coupled with a real understanding? ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 997
I make use of this as a piece of evidence for my thesis that Nietzsche is the ordinary historical man, the traditional Christian, and his peculiar standpoint in Zarathustra is just due to the fact that he is possessed by the archetype of Zarathustra that naturally would speak an entirely different language. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1000
It is so much nicer to be compassionate to other people than to themselves, and so much easier because they then keep on top; other people are to be pitied, other people are poor worms that ought to be helped, and they are saviors. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1001
If you give your compassion to yourself, if you are interested in the imperfect man in yourself, naturally you bring up a monster-all the darkness that is in man, all that with which man is cursed forever, without the grace of God or the compassion of Christ and his work of salvation. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1001-1002
The idea that every man has the same value might be a great metaphysical truth, yet in this space-and-time world it is the most tremendous illusion; nature is thoroughly aristocratic and it is the wildest mistake to assume that every man is equal. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1002
Anybody in his sound senses must know that the mob is just mob. It is inferior, consisting of inferior types of the human species. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1002
I am quite inclined to attribute immortal souls to animals; they are just as dignified as the inferior man. That we should deal with the inferior man on our own terms is all wrong. To treat the inferior man as you would treat a superior man is cruel; worse than cruel, it is nonsensical, idiotic. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1002
Christianity has done it: we owe it to Christianity that all men are equal and dignified and such nonsense, that God looks at all men in the same way. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1002
We have no responsibility in that respect; we take love like the weather or a gold mine or a fruit tree which we don’t own but from which we can pick fruit, and nobody thinks of such a thing as creating that which loves us or that we love. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1004
We cannot take it for granted that love is something we just get somewhere. It must be produced. So it is a thing which has to be created because it doesn’t yet exist. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1004-1005
But that must be so: if a church is not intolerant it doesn’t exist. It needs must be intolerant in order to have definite form, for that is what the inferior man demands. It is always a sign of inferiority to demand the absolute truth. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1008
The superior man is quite satisfied that the supreme state of life is doubt of truth, where it is always a question whether it is a truth. A finished truth is dead. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1008
A living truth changes. If it is static, if it doesn’t change, it is dead. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1008
The mystery of the Trinity for instance is immensely profound, expressing the most basic facts of our unconscious mind; therefore it is quite understandable that it played such a great role. So we cannot dismiss those church dogmas as perfectly useless or nonsensical. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1011
So we cannot dismiss those church dogmas as perfectly useless or nonsensical. They are carefully elaborated expressions that have certain effects on the unconscious, and inasmuch as the church is capable of formulating such things, it has a catching power. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1011
The church walls hold. They are tight. People live in peace inside those walls and are fed by the right kind of dogma, a dogma which really expresses the unconscious facts as they are. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1011
Protestantism is a festering wound in the body of the church, the wound in the body of Christ which has been infected and suppurating ever since. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1012
For you never can get to yourself without loving your neighbor-that is indispensable; you never would arrive at yourself if you were isolated on top of Mt. Everest, because you never would have a chance to know yourself. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1019
And if you lose yourself in the crowd, in the whole of humanity, you also never arrive at yourself; just as you can get lost in your isolation, you can also get lost in utter abandonment to the crowd. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1019
To fall into the extraverted principle and follow the object and forget about yourself, is just like going into the wilderness and losing humanity. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1020
Therefore, we are only right in following the prescription, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” when we are also entitled to say, “Love thyself as thy neighbor.” If you are bold enough to love your neighbor, then you must be just enough to apply that love to yourself, whatever that love may be. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1020
Love can be anything between the worst stupidity and a great virtue, and only God can say whether it is perfectly pure gold. Usually it is not; it is a sliding scale of values. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1020
There is no absolutely unselfish love. Even a mother’s devotion and love for her child is selfish, full of black substance, with only a little surplus which you can call ideal love. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1020
Now, it is surely true that our inferior function has all the qualities of mob psychology: it is our own mob, but in that mob is the creative will. The creative will always begins in the depths and never starts at the top. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1021
For the seed is not the tree and the seed doesn’t make the tree unless there is the black earth: the black substance is needed in order to create something in reality. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1021
The seeds can remain for a long time without growing if circumstances are unfavorable; certain ideas can hover over mankind for thousands of years, and they never take root because there is no soil. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1022
The man of the crowd is no better than an amoral half-wit; he is a sort of monkey or a bull or something like that, and an institution which deals with such a man must have the right kinds of walls and gates, which are just coarse enough. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1023
The Reformation upset the church very badly, for Protestantism has no safe walls; there are a few spiritual walls left of the old fortress but they are not strong enough to be a protection against the creation of new ideas. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1024
Yes, that is perfectly true. On the few occasions that I have had to treat Catholics who were still pratiquants in the church, I found that they all suffered from a most remarkable extinction of fantasy-they had the greatest trouble about it. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1024
Eventually you bring up the thing you fear the most, mob psychology, which is indispensable for individuation. When you go through such an experience, you know it is a quest in which you may be killed. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1024
And the church is a safeguard; therefore I would never encourage people who find their peace safely ensconced in the church to bring up their fantasies. I would even advise a Protestant to go back into the lap of the Catholic church if he finds his peace there, even if his whole spiritual life should be completely destroyed. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1024
You see, there is no intelligence that can create a new church except the blind creativeness of the mob; the mob can create a new church as no intelligent fellow ever could. For to create a church you must be blind: you cannot have too much intelligence or consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1025
For example, the actual organized state of Russia, even the actual Germany or Italy, is a church really, a religious affair; and the laws within that church are far more fatal than the laws of the Catholic church. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1025
Very lately, however, I discovered that New Platonist and Pythagorean philosophers still survived in 1050 in Baghdad under the Caliphs. They even experienced a late blossoming then; we owe to them the existence of the so-called Corpus Hermeticum. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1026
He [Osiris] came at the end of a very special spiritual development, culminating in the Ptolemaic civilization, when the Osiris became the Osiris of every better man: the ordinary man had no Osiris because he had no decent burial. Then with Christ there was an Osiris for everybody and that simply uprooted the whole of antique civilization. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1026
The early Christians denied the Caesar; they didn’t want to participate in sacrifices to a Roman Caesar because they only believed in an invisible Lord. That was another kind of prison, but it didn’t injure them so much as when they were put in fetters or thrown into the arena, and some imaginative people could see more in it than in a Roman Caesar. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1027
And we have to parade with flags and a brass band in honor of the Caesar. That is what is actually happening, and that might be-l hope not-the new gospel with all the isms and flags and brass bands; we have the sacrifice to Caesarism, the absolute authority of the state, and we have a law which is no law because it is liable to change by an uncontrollable authority on top. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1027
“Differentiated” means aristocratic, different, independent, and that is the quality of the aristocratic superior function. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1029
So a savior is one who seizes, the Ergreifer who catches people like objects and whirls them into a form which lasts as long as the whirlwind lasts, and then the thing collapses and something new must come. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1030
You see, the teaching Christ received through his teacher, John the Baptist, must have been the ripe fruit of the time; otherwise it could not have been so in tune with
the surroundings, with all the great problems of the time. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1030
But we have evidence that John must have belonged to a certain religious movement, current in those days, which must have been something like the Essenes, also called the Therapeuts, who were chiefly occupied in healing the sick and interpreting dreams. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1031
Then we know from Philo Judaeus of Alexandria that monasteries existed in those days and that there were considerable settlements on the Dead Sea and in Egypt, and they naturally had a body of teaching. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1031
So we are almost forced to assume that Christ received Gnostic teaching and some of his sayings-like the parable of the Unjust Steward which we recently mentioned, and particularly the so-called “Sayings of Jesus” which are not contained in the New Testament-are closely related to Gnosticism. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1031
You know, Oannes is the Babylonian form of the Greek Johannes, and he is the one who in the form of a fish comes out of the sea daily and teaches people wisdom and civilization and every good thing under the sun. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1033
Hermes the thrice-greatest is the aristocrat of aristocrats. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1033
Tot is the Egyptian equivalent of Hermes. He is also a mystery god. Hermes was the teacher of all wisdom, but a wisdom which is not for the mob, a wisdom which when it touches the mob causes a conflagration or a whirlwind; it is the thing that has to be kept secret. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1033
You see, that has once to be the pearls have to be cast before the swine eventually, since the swine are also human. You may try to save the pearls but once the moment will come and a man will appear who will hand them over to the herd; that great wind will come when it cannot wait any longer. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1034
Sure enough, wisdom is a woman, Sophia, and sure enough, she loves none but the warrior, but the warrior is not understood to be a being of air, a dancer upon the burial ground. He would be amidst all the dangers, really fighting the battle of life, not dancing in the clouds. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 507
You know, we are an unbalanced race, so our nervous system is very inferior in a way; we are highly gifted, both wind- and flame-like, but we have little earth. Therefore we are chiefly bandits, warriors, pirates, and madmen. That is the characteristic of the West as may be seen in the expressions of our faces. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1080
Then through the revelation of the Christian symbolism, we learned the most important fact that the deity had found a means in the human psyche to be reborn, to be born through man. That is the message, the great symbolic teaching; and that of course increases the conscious psyche of man to an extraordinary degree. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 981
That shame is of course a very typical reaction; it is a primitive reaction which clearly shows the distance that exists between the ego consciousness and the original unconsciousness of mere instinct. As long as man is in a merely instinctive animal condition, there is absolutely no ground for shame, no possibility of shame even, but with the coming of the ego consciousness, he feels apart from the animal kingdom and the original paradise of unconsciousness, and then naturally he is inclined to have feelings of inferiority. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 965
The creator has made a time-space cage; he split off the fourth dimension from space and the three remaining formed a marvelous cage in which things could be separated. And when time was added, the different conditions which evolved in space could be extended in the time dimension. There is extension in space and extension in time, so one could see things clearly, one could discriminate and that is the possibility of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 981
This figure of the chain is not my own invention. I found it the other day in a book by an old alchemistic doctor, as the so-called symbol of Avicenna;’ the alchemists were mostly doctors and they developed their peculiar kind of psychology by means of very apt symbols. This one consists of an eagle flying high in the air, and from his body falls a chain which is attached to a toad creeping along on the earth. The eagle of course represents the air, the spirit, and in alchemy it had a very particular meaning. The eagle would remind any alchemist of the phoenix, the self-renewing god, an Egyptian inheritance. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 967-968
Also the concept of energy is one by definition because you cannot say there are many different energies; there are many different powers but only one energy. So the idea of the self includes the idea of oneness because the sum of many things must be one. But it consists of many units: the actual empirical phenomenology of the self consists of a heap of innumerable units, some of which we call hereditary, the Mendelian units. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 986
For instance, those old hierarchies like the one of Dionysius the Areopagite, father of scholastic philosophy, or the ideas of the Gnostics, or of Paul, all point to the same idea: namely, that the world has a peculiar hierarchic structure, that different groups of people are presided over, as it were, by one angel, and that those angels are again in groups and presided over by archangels-and so on, up to the throne of God. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 988
The Mandaeans were disciples of John and they were Gnostics. Peculiarly enough, the Gnostic Evangel is also called the Evangel of St. John; this is obscure, but since it was written only at the beginning of the second century, it is possible that the name of John covers the Gnostic side of Christian origins; on the one side, he was decidedly an orthodox Jew and on the other side he must have received the Gnostic teaching. Paul also had been a Gnostic, a disciple of a Jewish Gnostic, the Rabbi Gamaliel the elder; and we have definite evidence in his writings of a Gnostic education: he uses Gnostic terms, particularly in the Epistle to the Ephesians. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1031
Jung-Ostrowski Seminar
Primeval history is the story of the beginning of consciousness by differentiation from the archetypes. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 32.
Shakti creates Maya to make Shiva visible; the female principle builds reality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 51
The greatest darkness is always felt through the opposite sex. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 51
Individual existence is the crime against the gods, disobedience to God, the peccatum originale. Out of this projection of spiritual fire is born the anima. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 32.
The anima comes out of an emotional act, taking place in darkness, the compensation for the crime against the fire; the anima is the compensating element that must be extracted from matter. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 32.
When the Primeval Mother is overcome the anima can become a world consciousness; she must be chiseled from the earth. The seed of the anima is only productive when man can subordinate his libido to the female principle. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 32.
The act of becoming conscious happens to man in darkness. If he can grasp and handle consciousness then the fire brought from Heaven becomes a sacrificial flame, not the wrath of the gods. The acquisition of consciousness by force creates a sense of guilt. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 9.
Consciousness is only possible if a spark of the essence becomes detached from the unconscious, religiously one could say from God. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 9.
Consciousness is obviously the supreme quality: the destiny of the world is to achieve entry into human consciousness. Man is the being God has sought not only to show him the world, but because the Creator needs man to illuminate his creation. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 9.
We have to realize the inborn divine will, which is the process of individuation. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 9.
If I am all things I cannot discover anything. I am a point that requires space and time to expand into consciousness. If I am all things I cannot distinguish myself from the rest or recognise what is different from me. Man is the dividing line of the acts of consciousness; he illuminates the night of the unconscious around him. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 9.
With the contents of my consciousness I must live as naturally as a plant. If I act inadequately it is the ape in me that does it. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 10.
The unconscious has first to be activated; then we must extricate ourselves, doubting all the things we have hitherto believed; then we can turn back and resume our place in the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 10.
The light of consciousness needs to be clearly distinguished from the cunning of the unfathomable depths of the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 10.
Attainment of consciousness is culture in the broadest sense and self-knowledge is therefore the heart essence of the process. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 11.
If we say “God” we give expression to an image or a verbal concept, which has undergone many changes in the course of time. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 11.
Life exists only where there is meaning; it does not matter what a person does provided it makes sense to him. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 13.
Individuation cannot be achieved without a mystery. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 13.
Christ himself associated with tax collectors and whores and accepted the thief crucified beside him. “I am the least of my brethren and my own shadow.” ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 13.
Even when we recognise that an erotic problem lies behind a neurosis we must not express it crudely lest we frighten the patient away. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 14.
All of us reach our destinations travelling under false hypotheses. Columbus wanted to sail to India and found he had discovered America. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 14.
Depressions always have to be understood teleologically. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 14.
The psyche is also the scene of conflicts between instinct and free will, for instincts are without order and collide with the organised consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 10.
To own a mystery gives stature, conveys uniqueness, and assures that one will not be submerged in the mass. Because a secret may cause suffering it is best to keep it to oneself. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 14.
Too much secrecy causes neurosis and a split from reality, but having no mystery permits only collective thinking and Action. Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 14.
If the unconscious does not cooperate, if, that is, there are no dreams or fantasies, then it is very difficult to deal with a neurosis. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 15.
Even in rearing a child it is often good for parents to react emotionally and not with cool superiority to the child’s bad behaviour. Children often irritate their parents just to make them show emotion. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 14.
If it is avoidable, the same analyst should not treat both, husband and wife. Both patients desire to have their analyst on their side. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Pages 15-16.
Often people come for analysis who wish to be prepared to meet death. They can make astonishingly good progress in a short time and then die peacefully. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page16.
Inner development can advance enormously if there is knowledge of the nearness of the end. It seems as if a further step in consciousness has to be reached before the end of life. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page16.
After a stroke general debilitation or senile depression can occur. If the brain is damaged, consciousness can slip back many levels. The real personality has then departed; what remains carries on the fight against death. Conflicts do not reach the whole person anymore and are therefore not real conflicts any longer. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 16.
If the question of an abortion arises the whole situation with all its implications must be taken into account. If the parents are married and healthy the child must be accepted, and the sacrifice of living a more modest life should be met if it is financially necessary. If the parents are not married the question must be weighed very carefully: would it be favourable or not, damaging or useful? ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 16.
There are patients who can accept neither the world nor themselves. It is the task of the analyst to bear with them until they can bear themselves. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 16.
Everyone in the world is crying out to be accepted. The analyst must pay the price for the damage done to his patients by others before him. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 16.
If the poles of the psyche are torn apart the analyst should take great care that the patient does not identify himself with one side of his conflict. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 16.
When geometric symbols appear in dreams or drawings they are the original images of the primeval condition. Geometric designs may also appear if a schizophrenic destruction is threatening. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 17.
Painting and drawing one’s inner pictures is a form of self-enchantment for the purpose of inner change which creates what had previously been depicted. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 17.
If someone has a mastery of total critical evaluation, it is possible for him to reach the processes of the unconscious through automatic writing instead of through “active imagination.” ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 18.
The technique of active imagination can prove very important in difficult situations — where there is a visitation, say. It only makes sense when one has the feeling of being up against a blank wall. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 18.
In difficult situations you talk to yourself, intuitively knowing that you are your self and also that other. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 27.
Active imagination is only legitimate if one is confronted with an insurmountable obstacle in a situation where no one can give advice. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 18.
Active imagination and automatic writing, painting and carving pictures from the unconscious, are all indirect methods of finding out what the unconscious means. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 18.
The unconscious behaves as if the laws of our world did not exist. It flies to the roof contemptuous of the laws of gravity. We must bring its demands down to earth and somehow try to realize them. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 19.
It is a very real help to find an expression that combines and satisfies the demands of the inner and outer worlds, the unconscious and the conscious. That is the achievement of the so-called transcendent function. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 19.
The archetype signifies that particular spiritual reality which cannot be attained unless life is lived in consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 21.
Archetypes are images in the soul that represent the course of one’s life. One part of the archetypal content is of material and the other of spiritual origin. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 21.
When all the archetypal images are properly placed in a hierarchy, when that which must be below is below, and that which must be above is above, our final condition can recapture our original blissful state. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 21.
Archetypes are not matters of faith; we can know that they are there. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 21.
The Bible says, “Whosoever shall say “Racha” to his brother is guilty of hellfire.” If we substitute “shadow” for “brother” and implicate the dark brother within, we open out this biblical word into new perspectives. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.
“What ye have done to the least of your brethren ye have done unto me.” The least of me is my inferior function which represents my shadow-side. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.
But what, if the inferior and neglected function expresses the will of God? ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.
When sacrifice is demanded it frequently implies the acceptance of our shadow- side. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.
All “good people” suffer from irritability. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.
An alchemical text says: “The mind should learn compassionate love for the body.” ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.
The unconscious shows us the face that we turn towards it. It smiles if we are friendly to it; but if we neglect it, it makes faces at us. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.
There are always people who want to bring light into the world because they are afraid to reach down into their own dirt. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.
But who can be humble who has not sinned? This is why sin is so important; this is why it is said that God loves the sinner more than ninety-nine righteous men. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.
We should not want to try to escape upward or downward from the world. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.
The self has inconceivable powers and possibilities, but it needs a world in which these powers and possibilities can become conscious. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 35.
The self is not wholly personal. One has one’s own personal view of it, but at the same time it is also, in a sense, more general. It is also the self of others, being greater than the individual. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 35.
Objects and a world to contain them are necessary for consciousness, a place where differentiation occurs and can be experienced. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 35.
The self is always present but does not know it … yet everything must be brought into consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 35.
A man is both, ego and self. The ego recedes more and more to make room for the self, changing the individual until the ego has disappeared. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 35.
It is said sometimes that Christ relinquished his divinity and became man. But that cannot be, for what can have become of the divinity? ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 35.
I do not know in what relation the ego stands to the self, but the self as a transcendent possibility is always present. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 36.
As an ego I am less than my totality because I am only conscious of being an ego. The self is infinitely more extensive. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 36.
The ego is a province, merely an administrative centre of a great empire. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 36.
Man is an indescribable phenomenon because his self cannot be completely grasped. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 36.
The self is simultaneously something abstract and something personal (supremely personal, indeed}. It is like the mana that is spread throughout nature which we can only make contact with through our experience of life or through ritual. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 36.
Consciousness is the cradle of the birth of God in man. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 39.
A religious life presupposes a conscious connection of the inner and outer worlds and it requires a constant, meticulous attention to all circumstances to the best of our knowledge and our conscience. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 39.
We must watch what the gods ordain for us in the outer world, but as well as waiting for developments in the outer world we must listen to the inner world; both worlds are expressions of God. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 39.
I must know what the Church teaches but I must then ask myself what my own law is. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 39.
When someone says, in the words of the “Our Father,” “Thy will be done,” we must find out, if he is capable of taking both the inside and the outside, the ego and the world, into account. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 39.
The words of the Bible and the sayings of Christ are paradox. We too must be paradox, for only then do we live our lives, only then do we reach completeness and integration of our personalities. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 40.
Biographies seem so unreal because they attempt to give a consistent picture of someone’s personality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 40.
The unconscious has its consciousness, it reveals it f. i. through dreams, for otherwise we could not know anything about it. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 41.
To understand the God-Creator as absolute potential is to recognize a power which is endowed with meaning in space and time and in causality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 41.
The four aspects, the quaternity of the Creator- God are space, time, causality and meaning. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 42.
Human consciousness is the second creator of the world. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 42.
God seems to be unconscious: He does not seem to know men. He tries to see them as He is Himself. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 42.
Man is also distinct from the angels because he can receive revelations, be disobedient, grow and change. God changes too and is therefore especially interested in man. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 42.
Christian dogma brought immense advances in religious comprehensions. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 42.
God the Father became the Son and His own soul, the Word that became flesh. Each son of God must awaken this new reality in himself. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 42.
I am a son of God when I do the simplest things; but how difficult it is to do what is absolutely unimportant when I feel I am so significant. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 42.
We must not forget that we are only ants … but that even an ant is an imago Dei. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 43.
The existence of the Church has its own validity. Anyone who drops out of the Church loses its maternal protection and is a prey to national confessionalisms. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 45.
It takes an enormous inner strength to live through severance from the Catholic Church. It is a tremendous responsibility to endeavour to entice someone else away from the Church. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 45.
When Christ is most luminous the Church receives the least light. The light of the Church is therefore greatest when the moon is in opposition to the sun. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 45.
Many patients must grasp that there is much that lives in their psyche that is not consonant with the Church: it is the Spirit that continues to beget and bloweth where it listeth. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 45.
One need not always be in opposition to the Church. The Church is valid up to the point where life goes on. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 45.
There are often elements in the psyche that are absolutely heathen. They have to be domesticated in some way in Christianity, but there are still certain heathen elements that even the Church has not been able to absorb. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 45.
The categories of good and evil cannot be suspended; they are continually alive and cannot be attached to material things. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 47.
Evil is that which obstructs meaningful vitality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 47.
In the Middle Ages the flight to the spiritual world was still necessary. It was meaningful then to want to live spiritually and give little attention to the material, for meaning was directed towards the spirit. But it is meaningful today to want to descend with dignity to the chthonic world. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 47.
The problem that is central and closest to our hearts already contains the lurking danger of evil. We must therefore beware of impetuous decisions and enthusiastic radical attitudes. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 47.
The Holy Spirit has to come into contact with the material world and beget; He is the new Yahweh standing on the third step. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 48.
Satan unlike Christ, was created, not begotten. When I create I am free and not dependent. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 48.
I often have to say to an anxious mother, “It is your damned love and anxiety that are preventing your children from ever growing up.” ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 48.
Those who are always on the look out to do charitable works serve virtue out of their moral cowardice and fall into the worst depravity. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 48.
It is a psychological fact that someone who is disloyal, or a liar can be capable of uttering the truth to an extent that we cannot fore see. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 48.
To evade action is really to bury one’s talents. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 48.
He who is most guilty is most innocent; the most holy man is the one most conscious of his sin. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 48.
But if we think that God were responsible for the original sin, there would be no more mystery about sin. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 48.
Adam and Eve would indeed have been inadequate people if they had not noticed which tree the right apples grew on. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 48.
If we study the horoscopes of a murderer and his victim we find that the victim has murdered himself. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 49.
A man often makes a decidedly infantile resistance to a woman and therefore at the same time to his own unconscious side. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 51.
A man also has a secret fear of a woman’s opinions. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 51.
Yahweh had this fear of Sophia and yet she helped him to create the world; he took on too much, without moderation. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 51.
A woman is more likely to acknowledge her own duality. A man is continually blinded by his intellect and does not learn through insight. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 51.
A woman is necessary to force a man to live in the concrete world. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 51.
There are women who believe that man will deflect them from their goals and men who often believe that women want to keep them from their work; yet the real causes are either fear of the other sex or of one’s own unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 51.
In a marriage neither partner sits on a throne. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 52.
When an archetypal event approaches the sphere of consciousness, it also manifests itself in the outer life. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 55.
When an archetype is constellated it can appear in the inner and the outer world at the same time. Each distinct case is an example of creation. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 55.
I do not use the I Ching very often myself but it has always given me something. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 56.
There is a story that says that when Mohammed ascended into Heaven the stone in the Temple of Jerusalem wanted to go too. The archetype manifests itself in the outer world as sympathia. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 56.
Science can collect experiences and find averages but the central and essential phenomena are passed over. Science only reaches the crudest basic conclusions. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 55.
Whole areas of life are considered by science to be non-existent so that it can concern itself with the laws of space and time. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 55.
But in the world it is not what is usual or general that is essential, but the exceptional and the individual; there is no such thing as a normal person, even in biology. The result of science is to reduce everything abstractly to an average; in spite of all its ingenuity it cannot create identity. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 55.
Physics does admit that there are exceptions that can be expressed as statistical truths, but it has no room for the a-causal ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 55.
The scientist is prejudiced by reason which acts to hide the world from him. Reality does not lie in statistical averages but in exceptions. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 55.
I should like to study the theory of numbers. What is a number, an entity, a sequence, an archetype? We think we can perceive and grasp a number logically and suddenly it behaves quite differently from the way we expected. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 55.
It is a fundamental phenomenon of mathematics that numbers are not just mathematical entities but individualities. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 55.
We believe we are playing with equations and suddenly it transpires that certain equations express the laws of electric currents. God played and formulated currents. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 55.
It is characteristic of the transcendent that it can be pictured and described by numbers; the passage of time, quantity, and identity, are spiritual substances. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 60.
The character of the image is not determined by numbers. Pure spiritual substance is eternal. An image as such needs neither time nor space. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 60.
Where numbers indicate a measure we move into the material. A concrete image is a manifestation requiring space in which the spirit clothes itself in the material in order to draw to man. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 60.
Images and numbers are doors through which the spiritual can reach man. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 60.
Newton experienced a breakthrough into the unconscious through his spiritual isolation. When we leave society and the community of human intelligences the spirits rise from the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 60.
As intelligent beings, however, we are dependent on human society; the unconscious is no substitute for reality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 60.
Newton was isolated by his discoveries and such spiritually isolated persons are more in danger of splitting — as Beethoven was, for example, when his music was not accepted. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 60.
The announcement of an important truth, even with the best of intentions, can lead to an extraordinary mess. That was the fate of Prometheus. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 60.
There is no difference between” my” objective unconscious (my pictures drawn from the objective unconscious) and the objective world or world events. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 63.
If “it” happens to me I do not have it any more in my hands than if it happened in Russia, in the air, in the house, or on the street. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 63.
Whatever happens psychically in me I can perceive, but it is as objective as if it were taking place in Siberia. There is really no distinction; the flow of objective events passes through the outer as well as the inner senses. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 63.
The contents of our psyche is a part of the larger, objective course of events. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 63.
It seems to me that we are at the end of an era. The splitting of the atom and the nuclear bomb bring us a new view of matter. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 63.
All misdirected mass-psychology leads to the destruction of the individual and the decay of civilization. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 63.
Carl Jung: 1925 Seminar
Life is never so beautiful as when surrounded by death. ~Carl Jung, Seminar 1925, Page 85
In my own case the release of the unconscious was demanded. The conscious had become practically a tabula rasa, and the contents underneath had to be freed. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 55
The criterion of art is that it grips you. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 57
Just as the dream seeks to maintain a psychological balance by filling out the daytime conscious attitude by the unconscious elements, so art balances the general public tendency of a given time. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 57
So modern art leads us away from the too great scattering of the libido on the external object, back to the creative source within us, back to the inner values. In other words, it leads us by the same path analysis tries to lead us, only it is not a conscious leadership on the part of the artist. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 60
Analysis would have been unthinkable in the Middle Ages, because those men were freely expressing those values from which we have cut ourselves off today. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 60
I had killed my intellect, helped on to the deed by a personification of the collective unconscious, the little brown man with me. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 62
The fear the introvert feels rests on the unconscious assumption that the object is too much animated, and this is a part of the ancient belief in magic. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 65
If I just tell the anima that she is working off some collective notion on me which I have no idea of accepting as part of my individuality, that does no good at all—when I am in the grip of an emotion it is no support to me to say it is a collective reaction. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 49
The minute a thing goes into language it is ipso facto conditioned in its objectivity. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Pages 63-64
Our mental processes cannot escape the intermingling with these preexisting images, so it is easy to see why a new idea always has to fight for its life against these ancestral predispositions. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 64
The extravert is controlled by his relation to the thing without, the introvert by his relation to the thing within. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 64
It is only through consciousness that the discrimination between inner and outer experience is achieved, and only by consciousness that a man can know he is connected with the outer object to the neglect of the inner and vice versa. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Pages 64-65
The conscious extravert values his connection with the outer object and fears his own inner self. The introvert has no fear of himself, but great fear of the object, which he comes to endow with extraordinary terrors. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 65
When the intellect or any superior function is pushed that far, it becomes bloodless and takes on an airy, gas-like character. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 66
The extravert, on the other hand, takes his unconscious material in an introverted way, that is, with extreme caution and with many incantations to exorcise the inner power the object exercises over him. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 66
We cannot get anywhere in analysis with thinking until it reaches its antinomy—that is, something is and is not true at one and the same time. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 66
The same is true with feeling, and a differentiated feeling type must reach the point where the thing most loved is the thing most hated, before refuge will be sought in another function. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 66
Why doesn’t the inferior function come up at once? The inferior function is hooked up with the collective unconscious and has to come up first in the collective fantasies, which of course, in their first aspect, do not seem to be collective. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 68
instinct is purposive. It works properly only under certain conditions, and as soon as it gets out of tune with these conditions it threatens the destruction of the species. ~Carl Jung, Seminar Given in 1925, Page 86.
Analysis should release an experience that grips us or falls upon us as from above, an experience that has substance and body such as those things which occurred to the ancients. If I were going to symbolize it I would choose the Annunciation. ~Carl Jung, Seminar 1925, p. 111.
We can hardly predict today what the artist is going to bring forth, but always a great religion has gone hand in hand with a great art. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 61
I used the same technique [Active Imagination] of the descent, but this time I went much deeper. The first time I should say I reached a depth of about one thousand feet, but this time it was a cosmic depth. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 68
When one gets an intuition of the collective unconscious, if there is any creative power in the individual a definite figure is formed, rather than that the material comes through in a fragmentary form. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 71
When an artist has a figure from the collective unconscious, he at once begins to play with it esthetically, and usually makes some concretization of it as a monument, etc. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 71
When one assumes a perceptional attitude toward one’s unconscious, an attitude often to be observed in certain intuitives, one makes no effort to assimilate the material into the personality. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 73
Our effort today should be the double one of consciousness plus a full participation in life. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 73
The common ideal of today is work at all costs, but many people simply work and do not live. We cannot depreciate the ideal of work, but we can understand that it is valueless when it divorces one from life. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 73
If you leave all your energy and will in the superior function you slowly go to hell—it sucks you dry. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 74
Today to bring up the inferior function is to live, but we pay dearly for it both in mistakes and in energy. Sometimes it is not our choice—the inferior function takes us unawares. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 74
I had the feeling that I was an over-compensated psychosis, and from this feeling I was not released till August 1st, 1914. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 48
Such a situation presented itself at the time of the spread of Christianity two thousand years ago. The spiritual values had at that time sunk into the unconscious, and in order to realize them again, people had to go to tremendous lengths in the repudiation of material values. Gold, women, art—all had to be given up. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 74
We seek life, not efficiency, and this seeking of ours is directly against the collective ideals of our times. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 74
Only those who have energy enough, or who have been gripped in spite of themselves, can go through this process, but once in it you have to bleed for it. It is a process that is going on all over the world today. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 74
These people in the early Christian era were unaware of the general movement contemporaneous with them. They could not realize they were Christians, yet they were seeking initiation into all sorts of mysteries in search of the thing Christianity was offering. They could not accept it because of its origin in the hands of despised peoples. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 75
Most of the troubles of our times come from this lack of realization that we are part of a herd that has deviated from the main currents. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 75
When you are in a herd you lose the sense of danger, and this it is that makes us unable to see where we deviate from the deep currents of collectivity. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 75
As a natural scientist, thinking and sensation were uppermost in me and intuition and feeling were in the unconscious and contaminated by the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 75
You cannot get directly to the inferior function from the superior, it must always be via the auxiliary function. Intellect will not hold together sensation and intuition, rather it will separate them. Such a destructive attempt will be checked by feeling, which backs up intuition. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 75
I like to reserve the concept of will for that small amount of energy that is disposable by us in consciousness. Now if you put this small amount toward activating the instinctive process, the latter then goes on with a force much bigger than yours. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Pages 76-77
The libido of man contains the two opposite urges or instincts: the instinct to live and the instinct to die. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 77
You cannot get out of your skin until you become an eternal ghost. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 79
The idea of the pairs of opposites is as old as the world, and if we treated it properly, we should have to go back to the earliest sources of Chinese philosophy, that is to the I Ching oracle. Curiously enough, the pairs of opposites do not appear as such in Egyptian thought, but they are a basic part of both Chinese and Indian philosophy. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 80
So in the Upanishads, in contrast to the Chinese viewpoint, the emphasis is not on the opposites as such, but on the peculiar creative process between them. One could say therefore that the general point of view of the Upanishads is monistic. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 81
Atman is the central thing between the opposites; they themselves are almost taken for granted. Lao-tse on the other hand, as we have seen, stresses the opposites, although he knows the way between the two, Tao, and accepts it as the essence of life. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 81
The Upanishads appeal to people who are beyond the pairs of opposites. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 82
Today we have lost to a great extent this sense of the immanence of thought, as one might put it, and have instead the illusion of making our thoughts ourselves. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 82
We are not convinced that our thoughts are original beings that walk about in our brains, and we invent the idea that they are powerless without our gracious creative act; we invent this in order not to be too much influenced by our thoughts. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 82
Of course it is quite useful to us to have the idea that our thoughts are free expressions of our intentional thinking, otherwise we would never be free from the magic circle of nature. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 82
After all, we really can think, even if not with an absolute independence from nature; but it is the duty of the psychologist to make the double statement, and while admitting man’s power of thought, to insist also on the fact that he is trapped in his own skin, and therefore always has his thinking influenced by nature in a way he cannot wholly control. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 83
The legend says of the I Ching that a horse came up out of the Yellow River bearing on his back the trigrams out of which the symbols are built up. The sages copied it and it was known as the River Map. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 83
We do not think thus, and so we no longer take our thoughts as nature; the very way thought processes work in us keeps us from the notion that nature has spoken to us when we have thought. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 83
Obviously there is no law to prove that this is so, but we cannot assume that the products of our brains do not derive from nature; therefore I see no reason why we would not find astonishingly true things in the thought of the ancient sages, such as the I Ching represents. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 84
He [Heraclitus] is singularly Chinese in his philosophy and is the only Western man who has ever really compassed the East. If the Western world had followed his lead, we would all be Chinese in our viewpoint instead of Christian. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 84
Extreme fanaticism I found to rest on a concealed doubt. Torquemada, as the father of the Inquisition, was as he was because of the insecurity of his faith; that is, he was unconsciously as full of doubt as he was consciously full of faith. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 85
I started with the primitive idea of the flowing out and the flowing in of energy, and from this I constructed the theory of the introverted and extraverted types. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 86
The libido is not split in itself; it is a case of a balancing movement between opposites, and you could say that libido is one or that libido is two according as you concentrate now on the flow, now on the opposing poles between which the flow takes place. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 86
The opposition is a necessary condition of libido flow, and so you may say that by virtue of that fact one is committed to a dualistic conception of the world; but you can also say that the “flow”—that is, the energy—is one, and that is monism. If there is no high and low, no water flows; if there is high and low and no water, nothing happens; thus there is at the same time duality and oneness in the world, and it is a matter of temperament which viewpoint you choose to assume. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 86
If you are a dualist like Lao-tse, and concerned chiefly with the opposites, all you will find to say about what is between might go into his words, “Tao is so still.” But if, on the other hand, you are monistic like the Brahmans, you can write whole volumes about Atman, the thing between the opposites. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 86
But when we become aware of the opposites we are driven to seek the way that will resolve them for us, for we cannot live in a world that is and is not, we must go forward to a creation that enables us to attain a third point superior to the pairs of opposites. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Pages 86 – 87
We have to learn with effort the negations of our positions, and to grasp the fact that life is a process that takes place between two poles, being only complete when surrounded by death. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 86
We could adopt Tao and Atman as our solutions, possibly, but only on the assumption that these terms have meant to their originators what our philosophical ideas mean to us. But that is not so; Tao and Atman grew, Atman out of the lotus, while Tao is the still water. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 87
Suppose a patient comes to me with a great conflict and I say to him, “Read the Tao Tê Ching” or “Throw your sorrows on Christ.” It is splendid advice, but what does it mean to the patient in helping his conflict? Nothing. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 87
Analysis should release an experience that grips us or falls upon us as from above, an experience that has substance and body, such as those things occurred to the ancients. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 87
If we release the energy of the collective unconscious until we have no more, then we arrive at differentiation. The archetypes are sources of energy. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 99
If people who have no views of life catch hold of an archetypal idea, say a religious idea, they become efficient. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 99
Moral views do not touch the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 99
Within the realm of willpower we have choice, but beyond that no choice at all. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 99
As I am an introverted intellectual my anima contains feeling [that is] quite blind. In my case the anima contains not only Salome, but some of the serpent, which is sensation as well. As you remember, the real Salome was involved in incestuous relations with Herod, her stepfather, and it was because of the latter’s love for her that she was able to get the head of John the Baptist. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 100
In my case the anima contains not only Salome, but some of the serpent, which is sensation as well. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 100
With Freud, the unconscious is always pouring out unacceptable material into the conscious, and the conscious has difficulty in taking up this material and represses it, and there is no balance. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 100
In the history of Gnosis, this figure plays a great role, and every sect claims to have been founded by such a one. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 101
When you think of a snake, you are always in touch with racial instinct. Horses and monkeys have snake phobia, as man has. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 102
The serpent shows the way to hidden things and expresses the introverting libido, which leads man to go beyond the point of safety, and beyond the limits of consciousness, as expressed by the deep crater. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 102
The serpent leads the psychological movement apparently astray into the kingdom of shadows, dead and wrong images, but also into the earth, into concretization. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 102
Inasmuch as the serpent leads into the shadows, it has the function of the anima; it leads you into the depths, it connects the above and the below. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 102
He [Elijah] said I treated thoughts as if I generated them myself, but, according to his views, thoughts were like animals in a forest, or people in a room, or birds in the air. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 103
For the understanding of the unconscious we must see our thoughts as events, as phenomena. We must have perfect objectivity. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 103
We went far up, and reached a cyclopean wall, boulders piled up in a great ring. I thought, “Ha, this is a Druidic sacred place.” We entered through an opening, and found ourselves in a large place, with a mound[ed] Druid altar. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 104
The animal face which I felt mine transformed into was the famous [Deus] Leontocephalus of the Mithraic mysteries, the figure which is represented with a snake coiled around the man, the snake’s head resting on the man’s head, and the face of the man that of a lion. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 104
It is the famous symbolism of the vessel, a symbolism that survives till 1925—see Parsifal. It is the Holy Grail, called the Vase of Sin (see King: The Gnostics and Their Remains). Also it is a symbol of the early Gnostics. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 107
You may remember that Cumont remarks that if something had happened to disrupt Christianity in the third century, the world would be Mithraic today. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 108
As soon as horizontal forms show in design it is the appearance of the rational functions, because they are on our earth. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 110
In itself this religion [Mithraic] is as antiquated as can be. It is only relatively important as being the brother of Christianity, which has assimilated some elements from it. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 112
The ringing of the bells in the celebration of the Mass probably comes from the Mithraic cult, where bells were rung at a certain point in the mysteries. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 112
Also, Christmas day is a Mithraic feast. In early days, Christmas came on the 8th of January, and was a day taken over from the Egyptians, being the day celebrating the finding of the body of Osiris. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 113
There is no man who could not exist without a woman—that is, he carries the necessary balance within himself if he be obliged to live his life that way, and the same thing applies to a woman with respect to a man, but if either sex is to have a complete life, it requires the other as a compensatory side. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 114
Primitives show a much more balanced psychology than we do for the reason that they have no objection to letting the irrational come through, while we resent it. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 114
For example, you can run across people who think themselves born without a religious sense, and this is just as absurd as if they said they were born without eyes. It simply means they have left all that side of themselves in the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 114
As another example, one is always hearing persons who have had some experience of analysis saying, “I won’t make up my mind about that, I’ll see what my dreams say.” But there are hosts of things which call for decisions from the conscious, and about which it is idiotic to “put it up” to the unconscious for a decision. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 114
One can even come to clairvoyance; but when such a gift as the latter is developed, it makes the person permeable to all sorts of atmospheric conditions that may result in his misery. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 115
So when you relieve the unconscious of non-realized contents, you release it for its own special functioning, and it will go ahead like an animal. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 115
We look at an animal and say it is such and such a species, but if we knew that animal to be our ghost brother, it would be a different situation for us. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 115
After all, an animal is not just a thing with fur on it; it is a complete being. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 115
That is, Americans, being so split, turn to the East for the expression of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 116
But if I ask myself how I establish an absolute or unconditioned connection with the world, my answer is that I can only do that when I am both passive and active at the same time, as much victim as actor. This only occurs for a man through woman. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 117
If you give up the woman in reality, you fall a victim to the anima. It is this feeling of inevitability about his connection with woman that man dislikes the most. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 117
Let us take as a sample the Catholic Mass. If we study this we must recognize it to be one of the most perfect things we possess. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 119
Take the goodness expressed in Christianity, for instance. That is apparent to us but get outside of your own skin and into that of a Polynesian native, and Christianity looks very black indeed. Or ask the Spanish heretics who have been burned for the glory of God what they think of Christianity. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 119
When a man knows his anima, she is both night and day to him. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 120
A man may, as I have said, know the real woman also as lightness and darkness, but when he sees in a woman the magical quality that is the essence of She, he at once begins tremendous projections of the unconscious upon her. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 120
A woman too has a peculiar attitude toward nature, much more trusting than that of a man. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 123
I have been tremendously impressed with the animal character of the unconscious of woman, and I have reason to think that her relation to the Dionysian element is a very strong one. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 124
It looks to me as if man were really further away from the animal than the woman—not that he has not a strong animal likeness in him, but it is not so psychological as in women. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 124
It is as though in men the animal likeness stopped at the spinal cord while in women it extends into the lower strata of the brain, or that man keeps the animal kingdom in him below the diaphragm, while in women it extends throughout her being. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 124
But that is altogether a mistake, for their [women] animalness contains spirituality, while in the man it is only brute. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 124
There are always parts of your functions that are within your conscious, and parts that are without your conscious but still within the sphere of psychical activity. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 131
I would like to speak now of the four functions in relation to reality, for it is my idea that each of them brings to the subject a special aspect of reality. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 131
Inasmuch as we can test the validity of intuition by seeing whether or not the possibilities do occur actually, and since millions of these possibilities arrived at by intuition have been realized, it is legitimate for the intuitive type to value his function as a means of understanding one phase of reality, that is, dynamic reality. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 132
Insofar as you live in a world, you cannot escape forming a persona. You can say, “I won’t have such and such a persona,” but as you discard one you get another—unless, of course, you live on Everest. You can only learn who you are through your effects on other people. By this means you create your personality. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 117
It was only in later days, when the Mithraic cult was being overcome, that the Christians took the 25th of December, the day celebrated by the followers of Mithras as the day of Sol invictus, for their Christmas. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 113
Thinking is based on reality only indirectly, but nonetheless it can carry just as much conviction. Nothing is more real than an idea to a person who thinks. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 132
Thinking, then, derives from the reality of the image, but has the image reality? To answer that question, let us turn to the field of natural science, where we can find abundant evidence of the potency of an image. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 132
The great philosophers have spoken of them always as being eternal. It is these static images that underlie thinking. We could call them, if we chose, Logos. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 133
Each function type has a special way of viewing feeling and is likely to find things about it which are untrue for the other types. Thus one of the points with respect to the functions that has been most combated is my contention that feeling is rational. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 134
My books have been read largely by intellectuals, who have, of course, not been able to see feeling from this aspect, because feeling in themselves is thoroughly irrational by reason of its contamination by elements from the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 134
Sometimes it is quite impossible to convince a person that he cannot grasp the trans-subjective world with one function alone, no matter how strong that function may be. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 134
I have spoken more than once of the way an intuitive type can neglect reality, and you can, I am sure, supply an equal number of examples of the ways a feeling type can do the same thing. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 135
Up to this time we have spoken of the subject as though it were unchanging in time, but as we know, the body is a four-dimensional entity, the fourth dimension being time. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 136
Time means a past and a future, and so the individual is only complete when we add his actual structure as the result of past events, and at the same time the actual structure taken as the starting point of new tendencies. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 137
We can speak of the conscious ego as the subjective personality, and of the shadow self as the objective personality. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 139
For we do have effects on people which we can neither predict nor adequately explain. Instinct warns us to keep away from this racial side of ourselves. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 139
If we became aware of the ancestral lives in us, we might disintegrate. An ancestor might take possession of us and ride us to death. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 139
When it comes to the rather delicate task of locating the collective unconscious, you must not think of it as being compassed by the brain alone but as including the sympathetic nervous system as well. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 140
The very primitive animal layers are supposed to be inherited through the sympathetic system, and the relatively later animal layers belonging to the vertebrate series are represented by the cerebrospinal system. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 140
On this basis the main body of the collective unconscious cannot be strictly said to be psychological but psychical. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 140
We cannot repeat this distinction too often, for when I have referred to the collective unconscious as “outside” our brains, it has been assumed that I meant hanging somewhere in mid-air. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 141
After this explanation it will become clear to you that the collective unconscious is always working upon you through trans-subjective facts which are probably inside as well as outside yourselves. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 141
It is of reality as it is that sensation speaks, not reality as it might have been nor as it might be, but as it is now. Therefore sensation gives only a static image of reality, and this is the basic principle of the sensation type. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 132
He thinks the sensation type spends his life with corpses, but once he has taken up this inferior function in himself, he begins to enjoy the object as it really is and for its own sake instead of seeing it through an atmosphere of his projections. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 90
In the same way I can see no sense in our blaming the war for things that have happened to us. Each of us carried within himself the elements that brought on the war. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 92
The substance of energy so to speak is a dissipation of energy, that is, one never observes energy save as having movement and in a direction. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 93
Coming back to the original point about the ambitendency, energy is not split in itself, it is the pairs of opposites and also undivided—in other words, it presents a paradox. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 93
Certainly seeing the top and the bottom is an introverted attitude, but that is just the place the introvert fills. He has distance between himself and the object and so is sensitive to types—he can separate and discriminate. He does not want too many facts and ideas about. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 94
The extravert is always calling for facts and more facts. He usually has one great idea, a fat idea you might say, that will stand for a unity back of all these facts, but the introvert wants to split that very fat idea. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 94
Introverts want to see little things grow big and big things grow little. Extraverts like great things—they do not want to see good things going into worse, but always into better. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 94
Moreover, the introvert leans toward accepting enantiodromia easily, because such a concept robs the object of much power, while the extravert, having no desire to minimize the importance of the object, is willing to credit it with power. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 94
In a Platonist’s idea of life, there is always a limited number of primordial images, but still there are many, not just one—so the introvert has the tendency to be polytheistic. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 95
Similarly, the unconscious pits itself against the conscious, and it is the special tragedy of man that in order to win consciousness he is forced into dissociation with nature. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 38
Going back to the question of fantasizing, if once the resistance to free contact with the unconscious can be overcome, and one can develop the power of sticking to the fantasy, then the play of the images can be watched. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 38.
Any artist is doing that quite naturally, but he is getting only the esthetic values out of it while the analyst tries to get at all the values, ideational, esthetic, feeling, and intuitional. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 38
But, aside from dementia praecox cases, so-called normal people are very fragmentary—that is, they produce no full reactions in most cases. That is to say, they are not complete egos. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 38.
There is one ego in the conscious and another made up of unconscious ancestral elements, by the force of which a man who has been fairly himself over a period of years suddenly falls under the sway of an ancestor. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, page 38.
Perhaps certain traits belonging to the ancestors get buried away in the mind as complexes with a life of their own which has never been assimilated into the life of the individual, and then, for some unknown reason, these complexes become activated, step out of their obscurity in the folds of the unconscious, and begin to dominate the whole mind. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 39.
It is possible that a certain historical atmosphere is born with us by means of which we can repeat strange details almost as if they were historical facts. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 39.
As soon as one begins to watch one’s mind, one begins to observe the autonomous phenomena in which one exists as a spectator, or even as a victim. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 40.
In a way the collective unconscious is merely a mirage because unconscious, but it can be also just as real as the tangible world. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 40
If the superior function is intuition, for example, then the intuitions are directly in the way, since the transcendent function is made, or takes place, between the superior and the inferior functions. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 27
The inferior function can only come up at the expense of the superior, so that in the intuitive type the intuitions have to be overcome, so to speak, in order for the transcendent function to be found. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 27
On the other hand, if the person is a sensation type, then the intuitions are the inferior function, and the transcendent function may be said to be arrived at through intuition. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 27
It is a fact that in analysis it often seems as though intuition were the most important of the functions, but that is only so because analysis is a laboratory experiment and not reality. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 27
In the process of directed thinking, thoughts are handled as tools, they are made to serve the purposes of the thinker; while in passive thinking thoughts are like individuals going about on their own as it were. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 28
Fantastical thinking knows no hierarchy; the thoughts may even be antagonistic to the ego. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 28
I was in my consciousness an active thinker accustomed to subjecting my thoughts to the most rigorous sort of direction, and therefore fantasizing was a mental process that was directly repellent to me. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 28
Or, to put it even more strongly, passive thinking seemed to me such a weak and perverted thing that I could only handle it through a diseased woman. As a matter of fact, Miss Miller did afterwards become entirely deranged. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 28
Sexuality and spirituality are pairs of opposites that need each other. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 30
The hero embodies the transition we are seeking to trace, for it is as though in the sexual stage man feels too much under the power of nature, a power which he is in no way able to manage. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 30
The hero is a very perfect man, he stands out as a human protest against nature, who is seeking to rob man of that possibility of perfection. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 30
We can conquer unconsciousness by regular work but never by a grand gesture. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 31
We would say one got strength from God through prayer, but the primitive gets strength from God by work. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 32
I began to see among my patients some who fit Adler’s theories, and others who fit Freud’s, and thus I came to formulate the theory of extraversion: and introversion. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 33
There followed much discussion here and there among friends and acquaintances, through which I found that I had the tendency to project my inferior extraverted side into my extraverted friends, and they their introverted sides into me. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 33
Little by little I made a discovery that was shocking to me, namely the fact of this extraverted personality, which every introvert carries within him in his unconscious, and which I had been projecting upon my friends to their detriment. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 33
Out of these experiences that were partly personal, I wrote a little pamphlet on the psychological types, and afterwards read it as a paper before a congress. There were contained in this several mistakes which I afterwards could rectify. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 33
What I did then in order to get at this inferior, unconscious side of me was to make at night an exact reversal of the mental machinery I had used in the day. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 35
That is to say, I turned all my libido within in order to observe the dreams that were going on. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 35
By assuming a passive attitude at night, while at the same time pouring the same stream of libido into the unconscious that one has put into work in the day, the dreams can be caught and the performances of the unconscious observed. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 35
I found that the unconscious is working out enormous collective fantasies. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 35
I watched the creation of myths going on and got an insight into the structure of the unconscious, forming thus the concept that plays such a role in the Types. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 35
I drew all my empirical material from my patients, but the solution of the problem I drew from the inside, from my observations of the unconscious processes. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 35
She [Miss Miller] took over my fantasy and became stage director to it, if one interprets the book subjectively. In other words, she became an anima figure, a carrier of an inferior function of which I was very little conscious. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 2
The analyst can never be sure that in making the patient throw away a wrong form, he is not going to throw away the contained value. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 10
As you know, Plato laid down the principle that it is impossible to look at something ugly without taking something of it into the soul, and it is equally impossible to be in contact with what is beautiful without reacting to it. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 10
One could say that nature working alone works along the lines of the mediatory or transcendent function, but one has to admit that sometimes nature works against us and brings the wrong personality into reality, so to speak. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 10
Our prisons and hospitals are full of people with whom nature has been experimenting to unhappy ends. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 10
In youth the libido fills out a frame of generous proportions, while in old age it contracts to a much smaller amplitude. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 11
Fantasy is the creative function—the living form is a result of fantasy. Fantasy is a pre-stage of the symbol, but it is an essential characteristic of the symbol that it is not mere fantasy. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 11
Life often demands the trying out of new ways that are entirely unacceptable to the time in which we live, but we cannot shrink from undertaking a new way for that reason. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 11
Suppose, for example, we are concerned with a certain historical problem. If I had five hundred years at my disposal I could solve it. Well now, I have within myself a “man” who is millions of years old, and he perhaps can throw light on these metaphysical problems. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 12
One should be willing to make mistakes cheerfully. The most perfect analysis cannot prevent error. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 13
Analysis is fatal to second-rate artists, but that should be a feather in its cap. In analysis, or in an analyzed person, only something big comes through, whereas it is the tendency of our times to make it easy for every little cat or worm to be born into the art world. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 14
The author shows an amazingly sympathetic knowledge of the introvert of the thinking type, and hardly less for the other types. Jung has revealed the inner kingdom of the soul marvelously well and has made the signal discovery of the value of phantasy. His book has a manifold reach and grasp, and many reviews with quite different subject matter could be written about it.” ~Sonu Shamdasani, Introduction 1925 Seminar, Page xi
When the First World War broke out, Jung considered that a number of his fantasies were precognitions of this event. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Introduction 1925 Seminar, Page xii
The work [Liber Novus], though never published during Jung’s lifetime, was intended for publication. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Introduction 1925 Seminar, Page xii
The paintings initially started out as illustrations of the fantasies in the text, and thereafter could be considered active imaginations in their own right, at times referring to contemporaneous fantasies in Jung’s Black Books. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Introduction 1925 Seminar, Page xii
In this way we could come to discuss many things which never came up in my analysis and I could understand your ideas from the foundation. Mona Lisa [Emma Jung] should be included too. Perhaps she knows all that is in it so well and understands it so completely that this would not appeal to her, but I thought it would he [Peter Baynes] asked me why it was such a problem with me about publishing the Red Book. ~Cary Baynes, Introduction 1925 Seminar, Page xiv
On August 22, 1922, Jaime de Angulo wrote to Chauncey Goodrich issuing “a challenge to all brother-neurotics—go, my brethren, go to the Mecca, I mean to Zürich, and drink from the fountain of life, all ye who are dead in your souls, go and seek new life.” ~Sonu Shamdasani, Introduction 1925 Seminar, Page xv
Jung made clear that it was only after having formed his initial conceptions of the unconscious and the libido and having made his mark through his experiment al researches in psychopathology that he came into contact with Freud. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Introduction 1925 Seminar, Page xvi
When Jung published three of his paintings from Liber Novus in his commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower in 1929 as examples of “European mandalas,” they were presented anonymously. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Introduction 1925 Seminar, Page xxi
In the late 1950s, when Aniela Jaffé was engaged in her biographical project that resulted in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, she raided sections of this seminar to supplement the material from her interviews with Jung. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Introduction 1925 Seminar, Page xxii
In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential we embody, and if we do not embody that, life is wasted. ~Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Page 325.
It is thought that cancer may be due to the later and anarchical development of embryonic cells folded away in the mature and differentiated tissues. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 39.
*ETH Lectures aka Modern Psychology
Through active imagination the image is imprinted on the psychic essence of personality with the purpose of transformation. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3rd Nov 1939
In my opinion our attitude to the East is one of Europe’s worst sins. We ignore it or notice it in the wrong way. We are not alone on the earth. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 15th Dec 1939
“Do you feel you are the result of chance, or do you feel that something of some kind was at work in you, that created you as you are?” ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 12th January 1940
A certain line of thought, for instance, is developed through a series of dreams; and I discover that I am the duplicate of my unconscious anticipation of myself; at the same moment I am filled with a sense of purpose as if a secret arrangement of my fate existed. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 26th Jan 1940
Anatomical knowledge does not tell us how we fill our own bodies but psychic experience does give us information on this point. We fill our bodies as if through inner streams. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 26 Jan 1940.
So when we say body, we really mean our psychic experience of the body. This has only a distant Relationship to the anatomical and physiological structure of the body and nothing whatever to do with matter. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 26
I must mention an old author of the 16th century, a philosophical doctor, Dorneus, he was a sort of colleague of mine! He said: “Do you know that the heavens and the earth first of all were one, and that then through the art of the Creator they were divided into four so that you and all else could be created.” ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 24 Feb 1939
The spirit is usually expressed by a serpent which proves that this spirit is not Just the human mind, but an animal or reptile mind. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 111.
The more complex a vision is the more doubtful its authenticity. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 7th July 1939
We must assume, therefore, that the spirit has two aspects in alchemy, the human mind as we know it, and the serpent mind, which we can only say is unconscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 111.
The snake is a personification of the unconscious, for, as early as the Gnostics, it was used as a symbol for the spinal cord and the basal ganglia, where the vegetative psyche is localized. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 111.
Therefore the Chinese alchemistic treatises, as far as we know them, do not differ in any essential way from the western treatises, in fact in places they agree with each other almost word for word. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 112.
One of the great dangers of our time is the uprooted population in big towns, they live too near together and become completely collective. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 10Nov1939, Page 179.
The goal of alchemy is not merely material, it is partly in “the Beyond”, and is almost exactly similar to the goal of Taoism, where the whole effort is directed towards finding or creating Tao. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 143.
Knowledge and intelligence are by no means identical, as you know; there are many people who know a great deal, who labour under loads of information, without being at all intelligent. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 154.
We find the flower-like, natural spiritual development, which is so universal in the East, also among the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Arizona. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture Epilogue 23rd June 1939
In the Middle Ages Christ was no historical figure but a perpetual presence, as he still is in the Roman Catholic Mass. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 7th July 1939.
For by Self-knowledge, they do not mean mere knowledge of the ego, but also knowledge of the Nous, that mind or spirit which is represented by the snake. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 113.
This field is the collective unconscious where the treasure is hidden, the royal treasure in the sea. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 113.
There is another possibility, that of the subtle body, a fine material veil of the soul, which cannot exist so to speak without a body. This is the “corpus glorificationis” (glorified body), the transfigured body, which is our future portion. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIV, Page 115.
The dreams of early childhood contain mythological motifs which the children could not possibly know of. These archetypal images are the primeval knowledge of mankind; we are born with this inheritance, though this fact is not obvious and only becomes visible in indirect ways. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIV, Page 119.
These things are then lost to consciousness and must be found again in the course of life, at the cost of infinite effort, if God is kind enough to send us a neurosis (that special gift of grace) to accompany us on life’s journey. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIV, Page 119.
Visions are spontaneous phenomena which spring from the unconscious and are a-moral. A moral standpoint is introduced by consciousness, it is impressed by a certain atmosphere and declares the visions to be good or bad. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 7th July 1939
The mighty of this earth are usually very ordinary human beings, no giants in intellect or stature. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8th Dec 1939
If you practise this art, there are certain thoughts which you can project at suitable moments. Mohammed seems to have been able to do this. His visions fitted the situation and corresponded to his own wishes. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 7th July 1939
It was Khunrath who said that Christ is the saviour of man, whereas the mysterious substance of alchemy is the saviour of the universe, not only of man but of nature. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIV, Page 121.
Khunrath, who wrote in the sixteenth century, says directly: “He who knows the stone, is silent about it.” This reminds us of Lao Tsu’s words: “Whoever speaks does not know, whoever knows does not speak.” ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XV, Page 128.
Saturn is the ruler of the sign of Aquarius, and it is quite possible that Khunrath meant the coming age, the age of Aquarius, the water carrier, which is almost due now. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XV, Page 128.
Confucianism was the recognised state religion in China, it subordinates the interests of the individual to those of the state, whereas Taoism is essentially a religion for the individual. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 142.
The central idea of Taoism is no moral question, but is the Tao, the indefinable essence of the right way, and this is also the mystery of alchemy. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 142.
The goal which the alchemist sets himself, however, is not a direct redemption of the human being, nor is it a propitiation of the Deity nor a defence against evil. It [Alchemy] is the idea of producing a perfect and complete being, a being which has a redeeming effect and which has many names: panacea, medicina catholica, the philosophers’ stone and innumerable other synonyms. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 143.
The, it is partly in “the Beyond”, and is almost exactly similar to the goal of Taoism, where the whole effort is directed towards finding or creating Tao. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 143.
Knowledge and intelligence are by no means identical, as you know; there are many people who know a great deal, who labour under loads of information, without being at all intelligent. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 154.
For the Mass itself is an “opus” (the Benedictines themselves use this term), it is a work of transformation, and is therefore similar to the alchemistic procedure. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 156.
The alchemistic opus is older than the Mass, just as the eternal water of alchemy is older than Christian baptism. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 156.
With all our modern means of disinfection we cannot rid ourselves of our fears, and is not the history of the world made by factors far beyond man’s conscious intentions? ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 159.
The Unconscious is indeed the dark being within that hears what our conscious ears do not hear. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Pages 229
The spirit of God’s wisdom = the Holy Ghost. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 160.
The word meditation is used, when someone holds an inner dialogue (colloquium) with someone else who is invisible, and also when God is invoked, or when someone speaks to himself or to his good angel. ~Dr. Rulandus, Cited ETH, Page 171.
In the East the Void represents a psychic emptying of all conscious contents through the practice of Yoga. In the western series the chaos, or nigredo, is not thought of as a psychic condition but as a condition of the materia. This is the great difference between the East and the West. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 175.
And so we find them in alchemy also, and the fact is recorded that in deep meditation dissociation occurs between the ego and a “second”, that takes on the form of an inner figure, or represents something quite objective which will answer questions or produce enlightening remarks. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 172.
The purpose of the meditation of the alchemists is also spiritualis, but in contrast to the other methods of meditation which we studied here – those of Yoga, Mahayana Buddhism and the Ignatian excercises – the subject of meditation in alchemy is something unknown, and not a known dogmatic formula. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 174.
The “Processing” is the alchemistic procedure; this, Taoism and the Book of Changes are all the same thing, according to Wei Po-Yang. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 109.
But when Przywara says that man is a “medium formale materiale”, that is, a mediator between a formal and a material nature, we can again assent. Man is a peculiar psychic unity of experience of body and spirit, torn in two pieces by the intellect. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 26 Jan 1940.
The idea of a normal man, perfectly healthy, is in itself an illusion. All mankind is liable to illness for we are not our own masters. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27 Jan 1939
It is a great blessing for mankind when the soul is contained in the dogma and there is always a great deal of misery when this is not the case. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27 Jan 1939
Where there are no forms and ceremonies, rites in which they can express their souls, people become moody and caught in conflicts. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27 January 1939
There is one tribe in Central Australia which spends two thirds of its time in religious ritual – and how much do we? We look down on them as primitives, but their way is far more meaningful than ours. We work for ourselves but they for the whole world. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27 January 1939
We must have a psychic image of the body, in order to become conscious of it, we must translate the physical fact of the body into a psychic experience. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IX, Page 221.
We meet with the possibility of a very dangerous misunderstanding here, because if we call becoming conscious becoming spirit, we think that consciousness is spirit and thus mix up the intellect and the spirit. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IX, Page 221.
If you contemplate the body from the point of view of the psyche, you will be able to locate a mental sphere of consciousness in the head, another centre of consciousness in the heart and one in the abdomen. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture X, Page 225.
Anatomical knowledge does not tell us how we fill our own bodies but psychic experience does give us information on this point. We fill our bodies as if through inner streams. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture X, Page 225.
So when we say body, we really mean our psychic experience of the body. This has only a distant relationship to the anatomical and physiological structure of the body and nothing whatever to do with matter. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture X, Page 226.
Rama Krishna is not worshipped; his photograph is there to remind the worshippers of his form. This is, therefore, totally different to the worship of Christ but the basic ide a of soul as form is common to both. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture ETH Lecture17th Nov 1939
Speaking from the standpoint of many thousands of dreams I cannot say that they show guidance. It is as if the dream were quite uninterested in the fate of the ego, it is pure Nature, it expresses the given thing, it mirrors the state of our consciousness with complete detachment; it never says “to do it in such and such a way would be well”, but states that it is so. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 198.
I have never carried out such exercises [Ignatian] but I have studied the extensive literature about them carefully, and I will try to give you information gathered from this as objectively as possible. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 10Nov1939, Page 181.
So meditation, in the Ignatian sense of the word, is something very different to eastern meditation, it is less an oratio than a petitio. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 10Nov1939, Page183.
This sun motif appears in many places and times and the meaning is always the same – that a new consciousness has been born. It is the light of illumination which is projected into space. This is a psychological event; the medical term “hallucination” makes no sense in psychology. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 231.
Avidya, not-knowing, is due to a lack of reflection, we just assume that temporal knowledge is eternal knowledge. Temporal things are full of pleasures, but they are never satisfactory because they always lead to disappointment. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 3, Page 17.
Guilt is also by no means the only cause of complexes, but with people who are especially sensitive on this point it is a very common complex ingredient, they have a moral complex, and it is as if they were ridden by the devil. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI 5July1934, Page 132.
Man was understood, already in antiquity, as a small mirror image of the whole of the world. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 59.
We are a part of this totality, we flow in a certain sense in the blood of Christ, we have our part in his body, which penetrates us, we breathe with his breath, and are therefore so to speak Christ himself, in spite of being parts. ~ Carl Jung, ETH, Page 28.
Christmas is celebrated three days after the shortest day; therefore it is the festival of the rebirth of the sun. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 176.
What is the ego? It is primarily a subjective factor; however we can objectify it to a certain extent by making it the object of our thought. Therefore we can take for granted that behind the ego stands a second ego, something which comments on the actions of the ego. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 27.
Seeing visions is another of these phenomena; for instance, during three days she saw continually a mass of flames which ran through her whole body. Such visions can sometimes be observed in ordinary neuroses and have a symbolic meaning. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 32.
- Dorneus speaks of the veritas as an impregnable castle, a citadel which cannot be stormed, it contains the treasure which is taken away after death. The idea is that the treasure is something which is ordained to eternal life, and apparently after death it goes up to the skies and leads a post mortem existence. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3rd March 1939
The psyche is the Mother of everything and its investigation is of primary importance. The unconscious is what we do not know and yet it is a part of our psychological nature, of our psyche. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 140.
There are cases where it is better not to interfere; we must fulfil our duty as doctors, but the fact remains that some people are not meant to be cured, they are not fitted for life and if you step in and interfere fate always takes its revenge on you. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 27.
The negro spirituals are tremendously alive, they belong to the most living religious expressions extant, which is a result of the tension between the opposites: a highly developed religion on one side and complete primitivity on the other. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 23rd June 1939
I have known cases where people become as it were somnambulists and disappear into the unconscious, it is as if they had never been born. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 27.
Although I have often been called a philosopher, I am an empiricist. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 57
The Church as an effective force has disappeared too, and what is left? The mob, the State, the man-made State, a mere ant heap of individuals. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 1st Dec 1939
We fall captive to the herd animal if we cannot reach the individual divinity in ourselves. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 1st Dec 1939
The feminine side of Christ is much emphasized in Christian iconology, he is usually represented as a very feminine man. The same characteristic was apparently attributed to his cousin, Mithras. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8th Dec 1939
I am an empiricist, with no metaphysical views at all. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 57
You see, I am not a philosopher. I am not a sociologist—I am a medical man. I deal with facts. This cannot be emphasized too much. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 57
You criticize me as though I were a philosopher. But you know very well that I am an empiricist. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 57
It is the soul which, by the divine creative power inherent in it, makes the metaphysical assertion; it posits the distinctions between metaphysical entities. Not only is it the condition of all metaphysical reality, it is that reality. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture17th Nov 1939
My concepts are based on empirical findings . . . I speak of the facts of the living psyche and have no use for philosophical acrobatics. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 57
My business is merely the natural science of the psyche, and my main concern to establish the facts. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 57
I have always been of the opinion that Hegel is a psychologist in disguise, just as I am a philosopher in disguise. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 58
We psychotherapists ought really to be philosophers or philosophic doctors—or rather . . . we already are so, though we are unwilling to admit it. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 58
This [Helene Preiswerk] was the one great experience which wiped out all my earlier philosophy and made it possible for me to achieve a psychological point of view. I had discovered some objective facts about the human psyche. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 62
There are only a few heaven-inspired minds who understand me. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934 Page 63.
Psychology proper appears only with the dawn of the age of Enlightenment at the end of the seventeenth century, and we will follow its development through a long line of philosophers and scientists who made the manifestations of the psyche their field of study. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 107
Still for Descartes (1596–1650), the soul is quite simply thought directed by the will. In his time, the whole of scientific interest was not yet focused on the human soul but flowed outward to concrete objects. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 107
The age of science coincided with the age of discovery, that is, the discovery of the surface of the world. Thus, science was only interested in what could be touched. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 107
This strange fact—namely, that phenomena of the soul were still contained within the religious sphere—holds true wherever religion is still alive. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 108
The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is an important document humain, and actually represents the secret psychology of the Renaissance, namely, that which had struggled free from the grip of the symbol. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 109
In earlier days, the healing of the psyche was regarded as Christ’s prerogative, the task belonged to religion, for we suffered then only as part of a collective suffering. It was a new point of view to look upon the individual psyche as something whole that also suffers individually. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 110
Thus, psychology was at first an entirely Protestant affair, then it became the business of the Enlightenment man, the skeptic, and the freethinker. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 110
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), an encyclopedic genius and a celebrated philosopher in his day, made the first explicit contribution to what we call psychology today. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 110
Johann Nikolaus Tetens (1736–1807) 77 went even a step further. He is the actual founder of experimental, physiological psychology, which later flourished before World War One in the era of Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920). ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 112
Dreams can spring from physical or psychic causes, a dream can be caused by hunger, fever, cold, et cetera, but even then the dreams themselves are made of psychic material. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 1May1935, Pages 202.
This age peaked in the great critical era whose pre-eminent figure was Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). His critique of knowledge also imposed boundaries on psychology. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 113
As a Privatdocent at the University of Zurich, Jung had lectured there from 1905 to 1913. He had resigned consciously, deliberately,” feeling that he had to make a “choice of either continuing my academic career . . . or following the laws of my inner personality.” ~ ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 113 fn 56
Etienne Bonnot de Condillac (1715–1780), who took holy orders and later became an abbé, was La Mettrie’s contemporary, but survived him by many years. From his love affair with one Mademoiselle Ferrand, Condillac learned that all psychic life originates in sensation. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 130
What I have practiced is simply a comparative phenomenology of the mind, nothing else. . .. There is only one method: the comparative method. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking, Page 220
The mystical rose, like the lotus in India, grows for the salvation of man. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3rd March 1939
As a matter of fact it was my intention to write in such a way that fools get scared and only true scholars and seekers can enjoy its reading. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 415
Personally, I am convinced that not only people but also animals have souls. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 141
My personal view is that no religious truth is relative, but that each is true in itself. There is no logical standard of comparison. Experiences exist in their own right. These are true and genuine psychological experiences. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 141
For the primitives that I encountered the rising of the sun was a religious experience. Were I to criticize these matters, I would be guilty of incredible stupidity from the outset! ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 141-142
Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841), for instance, followed the work of the English psychologists Hume and Hartley, and, like these, developed a psychology of association. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 142
Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887) is the founder of a new psychological point of view, namely so-called psychophysics, which played an essential role in the development of psychology. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 142
And do you believe that the homo sapiens is sapiens? I have never seen one yet. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 10th Nov 1939
Rama Krishna is not worshipped; his photograph is there to remind the worshippers of his form. This is, therefore, totally different to the worship of Christ but the basic ide a of soul as form is common to both. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture ETH Lecture 17th Nov 1939
Fechner’s great achievement is his distinction between an empirical inner world and an empirical outer world. He speculates even further in assuming that not only the human body but also all living bodies, or any body per se, possess an “interior,” that is to say, “self-appearance.” ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 143
For instance, Mother Earth is animated and possesses a soul, which is a by far more comprehensive being than the human soul. She conducts herself like the soul of an angel that embraces all human souls. The totality of human brains thus constitutes the brain of the Earth soul. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 143
The fact that Christ is regarded as male and female is extremely important, because it lays the foundation for the transcendent function, the reconciliation of the opposites. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 200.
The highest, omniscient essence of the Godhead is the soul of the universe. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 143
Carus [1789-1869[ was the first to speak of the “unconscious,” and his writings comprise highly modern points of view on it. For instance, he observed that the “key to the knowledge of the nature of the conscious life of the soul lies in the region of the unconscious.” ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 143
Carus regards the unconscious as human will and intelligence assuming a cosmic extent. It is a cosmic will, a cosmic intelligence, which creates things and produces consciousness through the individual’s unconscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 144
The Roman Catholic Church regards Christ as the spouse of its unmarried members. Therefore he is the bridegroom of women and the bride of men. I speak, of course, of the conscious of men, to their unconscious He is also the bridegroom. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8th Dec 1939
We could say that western man became conscious of the fact that this man, this teacher Jesus, was the divine man, whose path had been prepared for thousands of years by Osiris in Egypt and as the idea of the coming of the Messiah in Israel. This was no human conspiracy, probably Christ had a convincing effect, there was something about him which carried the conviction that he was filled with the spirit of God, that he was a prophet. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8th Dec 1939
The next link in the chain is Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), who is a great phenomenon, and whose message for the world is of utmost significance. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 144
But the genius of Schopenhauer brought the world an answer, for which thousands had groped in vain in the dark, and which remains unaddressed in all these empirical philosophies: the voice of suffering. He is the first to that the human psyche means suffering, and not only order and purpose. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 145
In this hour of upheaval and destruction, however, the human instinct achieved a compensatory feat: a Frenchman, Anquetil Duperron (1731–1805), went to the East in order to seek the truth there. It was as if Europe had been a psychological being that looked for a new hope in place of the one it had lost. Duperron became a Buddhist monk and translated the Upanishads into Latin. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 146
The first rays of Eastern light poured into the cracks made by the French Revolution, and, as France had destroyed, so it was France who first brought something new and living to broken hopes. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 146
One such account is Justinus Kerner’s (1786–1862) Die Seherin von Prevorst (1829) [The Seeress of Prevorst]. This is not a work of literature, but actually a case history, that is to say, an account of a curious and remarkable “psychic” personality. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 147
Justinus Kerneer’s The Seeress of Prevorst is not a case history in a modern sense, but as it were a dubious account of one of the peculiar and romantic lives that were quite common at the time. Kerner belonged to the school of Romanticists. He was not a scientist, ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 154
You are simply unaware that your own case exhibits all these basic facts, too, only they lie concealed in the dark background of your psyche. . .. The ideas that I have set forth in my lectures on the basis of this case have already been published, and I am not to blame if these are not more widely known! ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 65
It is extremely rare that someone is willing to abandon the present position of his consciousness. Once consciousness has claimed a certain resting point, it can barely be shifted from its localization. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 67
The Seeress was a normal, healthy, and happy child. Soon, however, it was noticed that she had a great number of colorful and graphic dreams. What struck people was that these dreams often came true. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 154
The child [Seeress] began to play with hazel rods and soon proved to be a good diviner. Divination was popular among farmers at the time, and she had probably observed some of them looking for the location of water veins. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 155
It happened to me that I attended the palaver of some highly respectable Negroes. Naively I asked them whether they had ever seen a ghost. They all averted their gaze and looked as if I myself had just conjured up the most frightful specter. One should not mention ghosts, for they are the unspeakables. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 156
It will be proved . . . that the human soul also in this life forms an indissoluble communion with all immaterial natures of the spirit world, that, alternately, it acts upon and receives impressions from that world of which nevertheless it is not conscious while it is still man and as long as everything is in proper condition. ~Emmanuel Kant, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 157
In my opinion, “second sight” is not an illness, but a gift that is not as such pathological—otherwise every other gift would be pathological, too, and we would be obliged to speak of an “intelligence disease,” an “art disease,” and so forth. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 157
If we consider this aspect of “Geist”, we shall see that it is a peculiar condition of man. That which is moved, as if blown away by the wind, that which is made alive, is called spirit. It is, therefore, an increase of life. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 26 Jan 1940.
The particular fate of the Seeress became apparent from then on. The death of the old priest was the experience that made clear to her that she would live more with the dead than with the living. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 159
I have chosen this particular case, and am treating it in detail, in order to show you the immense reality of the inner world. There are a considerable number of people whose psychology is somewhat similar, in that from the outset the outer world means less to them than this “back-world.” ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 159
But behind our consciousness there stands a perceiving subject, and this is no tabula rasa. This subject is not simply another exterior, but instead it comes endowed with a background, with whose help it is able to interpret perceptions in the first place. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 160
There is no escape from this psychic background with which we enter life, it can only be accepted. Endowed with it, however, we must comprehend the world according to this disposition. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 160
Clairvoyance more or less bears out this point: as if those people were able to see around the corner; or they hear things other people don’t. Something somehow reveals itself from within—or from “behind”; it does not come from the frontside, not from the clear world of consciousness, and it is not perceived by the sensory organs. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 166
This “I”—what a peculiar matter it is! First of all, it is something subjective. Nothing seems to be behind it, and yet you are able to think about the “I.” We can objectify it and make it the subject matter of our thinking. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 168
There are a great number of cases, however, in which this “vision” corresponds to nothing in reality. In these cases a subjective factor is at play, a dark point that lies behind us. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 169
Manichaeism explains the waxing and waning of the moon each month as its filling with the souls of the deceased until it is filled completely, turns towards the sun, gives the souls to it and thus is on the wane again. Then a new circle begins. This idea was brought from Beijing to southern France through the heretic teachings of the Albigenses. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 179
Behind lurks a dark superstition, and yet our entire scientific world has emerged from precisely such a dark superstition, from a world of magic. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 192
The second correspondent enquires whether human consciousness is identical to the sum of knowledge about psychic processes? In response, I would maintain that knowledge is self-evidently consciousness. Everything associated with the I is, of course, conscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 185
We can no longer ascertain the facts in the preceding case, but I have observed countless times that dreams and premonitions presaging the future do exist. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 197
If we want to draw the psychological conclusion we must go further and say that the West has an Anima, that is, a feminine unconscious, and that the East has an animus, that is, a masculine unconscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8th Dec 1939
Children and adolescents must forget the background. A child who remembers the background for too long would become inept at entering the world. Young people must erect many walls between the background and the subject so that they can believe in the world. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 216
Space is a necessary representation, a priori, that is the ground of all outer intuitions. One can never represent that there is no space, though one can very well think that there are no objects to be encountered in it. ~Emmanuel Kant, Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 198
If time and space are relative dimensions, they cannot have absolute validity. Consequently, we must assume that an absolute reality has different properties from our spatial-temporal reality: in other words, there exists a space that is unlike our space, and a time that is unlike our time. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 198
Another case is Professor Heim, who once fell down a mountain and revisited his entire life during the fall. Such cases seem to suggest that in certain circumstances the psyche needs only an unimaginably small amount of time. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 199
The actual soul, the objectively psychic, thus possesses qualities that border on nonspatiality and atemporality. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 200
The ancients understood this far better than we do; they did not speak, therefore, of being in love, but of being possessed or hit by a God. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 201
It is well established, however, that very “normal” people are compensated madmen. Normality is always slightly suspicious. I’m not just joking, but this has been the bitterest experience of my life. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 202
The truly normal person has no need to be always correct, or to stress his normality. He is full of mistakes, commits follies, lacks modesty, and does not hold normal views. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 202
The oldest depictions of circles, so-called sun wheels, date to the Paleolithic period. Please note that wheels did not yet exist at the time; the first wheels appeared in the “Wooden Age.” ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 204
The notion that souls wander from the moon to the stars is not new, either: stars have been associated with birth and death since time immemorial. Meteors are souls. Or when a Roman Caesar died the astronomers had to find a new star in the sky to account for his soul. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 179
We find the idea of the soul as the form giving principle already in the Middle Ages, it is the soul which forms the body and the outer life. So in meditating on the Anima Christi you are meditating on Christ’s form. The same ide a is to be found in the East. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture17th Nov 1939
We are also blessed with ideas or, if you want to put it more nobly, with inspirations. The Americans have a good word in this respect: to have a hunch, that is, a humped or crooked position. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 226
The primitive has a better realization of the autonomy of this inner side than we have. He does not speak of having a mood, but of being possessed by one. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 227
Like the people in the outer world, ghosts form groups, too. For example, the Church organizes its angels in a celestial hierarchy of nine orders and three groups, this hierarchy reaching its zenith in the Godhead. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 227
Primitives are unaware of their own “I.” There are many people among us, however, who are also unaware of their own I. Many neurotics have no
consciousness of their I at all and are completely identified with their environment. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 229-230
Octagonal light is a symbol of the unconscious symbolic source of light. One therefore speaks of il-lumination, a frequent occurrence in mysticism. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 234
Thereafter, Hélène also had visions at home. The man who haunted her regularly now appeared in a white coat and a turban. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 238
Her [[Helene] protective spirit or “control” could be induced to speak through her if one addressed the right-hand side of her body; she would respond by tapping her left hand. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 238
Being an enlightened man, our scholar had already heard about these “imaginations,” and said to the chief: “It is not really like that; you just imagined it!” Whereupon the Indian replied: “Well, but who imagined it in me? ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 240
If you dissect a salmon in a laboratory, you are not studying one salmon in particular, but simply the salmon. So these experiences lie more or less hidden in the unconscious of ordinary people. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 244
My psychology comprises, after all, quite a number of concepts that are underpinned by experiences that are not generally accessible. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Pages 245-246
A colleague drew his attention to the fact that “Léopold” contains three consonants, LPD, and that the same three letters represented the initials of the motto of the Illuminati, a secret society: lilia pedibus destrue, “destroy the lilies with your feet.” ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 246
The gathering is antedated, since the order of the Illuminati was not in actual fact founded until 1 May 1776—namely, by Adam Weishaupt, a former Jesuit who later became a Freemason. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 246
What we lack is never what we think it is, just as neurotic inferiority feelings never spring from where we claim they come from, but from real inferiority. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 250
When the field of consciousness is limited, the body plays a great role. People who are enamored by themselves are extremely conscious of their bodies, they attach tremendous importance to how they have eaten, slept, digested, and what impression they have made on others. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 250
In the fourth stage, absolute objectivation occurs. In parapsychology, this is to be taken literally. The figures detach themselves and act autonomously,
like persons that exist outside of us. These figures have their own will and intentions and strike us as strange. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 251
At the fifth stage, the reality of being one’s self ceases to exist; it is the stage of absolute reality, of absolute ecstasy. One has changed into something completely different, and the person becomes completely absorbed into a certain absolute existence. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 251
As we move through the sections, the body becomes less and less important. In section IV, the reality of the body, its mass, gravity, and undeniable existence, have already become transferred into the object. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 256
Everybody who has ever had a complex knows: Something comes to mind although you do not want to think of it, or at night, when you wish to sleep, you are unable to, because the complex is sitting right next to you. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 256
Such archetypes can appear in a broad variety of ways. For instance, they can also be equivalents of ideas. Ideas can take possession of us as if they were ghosts. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 258
As long as you can make yourself understood to single person, you are not yet mad. And even if you find no such person, you should consult some old books, and perhaps there you will find something that seems familiar to you. Only when you can no longer make yourself understood will you be mad and excluded. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 271
We have also seen that her ghosts had nothing in common with those seen by the “Seeress of Prevorst.” Hers are all relative and very subjective in character; they are relative objectivations of complexes. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 273
The two women will also offer quite different stories. The Seeress will tell the whole world about her ghosts. Hélène Smith, however, will talk, behind her mask, of very tangible realities. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 273
I could take a deep look into his [J.D. Rockefeller] personality, which is very complicated indeed. Rockefeller is really just a mountain of gold, and you might be wondering whether I asked him how he managed to amass such riches. But I am no longer curious about this, for I have seen that such gold is bought too dearly. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 275
The poor old gentleman [J.D. Rockefeller] is a terrible hypochondriac and is exclusively interested in his health. He frets all day over his physical well-being, thinking of different medicines, if he should he go to the baths and, if so, to which one, thinking of trying out different diets—or also doctors! ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 275
Plainly, he [J.D. Rockefeller] has a bad conscience. His secretary told me that he always carries dimes in his pockets, so that he can tip the boys who collect the balls on golf courses, or for that matter any child he chances to meet, so that it will look sweetly at him. Because he is terribly lonely. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 275
Let as have a look at the average curve of the “normal” person. You would be ashamed to be a normal person! Schopenhauer maintains that his egotism is so great that he would even strike dead his own brother in order to grease his boots with the latter’s fat. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 278
Thus, the normal person is firstly very selfish and obstinate, and secondly primitive. It is a fact that the ancient cave men are still among us; you will meet them on the tram! Likewise, Neolithic men and pile dwellers. Today, we might call them imbeciles, and so on. It takes very little, and out comes the barbarian in us again. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 278
At least 70, if not 80 percent of the population still belong to the Middle Ages, so that in fact very few people are truly adjusted to the year 1934. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 278
It is extremely rare that someone is willing to abandon the present position of his consciousness. Once consciousness has claimed a certain resting point, it can barely be removed from its place. It creates convictions, and people get so stuck in them that anything different is just seen as bad. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 282
An intuitive type, it is true, sees dozens of possibilities in other spheres, but he does not actually go there to experience them. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 283
The real, bright day and the people lie for me outside of the great ring, and I see more or fewer of them in the various sections. I prefer to represent these people as checkmarks. I feel the spirit of all people with whom I associated, but I do not feel or know anything of their body, their name, etc. Likewise (she said to me), I cannot think of you as a man or as a body, of you least of all. I always feel you as a blue flame going around and around the outer ring . . ., together with your wife in the same ring. But she is in human form, and more to the outside. . .. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 186 Seeress
An intuitive type, it is true, sees dozens of possibilities in other spheres, but he does not actually go there to them. For example, he sees a person living in Right IV as he appears to him from his vantage point in Left III. Consequently, the intuitive may see a great deal of which the man in Right IV.
is not aware, but what he says is unintelligible to the man himself because he does not know that Left III exists at all. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 67
Psychological Types (1921) had a long gestation time, of nearly a decade. In the wake of the original publication of Transformations (1911/1912), Jung
tried to come to terms, not only with “the countless impressions and experiences of a psychiatrist,” his “personal dealings with friend and foe alike,” and the “critique of [his] own psychological peculiarity” ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 67
I have intuitions about the subjective factor, the inner world. That is very difficult to understand because what I see are most uncommon things, and I don’t like to talk about them because I am not a fool. I would spoil my own game by telling what I see, because people won’t understand it. . .. So you see, if I were to speak of what I really perceive, practically no one would understand me. I have learned to keep things to myself, and you will hardly ever hear me talking of these things. That is a great disadvantage, but it is an enormous advantage in another way, not to speak of the experiences I have in that respect and also in my human relations. For instance, I come into the presence of somebody I don’t know, and suddenly I have inner images, and these images give me more or less complete information about the psychology of the partner. It can also happen that I come into the presence of somebody I don’t know at all, not from Adam, and I know an important piece out of the biography of that person, and am not aware of it, and I tell the story, and then the fat is in the
fire. So I have in a way a very difficult life, although one of the most interesting lives, but it is often difficult to get into my confidence. [Interviewer:] Yes, because you say you are afraid people will think you are sick.] [Jung:] The things that are interesting to me, or are vital to me, are utterly strange to the ordinary individual. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking, Page 310
There is “a particular current of thought,” he had written, which can be traced back to the Reformation. Gradually it freed itself from innumerable veils and disguises, and it is now turning into the kind of psychology which Nietzsche foresaw with prophetic insight—the discovery of the psyche as a new fact. Some day we shall be able to see by what tortuous paths modern psychology has made its way from the dingy laboratories of the alchemists, via mesmerism and magnetism (Kerner, Ennemoser, Eschenmayer, Passavant, and others), to the philosophical anticipations of Schopenhauer, Carus,
and von Hartmann; and how, from the native soil of everyday experience in Liébeault and, still earlier, in Quimby (the spiritual father of Christian Science), it finally reached Freud through the teachings of the French hypnotists. This current of ideas flowed together from many obscure sources, gaining rapidly in strength in the nineteenth century and winning many adherents, amongst whom Freud is not an isolated figure (1930a, § 748). ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 51-52
“modern” psychology, that is, to psychology “as a conscious science,” as he puts it in these lectures. As he wrote elsewhere, the projections falling back into the human soul caused such a terrific activation of the unconscious that in modern times man was compelled to postulate the existence of an unconscious psyche. The first beginnings of this can be seen in Leibniz and Kant, and then, with mounting intensity, in Schelling, Carus, and von Hartmann, until finally modern psychology discarded the last metaphysical claims of the philosopher-psychologists and restricted the idea of the psyche’s existence to the psychological statement, in other words, to its phenomenology (1941, § 375). ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 51
I fancied I was working along the best scientific lines, establishing facts, observing, classifying, describing causal and functional relations, only to discover in the end that I had involved myself in a net of reflections which extend far beyond natural science and ramify into the fields of philosophy, theology, comparative religion, and the humane sciences in general. This transgression, as inevitable as it was suspect, has caused me no little worry. . .. [I]t seemed to me that my reflections were suspect also in principle. . .. There is no medium for psychology to reflect itself in: it can only portray itself in itself, and
describe itself. That, logically, is also the principle of my own method: it is, at bottom, a purely experiential process. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 58-59
Goethe’s Faust was like a revelation: “Faust . . . pierced me through in a way that I could not but regard as personal. . .. Faust, the inept, purblind philosopher, encounters the dark side of his being, his sinister shadow, Mephistopheles, who in spite of his negative disposition represents the true spirit of life. . .. My own inner contradictions appeared here in dramatised form. . .. The dichotomy of Faust–Mephistopheles came together within myself into a single person . . . I was directly struck and recognised that this was my fate.” ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 62
Even in self-consciousness, the I is not absolutely simple, but consists of a knower (intellect) and a known (will); the former is not known and the latter is not knowing, although the two flow together into the consciousness of an I. But on this very account, this I is not intimate with itself through and through, does not shine through so to speak, but is opaque, and therefore remains a riddle to itself. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 59
The psychic facts have neither length, breadth, nor weight, but are essentially spaceless, and it is exceedingly difficult to determine their duration. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 40.
We are unable to measure the time in which a psychic process takes place; we can measure the psycho-physical reactions, but psychic things in and for themselves cannot be determined by time. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 40.
It has been proved over and over again that very long dreams can take place in the shortest time imaginable. ~ETH, Vol. 1, Page 40.
Numerous examples show us that without doubt every one of us is capable of having anticipatory dreams. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 40.
Ghosts and Spirits. These phenomena are projections from the background of the psyche, autonomous inner images of a subjective nature, obeying no conscious intention, but coming and going at their own volition. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 40.
Christian August Wolff (1679–1754) 72 initiated another line of thinking. Wolff limited his discussion entirely to consciousness, and divided his psychology into two parts: firstly, empirical psychology, which considers in particular the cognitive faculty and the activity of consciousness; and secondly, rational or speculative psychology, which centers on desire and the interrelations between body and soul. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 112
The Mayan “Temple of the Warriors” was excavated a few years ago. Beneath the altar a mandala, consisting entirely of cut turquoises, was found encased in a limestone cylinder. It was bedecked with 3,000 turquoises. It is kept at the Museum of Mexico City. In the four main points comes the feathered serpent and opens its mouth inward. This serpent adorns the robes worn by priests to this day, and it has a spellbinding effect in that whoever looks at it is enchanted. [It is] The object of concentration. Whoever succeeds in placing themselves in this circle is protected against evil spirits. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 205
For several years now I have been lecturing about the process of individuation. First I gave an account of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra,1 then of two Buddhist treatises concerning the attainment of Buddahood. The third course was about the Exercitia Spiritualia of St. Ignatius. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 300
The four classic Yoga Sutras compiled and commented on by Patanjali, whose historical personality is still controversial. The first three Sutras may date from the 2nd cent. B.C., the fourth is apparently later. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali represent a philosophical systematization of ancient Yoga theories and practices. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 300, Footnote 1.
We are all meant to be mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born. – Meister Eckhart Cited in Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 286
The essence of science is knowledge, it does not know the piety of faith, but that of investigation and of knowledge. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. V, Page 14.
We can therefore assume, psychologically speaking, that the object which is to be transformed in alchemy is connected with the human body: it is a mystery of the body. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 177.
There are certain disturbances of the unconscious, in the sympathetic system, which produce symptoms exactly like organic disturbances. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 177.
Mercury is the anima mundi, the soul of the world, and entered matter as an emanation of God, and since then it is concealed in it. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 180.
Moreover the colour attributed to the Holy Ghost in the Middle Ages was green, because when the spirit of life is poured over the earth the latter becomes green. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 183.
Therefore the trans-substantiated wine, which becomes the blood of Christ in the Mass, is the anima, that is the soul, of Christ. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 189.
He says directly that man has two lights: the one is the spirit and the other the light of nature. Man has a spirit in order to be able to understand the divine revelation, and a soul in order to recognise the world in the light of nature. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 193.
Divine grace is not, so to speak, conjured up, the priest does not make a sort of magic incantation in the prayer of consecration to compel the intervention of divine grace; but the Mass itself is a divine intervention, of which man should become aware. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 110.
We may like to think that all psyches are single psyches, that no such thing as a collective psyche exists, in other words that the psyche is nothing more than consciousness, for consciousness is an individual phenomenon. But can we really be so very sure of this? ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, 27 Oct. 1933.
The child born in a country takes something of that land, it is the secret influence of the place. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 12July1935, Pages 241.
The child born in a country takes something of that land, it is the secret influence of the place. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 12July1935, Pages 241
We are very much afraid of the word magic, it has a bad name, for its meaning has degenerated and it has a purely superstitious sound in our ears. But magical was originally simply psychical, the ancients did not know of the existence of the psyche, so not being able to call anything psychic they used the word magic. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 71.
Mandalas are sometimes made with the express purpose of evil, to do people harm. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 71.
The European who practises Yoga does not know what he is doing. It has a bad effect upon him, sooner or later he gets afraid and sometimes it even leads him over the edge into madness. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 71.
We are in a bad situation in the West for we are living as decapitated heads. The intellect is indispensable in order to understand, but you must feel yourselves that our text is not just related to the head, It arises from whole man. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 71.
As the Yogin is a man his conscious is masculine, so the male Devatas represent his conscious thoughts, religious, philosophical and personal. He has already been freed from his masculine conscious, but to be really freed he must also externalize his feminine unconscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 71.
While we are in avidya, we act like automatons, we have no idea what we are doing. Buddha regarded this as absolutely unethical. Avidya acts in the sense of the concupiscentia and involves us in suffering, illness and death. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 74.
Here is a piece of the superior wisdom of the East. The Yogin realizes that all the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and Devatas with which he has filled the heavens are Maya illusion just as the world itself is Maya. All this plurality is illusion. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 74.
We do not know what a spirit is any more than we understand matter. We are really enclosed in a psychic world of images. We label everything as physical or spiritual but the only reality is purely psychic. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 75.
We must know how the human psyche came into being for in the unconscious the old ways are always trodden again. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 98.
We find all the ancient forms of the human psyche in dreams and in such texts as the Shri-Chakra-Sambhara Tantra. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 98.
The unconscious comes into action through the attitude of the conscious in active imagination. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 98.
The official example of Yoga in the West is the exercitia spiritualia of St. Ignatius of Loyola. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 98.
It is only within the last few years that a few Lamas have become interested in giving their texts to the world. This is largely due to Sir John Woodroffe and to the American Evans Wentz who succeeded in getting in touch with such people, and in interesting them in the translation and publication of some of their texts. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 98.
Divinitas sancti spiritus has a peculiar relation to Mary, for the Sapientia Dei or Sophia was identified by the early Church with Mary. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 98.
We can understand thinking, feeling and sensation but intuition is another thing. We do not know how we arrive at an intuition; it is perception by way of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 99.
Alchemical philosophy is an instrument and a way to the inner transformation of man, a problem which is practically unknown today. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 99.
Christ is spoken of as being born or hidden in a rose, or as a sea bird resting in a flower of the sea. This is a direct analogy to Buddha appearing in the Lotus in the Amitabha Land with geese and swans about him. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Pages 100-101.
Komarius teaches Cleopatra that the dead who stay in Hades [that is in chaos) are transformed into Spring flowers by the miraculous dew. This is the idea of the living elements in chaos or Shunyata waking and uniting through being contained in the lotus. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 101.
The method of actual phantasying is seldom advisable for young people as it tends to hinder them in their task of getting into reality, and the young need actual experience. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IV 24 May 1935, Page 212.
The age of the body is something we often swindle ourselves about, but this swindle does not help the psyche. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IV 24 May 1935, Pages 213.
The task in these cases is to look for the meaning, for there is a meaning in both love and sex, and in every instinctive urge. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IV 24 May 1935, Pages 213.
This system of images is also born in human beings, it is the archetypes, the potential force in man, but it only comes to the surface when the moment for it is ripe, then the archetype functions as an urge, like an instinct. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IV 24 May 1935, Pages 213
In the collective unconscious the archetypes and the instincts are one and the same thing. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IV 24 May 1935, Pages 213.
The same instinct that moved you at the age of fifteen may be moving you again when much older and yet there is something showing that the whole process which is happening in the unconscious is different, the images are becoming liberated from the active instinct. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IV 24 May 1935, Pages 214.
The East understands active phantasying and its inner meaning far better than we do. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 12July1935, Pages238.
The ancestral part is given to us by our body, we take over the life of our ancestors in that way. It is the terrace of life because it is here that life renews itself. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 12July1935, Pages 240.
These signs appear in Gnosticism, St. Paul’s sayings are undoubtedly connected with Gnosticism. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8March1935, Pages 199.
On Gnostic gems we find the symbol of the vase, the vase of sin. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8March1935, Pages 199.
The Gnosis is a disturber of the peace of the Church, but it is full of psychological truths, many yet undiscovered. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8March1935, Pages 199.
This leads us over to the secret gnosis of the Middle Ages, when it takes the form of alchemy. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8March1935, Pages 198
If we seek our connection with the snake we come to the spinal cord and that points to the animal soul of man which leads him down into the darkness of the body, into the instinct which one meets in animal form in the outer world. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8March1935, Pages 199-200.
Complexes can also be called fragmentary souls. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 1May1935, Pages 201.
All dreams originate in the unconscious though occasionally a dream can be induced by suggestion or hypnosis. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 1May1935, Pages 202.
Dreams as a whole are without purpose, like nature herself, it is wiser to regard them as such. The third question asks if we can dream of experiences undergone by our ancestors. I cannot be sure of this. There are so many curious sources from which we dream, that we cannot say for certain where anything comes from. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8March1935, Pages 198.
Where there are complexes there are always phantasies, for complexes are continually trying to find a solution. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture III, 17May 1935, Pages 208.
Phantasies and dreams do not of themselves enlarge consciousness, they have to be understood and here the great difficulty begins. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture III, 17May 1935, Pages 208.
In India free phantasying is not permitted, phantasying there is based on dogmatic pictures which are called Yantras, contemplation pictures, mandalas, which have the object of attracting the attention and forming a guide to phantasy. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture III, 17May 1935, Pages 208.
Our method aims at allowing the complex to express itself and reveal its structure, but Yoga aims at fettering it in dogma. This is almost universally the case in Indian Yoga. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture III, 17May 1935, Pages 208
Taoism degenerated terribly but has lately undergone a renaissance while Confucianism is at present degenerating. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture III, 17May 1935, Pages 209.
Taoism has also a kind of Yoga but it is less well known than the Indian. The Chinese Yoga is very much less founded on dogma, the Yogin is left to find his own way through his difficult experiences. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture III, 17May 1935, Pages 209.
Nirvana, for instance is a positive non-being, this is something which you cannot say anything about. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture III, 17May 1935, Pages 210.
The twenty gods have no special importance in the East, Eastern man has no liking for being born a god, for the gods have to become men and this they think would only make the process last longer. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture III, 17May 1935, Pages 210.
The individual experience is woven in to this tissue, so it is of vital importance, where we come from, who our parents are, and what our early surroundings were. We say that a person has such and such a character, but one is born with a form which can only be changed with the greatest difficulty. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XII, 1Feb1935, Page 179.
Unfortunately very few people can remember these primeval pictures, many people become ill because they have lost them and only get well when they find them again. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XII, 1Feb1935, Pages 179.
There are cases like that, they understand the world in too deep a sense. Buddha was such a case. He was a prince with everything that he wanted in the world, but he knew nothing of the truth of life. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XII, 1Feb1935, Pages 181.
The foundation of the unconscious is not chaotic but has a distinct organization. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 22Feb1935, Pages 190
When things fall into the unconscious, it is only the power of reproduction which is lost; to event is lost, nothing has ever not happened, it is all stored up, and even after ten thousand years can come up in its pristine freshness. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 22Feb1935, Pages 191.
In early childhood we become acquainted with fairy tales and we learn mythology in school and in our later reading, we forget most of it in consciousness, but in the depths it is all carefully treasured. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 22Feb1935, Pages 192.
God made the horse and the tiger to be what they are, but to us it has become more important to be Mr. So and So than to fulfil the primitive task of being a human being. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XVI 1Mar1935, Page 197.
We could say that it was owing to Al-Gazzali that Islam became a mystical religion, though we in the West know very little today of this mystical side. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 10Nov1939, Page 178.
So Christian theologians became acquainted with the devotional and mystical books of the Arabs and they made a vast impression upon them. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 10Nov1939, Page 178.
I have never carried out such exercises [Ignatian] but I have studied the extensive literature about them carefully, and I will try to give you information gathered from this as objectively as possible. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 10Nov1939, Page 181.
So meditation, in the Ignatian sense of the word, is something very different to eastern meditation, it is less an oratio than a petitio. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 10Nov1939, Page183.
It is common for very infantile people to have a mystical, religious feeling, they enjoy this atmosphere in which they can admire their beautiful feelings, but they are simply indulging their auto-eroticism. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 11Jan1935, Pages 171.
When we were first in Africa we thought we must always be armed, but we soon learnt it was safest to have only a stick for wild animals know whether you have a gun or not and what game you are after; the leopards used to come shooting with us and take our partridges before we could reach them. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 18Jan1935, Page 173.
Our projections on other people behave like the icicle, they return to us, we do not remain unpunished when we make projection. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 18Jan1935, Page 174.
But we find the chief parallel to the lotus in the hymnology of Mary, where she is called the flower of Heaven, the noble rose of Heaven, the rose without thorn; she is also greeted as the sweet rose, etc. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3rd March 1939.
Mary is the bud which contains the becoming being that is undergoing transformation. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3rd March 1939.
Things which are unconscious must come to us from outside, we see them first in other people, they are thrown at us or we have to go out and fetch them in. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 18Jan1935, Page 174.
Dreams often seem nonsense to us, but they spring from nature and are related to our future life. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V 23Nov1934 Page 156.
So we cannot judge dreams from the conscious point of view but can only think of them as complementary to consciousness. Dreams answer the questions of our conscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V 23Nov1934 Page 157.
Dreams never really repeat experience, they always have a meaning, they are like association experiments, only they themselves produce the test words, they are a whole system of test words. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI 5July1934, Page 134.
Then there are philosophical dreams which think for us and in which we get the thoughts that we should have had during the day. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI 5July1934, Page 135.
Modern philosophers’ philosophise with the head alone about man, but the old philosophy came from the whole man. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 71.
There is what we might call a fifth function over all these four functions: the will. This is a peculiar function set above the others with a certain quantity of disposable energy in direct relation to the ego. ~Carl Jung, Lecture V 25May1934, Page 107.
Emotions are often confused with feelings but this is all wrong. Feeling is a valuing function, whereas emotion is involuntary, in affect you are always a victim. ~Carl Jung, Lecture V 25May1934, Page 109.
The unconscious is a living being with its use, object, and goal, and is eternally looking for a way to reach that goal – a way, which is not our personal one, but the human way, mankind’s way. ~ Carl Jung, Lecture VI 2June1934, Page 113.
Mark Twain wrote a book about Christian Science, he showed it up as the most abject nonsense, as an outflowing of human stupidity. But, he adds, it is nevertheless very important, because it is stupidity which rules mankind. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XII,10th February 1939, Pages 76-81.
When his pupils questioned Buddha about Shunyata, he was silent or replied in a roundabout way. There were things he did not want to speak of, he would not say what was best left unsaid. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XII,10th February 1939, Pages 76-81.
But there is something which can be proved from everyday experience, not body becoming spirit, but body becoming conscious, man becomes conscious of his body. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 26 Jan 1940
It is surely inaccurate to say that man is a body which becomes spirit. It is true that consciousness can reach far into the body and that this may have some effect on the processes themselves, but in a very limited degree. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 26 Jan 1940
The microcosm is a small edition of the macrocosm, the anima mundi. They both have the same round form. Plato’s idea is identical with the eastern idea of the Atman or Purusha. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3 Feb 1939
But here it is the earth which comes last out of Shunyata as the quinta essentia, apparently the goal of imagination is not spiritualization but that the tangible earth should become real. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 10th Feb 1939
We also find four colours in the Bardo Thodol as the lights of the four wisdoms, they form four “light-paths” to Buddhahood or redemption. These are clearly the four functions expressed as four paths of orientation. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 10th Feb 1939
It is absolutely necessary to grasp every psychic process with all the four functions, otherwise we only grasp a quarter of it. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 10th Feb 1939
Very few people understand intelligent things whereas everybody understands stupid things; stupidity, therefore, is a far greater power than intelligence. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 10 Feb 1939
Alchemy works as a sort of chemistry on actual matter and yet it is essentially Yoga and the symbols which arise in both are very similar. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 24 Feb 1939
The old idea of chaos was that it held everything in potentia including man. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 24 Feb 1939
This potential man was not the biological man but the philosophical man, a peculiar being, which is also sometimes called anima. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 24 Feb 1939
A subtle body, breath or smoke resembling, which can also be correctly described as anima. Anima is the feminine of animus, which is identical with the Greek word anemos which means wind or breath. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 24 Feb 1939
Proclus said: “Always where there is creation there is also time.” ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 24 Feb 1939
I have only mentioned the East as an analogy and I should like to take the opportunity to give a public warning against imitations of the East. It is our task to find a way to come to terms with these things in our own manner. Eastern ways are quite unsuitable to the western form of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 207
The archetypal or image side seldom comes to the surface in young people, they take instinct for granted, and never stop to think what the meaning of it is, it just functions naturally. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 213.
When those doubtful blessings, missionaries, stop the initiation ceremonies of a tribe, it always decays. When you take these rites from the people they lose their sense of life, and then they just go from one cigarette to the next, and from one drink to the next. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 216.
It is in our own body that we must search, not outside, but today everyone is convinced that it is outside. ~ Carl Jung, ETH, Page 21.
The world is an image to us, even when we have a scientific conception of it and assert: “This is so and so”, it is still only an image. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 62.
Man in antiquity differentiated between man’s “daemon” and his “own mind”. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture VII, Page 50.
…we say, “I thought”, when we have done nothing of the kind but something has happened to us. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture VII, Page 50.
Our modern scientific attitude tries to eliminate every subjective factor from scientific reasoning. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Lecture VII, Page 65.
And matter [which was alive and had psychical qualities for him) contained a secret intention, a kind of wish, as if it wanted to be transformed. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Lecture VII, Page 66.
For man has the yearning in himself to become what he would call the perfect man. Or rather, there is the image of a perfect and complete being in his unconscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Lecture VII, Page 67.
There must be a psychical equivalent of matter preformed in man, and this is our own matter, our physical world: the body, for the body is matter. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Lecture VII, Page 67.
Rama Krishna is not worshipped; his photograph is there to remind the worshippers of his form. This is, therefore, totally different to the worship of Christ but the basic ide a of soul as form is common to both. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture ETH Lecture 17th Nov 1939
The question is not why did our Christian ancestors believe things which are absurd, but how is it that humanity knows these things and prizes them so highly? ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, 17 Nov 1939
This bi-sexuality of Christ is called androgynous, from aner (man) and gyne (woman). This is not only a Christian idea, the gods in most religions have an androgynous nature ascribed to them in some form or other. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8th Dec 1939
If we consider this aspect of “Geist”, we shall see that it is a peculiar condition of man. That which is moved, as if blown away by the wind, that which is made alive, is called spirit. It is, therefore, an increase of life. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 26 Jan 1940.
He [Dante] began to write his “Divine Comedy” in his thirty fifth year. The thirty-fifth year is a turning point in life – it is an interesting fact that Christ died in his thirty-fourth year. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture VII, Page 222.
This process of active imagination is the making conscious of the material which lies on the threshold of consciousness. Consciousness is an effort and you have to sleep in order to recuperate from the task. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Volume II, Page 12.
The earth, in the alchemistic sense, means the body and in a double sense: chemical bodies (substances), minerals etc., and the human body. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 101.
That with which we are concerned is not God, the creature is the image of the human mind, neither alive nor dead. ~Dorneus cited in ETH Lectures, Page 103.
This is a passage, where you can see for yourselves that ideas, which are in full bloom in the East, are also to be found in medieval meditations, ideas which touch the foundation and origin of our existence. ~Dorneus cited in ETH Lectures, Page 103.
Who would have thought that the alchemists, popularly supposed to be searching for gold, were really promising themselves freedom from illusion, exaggerated emotion, passion, excess and all possible vices ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 108.
The “Processing” is the alchemistic procedure; this, Taoism and the Book of Changes are all the same thing, according to Wei Po-Yang. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 109.
Divine grace is not, so to speak, conjured up, the priest does not make a sort of magic incantation in the prayer of consecration to compel the intervention of divine grace; but the Mass itself is a divine intervention, of which man should become aware. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 110.
A dog does not know that it is a dog any more than a star knows that it is a star. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Pages 217-223
The fact that Christ is regarded as male and female is extremely important, because it lays the foundation for the transcendent function, the reconciliation of the opposites. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 200.
The ego is an illusion which ends with death but the karma remains, it is given another ego in the next illusion. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Vol. 3, Page 17
A subtle body, breath or smoke resembling, which can also be correctly described as anima. Anima is the feminine of animus, which is identical with the Greek word anemos which means wind or breath. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 24 Feb 1939
If we speak of the atom we are not moved by it, but when we speak of the soul everyone is personally touched, it always awakes an emotion. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Vol. 2, Pages 140-142.
The goal which the alchemist sets himself, however, is not a direct redemption of the human being, nor is it a propitiation of the Deity nor a defence against evil. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 143.
We are not used to thinking that light comes from within as well as from without, it is as if the eye had an inward light of its own, if we receive a blow on the head for instance, we see stars. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture III, 17May 1935, Pages 210.
The levitation of St. Francis is a typical example. You can see yourself from a foot above, from the ceiling or from the ground. The Yogin himself levitates because he is so identified with his contemplation that he loses the weight of his body. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture III, 17May 1935, Pages 210.
There are people indeed who always project the blame, but I hold this to be incorrect! The fruit comes to him from the mother, through the friend, the shadow; this means that if he goes out into the world with his shadow, fruit will come to him. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XII, 1Feb1935, Pages 180
A dream gives us unadorned information about the condition of a patient, it is as if a nature- being were stating his diagnosis or taking a child by the ear and telling him what he is doing. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 18Jan1935, Page 174.
A dream is a product of nature, the patient has not made it, it is like a letter dropped from Heaven, something which we know nothing of. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V 23Nov1934 Page 156.
It was the anticipatory quality in dreams that was first valued by antiquity and they played an important role in the ritual of many religions. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V 23Nov1934 Page 156.
In psychological language: between the forms, tangible and visible to our senses, and the disappearance of all forms, there is a between world, the psyche. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XIII 17Feb1939, Page 86.
“The innermost nature of all corn meaneth wheat, and of all metal, gold, and of all birth, man!” ~Meister Eckhart cited ETH Lecture XIII 17Feb1939, Page 87.
The Sambhoga-kaya corresponds exactly to the modern term collective unconscious; and the archetypal figures correspond to the Devatas of our text. ETH Lecture XIII 17Feb1939, Page 86.
Guilt is also by no means the only cause of complexes, but with people who are especially sensitive on this point it is a very common complex ingredient, they have a moral complex, and it is as if they were ridden by the devil. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI 5July1934, Page 132.
Dante saw the mystical rose as the last vision in the Paradiso, where it embraced the whole Heavens. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3rd March 1939
To some people every word irritates a complex, but these people are usually insane, they apply every word to their complexes. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI 5July1934, Page 132.
Big dreams are impressive, they go with us through life, and sometimes change us through and through, but small dreams are fragmentary and just deal with the personal moment. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI 5July1934, Page 133.
It is fairly easy to imagine being able to think consciously, to have one’s thoughts under control, but when it comes to feeling it is much more difficult to do so, especially for a man. ~Carl Jung, Lecture IV, 18May1934, Page 102.
As a matter of fact it is by no means everyone who can sit down and think out something voluntarily, and it is quite equally possible for someone to sit down and feel something out. It just depends which is your domesticated function. ~Carl Jung, Lecture IV, 18May1934, Page 102.
They [Intuitives] draw the souls out of things and act according to what they discover by this process, just as if what they discovered were ordinary every day facts. ~Carl Jung, Lecture IV, 18May1934, Page 102.
The idea of the functions did not originate with me but was discovered by the Chinese centuries ago. It is true, however, that I stumbled up on it without knowledge of the east and only afterwards found the parallels to my own discoveries. ~Carl Jung, Lecture IV, 18May1934, Page 105.
Schopenhauer was primarily a thinker and secondarily an intuitive, whereas the quantities were reversed in Nietzsche. ~Carl Jung, Lecture IV, 18May1934, Page 105.
Intuitives are often very poor because they never wait for the harvest. Carl Jung, Lecture V 25May1934, Page 107.
There is what we might call a fifth function over all these four functions: the will. This is a peculiar function set above the others with a certain quantity of disposable energy in direct relation to the ego. ~Carl Jung, Lecture V 25May1934, Page 107.
We make the great mistake of thinking that children are born a tabula rasa, but this is not the case. They are born with a vast inherited memory which contains a subjective content to meet everything which they contact externally. ~Carl Jung, Lecture V 25May1934, Page 108.
Affect is undomesticated primitivity, annoyance can still be a feeling, but when your head begins to burn and you find your heart and pulse beat, then it has gone over into an emotion. ~Carl Jung, Lecture V 25May1934, Page 109.
Our present material consists of that which touches the ego, the individual or Self reaches far beyond this, it is only in the evening of life that we can say who we really are. ~ Carl Jung, Lecture VI 2June1934, Page 110.
The unconscious contains not only memories but also the germs of the new, creative seeds. ~ Carl Jung, Lecture VI 2June1934, Page 113.
Much of Christ’s teaching is also to be found in the teaching of his cousin Mithras. ~ Carl Jung, Lecture VI 2June1934, Page 113.
The collective unconscious is a source in which all the past and all the future lie, it does not belong to the individual, but to mankind. ~ Carl Jung, Lecture VI 2June1934, Page 113.
Jealousy is always an extremely suspicious symptom. ~Carl Jung, Lecture VIII 15June1934, Page 119.
Neurotics often hardly breathe at all and when at last they are forced to draw a breath they sigh, and their fond relations are much concerned and ask: “What is the matter?” But they were just in need of breath. ~Carl Jung, Lecture VIII 15June1934, Page 121.
This shallow breathing can have very serious results and can start tubercular trouble for people with many complexes get into the habit of not breathing to the bottom of their lungs. ~Carl Jung, Lecture VIII 15June1934, Page 121.
We sleep a third of our life away and in the remaining two-thirds we are only more or less conscious. ~Carl Jung, Lecture II, 27April1934, Page 96.
Alert consciousness is a very rare condition, it is tiring and expensive, and as it requires so much energy we prefer to let ourselves live in a kind of torpor. ~Carl Jung, Lecture II, 27April1934, Pages 96.
If the unconscious stopped living nothing would happen in consciousness, for all that comes into our heads proceeds from the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Lecture II, 27April1934, Pages 97.
Consciousness is essentially the psyche’s organ of perception, it is the eye and ear of the psyche. ~Carl Jung, Lecture II, 27April1934, Pages 98.
There is nothing which man has done, thought or undertaken which has not originated in the psyche. ~Carl Jung, Lecture I, 20April1934, Page 93.
The psyche appears to everyone as that which is reality to him and it takes an exceedingly long self-education to see that one’s own experience is not the general experience. ~Carl Jung, Lecture I, 20April1934, Page 93.
The psyche experiences itself and is at the same time a general phenomenon; everything that exists depends on this fact. ~Carl Jung, Lecture I, 20April1934, Pages 94.
Psychology is no arbitrary matter, it is more a phenomenology that consists of many realities which have to be accepted as they are. ~Carl Jung, Lecture I, 20April1934, Page 94.
Ego consciousness is no universal condition; it could rather be called the organ of orientation which is sub-divided into functions. ~Carl Jung, Lecture III, 4May1934, Page 99.
The history of energetics is largely intuitive, it starts primitively as intuitions of archetypes, first they were beings, now they are mathematical formulas. ~Carl Jung, Lecture III, 4May1934, Page 100.
There is unchanging opposition, war in fact, between thinking and feeling. If thinking appears cold to feeling, feeling certainly appears stupid to thinking. ~Carl Jung, Lecture III, 4May1934, Page 100.
Intuitives show a quite extraordinary inability to register sensation facts, they have extraordinary fantasies about a thing, they intuit what is inside the locked drawer, but have no idea what the bureau looks like outside. ~Carl Jung, Lecture III, 4May1934, Page 101.
You can quite well say “I think”, “I feel” but the other view works also, “I am thought”, “I am felt “. ~Carl Jung, Lecture III, 4May1934, Page 101.
In any case, the Clairvoyante’s visions lead us to the conclusion that she possessed the faculty of exteriorization, of seeing psychic processes as if existing outside herself. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V, Page 26.
These processes are based on psychological facts, but we do not know scientifically whether ghosts exist or not. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V, Page 26.
In my estimation, second sight is not an illness, but a gift; you might as well say that it is pathological to be endowed with remarkable intelligence, but the possession of a gift always carries with it the burden of responsibility. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V, Page 26.
We can have prophetic dreams without possessing second sight, innumerable people have such anticipatory dreams. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V, Page 26.
This disproves the theory that a child’s mind is a tabula rasa, for it shows us that the unconscious is no empty surface, but a prepared ground; the brain is complete with the history of the world and every child is born with an unconscious assumption of the world. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V, Page 27.
There is no escape from this psychic background with which we enter life, it can only be accepted, we are bound to see the world through our own inborn temperament. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V, Page 27.
I should like to stress the fact that intense withdrawal from outer reality brings about an animation of the inner world which calls forth these phenomena. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IX,15Dec1933, Page 39.
But psychology, of all things, demands that we be honest and shut our eyes to nothing. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IX,15Dec1933, Page 39.
Space is a pure conception, the condition a priori of all spatial experiences generally. It possesses “empirical reality” and is the frame of all outer experience. Time is “the formal condition a priori of all phenomena”. Time as inner sense (space being the outer sense) has “subjective reality”. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IX,15Dec1933, Page 40.
If the light were suddenly to go out and you could no longer see me, you would not be likely to think that I had ceased to exist, yet it would be no more foolish than to assume that the contents of the psychic background only exist when we can see them. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IX,15Dec1933, Page 41.
The ancients understood this far better than we do, they did not speak, therefore, of being in love but of being possessed or hit by a god. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IX,15Dec1933, Page 41.
The psyche has a great desire to become whole and to collect back its scattered parts. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IX,15Dec1933, Page 41.
The really normal man has no need to be always correct, or to stress his normality; he can be possessed by an idea, a conviction, a feeling, he can live all sides of himself and do many foolish things. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IX,15Dec1933, Page 41.
Consciousness is becoming aware of, making an image or concept of something, and intellect is the ability to think. Neither of these things is spirit. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 26 Jan 1940.
This is equally true of the concept of matter or body. We must say here that the body has nothing to do with matter. Matter is an abstraction, nowadays it has become a philosophical and scientific concept, whereas body is the direct psychic experience of the body. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 26 Jan 1940.
A host of possibilities is still embedded in the archetypes, in the realm of the Mothers. The abundance of possibilities eludes our comprehension. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 22
The origin of the archetypes is a crucial question. Where space and time are relative it is not possible to speak of developments in time. Everything is present, altogether and all at once, in the constant presence of the Pleroma. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 22
Man is also distinct from the angels because he can receive revelations, be disobedient, grow and change. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 36.
God changes too and is therefore especially interested in man. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 36.
Although the earth existed before there were any human beings, it could not be seen or known by anyone. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 22.
So when we say body, we really mean our psychic experience of the body. This has only a distant Relationship to the anatomical and physiological structure of the body and nothing whatever to do with matter. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 26 Jan 1940.
Man is the point that has become visible, stepping out from the Pleroma, knowing what he is doing, and able to name the things about him. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 22
Very few people understand intelligent things whereas everybody understands stupid things; stupidity, therefore, is a far greater power than intelligence. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 10 Feb 1939
Alchemy began at latest in the first century A. D. and is really a curious process of initiation, a s ort of practical Yoga. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 24 Feb 1939
This perfect being is a conception of an optimum of life, and it is symbolically represented as the all-round being. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture 10, Page 81.
…I have been working for many years on the psychology of the unconscious, and it was the enigmatical and puzzling structure of the unconscious which brought me to alchemy, as well as to the study of Yoga and of the Ignatian exercises. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture 10, Page 81.
The “anima rationalis” is the reasonable mind of man, which is really the highest form of the human psyche, worthy of immortality. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XI, Page 96.
The serpent is a Gnostic symbol for the spinal cord and the basal ganglia, because a snake is mainly backbone. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XI, Page 97.
If the unconscious can be localized anywhere it is in the basal ganglia, and it has the same uncanny character. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XI, Page 97.
The “art of gold making” is a sort of creating of the world, or it is based on the pattern of the creation of the world, and, as in Genesis, a cosmos is fashioned from the chaos. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XI, Page 97.
This means, applied to alchemy, that it is death to take alchemy as an external occupation, but the man who regards it as an inward experience, can live and rejoice. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XI, Page 97.
The assurance that the stone will remain with us seems to be directly related to Christ’s promise: “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” (St. Matt. XXVIII. 20.) ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XI, Page 97.
[Study and search of what thou art,
And what is in thee, thou wilt see,
Thy study, learning, whole and p art,
It all doth come from inside thee,
For what outside us we do ken
Is also in us, so Amen.] ~Salomon Trissmosin cited by Carl Jung, ETH, Page 105.
When his pupils questioned Buddha about Shunyata, he was silent or replied in a round about way. There were things he did not want to speak of, he would not say what was best left unsaid. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XII,10th February 1939, Pages 76-81.
The serpent is a Gnostic symbol for the spinal cord and the basal ganglia, because a snake is mainly backbone. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XI, Page 97.
This serpent does not represent “reason” or anything approaching it, but rather symbolises a peculiar autonomous mind which can possess one completely, a spirit of revelation which gives us “Intuitionen” (intuitions). ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 215.
Since the time of the old Gnostics, the serpent has been the symbol for the brain and its appendages; that is, for the lower centres of the brain and for the spinal cord, partly on account of its shape, but also from introspective reasons. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 216.
…the serpent is the hypostatic, underlying materia (the essence of matter), which sinks into the water, or is as it were in the water, and, through illusion, it deceives the senses. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 219.
The Kavirondos say that people only become human beings through initiation, before that they are animals. This is the sacrifice of avidya, of not knowing, of being a purely instinctive creature. This instinctive unity is divided into four and is reunited. This second unity is Mt. Meru. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 24 Feb 1939
We have our bete noire and say with the old Pharisee: “God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are.” We don’t want to know that we are the “other men.” ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27 Jan 1939
In every case of very pronounced introversion, the three groups of phenomena, which I mentioned in the last lecture, occur: first, experience of the relative character of space and time; secondly, the autonomy of certain psychic contents and thirdly, the experience of symbols belonging to a centre which does not coincide with the centre of consciousness and which is equivalent to an experience of God. ~Carl Jung, Lecture X, 12Jan1934, Page 43.
Youth has to build many walls in order to shut off the background from the ego, so that it may believe in the outer world; for to remain under the fascination of the inner images causes hesitation and lack of accomplishment, and to live, to be wholly devoted to something, is also an art which must not be despised. ~Carl Jung, Lecture X, 12Jan1934, Pages 45.
I am personally of the opinion that not only people, but even animals have souls. I am also deeply convinced of the truth of all creeds. No logical standard of comparison exists, they all contain genuine and real psychological experience and it is merely stupid to criticize them with the aim of establishing one truth. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture III, Page 18.
Psychology did not suddenly spring into existence; one could say that it is as old as civilization itself. The ancient science of astrology, which has always appeared in the wake of culture all over the world, is a kind of psychology and alchemy is another unconscious form. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture I, Page 11.
In reality we imagine nothing, it imagines itself. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XII, Page 53.
Leopold did not suddenly spring into existence when he appeared as a control, he was always present in Helene Smith, he was part of her psychic structure. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XII, Page 53.
William James had a true understanding of these facts when he said: “Thought tends to personal form.” ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XII, Pages 53-54.
In earlier days the healing of the psyche was regarded as Christ’s prerogative, the task belonged to religion, for we suffered then only as part of a collective suffering. It is a new point of view to look up on the individual psyche as a whole with its own individual suffering. Carl Jung, ETH Lecture I, 20Oct1933, Page 12
It is no wonder, therefore, that nature herself strives to produce a strengthening of the ego in order gradually to bring about more consciousness, for without this the further development of mankind would be impossible. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 137.
The whole history of culture is really the history of a strengthening and widening of consciousness, and therefore of the controlling ego. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 137.
After half an hour’s conversation I felt I was listening to a Chinese sage or an east European peasant, still rooted in the Earth Mother yet close to Heaven at the same time. I was enthralled by the wonderful simplicity of his presence…~Mircea Eliade on Carl Jung, Ordeal by Labyrinth, Pages 162-3.
The lotus has always had an important mystical meaning. Its roots are down in the slime and mud at the bottom of the lake and the flower unfolds on the surface of the water. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 113.
There are, it is true, cases of people who are living below their own value where the shadow is the superior instead of the inferior part of the personality. Such people are apparently very modest but there is a lot of cunning in their modesty. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 113.
So we see that what we call spirit and body are psychic conditions, limited psychic functions, and the body tells us as little about what matter really is, as the spirit about the thing in itself which is behind the spiritual condition. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture X, Page 226.
We can experience the body psychically, a prana-body, a subtle body, and there are certain exalted and ecstatic conditions in which we can experience spirit. So what we experience of spirit and body are really psychic modalities. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture X, Page 226.
Body and spirit, thought of as two poles, combine correctly with each other if man depends correctly upon God, because they are reconciled through His unity. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture X, Page 227.
Prana conceives of the body as a sort of system of pipes, going into the limbs and connecting the centres. These centres are not mystical but psychical centres of experience. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture X, Page 225.
That is how we should understand the pleroma, the fullness, which is the origin of the existence of the world, where everything is contained but in potentia, as a possibility, anything can come out of it. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 254.
We find the same idea in the Indian Atman, a word which is related to the German Atem (breath]; it is the breath of life, which goes through everything, corresponding to the Buddha essence. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 9Dec38, Page 41.
The lapis philosophorum of the alchemists is the same thing as the Vajra, it is the thing which is produced in the laboratory of a man’s life and which is far more durable than he is. These thoughts run parallel both in the East and West. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 9Dec38, Page 43.
The text tells us that the body of the sleeper is imagined to be the body of the Buddha, we should understand that as the diamond body. So it is the transformation of the ordinary body into the eternally durable body that is meant. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 9Dec38, Page 43.
As we have already seen that Karma is the sum-total of what we bring over from former lives, our debit and credit account, merits and losses. Sangskara is the sum-total of the mind that we have created in former existences. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Pages 55-56.
Very highly developed people can remember their former lives, even back into animal lives. Buddha remembered innumerable lives and spoke freely of them. There are curious cases of this kind to be found even now. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 56.
The East is absolutely convinced that we actually lived former lives but such assertions are open to doubt. We call the same thing hereditary tendencies, our disposition, certain things run in the family, etc. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 56.
In the West we are always using our intuition on outward things, but the East turns their Sangskara-skandha inwards. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 56.
When people are foolish enough to imitate the East their bodies rise up against them and teach them better. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 56.
There must be a long preparation to be Buddha, if we do not realise this we are taking part in a holy ceremony with dirty hands. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 56.
The eastern gods all have two aspects, Kwannon, the well-known goddess of kindness, is also the goddess of hell. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 57.
Rupa-skandha = Thinking.
Vedana-skandha = Sensation.
Samjna-skandha = Feeling.
Sangskara-skandha = Intuition.
Vijniina-skandha = Buddha Vajra-sattva . Knowledge. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 52.
The meaning of this passage age is that through active imagination the Yogin succeeds in making his senses and functions independent. It is the purification of the senses. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 20Jan1939, Page 59.
Disintegration is consciously undertaken in our text with the purpose of emptying the ego consciousness and integrating a central consciousness, the totality of the personality; it is undertaken because the problem of the body has come up. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 20Jan1939, Page 62.
All this means that in time and space I am only here in my body, I cannot be identical with Buddha, but if I can rid myself of all my personal contents, if I can distribute them as Devatas all over the universe, I can sit in the heaven of the gods and reach eternal peace. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 20Jan1939, Page 62.
The Yogin’s Buddha is a subjective and objective image. It lies in the Yogin’s power to create him or to leave him uncreated and yet the Buddha has an objective existence. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27Jan1939, Pages 65.
We know that twice two are four, for instance, but we cannot call that our subjective knowledge. We simply take over such facts ready-made and play chess with them; for we can to some extent use the fact that twice two are four for our own purposes even though it does not belong to us. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27Jan1939, Pages 65.
We do not suffer from the delusion that a cherry could not hang on its stalk without our help, yet it never occurs to us that we are just as powerless in our own dreams. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27Jan1939, Pages 65.
People cannot stand having unnatural virtue around them all day, it makes them feel inferior and they may even be come criminals in order to compensate it. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27Jan1939, Pages 66.
In India it has given way to Hinduism, in which Buddha is merely the ninth, that is the last, incarnation or avatar of Vishnu. The Hindus believe that the time of Buddha has passed and that a tenth avatar of Vishnu in the form of a white horse will soon appear. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27Jan1939, Pages 68.
As Buddha and his teaching are still recognized within the frame of the Hindu religion, you find traces of him everywhere; but his achievement, amazing consciousness and highest integrity are no longer to be found in India today, though Rishis and Yogins still make private efforts to reach its illumination. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27Jan1939, Pages 68.
I do not know why India was not able to keep Buddhism, but I think probably its present polytheistic religion is a better expression of the Indian soul today than the one perfect Buddha. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27Jan1939, Pages 69.
This round motif should be kept clearly in your mind, for it is an exceedingly important symbol in the West as well as in the East. It is especially women who produce such symbols in the West. This is not the case in the East, the mandalas are made by men, the feminine has remained unconscious. We find an exception to this rule in the matriarchal South of India. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI., 3Feb1939, Page 70.
It is not that the things do not exist but that our perception of them is nothing but illusion. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 75.
Women played a considerable part in alchemy and worked at it themselves. This is not the case in Indian Yoga, with the exception of Tantrism. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 24Feb1939, Pages 92.
We must know how the human psyche came into being for in the unconscious the old ways are always trodden again. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 98.
We find all the ancient forms of the human psyche in dreams and in such texts as the Shri-Chakra-Sambhara Tantra. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 98.
We do not know why the Christian “Weltanschauung” exists, and why it is so insisted upon. The real reason is that these things lie under it, these essential roots of man; they belong to the secret teaching and had to be hidden, the Church was built over them and because of this people have become cut off from their roots. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8March1935, Pages 200.
Everyone has complexes, there is nothing to be ashamed of in that; it would in fact be highly suspicious if we found someone who had no complexes, for these are the fires of the psyche. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 1May1935, Pages 203.
Miracles are symbols for a heightened understanding of life; learning to fly without wings, telepathy, Yoga practices, etc., all belong psychologically to this heightened consciousness. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 1May1935, Pages 203.
The purpose of the meditation of the alchemists is also spiritualis, but in contrast to the other methods of meditation which we studied here – those of Yoga, Mahayana Buddhism and the Ignatian excercises – the subject of meditation in alchemy is something unknown, and not a known dogmatic formula. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 174.
The “Aurora Consurgens” asks the question: “What is the science? It is the gift and sanctuary of the Deity, it is a divine thing, and is hidden by the Wise in symbolical words and in many ways.” ~Cited in ETH Lectures, Page 175.
He says directly that man has two lights: the one is the spirit and the other the light of nature. Man has a spirit in order to be able to understand the divine revelation, and a soul in order to recognise the world in the light of nature. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 193.
You can put the most marvellous things before the eyes of a stupid person and they will make no impression on him, for all impressions come from inside ourselves. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 226.
The elements are of an earthly nature, the physical and chemical constituents of our bodies. These are the earth in us, so to speak, and the stars represent the beginning of psychical life, the influence of the stars in the condition of the chaos. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 229.
This book [I Ching] lies just under the threshold of Chinese consciousness, it is rationally despised under European influence, but every Chinese believes in it at bottom and is perfectly right to do so, for it is an extraordinarily intelligent book. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 109.
Divine grace is not, so to speak, conjured up, the priest does not make a sort of magic incantation in the prayer of consecration to compel the intervention of divine grace; but the Mass itself is a divine intervention, of which man should become aware. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 110.
The most pronounced intuitives have what the Scotch call second sight, they can, for instance, foretell the weather, many animals also have this last power. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 100.
Often when people behave in an exceedingly unexpected manner the appearance of an archetype is the explanation; archetypes go back not only through human history, but to our ancestors the animals, that is why we are able to understand animals so well and make friends with them. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Vol. 2, Page 177.
Primitives are really human animals living on the lap of the earth and from its sap. We are merely enlightened! ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Vol. 2, Page 200.
One of the aims of some kinds of Yoga is to understand the voice of all animals, but we are not convinced in the West that horses and dogs have such important thoughts. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Vol. 2, Page 17.
This was the case with our dreamer, fate is not devilish but elfish and chose this moment to bring a new influence into his life. Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 25Jan1935.
The idea is that primeval man possessed a substance, a sort of earth, out of which Paradise could grow, and Adam (or primeval man) carries the secret of this earth in himself. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 215.
The snake in alchemy is the “mercurial serpent”, the old Gnostic image for the Nous, the mind, where the spirit was represented as a serpent, as the Agathodaemon (the good daemon), or directly called the serpent of the Nous. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 215.
This serpent does not represent “reason” or anything approaching it, but rather symbolises a peculiar autonomous mind which can possess one completely, a spirit of revelation which gives us “Intuitionen” (intuitions). ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 215.
Since the time of the old Gnostics, the serpent has been the symbol for the brain and its appendages; that is, for the lower centres of the brain and for the spinal cord, partly on account of its shape, but also from introspective reasons. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 216.
One could say, in a certain sense, that the unconscious was the invisible, psychical part of the tangible and visible nervous system, just as one might say consciousness was the invisible part of the brain. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 216.
Living matter is a mystery which is beyond our understanding, if only for the reason that we ourselves consist of living matter. We cannot climb above our own heads, a fact which should be a warning to all those people who try to explain the nature of God. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 216.
…the serpent is the hypostatic, underlying materia (the essence of matter), which sinks into the water, or is as it were in the water, and, through illusion, it deceives the senses. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 219.
To put it more simply: the prima materia can be won from the centre of a stone or substance, but then it is no longer designated as a substance but as an agent. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 221.
Therefore the prima materia is called “monad”, “ens reale” and “forma interna”, that is, it is the inner form which gives things their existence, and is, therefore, the cause of all existence. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 221.
And this being has body, soul and spirit, and is, therefore, the principle of life itself, as well as the principle of individuation. Its nature is spiritual, it cannot be seen, and it contains an invisible image. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 221.
We could define the unconscious as a psychical existence in ourselves of which we are unconscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 224.
Even today the majority of people have no idea what psychology is; they have a personal psychology and some metaphysical convictions. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 224.
And it is a curious fact that, all over the earth wherever we find astrology, the stars have essentially the same meaning. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 225.
While a man sees something in the sky, there is no chance of his seeing it in himself, and so naturally he will attribute his own actions to the stars. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 225.
The well-known sentence in the Lord’s Prayer, “Deliver us from evil”, meant, as it was first understood, deliver us from the evil principle of the Heimarmene. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 225.
The beautiful old name, Elizabeth, is a remnant of the same idea. It originated in Babylon and means: “My deity is the seven”, that is, these even planets, for only seven were known in those days. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Pages 225-226.
The things, which impress us from outside, can only do so because of our inner attitude. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 226.
You can put the most marvellous things before the eyes of a stupid person and they will make no impression on him, for all impressions come from inside ourselves. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 226.
The elements are of an earthly nature, the physical and chemical constituents of our bodies. These are the earth in us, so to speak, and the stars represent the beginning of psychical life, the influence of the stars in the condition of the chaos. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 229.
Psychologically this means that the souls of the ancestors (potential factors, qualities, talents, possibilities, and so on, which we have inherited from all the lines of our ancestry) are waiting in the unconscious and are ready at any time to begin a new growth. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 230.
These are, so to speak, the re-animated souls of the ancestors which have been lying dormant in the unconscious, and the alchemists call these units or souls the sleepers or the dead in Hades who are resurrected by the “holy waters” (that is the miraculous water of alchemy, the fertilising Mercury). ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 230.
The lotus has always had an important mystical meaning. Its roots are down in the slime and mud at the bottom of the lake and the flower unfolds on the surface of the water. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 113.
There are, it is true, cases of people who are living below their own value where the shadow is the superior instead of the inferior part of the personality. Such people are apparently very modest but there is a lot of cunning in their modesty. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 113.
As we are considering man’s psyche, the ego in the conscious and the shadow in the unconscious are both masculine but on the lower floor it is different. There man meets his other side which is feminine. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 114.
It is a primeval fact that the psyche consists of both sexes. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 114.
Yet we know that every embryo is formed of masculine and feminine genes, the sex is determined by the majority. Where then is the minority? Carl Jung, ETH, Page 115.
Marriage is no help in this, one does not reach it in that way, for we have deceived ourselves when we find our own feminine in a real woman. Carl Jung, ETH, Page 115.
If I have a beam in my own eye I shall see a mote in someone else’s eye and call it a beam. This exactly describes the way I necessarily first see my own feminine psyche. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 116.
We think of maya as illusion, deception, but it is also building material, illusion which becomes real. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 116.
If we regard alchemy rationally it is complete nonsense but it is exceedingly meaningful psychologically, the whole riddle or secret of the human psyche is to be found in it. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 117.
The alchemists returned in matter to the mother, the first carrier of the feminine unconscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 117.
Mary is represented as a sea flower in one hymn and Christ as the sea bird that rests in her. This is exactly the eastern motif of the lotus. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 118.
These various formulations indicate the same being that we find in the Gnosis as the ethereal man, light and diaphanous, identical with gold, diamond, carbuncle, the Grail, and, in Indian philosophy, with the Purusha or personified as Christ or Buddha. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 118.
It is necessary to talk to Yogins themselves in order to understand and those who come over here are usually acrobats and not philosophers. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 119.
Through fettering the klesas one brings the eating of the world to an end and can discriminate between oneself and desire. We reach our own will and its content by practising this restraint. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 127.
But we spend our free time listening to the wireless and rushing off to the cinema. Yet much of our western neurosis comes from the fact that we do not find enough time for ourselves; it would be wiser to meditate and seek the Void when we need rest, than to run after outer distraction. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 128.
Yoga does not lead to the ego but to the knowledge that the ego is only a phenomenon, it is the face, skin or symptom of an incomprehensible being. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 136.
When the ego is identified with the Atman it goes up on to a height where it does not belong, and when the two are separated the ego rolls down the hill. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 137.
The idea that Christianity dropped from Heaven as a direct revelation is an historical forgery. Its essential content is rich in philosophical ideas which reach back beyond Plato and Pythagoras. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 137.
Alchemy began about the same time as Christianity, in fact we find alchemical ideas in China long before our era, so one can only be sure that the symbolism and language of the Fathers of the Church play an enormous role in alchemy. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Pages 161-162.
The coniunctio in alchemy is a union of the masculine and feminine, of the spiritual and material principles, from which a perfect body arises, the glorified body after the Last Judgement, the resurrection body. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 159.
This means an eternal body, or the subtle body, which is designated in alchemy as the philosopher’s stone, the lapis aethereus or invisibilis. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Pages 159.
Active imagination is to be understood as a way or method, to heal, raise and transform the personality. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 174.
a psychic emptying of all conscious contents through the practice of Yoga. In the western series the chaos, or nigredo, is not thought of as a psychic condition but as a condition of the materia. This is the great difference between the East and the West. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 175.
The ego changes all the time, it has every kind of illusion, but the Self is as it is, there is nothing we can alter in it. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 175.
Active imagination is the intentional activating of a function which otherwise remains passive. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 175.
We do not stop to think that nothing would exist, there would be no culture in the world, if it were not for active imagination; it is always the forerunner, everything springs from it. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 175.
In the East the Void represents
Later the single lotus is imagined on the firm ground of seven jewels, which is reality; so it is on the foundation of reality that the lotus is induced through imagination. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 103.
We constantly hear of Mahatmas and Rishis living away in the mountains of Tibet who are capable of all kinds of magical practices and in India this is also taken for granted; but when Shri Rama Krishna became interested in the question and tried to discover if such people existed, he did not find a single one. Usually it is the invisible or psychic reality which is meant. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 103.
We, in the West, are all in the deep darkness of avidya and badly in need of redemption. We need to achieve psychic understanding, not just to be, but to know what you are. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 104.
In the West, we associate the spiritual with something high above, but the East finds it in Muladhara, the lower part of the pelvis, that which supports the roots, the lowest foundation of life. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 104.
I have seen such cases where a second personality brings about an absolute change in character. It is this phenomenon which is made conscious here through active imagination. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 106.
Christian iconography represents Christ as a very feminine man. This is not just a matter of taste, but because he could not be the redeemer if he were not woman as well as man: all the opposites had to unite in him. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Page 110.
In alchemy, the redemption of man is brought about through the opus; in contrast to Christianity, where redemption depends entirely on the grace of God. The eastern concept is identical with the alchemical idea: it is the task of the individual to redeem himself. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Page 110.
The chemical and the psychological processes went hand in hand, the alchemists worked with such intensity and expectation that it had a psychological effect on them. This is difficult for us to understand. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Page 110.
We like to think that we are not unconscious but we are to an amazing extent: think of the many things we do without knowing it. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Page 111.
These unconscious actions, therefore, do not exist for us (any more than America exists for those who do not know that it was ever discovered) but other people see what we are unaware of ourselves! ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Page 111.
This dissolution of the darkness also dissolves the picture which we have made of ourselves. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Page 111.
Just as the ark found a dry point on which to land, so you find a small but firm spot, an instinctive foundation on which you can stand and from which you can see: here I am right and there I am wrong, I am not quite right and not quite wrong, I am that. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Page 111.
Every profound student of alchemy knows that the making of gold was not the real purpose and that the process was a western form of Yoga. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Page 107.
It is, however, impossible for us to recognise our relationship to eastern ideas, or to assimilate these, unless we realise our own Christian background and that such ideas were expressed in the original documents of our own faith. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 197.
The alchemists think of the Redeemer as lying hidden or sleeping in the materia, he does not only descend from heaven but comes also from the depths of matter. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 189.
There is indeed a meaning in suffering, it is a sort of divine secret, for it is less the human being and more the divine man that suffers. God humiliated himself to become man and thus necessarily fell a victim to human suffering. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 189.
We saw that Christ is the western parallel to the eastern Atman or Purusha, and the search for both is the search for the Self, though the paths are utterly different. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 189.
We know for psychological reasons that when the outer attitude to the world is feminine and passive, the inward attitude will be masculine and active. And of course vice versa, a belligerent outer attitude means a feminine inner attitude, characterised by a peculiar receptiveness and surrender. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 192.
It is curious that the East has such a negative attitude to suffering, that it regards it merely as an illusion to be overcome, whereas to us it is the path par excellence to Christ, to the Self. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 194.
I am afraid that the historical responsibility for this state of things belongs to the Church: it did not emphasize the metaphysical significance of the individual and taught its members to deify the Church, the institution. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 196.
Our culture, which is threatened today, is primarily a Christian culture, if it had not been for the Roman Catholic Church, we should still be barbarians. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 196.
But we stopped at the institution of the Church, it was erected for the welfare of mankind and the divine germ of the individual was neglected and repressed, to such an extent that we have no understanding for the East and depreciate its teaching as megalomania. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 196.
We were all taught to depend on the walls of the Church, not on God in ourselves. How many of you even know that Christ said: “Ye are gods”? Have you ever heard a sermon on this text? I have not. But there are many passages in the New Testament which are never preached upon. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 196.
Not the human being, not the ego, is God but the Self is God in man, and it is superior to human consciousness, just as the whole is superior to a part. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 196.
We suffer from a certain “development arrete”, our spiritual development stopped short, whereas that of the East is hypertrophic. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 197
He [Nietzsche] expressed it as “God is dead” and he did not realise that in saying this he was still standing within the dogma, for Christ’s death is one of the secret mysteries of Christianity. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 197.
There is a real salvation in these medieval ideas which can free a man and give his existence a meaning far beyond the sacred bank balance and which reaches as far as suffering. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 191.
The dogma claims that Christ was God who became man. In psychological language this means that the Self approached the consciousness of man, or that human consciousness began to realise the Self, as a real human fact. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 200.
Eastern man realizes the Self in himself but it approaches western man from outside, it is even an historical event, the life of Christ. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 200.
The East, on the contrary, first realizes the Self as the thumbling in man’s heart, as the smaller than small which I contain. But the Self appears in western psychic experience as a divine figure, as something which contains me and faces me with the infinite power of a god. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 201.
In other words, individuation, becoming conscious of the Self, is divine suffering. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 201.
At last I discovered that they [The East] call the unconscious consciousness, indeed enlightenment. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 204.
Natural science holds that man has developed, through long generations of pre-human ancestors. This is, of course, a process of nature, not a human activity. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 212.
The child’s psyche is unconscious, an animal psyche if you like to express it that way, and very gradually a conscious condition develops. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 213.
Consciousness is produced from a quite specific unconsciousness, which anticipates things that consciousness will only later recognise and understand. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 213.
We are thought from our psyche before we know it, we can bring empirical facts to prove this. So the statement that “man was created” seems to me very important. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 213.
If I discover that I have been anticipated, it makes an enormous impression upon me; I could not in that moment clearly define the meaning of my life but I feel it as something living. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 214.
One living experience is worth a great many intellectual formulations and a psychology must be founded on this fact. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 214.
If man does not reverence and submit to the unconscious, which created his consciousness, he loses his soul, that is, he loses his connection with soul and unconscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 214.
We think we have conjured away this danger when we call it God, for Christianity has forgotten the dark side of God. The old Church knew that God was dangerous. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 215.
But gradually God was only spoken of as the good God but the Church knew, and perhaps still knows, that God is dangerous. But it preaches in mild murmurs, for it is not popular to speak as Luther spoke of the deus absconditus. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 215.
The principle of evil is just as autonomous and eternal as the principle of good. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 215.
An old alchemist said that God was obviously displeased with his work on the second day when he had separated the waters above from the waters below, thus creating the Binarius (two) which is the devil. On all the other days “God saw that it was good” but not on the second day. (Compare Gen. I. 6-8.) ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 215.
As God is the union, the reconciliation, of all the opposites, it is natural that both the good and evil principles should be in him potentially, should originate in him. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 215.
It is much more important to be contented and peaceful than to be intellectual. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 214.
We could say that the universe only exists in order that this fruit may ripen; in order that the Self may come into being and reach its own place, which is simply a psychic process of becoming. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IX, Page 220.
That is, as man himself is created for a purpose, he may use all created things for that purpose, and in order to do so freely he must be indifferent and unconcerned about them. One might almost think that this attitude was similar to that of Buddhism. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IX, Page 220.
How I experience the body from within is a totally different question. I am inside the body as a psyche. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture X, Page 225.
If you want to know how the body can be experienced psychically you must turn to eastern Yoga; medieval philosophy also knew something of the matter. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture X, Page 225.
The Indian teaching of Prana formulates this, it makes people aware that they can, so to speak, stream into certain limbs and, if one experiments on these lines, one finds it is possible to achieve very peculiar results. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture X, Page 225.
So when we say body, we really mean our psychic experience of the body. This has only a distant relationship to the anatomical and physiological structure of the body and nothing whatever to do with matter. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture X, Page 226.
The body, therefore, is also a psychological condition, a peculiar form of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture X, Page 226.
So we see that what we call spirit and body are psychic conditions, limited psychic functions, and the body tells us as little about what matter really is, as the spirit about the thing in itself which is behind the spiritual condition. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture X, Page 226.
We can experience the body psychically, a prana-body, a subtle body, and there are certain exalted and ecstatic conditions in which we can experience spirit. So what we experience of spirit and body are really psychic modalities. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture X, Page 226.
Body and spirit, thought of as two poles, combine correctly with each other if man depends correctly upon God, because they are reconciled through His unity. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture X, Page 227.
Prana conceives of the body as a sort of system of pipes, going into the limbs and connecting the centres. These centres are not mystical but psychical centres of experience. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture X, Page 225.
That is how we should understand the pleroma, the fullness, which is the origin of the existence of the world, where everything is contained but in potentia, as a possibility, anything can come out of it. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 254.
If we want to know the truth about ourselves we must realise that we are capable of great virtue and also of the worst vice. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13, Page 245.
Consciousness has increased but historical evidence shows that morality has not. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XIV, Page 247.
In old Egypt, for instance, there was no concept of sin in our sense at all. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XIV, Page 247.
Western man comes in from outside, so to speak, from the quaternity of the world into the unity of God, whereas eastern man goes out from the divine unity into the quaternity. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XIV, Page 252.
The ideal in some Christian circles is to be always cheerful, of good courage, to be friends with all the world and to live above all conflict; for Christ has taken the conflict on Himself, so why should I trouble with it? That is no imitation of Christ, it is a device to avoid the essential Christian conflict. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XVI, Page 258.
It is very remarkable that this conception of the divine water should have existed in Greek philosophy before the days of John the Baptist. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IX, Page 75.
“It is by the revelation of the highest and greatest God that I have attained this art, and only through diligent study, wakefulness, and through constantly reading the authentic books.” ~Carl Jung, Citing an Alchemist, ETH Lecture V. Page 161.
Through diligent study and religious exercises, one can attain an art or knowledge which exists somehow beside Christianity. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V. Page 161.
Paracelsus says that man has a mind in order that he may understand the truths which are made known in the Gospel, and only for this purpose. But on the other hand man has also a “lumen naturae” (a natural light), a source of knowledge hidden in nature, from which he can draw enlightenment. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V. Page 162.
I use the word “Gnosis” intentionally, because alchemy retained, or rediscovered, a great many things which played a very important role in the early days of Christianity. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V. Page 162.
Christianity really arose from the spirit of Gnosticism, but came into conflict with it later, because the Gnostics threatened to dissolve Christianity with their philosophical speculations. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V. Page 162.
This whole effort is not an undertaking for the many, it does not contain social thoughts, it is essentially an individual matter, and, whether it is practised by one, ten or even a thousand people, each works alone. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V, Page 165.
And indeed it is as individuals that we are part of the world, and we cannot experience anything except as an individual. We may feel safer and more protected in a crowd, yet the truth is that the individual is more unsafe and in greater danger in a crowd than anywhere else. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V, Page 165.
He has a secret purpose: to free the world soul (the Deus absconditus) bound in matter. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V. Page 166.
A girl who has an illegitimate baby is condemned and nobody asks whether she is a decent human being or not. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, On Eros Theory, Page 27.
Any form of love not sanctioned by law is considered immoral, whether between worth-while people or bounders. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, On Eros Theory, Pages 27.
We are still so hypnotized by what happens that we forget how and to whom it happens, just as for the Middle Ages finance was nothing but glittering gold, fiercely coveted and therefore the devil. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, On Eros Theory, Page 27.
Eastern texts show us how processes, which we have forgotten or never knew, can in the course of thousands of years become an elaborate technique. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 11Nov1938, Page 20.
Indians think of thought as something thinly substantial, thought is not vaporous to them, as it is to us. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 11Nov1938, Page 25.
A mandala is a technical term for a magic circle which is used for meditation, but it is also used in a lower form for purpose of witchcraft; the witches’ circle was well known in the Middle Ages. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 25Nov1938, Page 25.
- a) The Dharma Kaya = the world of absolute truth.
- b) The Sambhoga Kaya = the world of subtle bodies.
- c) The Nirmana Kaya = the world of created things.
One could also call these three: Self, anima and body. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 2Dec1938, Page 35.
The prayer or mantra which is repeated while they walk round these stupas is “om mani padme hum”. Om is a primeval sound, you find it in every culture which is still growing on its original foundations, and we ourselves make the same sound to express natural pleasure, we m-m about food, for instance. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 2Dec1938, Page 36.
Mani means pearl or great treasure, padme is the lotus and hum, like om, has no definite meaning, it is a sound like the humming of bees. So we find the pearl and the lotus sandwiched between a singing sound and a humming sound. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 2Dec1938, Page 36.
The East regards the psychic as half physical, it is not immaterial for them as it is for us, it is definite, it has a given concreteness; so that you can actually create a Buddha through imagination. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 2Dec1938, Page 37.
The light of the mandala, and therefore the mandala itself, is already the Buddha, although he himself is not yet visible. The mandala is not just the seat of the Buddha, it is identical with him. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 2Dec1938, Page 39.
The State consists of a mass of individuals and only the individual gives it meaning and value. What is collectivity without the individual? No god can be made out of such an idol. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 2Dec1938, Page 40.
We get, it is true, a foggy idea of such terms as Dhyana and Samadhi, the words sound wonderful to us, but such words are no mere concepts, and they mean nothing unless one has oneself experienced the states they denote. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 9Dec38, Page 41.
We find the same idea in the Indian Atman, a word which is related to the German Atem (breath]; it is the breath of life, which goes through everything, corresponding to the Buddha essence. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 9Dec38, Page 41.
The lapis philosophorum of the alchemists is the same thing as the Vajra, it is the thing which is produced in the laboratory of a man’s life and which is far more durable than he is. These thoughts run parallel both in the East and West. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 9Dec38, Page 43.
The text tells us that the body of the sleeper is imagined to be the body of the Buddha, we should understand that as the diamond body. So it is the transformation of the ordinary body into the eternally durable body that is meant. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 9Dec38, Page 43.
The Yogin tries to establish a fourfold consciousness and the fifth in the centre, uniting all, is Buddha consciousness. The quaternity is dissolved in the essence of the Yogin, and the fourfold image of consciousness disappears. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 16Dec1938, Page 51.
But the East thinks in circles, and then 5 is not just the next figure but the centre, it is the quinta essentia, the essence of all. We used to think like this in the Middle Ages also, but scientific thinking put a stop to it. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 54.
The meditation on the syllables of the mantra leads to identification with the highest Self. This condition, sometimes reaching ecstasy, is dangerous to the Yogin, for if the human being believes that he is the absolute he may explode. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 55.
Kant himself emphasises that God, the Highest Being, is in no way affected by what we know about him. So the Yogin analyses what he knows about Buddha and takes the last word in the Mantra: “Aham” for this purpose. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 55.
Modern philosophers philosophise with the head alone about man, but the old philosophy came from the whole man. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 71.
The Chinese do not say there is no content, but “we will not speak of it “, and they are so wise that they really do not do so, but we are so childish that we write thick books about it! ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture III, 17May 1935, Page 210.
We are not far from the truth, in fact we are very near to primeval truth, when we think of our dreams as answers to questions, which we have asked and which we have not asked. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V 23Nov1934 Page 157.
We do not realise in the West how important our consciousness is, it is a cosmogonic fact of the first importance. Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XIII 17Feb1939, Page 85.
Frau Hauffe also had the faculty of exteriorization, – she could see herself outside her own body, as if she were another person. The first time this occurred, she saw herself sitting at her own bedside; this phenomenon is not only experienced by neurotics but also by people who are very ill or dying. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 32.
She saw all manner of things which she projected into the outer world as ghost figures: ghosts which were connected with herself and ghosts connected with other people. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 32.
There are people who can read the past, the present and the future by gazing into a crystal, a glass of water or a mirror; in reality they are seeing processes out of their own unconscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 33.
The Clairvoyante had yet other visions which have their origin in a centre other than the brain and particularly one very remarkable vision which left Kerner utterly perplexed. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 33.
All we have ever heard lies dormant in our unconscious till something provokes it and it walks out autonomously. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 40.
…therefore I always feel very suspicious when somebody assures me that he is very normal, too many normal people are just compensated madmen. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 41.
We do not perceive people and objects as they really are, we see rather an image of them, for we are always caught in subjective prejudices which have the effect of a kind of fog. ~ Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 46.
It is impossible to live entirely in the personal attitude, the non-personal catches us somehow; we need both personal and impersonal points of view. ~ Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 46.
Nature simply produces a thing, she never tells us her laws, but human intelligence discovers them and makes abstractions, classifications according to sex, age, family, tribe, race, nation etc. ~ Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 46.
In reality we imagine nothing, it imagines itself. ~ Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 53.
…factual material is an indispensable component of such lectures, we have to deal with the whole psyche and we must keep close to the warmth of the human herd, or we should get lost in cold theories. ~ Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 53.
When the field of consciousness is narrow, the body plays an important role. ~ Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 58.
Anybody who is conscious of a complex knows what a disobedient animal it is… Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 58.
Freud found out that neurotics must be regarded as individuals. He also realized that as an explorer he had to be able to be subjective, for you can only induce the patient to declare his standpoint when you can tell him what you yourself think of him. ~ Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 66.
His secretary had to keep him provided with coins which he distributed among the children he met on his daily walks; he did this to get their thanks, for he was appallingly lonely, and needed such devices in order to reach some kind of human contact. ~ Carl Jung on J.D. Rockefeller, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 66.
Cave men still exist in all ranks of society and the least loss of self-control brings up the barbarian. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 68.
Seventy or eighty per cent of the population today belong to the middle ages, so that very few people are really adapted to this year 1934, and of those few the majority have forgotten their shadows which trail behind their well-adapted personas! ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 68.
With the rise of certain religious movements, when general consciousness soars, the curve will reach Right V. To give an historical example I will mention the wave of ecstasy which swept over the ancient world with the rise of Islam. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 68.
The process of energy which produces the union of the opposites in this case is the human personality which is the carrier of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Pages 71-72.
Guilt does not always form a complex; some people are able to stand a great deal without any complexes forming. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 132.
The war was an example of this on a ·grand scale, countless neurotics lost their compulsions and became perfectly normal during the war and did very useful work, work which they would have been quite incapable of in normal circumstances. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 132.
The insane and hysterical people become quite sensible when they are hurt physically or overcome by illness, because they then know what is hurting them and where. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 132.
The Roman Catholic Church provides a chance for people to get away from their complexes and back to mankind with confession and the age-old therapy was consecration by initiation which included the avowal of sins. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 132.
Another way by which people can find their way back to humanity is to feel that their sins are shared with collectivity, to nationalize their sins and then they have only a national complex! ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 133.
With complexes we are still in a sphere where we can experiment, but with dreams experimenting comes to an end, for we are dealing with pure nature. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 133.
A bridegroom, as is well known, never dreams of his bride, and if he does there is something wrong. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 134.
The position of the body produces some dreams, and a real noise can work itself into a dream in a most peculiar way. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 134.
The psychic contents of a dream are very complicated; it runs timelessly through the head as if there were no time. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 134.
It is as if there were another time, under the dream, and as if something existed there which knew far more and saw much further than we do. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 134.
A dream should always be written down at once, otherwise we inevitably lie to ourselves. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Pages 136-139.
Things which come to us from the left have been thought out of the body; the heart is on the left; things happen to us from the left as it were accidentally. Things from the right, on the other hand, are conscious, thought out by the head, directed. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Pages 136-139.
The crab belongs to the motif of the helpful animal. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Pages 136-139.
There is no stereotyped explanation for dream symbols, we must not forget that words often have a totally different setting for other people than for ourselves and if we talk to them from our preconceived ideas it is as bad as talking Swiss-German to an Englishman. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 141.
There are people who hold that dreams are self sufficient and that they can be understood without their associations. This is an illusion. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 1, Page 142.
It takes the normal individual 20 or 30 years to find out that his parents are ordinary sized mortals and not Napoleons, saints or devils, and some people never find this out, but carry these images with them throughout their lives. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 146.
The motif of the net is the attribute of wisdom, it represents the logos and is the net of understanding in which the Mother can be caught. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 148.
Adler looks forward and Freud looks back. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 150.
Inferiority is laming and so leads to a neurosis or even a psychosis. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 151.
The professor who writes a particularly thick book may be writing it to compensate an inferiority complex. [I am not forgetting that I have written several thick books!) ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 153.
…when we discover an inferiority in ourselves we should not be depressed, no disaster has taken place, but we have discovered our humanity. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 153.
The more violent the opposition to an idea is, the more sure you may be that it has hit the nail on the head, for there is always a cause for strong resistances. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Pages 153-154.
A dream is a product of nature, the patient has not made it, it is like a letter dropped from Heaven, something which we know nothing of. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 156.
Begin with yourself, see whether your own gun is rusty before you declare war on other people. ~Alfred Adler cited in ETH, Vol. 2, Page 155.
It is quite possible to predict the kind of dreams which a certain type of consciousness will produce and owing to my long study of these things, on hearing a dream, I am often able to form an accurate idea of the conscious attitude of a dreamer who is a stranger to me. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 158.
No one exists who has not the primitive in him, somewhere we are very close to the jungle and there we need t o b e as careful as the primitive in the bush. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 160.
The dream is its own interpretation. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 160.
In later life married couples often change roles: the little “commercant” becomes content to wash dishes and perform domestic tasks, while his wife wears the breeches and manages the shop. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 160.
Freud and Adler believe that the unconscious consists only of contents which have once been conscious; for me it is a thing in itself, it is my belief and in fact I know that dreams are exactly what they say. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 162.
We sprang from these lower vertebrates – children who suffer from atrophy of the brain show all the characteristics of animals – and this man has come up against his own instinctive nature and feels that he must fight it. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 163.
We are always fighting our own nervous systems, such proverbs as “Where there is a will there is a way” are hysterical exaggerations. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 163.
Symptoms are our best friends, we should not wish to be free of them, but to try and understand them. Sugar in the urine, for instance, is not in itself desirable, but it is a benevolent wish of nature to tell the patient something. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 164.
We shall make no mistake if we follow nature, and if the warning is ignored a catastrophe is sure to follow, whatever form it takes. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 164.
The Essenes were a sect of people who lived in a monastery by the Dead Sea, they practiced a kind of mental healing, or therapy, and believed in the interpretation of dreams. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 166.
We have to place the dream so that we can see it in human life, we have to see its meaning in the psyche. A dream comes in a fragmentary form like a telegram and we often fail to understand it for want of context. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 166.
A single dream is not convincing, one dream flows out of another, they are images which come from an inner source, a stream that never ceases and which comes to the surface when our consciousness relaxes. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Pages 166-167.
Dreams repeat themselves and motifs appear again and again, sometimes quite regularly, showing the continuity of the unconscious processes. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 167.
Many patients develop a morbid passion for causal research and unless the doctor is very wary he falls into the trap as well. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 174.
We say that a person has such and such a character, but one is born with a form which can only be changed with the greatest difficulty. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 179.
Unfortunately very few people can remember these primeval pictures, many people become ill because they have lost them and only get well when they find them again. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 179.
Plato’s philosophy is concerned with these pictures of a time before creation, creation is a reflection of these pictures. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 179.
Our parents in the Garden of Eden also found the apple a prelude to something unpleasant that is to doing some work. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 180.
The great reproach which is brought against psychology is its personal and introspective nature, but psychology consists of all that the human spirit has ever experience d and that can certainly not be called personal. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 180.
Real life is always tragic, and those who do not know this have never lived. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1 Feb 1935
Buddha was such a case. He was a prince with everything that he wanted in the world, but he knew nothing of the truth of life. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 181.
This is a dream of fate which gives the dreamer information as to the course his life will take and in this case the actual end was suicide. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 2, Page 182.
It is when we come to a summit in life that the archetypal symbols appear. These primeval pictures of human life form the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Pages 176-177.
The moment where the archetype appears is always characterized by remarkable emotion; it, as it were, fascinates the dreamer and exalts him, as if the Muse had kissed him not only on the forehead but on the shoulder. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 177.
When people appear cold you can always search for the place where things are too hot for them. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 177.
This was the case with our dreamer; fate is not devilish but elfish and chose this moment to bring a new influence into his life. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 177
I said last time that marriage did not end the young man’s difficulties. I said this in order to show you I am not under the illusion that people who have undergone treatment with me glide through life forever afterwards on golden wheels! ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 183.
I aim at making people reasonable not perfect by analysis; if the latter possibility existed I should give up analysis at once, for when we aim at perfection we necessarily attach to ourselves a museum of the imperfections of human nature and our neighbors are unable to stand the smell! ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 183.
I always warn people not to identify with their profession or their important achievements, if they do so they are living in their own biographies. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 183.
The formation of the world is not changed because we form a new hypothesis about a relatively unknown part of it. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 183.
My esteemed critics forget that it is actual experience which has taught me and that these are no speculative ideas. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 184.
It is an actual empirical fact that the unconscious is no mirror of our ordinary world but has creative phantasies and living structures of its own. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 184.
It is a curious accusation that I conjure things in and out of the unconscious, I am not aware that I ever produced any rabbits! ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 184.
Most of our cathedrals have underground crypts; the idea of the crypt is the hidden, underground passage to Hades. ~ Carl Jung, ETH, Page 187.
There is no description of the Mass, for instance, in the gospels, it came in from antique sources; so the key of God in the Christian cult is the magic key with the power to open or shut. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 189.
When things fall into the unconscious, it is only the power of reproduction which is lost; no event is lost, nothing has ever not happened, it is all stored up, and even after ten thousand years can come up in its pristine freshness. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 191.
One of our great dangers is that on the surface we do not recognize the important moments of our life and it is in such moments that these mythological themes rise from the depths and present themselves. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 192.
We cannot examine the unconscious with a psychological microscope and lay bare its structure, if we could, we should see that it begins its work from within, like the crystal. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 192.
God made the horse and the tiger to be what they are, but to us it has become more important to be Mr. So and So than to fulfil the primitive task of being a human being. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 192.
The third question asks if we can dream of experiences undergone by our ancestors. I cannot be sure of this. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 198.
The essential thing is not what the dreamer believes but what he is; it is not my creed that matters, but what I am, every gesture betrays me. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 199.
It sometimes happens that such people identify with a content in a dream that belongs to a fate which it is far beyond their capacity to live, and this may cause a bad split, or even a psychosis. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 204.
We are not used to thinking that light comes from within as well as from without, it is as if the eye had an inward light of its own, if we receive a blow on the head for instance, we see stars. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 210.
It is the drive of the instinct which makes life worth living; without it life is merely momentary and fragmentary, it is this drive which gives life form and meaning. But, unless we understand them in a deep sense, the spiritual instincts just worry at us, we try to explain them in the wrong way and can see no use in them. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 216.
The original sperm from which we are formed is masculine and feminine, the one which is in the majority wins, but the other side does not die, it remains living but as a minority, just as in politics the Government and the Opposition both exist. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 216.
There is nothing in the New Testament about animals, the places where they are mentioned were left out by the compilers of our scriptures. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 221.
In these days, on the other hand, we are becoming very sentimental about animals, every kind of society for the prevention of cruelty to animals exists, which shows that we are getting more friendly towards our instincts. ~Carl Jung, Modern ETH, Page 221.
It is only possible to live as we should if we live according to our own nature. But in these days we live by our brains alone and ignore the very definite laws of our body and the instinctive world. We damage ourselves severely when we offend against these, and this is what our patient has done in her efforts to live rationally. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 219.
A point exists at about the thirty-fifth year when things begin to change; it is the first moment of the shadow side of life, of the going down to death. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 223.
Psychology did not exist in earlier days, people thought naively, and when they sank into themselves they saw the inside of their own body. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 224.
We must not forget that this is the region of the navel where we feel. It is a western prejudice that we think and feel in the head; American Indians know that this only happens if things are out of order. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 227.
This belongs to the secret teaching of the Yoga and is difficult to understand as we are not initiated. I am not versed in all the secrets of it, and have to thank my deceased friend, Richard Wilhelm, for all that I do know about it. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 227.
This sun motif appears in many places and times and the meaning is always the same – that a new consciousness has been born. It is the light of illumination which is projected into space. This is a psychological event; the medical term “hallucination” makes no sense in psychology. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 231.
Psychotherapy is of primordial origin; it was a generally accepted fact that all illnesses could be approached from the psychic side. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 235.
The soul and the body are indeed one, so, at any rate theoretically, any illness can be approached from either side; for even if an illness has not a psychic cause it still has a psychic side. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 235.
What affects the body has its influence on the soul, and vice versa. In a very difficult case of illness psycho-therapy is always called in. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 236.
Fire and water are inherent opposites and it is just this which causes rebirth. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 236.
We think we are better than our forefathers but all these ancient things are not so very dead. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 236.
The East understands active phantasying and its inner meaning far better than we do. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 236.
You can make up a dream from a dictionary. This has been done to me before now but I can detect it, to the chagrin of the inventors! ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 3, Page 11.
A primitive is insulted if you ask him what he is thinking about, for he is convinced that only lunatics use their heads. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 3, Page 12.
We have not been educated to look inwards, though most people are able to give their attention to outside things. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 3, Page 13.
It is not the world which produces concentration but concentration which produces the world. The images which occupy my mind are really Maya. Ma means building material. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 3, Page 15.
The alchemistic development of active imagination broke off after the Middle Ages but such interruptions do not occur in the East. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 3, Page 14.
The object of meditation is prescribed in the East but here we take a fragment of a dream or something of that kind and meditate upon it. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 3, Page 15.
This turned out to be possible, for I discovered that if one concentrates enough attention on the contents of the unconscious, they begin to move and various peculiar phenomena take place. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 3, Page 11.
Children are full of active imagination but we think of it as a childish activity. This is an error, for we find it everywhere among primitives and in all ancient cultures all over the world. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 3, Page 12.
We are inclined in Europe to think of Yoga as a kind of acrobatics but it is really principally philosophy. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 3, Page 16.
Yoga is the oldest practical philosophy of India; it is the mother of psychology and philosophy which are one and the same thing in India. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 3, Page 16.
Yoga must on no account be under-estimated, if only because of its antiquity and the number of its adherents. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 3, Page 16.
I was telling you at the end of the last lecture that the immediate practical goal of Yoga is to overcome the klesas, that is, the instinctive urges and oppressions. These are compulsive mechanisms which lie at the base of the human being. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 3, Page 16.
Not-knowing our true being is the foundation of all the other klesas, the goal of Yoga is to strive after perception and insight, and no t-knowing is the chief enemy on the path. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. 3, Page 16.
Our age is striving to bring about a conglomeration and organization of enormous masses of people in which the individual suffocates, whereas meditation on the Process of Individuation leads in the reverse direction: to the problem of the spiritual development of the individual. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. V, Page 11.
The process of individuation is founded on the instinctive urge of every living creature to reach its own totality and fulfilment. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. V, Page 11.
In other words: if the individual is worthless, the nation will be worthless; and if the individual does not flourish, the whole will not flourish. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. V, Page 11.
For when the “deesse Raison” usurps the power, she turns into murderous “raisons d’état “, which only benefit the people in power and never mankind. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. V, Page 13.
ZOSIMOS, a philosopher of the third century A. D., said something similar: “Nature, when it is turned upon itself, transforms itself.” ~Zosimos cited by Carl Jung, ETH, Vol. V, Page 13.
The western rose is wholly parallel to the eastern lotus. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 21.
The body seems to be understood as a materialization of the life principle, which latter is an abstraction of the sum total of bodily existence. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 21.
The East tries to avoid abstraction, so that the enormously valuable body shall not be lost. The whole meditation originates in the body, not in the spirit. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 21.
To reach the Kingdom of God is the last stage in a Christian meditation, but our Buddhist text, unlike Christianity, goes a step beyond the saintly multitude. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 22.
The figure of Christ has, as you have already heard, its counterpart In the East, in the figure of the Purusha, of the Atman or of Mahasukha. ~ Carl Jung, ETH, Page 28.
…for in the West, Christ is the active agent who takes man and makes him part of himself, it is not the meditator who makes Christ his own. In the East, no subject exists except that of the Yogin himself. ~ Carl Jung, ETH, Page 28.
One deceives oneself completely when one assumes, that a religious service in the East, taking place before a statue of Buddha, is addressed to Buddha. Buddha no longer exists, but in Christianity, on the contrary, Christ always exists. ~ Carl Jung, ETH, Page 28.
Habitual repression of the emotions is dangerous, it can even endanger life. ~ Carl Jung, ETH, Page 30.
This is a very deep reaching formulation, in that it declares God to be suffering. This suffering is laid upon man, in the sense that man is not God, he is not united but divided, and he suffers from the yearning and necessity to find unity. ~ Carl Jung, ETH, Page 30.
Nature delights in nature, nature conquers nature, and nature rules nature. ~Demokritos, ETH, Page 43.
Nature gives itself pleasure, or eats itself out of sheer love, so to speak. Nature is then represented as an undivided being, a dragon or a snake biting its own tail, eating itself up from the tail end. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 42.
…nature exists without human aid, can deal with her processes herself, has everything in hers elf to bring about transformations, to move from the depths to the heights and down into the depths again. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 42.
Taoist meditation is mainly concerned with the curious transformations of Yang and Yin. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 43.
Nature gives itself pleasure, or eats itself out of sheer love, so to speak. Nature is then represented as an undivided being, a dragon or a snake biting its own tail, eating itself up from the tail end. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 42.
The treatise begins: “The element Omega is round, it consists of two parts: it belongs to the seventh zone, that of Saturn in the language of the corporeal beings.” At that time Saturn was the most distant planet, the others were not yet discovered. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 47.
The innermost nature of all grain meaneth wheat, and of all metal, gold, and of all birth, man ~Meister Eckhart cited by Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture VII, Page 66.
In the cheap and vile substance, which can be found everywhere and which is despised, the highest and most precious substance mind is hidden, which longs to be redeemed and to return to its original state of incorruptibility, to the form in which it was originally created and in which it was of the same nature as the creator. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Lecture VII, Page 66.
We are used to thinking of matter and spirit as of two wholly different and opposite principles. But to the alchemist, the materia was filled with a spiritus, and the two were inseparably one. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Lecture VII, Page 67.
Inasmuch as they cannot be influenced by consciousness, the functioning of the intestines, the heart, the glands, the whole world of the cerebro-spinal reflexes, and so on, all belong to the vegetative psyche, and lie in the dark, in the unconscious. The vegetative processes in our bodies, in their normal functioning, cannot be reached by our consciousness or influenced by our will. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Lecture VII, Page 68.
This sun motif appears in many places and times and the meaning is always the same – that a new consciousness has been born. It is the light of illumination which is projected into space. This is a psychological event; the medical term “hallucination” makes no sense in psychology. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 231.
The idea lies concealed here that Christianity is only concerned with the problem of the salvation of man, whereas alchemy is concerned with that of the whole of nature. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 61.
In the Middle Ages Christ was no historical figure but a perpetual presence, as he still is in the Roman Catholic Mass. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 7th July 1939.
The goal which the alchemist sets himself, however, is not a direct redemption of the human being, nor is it a propitiation of the Deity nor a defence against evil. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 143.
He says directly that man has two lights: the one is the spirit and the other the light of nature. Man has a spirit in order to be able to understand the divine revelation, and a soul in order to recognise the world in the light of nature. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 193
Apparently God the Father is thought of here as the soul, the anima mundi, which is the centre of the world, and which at the same time enfolds the whole world, or rather the universe including the starry heavens. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 198.
This is a Platonic idea; the anima, as animation par excellence, is the principle of movement. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 198.
We think: “How peculiar that person is”, but no one is peculiar really. People seem odd to us when they possess qualities which we do not see in ourselves. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 198.
We think of a chaos as complete confusion, but to the alchemists it was a confusion of definite qualities and of special factors. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Pages 201-202.
“Go to the streams of the river Nile and there thou wilt find a stone which has a spirit. Take this stone, divide it and put thy hand inside it and draw out its heart: for its soul is in its heart.” ~Ostanes cited by Carl Jung, ETH, Page 205.
According to the conception of Paracelsus, every man receives this inner image of the heavens at the moment of his birth, and has, therefore, his own individual firmament within himself. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 209.
The West is the land of the dead, the sun sinks in the West, it is there that the day, and life itself, sink, so to speak, into eternity. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 210.
Mylius also calls it “perpetua” (perpetual). It is eternal and “susceptible”, that is, it receives the eternal images which God impresses on it, and therefore all living beings find their origin in it. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 210.
Since the time of the old Gnostics, the serpent has been the symbol for the brain and its appendages; that is, for the lower centres of the brain and for the spinal cord, partly on account of its shape, but also from introspective reasons. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 216.
There are, it is true, cases of people who are living below their own value where the shadow is the superior instead of the inferior part of the personality. Such people are apparently very modest but there is a lot of cunning in their modesty. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 113.
Our culture, which is threatened today, is primarily a Christian culture, if it had not been for the Roman Catholic Church, we should still be barbarians. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 196.
But we stopped at the institution of the Church, it was erected for the welfare of mankind and the divine germ of the individual was neglected and repressed, to such an extent that we have no understanding for the East and depreciate its teaching as megalomania. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 196.
We were all taught to depend on the walls of the Church, not on God in ourselves. How many of you even know that Christ said: “Ye are gods”? Have you ever heard a sermon on this text? I have not. But there are many passages in the New Testament which are never preached upon. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 196.
Not the human being, not the ego, is God but the Self is God in man, and it is superior to human consciousness, just as the whole is superior to a part. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 196.
I am an exceptionally good sailor, but once I also had to pay my tribute to Neptune. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI 5July1934, Page 134.
Then there are philosophical dreams which think for us and in which we get the thoughts that we should have had during the day. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI 5July1934, Page 135.
It is fairly easy to imagine being able to think consciously, to have one’s thoughts under control, but when it comes to feeling it is much more difficult to do so, especially for a man. ~Carl Jung, Lecture IV, 18May1934, Page 102.
As a matter of fact it is by no means everyone who can sit down and think out something voluntarily, and it is quite equally possible for someone to sit down and feel something out. It just depends which is your domesticated function. ~Carl Jung, Lecture IV, 18May1934, Page 102.
They [Intuitives] draw the souls out of things and act according to what they discover by this process, just as if what they discovered were ordinary every day facts. ~Carl Jung, Lecture IV, 18May1934, Page 102.
The collective unconscious is a source in which all the past and all the future lie, it does not belong to the individual, but to mankind. ~ Carl Jung, Lecture VI 2June1934, Page 113.
Jealousy is always an extremely suspicious symptom. ~Carl Jung, Lecture VIII 15June1934, Page 119.
Neurotics often hardly breathe at all and when at last they are forced to draw a breath they sigh, and their fond relations are much concerned and ask: “What is the matter?” But they were just in need of breath. ~Carl Jung, Lecture VIII 15June1934, Page 121.
Space is a pure conception, the condition a priori of all spatial experiences generally. It possesses “empirical reality” and is the frame of all outer experience. Time is “the formal condition a priori of all phenomena”. Time as inner sense (space being the outer sense) has “subjective reality”. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IX,15Dec1933, Page 40.
The psychic facts have neither length, breadth, nor weight, but are essentially spaceless, and it is exceedingly difficult to determine their duration. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IX,15Dec1933, Page 40.
When his pupils questioned Buddha about Shunyata, he was silent or replied in a round about way. There were things he did not want to speak of, he would not say what was best left unsaid. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XII,10th February 1939, Pages 76-81.
You notice that the meditation is not on the spirit of the Buddha, but on the Body of the Buddha; the highest truth grows from the deepest roots of the body and not from the spirit. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 28
Carl Jung: Basel Seminar.
“Love thy neighbour” is wonderful, since we then have nothing to do about ourselves; but when it is a question of “love thy neighbour as thyself” we are no longer so sure, for we think it would be egoism to love ourselves. There was no need to preach “love thyself” to people in olden times, because they did so as a matter of course. But how is it nowadays? It would do us good to take this thing somewhat to heart, especially the phrase “as thyself.” How can I love my neighbour if I do not love myself? How can we be altruistic if we do not treat ourselves decently? But if we treat ourselves decently, if we love ourselves, we make discoveries, and then we see what we are and what we should love. There is nothing for it but to put our foot into the serpent’s mouth. He who cannot love can never transform the serpent, and then nothing is changed. ~Carl Jung, Basel Seminar, Para 87
Why is psychology the youngest of the empirical sciences? Why have we not long since discovered the unconscious and raised up its treasure-house of eternal images? Simply because we had a religious formula for everything psychic — and one that is far more beautiful and comprehensive than immediate experience. Though the Christian view of the world has paled for many people, the symbolic treasure rooms of the East are still full of marvels that can nourish for a long time to come the passion for show and new clothes. What is more, these images—be they Christian or Buddhist or what you will—are lovely, mysterious, richly intuitive. Naturally, the more familiar we are with them the more does constant usage polish them smooth, so that what remains is only banal superficiality and meaningless paradox. ~Carl Jung, Basel Seminar, Para 11.
I cannot love anyone if I hate myself. That is the reason why we feel so extremely uncomfortable in the presence of people who are noted for their special virtuousness, for they radiate an atmosphere of the torture they inflict on themselves. That is not a virtue but a vice. And thus, from so-called goodness, which was once really good, something has arisen which is no longer good; it has become an evasion. Nowadays any coward can make himself respectable by going to church and loving his neighbour. But it is simply an untrue state, an artificial world. ~Carl Jung, Basel Seminar, Para 88
What is a problem of the present day? If we speak of a general problem nowadays, it is because it exists in the heads of many people. These individuals are somehow chosen by fate and destined by their own natures to suffer under a collectively unsatisfactory condition and to make it a problem. Therefore it is always single individuals who are moved by the collective problem and who are called upon to respond and contribute to its solution by tackling it in their own lives and not running away from it. ~Carl Jung, Basel Seminar, Para 86
When we say, “the animal in man,” this always strikes us as something horrible. But this animal in man is not horrible, no more than animals are horrible, for they fulfil God’s will most faithfully; they live to fulfil their Creator’s purpose. We do not do this. We meddle with the work of the Creator, for we always want to be something different from what we are. Our ambition is not to be the whole of ourselves, for that would be unpleasant. But the animals are themselves and they fulfil the will of God that is within them in a true and faithful manner. ~Carl Jung, Basel Seminar, Para 87
We always think that Christianity consists in a particular confession of faith and in belonging to a Church. No, Christianity is our world. Everything we think is the fruit of the Middle Ages and indeed of the Christian Middle Ages. Our whole science, everything that passes through our head, has inevitably gone through this history. It lives in us and has left its stamp upon us for all time and will always form a vital layer of our psyche, just like the phylogenetic traces in our body. The whole character of our mentality, the way we look at things, is also the result of the Christian Middle Ages; whether we know it or not is quite immaterial. The age of rational enlightenment has eradicated nothing. Even our method of rational enlightenment is Christian. The Christian Weltanschauung is therefore a psychological fact that does not allow of any further rationalization; it is something that has happened, that is present. We are inevitably stamped as Christians, but we are also stamped by what existed before Christianity. ~Carl Jung, Basel Seminar, Para 84
All of us who have had a religious education are deeply impressed by the idea that Christianity entered into history without an historical past, like a stroke of lightning out of a clear sky. This attitude was necessary, but I am convinced it is not true. Everything has its history, everything has “grown,” and Christianity, which is supposed to have appeared suddenly as a unique revelation from heaven, undoubtedly also has its history. Moreover, how it began is as clear as daylight. I need not speak of the rites of the Mass and certain peculiarities of the priests’ clothing which are borrowed from pagan times, for the fundamental ideas of the Christian Church also have their predecessors. But a break in continuity has occurred because we are all overcome by the impression of the uniqueness of Christianity. It is exactly as if we had built a cathedral over a pagan temple and no longer knew that it is still there underneath. The result is that the inner correspondence with the outer God-image is undeveloped through lack of psychic culture and has remained stuck in paganism. ~Carl Jung, Basel Seminar, Para 84
Therefore it is always single individuals who are moved by the collective problem and who are called upon to respond and contribute to its solution by tackling it in their own lives and not running away from it. ~Carl Jung, Basel Seminar, Para 86
How can I love my neighbour if I do not love myself? How can we be altruistic if we do not treat ourselves decently? But if we treat ourselves decently, if we love ourselves, we make discoveries, and then we see what we are and what we should love. There is nothing for it but to put our foot into the serpent’s mouth. He who cannot love can never transform the serpent, and then nothing is changed. ~Carl Jung, Basel Seminar, Para 87
What is more, these images—be they Christian or Buddhist or what you will—are lovely, mysterious, richly intuitive. Naturally, the more familiar we are with them the more does constant usage polish them smooth, so that what remains is only banal superficiality and meaningless paradox. ~Carl Jung, Basel Seminar, Para 11
If one reflects upon what consciousness really is, one is deeply impressed by the extremely wonderful fact that an event which occurs outside in the cosmos produces simultaneously an inner image. Thus it also occurs within; in other words, it becomes conscious. ~Carl Jung, Basel Seminar, Para i
Since the differentiated consciousness of civilized man has been granted an effective instrument for the practical realization of its contents through the dynamics of his will, there is all the more danger, the more he trains his will, of his getting lost in one-sidedness and deviating further and further from the laws and roots of his being. ~Carl Jung, Basel Seminar, Para 276
And thus, from so-called goodness, which was once really good, something has arisen which is no longer good; it has become an evasion. Nowadays any coward can make himself respectable by going to church and loving his neighbour. But it is simply an untrue state, an artificial world. ~Carl Jung, Basel Seminar, Para 88
Therefore it is always single individuals who are moved by the collective problem and who are called upon to respond and contribute to its solution by tackling it in their own lives and not running away from it. ~Carl Jung, Basel Seminar, Para 86
We meddle with the work of the Creator, for we always want to be something different from what we are. Our ambition is not to be the whole of ourselves, for that would be unpleasant. But the animals are themselves and they fulfil the will of God that is within them in a true and faithful manner. ~Carl Jung, Basel Seminar, Para 87
The Christian Weltanschauung is therefore a psychological fact that does not allow of any further rationalization; it is something that has happened, that is present. We are inevitably stamped as Christians, but we are also stamped by what existed before Christianity. ~Carl Jung, Basel Seminar, Para 84
It is exactly as if we had built a cathedral over a pagan temple and no longer knew that it is still there underneath. The result is that the inner correspondence with the outer God-image is undeveloped through lack of psychic culture and has remained stuck in paganism. ~Carl Jung, Basel Seminar, Para 84
Why have we not long since discovered the unconscious and raised up its treasure-house of eternal images? ~Carl Jung, Basel Seminar, Para 11
He who cannot love can never transform the serpent, and then nothing is changed. ~Carl Jung, Basel Seminar, Para 87
If one reflects upon what consciousness really is, one is deeply impressed by the extremely wonderful fact that an event which occurs outside in the cosmos produces simultaneously an inner image. ~Carl Jung, Basel Seminar, Para i
Therefore it is always single individuals who are moved by the collective problem and who are called upon to respond and contribute to its solution by tackling it in their own lives and not running away from it. ~Carl Jung, Basel Seminar, Para 86
Carl Jung: “Visions Seminars”
Most connections in the world are not relationships, they are participation mystique. One is then apparently connected, but of course it is never a real connection, it is never a relationship; but it gives the feeling of being one sheep in the flock at least. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, page 625.
A breeder of cats, for instance, will tell you that cats born in the spring are different from cats born in the fall. And a connoisseur of antiquities will tell you that certain objects must date between 1420 and 1450, say; anything that originated then has the quality of that time. An astrologer has merely a more detailed knowledge, he is able to tell you that a thing originated in such and such a month without any further knowledge of the qualities of the object. A breeder of cats, for instance, will tell you that cats born in the spring are different from cats born in the fall. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 109
Dr. Jung: Ah, you mean the taurabolia. Yes, that is right. And there is an old astrological connection between the bull and the mother. The syncretistic cults of that era were based very largely upon astrological facts. On the Mithraic altar-stones, for instance, are the sun and the moon and the signs of the zodiac, it is evident that they are meant as astrological symbols. In the Christian cult it was more hidden, but the philosophical systems of the time were filled with astrological connotations. The bull in astrology is an earthly sign, it is the domicilium Veneris. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 486
The cult of Attis belongs to the great group of mother cults, Attis is very much the son of the Great Mother; so the bull is very much connected with the cult of the Magna Mater. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 486
“A great heat went through me and when I lifted my foot I saw marked upon the sole, a Chinese dragon twined upon a cross, and above the cross the head of a lion.” ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1037
- JUNG: Yes, the bristling mane of the lion symbolizes the rays of the sun, like the hair of Samson. And the lion astrologically is the domicilium solis, it is the sign between the 21st of July and the 24th of August, when the sun is at its greatest power. So this lion can stand for this sun but in the particular aspect of the lion. For the sun, or whatever the sun means, can be symbolized in many different ways; if by the lion, it would mean power of a special kind, in the form of a powerful animal, not of a powerful man. The sun is also symbolized by the face of Moses, with the horns meaning radiation, therefore they would be the horns of power. And his face radiated such light when he came down from Sinai that only when it was veiled could the people gaze upon it; that would be the sun in the form of enlightened man. Also the sun is symbolized by the crown of Helios, the sun god, the radiation or the crown of sun rays which the old Caesars used to wear; one sees it chiefly on Roman coins. There the sun would express the human mind or understanding, or the human spirit, it would be a specifically human quality. But here the sun is in the form of the animal. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1028
- JUNG: Yes, those of you who have been in Luxor remember that great statue of the goddess Sekhmet. It is made of the most beautiful black basalt, and she has the head of a lioness. She personified the terrible destructive power of Ra, or the sun at its height, at the hottest time of the year.
Symeon, the “New Theologian” (970–1040), says: My tongue lacks words, and what happens in me my spirit sees clearly but does not explain. It sees the Invisible, that emptiness of all forms, simple throughout, not complex, and in extent infinite. For it sees no beginning, and it sees no end, and is entirely unconscious of any middle, and does not know what to call that which it sees. Something complete appears, it seems to me, not indeed with the thing itself, but through a kind of participation. For you enkindle fi re from fi re, and you receive the whole fi re; but this thing remains undiminished and undivided as before. Similarly, that which is imparted separates itself from the first, and spreads like something corporeal into many lights. But this is something spiritual, immeasurable, indivisible, and inexhaustible. For it is not separated when it becomes many, but remains undivided, and is in me, and rises in my poor heart like a sun or circular disc of the sun, like light, for it is a light. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1028
Dr. Jung: That story exactly expresses what the primitives think about hair, so here it would be a symbol which contains a lot of mana. The same meaning is also to be found in the story of Samson and Delilah: when she cuts his hair, he loses all his strength. The name Samson comes from Shemsh which means sun-man or little sun, after the old Canaanite god Shemsh; so curtailing the rays of the sun means weakening the sun. There is an astrological interpretation of Delilah as the sign of Virgo, in which the sun loses its power, Virgo being followed by the autumnal equinox when the sun is definitely becoming weaker; the sun then loses its hair, its rays. So the hair is understood to be an emanation o the head, having to do with the mind and the most spiritual as well as magical forces. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 198
He [Astrologer] might be able to tell you that you were born when your sun was in such and such a position and when your moon was in such and such a position, simply from observation of your typical qualities. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 110
Don’t try to better than you are, otherwise, the devil gets angry. Don’t try to be worse because God gets angry. Try to be what you are, that is acrobatics enough. ~C.G. Jung, Visions Seminars, Vol.1, page 235
The religious attitude, it is quite different, and above all it is not conscious. You can profess whatever you like consciously while your unconscious attitude is totally different. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 41.
You may have, say, a religious attitude, which means an attitude of great totality, so that you receive the next leaf that falls from the tree as a message from God, and it works. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 919.
The Kingdom of Heaven is within ourselves. It is our innermost nature and something between ourselves. The Kingdom of Heaven is between people like cement. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 444.
People with a narrow conscious life exteriorize their unconscious, they are continually in participation mystique with other people… if more unconscious things have become conscious to you, then you live less in participation mystique. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, para 1184.
Only those people who can really touch bottom can be human. Therefore Meister Eckhart says that one should not repent too much of one’s sins because it might keep one away from grace. One is only confronted with the spiritual experience when one is absolutely human. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 394
In the least the greatest will appear— such is your expectation. And that is the numen, the hint of the god. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 919.
In the unconscious it is not so terribly important whether a man is alive or dead, that seems to make very little impression upon the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 903.
But your attitude to it matters, how you will take it, whether you believe in immortality or not, how you react to such and such an event, that matters to the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 903.
No matter what your conscious attitude may be, the unconscious has an absolutely free hand and can do what it pleases. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 27
The unconscious can make a fool of you in no time. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 747
It is surely not the divine will in man that he should be something which he is not, for when one looks into nature, one sees that it is most definitely the divine will that everything should be what it is. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 569.
The unconscious on one side is nothing but nature, and on the other hand it is the overcoming of nature; it is yea and nay in itself, two things in one. So we shall never understand what the unconscious is, as we shall never understand what the world is, because it is and it is not. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 89.
So we shall never understand what the unconscious is, as we shall never understand what the world is, because it is and it is not. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 89.
So the Self is part of the collective unconscious, but it is not the collective unconscious; it is that unit which apparently comes from the union of the ego and the shadow. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 754
Just as the Self is a unit in the collective unconscious, so we are units in the Self. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 754
If there were no consciousness, there would be no world; the whole world, as far as it enters into our consideration, depends upon that little flame of consciousness, that is surely the decisive factor. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 898
In the unconscious one cannot judge because of the great darkness there, but in the conscious there is light, and so there are differences; there is a criterion in consciousness which gives one a measure by which to judge. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 898
The fact is that if one tries beyond one’s capacity to be perfect, the shadow descends into hell and becomes the devil. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 569.
To be fully aware of the shadow would be an almost superhuman task, but we can reach a certain optimum of consciousness; we should be aware to a much higher degree than we are now. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 237.
We have to discover our shadow. Otherwise we are driven into a world war in order to see what beasts we are. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 235
We substitute our ignorance with gas; modern people are all gas bags inasmuch as they are ignorant of what they really are. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 235
The animus is not created by the conscious, it is a creation of the unconscious, and therefore it is a personification of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 208
The animus is a sort of film between reality and a woman’s mind, she always talks about things as they should be, so when she says a thing is really so, it is really not so at all. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1228.
The animus when on his way, on his quest, is really a psychopompos, leading the soul back to the stars whence it came. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1229
On the way back out of the existence in the flesh, the psychopompos [Animus] develops such a cosmic aspect, he wanders among the constellations, he leads the soul over the rainbow bridge into the blossoming fields of the stars. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1229
I could even go as far as to say that without the anima and animus there would be no object, no other human being, because you perceive differences only through that which is a likeness to the differences in yourself. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1357
That tiny thing, that unique individual, the Self, is small as the point of a needle, yet because it is so small it is also greater than great. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 358
For not knowing about the unconscious means that one has deviated, one is not in harmony with it, and therefore it works against one. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 405
The animus is meant to be cosmic. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1228.
Is there any more beautiful love story than the love story of Mary? Wonderfully secret, divine, it is the only love affair of God that we know about. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 492
They [Children’s Dreams] must come from the psychology of the collective unconscious; one could say they were remnants of things they had seen before they were born, and that is really vision. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 424.
Individuals can be stunted all through their lives by a vision in childhood. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 424.
Therefore the appearance of an archetype in our psychology is always a moment of the greatest danger as well as the greatest hope. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 67
But many people are never quite born; they live in the flesh but a part of them is still in what Lamaistic philosophy would call the Bardo, in the life between death and birth, and that prenatal state is filled with extraordinary visions. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 424.
One often has dreams which seem destructive and evil, the thing one cannot accept, but it is merely due to the fact that one’s conscious attitude is wrong. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 405-406.
People have a transference to their analyst because they suppose that he is in possession of the treasure. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 319
The principal pair of opposites is the conscious world and the unconscious world, and when the two come together, it is as if man and woman were coming together, the union of the male and the female, of the light and the darkness. Then a birth will take place. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 574
In the center is the individual where the opposites are united, the one peaceful spot in man, the space where nothing moves embedded in a world of chaos. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 263
For we may assume that the collective unconscious is in absolute peace until the individual appears. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 263
Therefore individuation is a sin; it is an assertion of one particle against the gods, and when that happens even the world of the gods is upset, then there is turmoil. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 263
The day comes when you are outgrown and then you are approaching the void, which seems to me to be the most desirable thing, the thing which contains the most meaning. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1026.
The Eastern philosophy is a sort of yoga, it is alive, it is an art, the art of making something of oneself. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1024
The great asset of the East is that they are based on instinct. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1066.
It is also the Eastern idea that through understanding one finds the roots of suffering. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 524.
You may have, say, a religious attitude, which means an attitude of great totality, so that you receive the next leaf that falls from the tree as a message from God, and it works. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 919.
This symbolic process within us, or that need to express unknown, unknowable, inexpressible facts, culminates in religion. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 742-743
By removing yourself from the dogma you get into the world, which is increasingly chaotic and primitive, in which you must find or create a new orientation. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 905
It is tremendously important that people should be able to accept themselves; otherwise the will of God cannot be lived. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 391.
You cannot keep on the white side only; you have to admit that the spirit of life will at times take on the aspect of evil. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 140
Even the Holy Ghost has to turn into a bird of prey in order to snatch the germ of life. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 140
The experience of Tao can happen at any time. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 761
The religious and moral and philosophical confusion, even the confusion in our art, is due to the World War. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 77
When pairs of opposites appear together it is like fire and water; it either means an immediate crash, a tremendous catastrophe, or that they merely counteract one another. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 647
For it is really true that if one creates a better relation to the unconscious, it proves to be a helpful power, it then has an activity of its own, it produces helpful dreams, and at times it really produces little miracles. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 604
Now to bring forth what the original will intended is really the task of a whole lifetime, a very serious undertaking. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 391.
The body is the past, our earth, the world of heretofore, but out of it rises a new light which is not identical with the body. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 374
Creation begins today, it has no history and no cause, creation is always creation from nothing. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1035
In the redemption of the individual, the whole past will be redeemed, and that includes all the inferior things as well, the animals, and all the ancestral souls, everything that has not been completed; all creation will be redeemed in the apokatastasis [at the time of the Last Judgement], there will be a complete restoration of things as they have been. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1280
If one has done one’s duty, fulfilled one’s task, one can then die, one can say goodbye and disappear. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 402
If one is allowed to speak of complete individuation at all, I should say that it would be conscious experience of the totality of nature. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 760-761
We are like onions with many skins, and we have to peel ourselves again and again in order to get at the real core. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 821
One cannot individuate as long as one is playing a role to oneself; the convictions one has about oneself are the most subtle form of persona and the most subtle obstacle against any true individuation. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 821
Only if you first return to the body, to your earth, can individuation take place, only then does the thing become true. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1314
Individuation is not an intensification of consciousness; it is very much more. For you must have the consciousness of something before it can be intensified, and that means experience, life lived. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 757-758
People who live sterile lives are like that fig tree, they do not fulfill the will of the Lord. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 232
The way of nature will bring you quite naturally wherever you have to go. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 402-403
Therefore we say that if you give the little finger to the devil, he takes the whole arm, and finally the whole body. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 93-94
If you are completely destroyed by the world, then the world which destroyed you must be completely transformed, because you looked upon it with the eye that transforms, the eye that contains the germ of what is new. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 361
You see, all that a man does, whatever he attempts, means his individuation, it is an accomplishment, a fulfillment of his possibilities; and one of his foremost possibilities is the attainment of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 759
But such a thing [Individuation] is only possible if the individual in every moment of existence fulfills his complete being, lives the primitive pattern, fulfills all the expectations that he was originally born with. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 760-761
We must give nature a chance to fulfill itself. Then only can we detach, and then it comes about quite naturally. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 402
A truth is only a truth when it lives, otherwise it is perfectly nonsensical; it must be able to change into its own opposite, to even become an untruth at times. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1311
Only when you behave exactly as you are meant to behave are you the friend and the brother of all living things; then you are right in your place, and then you suddenly understand that everything else is in its place. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 760-761
Yes, he cannot see our world, which means we are the eyes of that man who lives forever, because our consciousness is an eye that sees ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1016.
In this vision we find the same principle as in Buddhism, the consciousness of what is happening as a redeeming principle. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 322.
The anima behaves exactly like a definite person, yet she is also a function, her true function being the connection between the conscious and the unconscious; there the anima is in her right place. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 204-205
That is, she [Anima] is not in between myself and my audience, but in between myself and my unconscious audience, a mirror reflex of this world, the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 204-205
There again, those people who think of the unconscious as being a psychological tissue contained in one’s head are completely bewildered, for they can hardly form an idea of a tissue standing in one’s head. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 204-205
I do not believe in magic made by man, magic as made in Germany or in Great Britain or in America; it does not work. But I firmly believe in the natural magic of facts. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1205
Whatever you experience outside of the body, in a dream for instance, is not experienced unless you take it into the body, because the body means the here and now. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1316.
Psychological energy does not exist, it is a concept, but in the physical or phenomenal equivalent of energy in these conditions we find the same peculiarity, namely, that this creative power is after a while exhausted, and then everything sinks back into the condition it was in before. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 118-119
If you just have a dream and let it pass by you, nothing has happened at all, even if it is the most amazing dream; but if you look at it with the purpose of trying to understand it, and succeed in understanding it, then you have taken it into the here and now, the body being a visible expression of the here and now. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1316.
The earth is a microcosm in the great cosmos of the stars and we are ourselves microcosms upon the earth. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 1158-1159
Each of us, every living being, is a small earth, one could say, because we are in intimate connection with the earth, we are partially earth, we are conscious of our earthly body, for instance. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 1158-1159
The star symbol means the center of a mandala, and the meditation on the Self or the meditation on the mandala is prayer; in many different religions that concentration upon a point outside of oneself, not identical with oneself, is called prayer. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 1158-1159
One could not say that the ego was the microcosm because the ego is only the center or the focus of the individual consciousness, and consciousness reaches only as far as the conscious material reaches. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 1158-1159
There is nothing without spirit, for spirit seems to be the inside of things … inside is spirit, which is the soul of objects. Whether this is our psyche or the psyche of the universe we don’t know, but if one touches the earth one cannot avoid the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminars; Pages 164-165.
We must read the Bible or we shall not understand psychology. Our psychology, whole lives, our language and imagery are built upon the Bible. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 156.
It is a general truth that the earth is depreciated and misunderstood…For quite long enough we have been taught that this life is not the real thing…and that we live only for heaven. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 193.
Yet in nature the animal is a well-behaved citizen. It is pious, it follows the path with great regularity, it does nothing extravagant. Only man is extravagant. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 168.
Machines are running away with us, they are demons; they are like those huge old saurians that existed when man was a sort of lizard-monkey and deadly afraid of their hooting and tooting. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 502
A big city is like a holocaust of humanity, as Zola expressed it. Man has built his own funeral pyre and it is destroying him, and so our whole world is being destroyed. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 502
Art is just a particular way of decorating the nest in which you lay your eggs. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 913-914
The center of that totality does not necessarily coincide with the ego system, just as the center of our galaxy of stars does not coincide with our sun, and the center of our solar system does not coincide with the earth; we cannot assume that our earth is the center of the universe. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 1158-1159
It was discovered long ago that the earth is in the periphery of something bigger, it is an appendix of the sun, and even the sun is an appendix of a larger system, a galaxy of unknown extent. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 1158-1159
We cannot think of our earth as a sun, nothing is revolving round us except perhaps the moon; the ego is a little system like the earth with the moon, but it is by no means the center of the universe. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 1158-1159
The Self is the center of the totality of the psyche in as far as we can measure it or have an intuition about it, or in as far as we have dreams about it, and surely beyond, for we cannot assume that we are informed through our dreams of everything that is happening in our psyche. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 1158-1159
For about twenty-five years I have analysed about two thousand dreams or more every year,… ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Lecture II, Page 19.
If you have a foreign body in you, nature sends a host of special cells to assimilate it; if they don’t succeed in absorbing it, then there is suppuration to bring about expulsion. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 19.
Probably in absolute reality there is no such thing as body and mind, but body and mind or soul are the same, the same life, subject to the same laws, and what the body does is happening in the mind. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 22.
These patients become much better Catholics after analysis; I have often taught Catholic patients how to confess. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Lecture II, Page 22.
We cannot even be certain that it is our own psyche; it might be, but there are many things in our unconscious, and we are by no means sure whether they really belong to us or to somebody else. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 1158-1159
I say that the unconscious says what it means. Nature is never diplomatic. If nature produces a tree, it is a tree and not a mistake for a dog. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 30.
Only men were admitted to the Mithraic ritual, the women all went to the Earth Mother. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 35
Only domesticated animals misbehave; a wild animal never misbehaves; it follows its own natural law; there is no such thing as a good tiger that eats only apples and carrots! ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 37
We must fulfil our destiny according to nature’s laws or we cannot become true servants of God. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 37
Don’t forget that Christ completely absorbed Mithras; that old Mithraic idea has been continued in Christianity through the middle ages up to recent times; bulls and even little lambs have been killed, everything that was animal has been killed throughout the ages. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 37
The occult stuff transcended his digestive powers, he suffered from mental indigestion. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 41
This is a peculiar projection of our minds, this wanting to be free, not held down by any background: it is a sort of illusion of our consciousness in order to have the feeling of complete freedom, as if the historical past was fettering and would not allow free movement-a prejudice which again has psychological reasons. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 69
Our actual mind is the result of the work of thousands or perhaps a million years. There is a long history in every sentence, every word we speak has a tremendous history, every metaphor is full of historical symbolism; they would not carry at all if that were not true. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 69
This is a peculiar projection of our minds, this wanting to be free, not held down by any background: it is a sort of illusion of our consciousness in order to have the feeling of complete freedom, as if the historical past was fettering and would not allow free movement-a prejudice which again has psychological reasons. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 69
Animals understand utterances of fear of entirely different species because they have the same underlying fibre. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 70
I analysed dreams of Somali Negroes as if they were people of Zurich, with the exception of certain differences of languages and images. Where the primitives dream of crocodiles, pythons, buffaloes, and rhinoceroses, we dream of being run over by trains and automobiles. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 70
Scientists like to think that symbols have migrated. This is not true; they are quite autochthonous. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 71
If one studies the occult with the wrong attitude one can get infected, for this whole field is full of metaphysical traps through which one can fall, disappear as into an oubliette, and became the astrologer, the theosophist, or the black magician. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 72
No one approaches the Kingdom of Heaven without having passed through the flame and been burnt through and through. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 74
The new man of St. Paul’s early Christian teaching is exactly the same thing as the subtle body. It is an archetypal idea, exceedingly profound, which belongs to the sphere of the immortal archetypes. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 116
A real knowledge of Yoga practices is very rare in the West. I felt quite small when I became acquainted with these things. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 118
Three-fourths of analyses are made by women, and I learn from them. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 122
Extraverts, and all people who are identified with their persona, hate to be alone because they begin to see themselves. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 75
Our spring point is at about 29° of Pisces and is no longer in Aries, although horoscopes are made on that basis. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 118
To the early Christians it was nothing to call a man a “Son of God,” it was a commonplace, it was their daily bread. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 117
When you come to that loneliness with yourself-when you are eternally alone-you are forced in upon yourself and are bound to become aware of your background. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 75
What is the use of a sin if you can throw it away? If you are thoroughly aware of your sin, you must carry it, live with it, it is yourself. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 76
Even when you think you are alone and can do what you please, if you deny your shadow there will be a reaction from the mind that always is, from the man a million years old within you. You are never alone because the eyes of the centuries watch you; you feel at once that you are in the presence of the Old Man, and you feel your historical responsibility to the centuries. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 77
Those old doctors like Galen asked their patients for their dreams. Dreams played a large part in medical cures. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 130
One of my students made some experiments on the viscosity of the blood, following the viscosity through different stages of analysis. Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 131
As our conscious personality is a part of the visible world, so our shadow side is a body in the collective unconscious, it is the unknown in things. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 78
We never see the curative things that come from within; Christian Science recognizes them, but clinical medicine even in our day is living and working by the outer facts. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 130
I said to her, “Who told you that you had an obligation to analysis? Your obligation is to life!” That girl is a victim of analysis. Her doctor is also stuck. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 86
It is death to the soul to become unconscious. People die before there is death of the body, because there is death in the soul. They are mask-like leeches, walking about like spectres ~~dead but sucking. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 90
There is no development under the law of conventional morality. It leads to compartment psychology, and how can a man develop when he forgets what his compartments contain? ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 214
Yes, a man is never represented by himself alone. A man is only something in relation to other individuals. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 219
The unconscious is like a compass, it doesn’t tell you what to do. Unless you can read the compass it cannot help you. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 208
An introvert often keeps the events of his life in different compartments, he has a sort of wall between so they cannot blend. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 211
For the ultimate task of life, according to Hindu teaching, is that you take up your karma, that you work it out; otherwise it accumulates and you have it in the next existence-a hell of a time. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 58
002 An intuitive will come to an impasse where his intuition serves him not at all; he needs sensation, the function of reality, in order to be able to continue his life; he has left too many situations unsolved, and finally he is overcome by them, nailed down by the unsolved problems, and only his reality function can help him. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 58
003 In the village where I lived as a child there was such a family. The mother was a typical witch. She caught birds, they ate ravens and danced on the nights of the full moon. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 60
004 People are always astonished when I say that the inferior function should be cared for as if it were a little child. It sounds all right, sentimental and wonderful, but when it comes to reality, it is another question, because your inferior function may suddenly take a course that you don’t like. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 63
005 The harvest is the reward for the early part of the year, so since time immemorial the miraculous child has been symbolized by the wheat. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 64
006 The point is that she touches here upon the archetype of mother love, the mother with child.
That is the archetype which underlies the Christian idea.
As you know, Isis and Osiris were often taken for Christian symbols.
The analogy between the Horus-Isis myth and the Jesus mystery was so obvious that the Catholic church was really forced to account for it by the official teaching that the whole Horus myth was a legitimate anticipation of the coming of Christ; God allowed that good news to filter through several thousand years before it actually came off. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 65
We forget that the animal is the most pious thing that exists, the one thing besides plants that really fulfills its destiny, that fulfills the superior will, the will of God. We are of the devil because we are always deviating, always living something of our own. Animals live exactly as they were meant to live. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminars Page 72-88
007 In taking care of her own inferior function, she is lifted up to the likeness of the Madonna.
She is now the Mother of Pain and, at the same time, of the child; she is now that mystery, and therefore she is eternal, indestructible, nobody can reach her there.
That is the reason why there are altars and sanctuaries and cloisters where such identifications can take place; they are simply the exteriorized or concretized expression of that inner function of renewal through contact with the archetype. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 67
008 Therefore the appearance of an archetype in our psychology is always a moment of the greatest danger as well as the greatest hope.
It is a manifestation of extraordinary power, and all religions, as I said, are organized efforts to procure the contact. In the rites of the Catholic church, one sees that again and again: by putting people into contact with archetypes they produce the magic effect. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 67
009 Those black virgins are occasionally black Isis figures, with the specific meaning of the black goddess, an allusion to the black earth.
In an early Christian manuscript, St. Augustine said that the Virgin Mary was really the black earth not yet fecundated by torrents of rain; he used that simile in one of his sermons.
And there was the identity of Mary and the earth in the Eleusinian mysteries, so the black Mary is a relic of the past. There is a black Virgin at Einsiedeln, though they say it is black from the effect of a fire, but they always say that!
The fact is that there are a number of black Isis figures made of basalt that have served as Madonnas in Catholic churches.
Mary was the earth, the dark principle, but since that was close to the chthonic cult of Demeter, it was absolutely denied by the church. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 68
010 Now that is the meaning of the veiling of the unconscious side: be wise as the serpent.
This is one of the sayings in the New Testament that points the way to the new morality, the Gnostic morality. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminars Page 71
011 But in the Mithraic cult they drank water instead of wine, because it was a religion of severe discipline, suited to soldiers.
And there was the great difference that women were excluded; that is one of the reasons for its downfall. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminars Page 79
012 But I have ample evidence that the same symbolism may occur in the dreams of people who know nothing about it.
I once dreamed about the Mithraic mystery myself without knowing that it was Mithraic. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminars Page 70
013 Human psychology today is as if people had learned absolutely nothing. German psychology remains the same.
And look at Italy! It is as if she had not lost half a million young men.
They are propagating like rabbits down there, in preparation. It is the psychology of despair. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminars Page 77
014 That is the reason why the Host must consist of flour of wheat, why Osiris is symbolized by wheat, and why in the Eleusinian mysteries, when the priest in the epopteia announced the birth of the god, he showed to the people an ear of wheat. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 64
015 So this dream of the apparition of the Virgin and Child, the Mother of God, has had the effect of giving the patient the feeling of invulnerability. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 66
016 Without the blackness of the earth, no wheat could be grown.
But here it is not a black face, it is a black veil, and the veil is not meant to make her face black.
That all virgins should wear veils in order to hide their beauty from the cupidity of man is an old idea which turned up in early Christianity; there is an interesting old book about the veiling of virgins.
It is the veiling of the sex element, as, for instance, women are not allowed to show their hair in church. In certain rites they have a special cloth or veil to cover the hair, because that is a secondary sex indication; it would bring black magic into the church, evil elementals would appear.
And such evils could be conjured up by the beauty of the face, therefore that should be veiled. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 69
017 This is one of the sayings in the New Testament that points the way to the new morality, the Gnostic morality. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 71
018 I should like to put the question whether the distinction between the shaman and the saint cannot be referred to the anima relation, namely, that the power of the shaman comes from accepting the rule of the anima as the spirit of his metier, while the saint rigorously excludes the anima; although both are in fact determined by her. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 89
019 The saint is a product of social and civilized differentiation, while a medicine man is a product of nature; he depends upon nature. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 89
Dr. Baynes puts it as depending upon the anima, but the anima is nature, and the primitive medicine man is enveloped by the unconscious, he is part of it, the unconscious functions through him. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 89
020 The unconscious on one side is nothing but nature, and on the other hand it is the overcoming of nature; it is yea and nay in itself, two things in one. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 89
021 One sees this very clearly in the psychology of the Buddhist saint; by every word and every act he is overcoming the unconscious, overcoming the illusion. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 90
022 And the Christian saint also overcomes the unconscious, he rises above it; to him the unconscious is the devil and he overcomes the devil. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 90
023 Therefore most of the primitive shamans are sort of mediums; they get into a trance and work through that, which means, of course, the complete defeat of the human individual in his relationship to the unconscious powers. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 90
024 The Buddhist idea of nirvana is a nonexistent existence, or an existent nonexistence; it is not merely a nothingness. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 91
025 The unconscious that wants to dismember everything, to disintegrate everything, to bring everything back into its beginning, is also creating the most beautiful jewel, the essence of synthesis, and that is so paradoxical that one is bewildered. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 91
026 The fathers of the church often spoke of these spelea as being in rocks; they were natural grottoes.
In some cases they were far below the surface; in a place in Syria there were three hundred and sixty-five steps to go down, which means that the initiate had to go back through a whole year in order to reach the chamber of initiation. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 92
027 The intellect is something like a bird of prey; it seizes its object, tears it to pieces, and separates it from its surroundings, in order to acquaint itself with it. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 96
028 The intellectual processes are really based upon separation; they are based upon endless acts of cruelty, cutting things down, excluding things. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 96
029 Artists are not necessarily differentiated people; very often they are awfully primitive, the least differentiated.
For that very reason they are sort of idols to differentiated people, who get perfectly dry and sterile and are really craving for the artist, as the artist is craving for differentiation. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 102
030 He is like the primitive man whose mind is in objects. Therefore the artist, not only in his creation, but also in his life, in his conduct, is very often an absolute victim of his unconscious, which cannot be said of the differentiated man. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 103
031 Our mind evolved out of rivers, trees, hills, fruits, and we slowly brought it together by the process of abstraction. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 106
032 We must look at these things from the standpoint of consciousness, and this woman’s consciousness would assume that spirit was above, and that there was no spirit in matter.
Here for the first time she becomes aware of the fact that spirit can also come from the earth, and it is the same Holy Ghost.
The Holy Ghost is by no means only an air bird, he is also a water bird. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 123
033 You remember the first vision was the peacock, and then came the symbol of the rising sun or the sun-man, the man with the halo.
The halo or nimbus expresses the sun-man, and therefore the Roman emperors were characterized by it.
But the saints are the real sons of the sun, they are crowned by the sun’s rays.
In the Mithraic mysteries, for instance, the initiate was crowned as a sun god, he was made into Helios, into the sun god himself, and worshipped as such. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 108
034 Now astrology may be quite unknown to your conscious mind, yet to your unconscious it is very intimately known; because the fundamental ideas of astrology, the signs of the zodiac, for instance, are projections onto the skies of our unconscious functioning. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 109
035 The qualities of the different months of the year, in other words, the signs of the zodiac, are really the projections of our unconscious knowledge of time and the qualities of time. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 109
036 A breeder of cats, for instance, will tell you that cats born in the spring are different from cats born in the fall.
And a connoisseur of antiquities will tell you that certain objects must date between 1420 and 1450, say; anything that originated then has the quality of that time.
An astrologer has merely a more detailed knowledge, he is able to tell you that a thing originated in such and such a month without any further knowledge of the qualities of the object. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 109-110
037 While the primitive medicine man is, essentially, the power of illusion, he himself is at the same time the subject of the power of imagination and of illusion and is made to work through it. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 90
038 The first is that of a man, like anybody, but one must recognize him, and only those people who can chant the chapters of the Koran are able to recognize him.
Then one must step up to him and say, “Salem Alaikum,” Peace be with thee, and he will say, “Alaikum Salaam,” and all one’s wishes will be granted.
The second way that God appears is as a pure white light, not like a flame, not like a fire or a lantern, but a pure white light.
And to explain the third form, my head man smiled and picked up a blade of grass, saying: “God can appear like that.” ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 111
039 So we shall never understand what the unconscious is, as we shall never understand what the world is, because it is and it is not. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 89
040 Also there is a painting of the mummy case of Osiris, the god of the underworld, with wheat growing all over him, out of his body and out of the mummy case.
And, you remember, the reason why the Host in the communion must consist of wheat flour is because Christ is the son of the earth. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 111
041 Well, China is the far East, the place where the sun rises, Japan calls herself the land of the rising sun, and the Chinaman is the antipode to the white man; what is black with us is white with them. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 116
042 Of course, psychological energy does not exist, it is a concept, but in the physical or phenomenal equivalent of energy in these conditions we find the same peculiarity, namely, that this creative power is after a while exhausted, and then everything sinks back into the condition it was in before. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 118
043 In the Tantric system the ram is a force that is located in the abdomen, while the bird has to do with the head; winged things inhabit the head, thoughts flutter about like birds. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 119
044 The devil is always represented as the darkness itself; he has not the ram’s head, but he has the horns of the he-goat and the goat’s hoofs; he is half animal, a sort of satyr.
In the Middle Ages he was also a phallic god. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 120
045 We are apt to be tremendously pleased with such Eastern philosophy; the sayings of Lao-tze are most impressive and we like to quote them, not realizing that we are putting on a garment which does not belong to us. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 120
046 We must look at these things from the standpoint of consciousness, and this woman’s consciousness would assume that spirit was above, and that there was no spirit in matter.
Here for the first time she becomes aware of the fact that spirit can also come from the earth, and it is the same Holy Ghost.
The Holy Ghost is by no means only an air bird, he is also a water bird. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 123
047 The animus impersonates the unconscious, as the anima impersonates it in a man’s case.
One could say the anima was the woman who emerges from the water, like Aphrodite arising from the foam of the sea in a shell.
And the animus is also in a way a spirit that hovers over the black waters and is often represented as such; I have two pictures in my collection where the animus is depicted as a huge black bird hovering over the primordial waters. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 124
048 Just as you are quite convinced in reality that the things behind your back are no less real than those in your field of vision, although you don’t see them, so your conception of the collective unconscious should be that it is an invisible reality. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 126
049 The inside of things is unknown, unconscious, and there, wherever you touch, is the collective unconscious; it is all over the place, outside as well as inside of you, it is the unknown reality. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 126
050 Since the animus is more or less the counterpart of the persona, the animus is in your unconscious life what the persona is in your conscious life-of course, in a woman’s case. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 125
051 Just as much as you are possessed by the persona, are you, unconsciously, an animus-possessed being.
You see, there are women who think they really are just what they seem to themselves to be and what they appear to be to other people, but that is a tremendous illusion.
Such women are possessed by their animus, by their opinions; any woman who believes that she is identical
with her persona is invariably an animus hound. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 126
052 Only the animal man can be possessed.
The man who is possessed by the anima and the woman who is possessed by the animus are just beasts.
It is easier to talk or to argue with a dog or a cow than with someone possessed by such a figure. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 126
One should invent a term for the man possessed by the anima.
053 I must leave that for a clever woman to suggest. I cannot do it for my own sex.
The natural function of the animus is not to possess the human being, because the human being is supposed to be human, thus far divine and creative; the possession of at least two functions guarantees a nature that is at least approximately divine. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 127
054 If the animus or the anima are in their proper place they cannot possess the human being; instead, the human being is in control.
The human being is then superior to those figures, as he-or she-is superior to the appearances of the persona. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 127
055 And Hermes, the winged god, is a bird-man, a messenger, and he is also the god of the thieves; it is a peculiarity of birds that they suddenly swoop down and take something off-that is another kind of descent. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 130
056 So the natural function of the animus is to remain in his place between the individual consciousness and the collective unconscious, exactly as the persona is a sort of stratum between the ego consciousness and the objects of the external world. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 127
057 But when you come before God, all your knowledge and all your beauty amount to nothing, all the values that count in the world are nothing. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 129
058 The Docetic conception was that no god was ever sacrificed, that it would have been quite impossible to sacrifice a god; it was an ordinary poor man who was sacrificed-he was abandoned by the white bird. An entirely psychological viewpoint, and like most of those early heresies, beautifully human ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 131
- That is the reason why the ancients were quite convinced that the figure of the god answered or moved his head, although the idol was of stone. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 123
060 There are certain difficult situations in life when everything you have learned, everything you have slowly built up, crumbles away, nothing helps; and then you have a most foolish little idea or hunch and you go by that. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 133
061 So people who can follow their instincts are much better protected than by all the wisdom of the world. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 133
062 The earth has a spirit of her own, a beauty of her own, and there is enough to indulge in besides sexuality. The natural mind has the world of earthly beauty to itself really. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 133-134
063 The animus is not meant to live in the depths of the unconscious, he is meant to live on the surface of the earth. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 134
064 Christianity is the last word of mankind in the tremendous attempt to formulate the mysteries of the soul, and knowing nothing better we should acknowledge that we are still there; whether we like it or dislike it makes no difference at all, we are still there. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 135
065 You know the dove is relatively weak and harmless, but the hawk is a wicked bird of prey.
Yet it is also a divine bird, it is the bird of Horus, the Egyptian Christ, and the official Catholic teaching is that the Egyptian myth was an anticipation of Christ. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 135-136
066 We are not used to thinking of the Holy Ghost as taking anything from the earth, as taking something from below, but always as bringing something down to the earth, such as the immortal feat, the miracle of transformation, the heavenly fire, or the generative power from God into man. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 136
067 Meister Eckhart wrote a beautiful sermon about repentance in which he said one should not waste too much time on repenting one’s sins because out of the night comes day; out of error, truth; and out of sin, forgiveness. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 136-137
068 Mind you, nobody would doubt that Christianity was a very good thing for the four hundred millions, but it might be the worst thing for a particular individual; for him it might mean utter destruction. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 138
069 That is still true in the East, there are many good examples of what the Lord can do for people in that line, a man standing with his hair like a bird’s nest on his head, for instance, eaten up with vermin.
And think of the lives of those greatest saints, the Tibetan monks who have themselves walled in for sixty or seventy years until they shrivel up.
One man was walled in for seventy-two years and died in the wall; he had atrophied completely and decreased to a third of his height. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 139
070 For it is the spirit of ecstasy, of enthusiasm, and no life is really lived without enthusiasm; you could put yourself into a box just as well and be buried.
Life is only worthwhile if lived with enthusiasm. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 139-140
071 Life consists of night and day, and the night is just as long as the day; so evil and good are pairs of opposites without which there is no energy and no life.
The unconscious is the illusion and he is in a state beyond illusion. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 90
072 While the primitive medicine man is, essentially, the power of illusion, he himself is at the same time the subject of the power of imagination and of illusion and is made to work through it. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 90
073 They are the Yang and the Yin and they are necessary.
Even the Holy Ghost has to turn into a bird of prey in order to snatch the germ of life.
The content of life is not always above, sometimes it is below.
That is the important truth. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 140
074 The unconscious is the illusion and he is in a state beyond illusion. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 90
075 The next thing is that the bird flies to the woman dressed in blue, who is sitting like an ancient statue, and settles down on her hands.
You will remember the picture of it.
The woman holds a grain of wheat which the bird takes in its beak and then flies again up into the sky.
The woman dressed in blue is a peculiar mixture of the Christian celestial mother and, on account of the wheat, of Demeter and Isis.
Inasmuch as the Host must consist of wheat, there is a connection with Christ as well as with Iacchus and Osiris (being the resurrected wheat).
The scene of the white bird coming down upon the mother is an unmistakable parallel to the conceptio immaculata, since the Holy Ghost is depicted as a dove. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 141
076 Through the picture of the immaculate conception the germ of life has been deposited in the stream of blood; thus it has been inserted into the sphere of the instincts and thereby something like a pregnancy begins, in which the patient is her own child. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 142
077 This is very typical of the beginning of visions: it begins at the bottom, as it were, as if the whole world had to be built anew, or as if nothing had ever happened before; and then it carries the thought through until it reaches the stage that is not yet and that never has been: it reaches the future. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 142
078 It is very much like a biblical scene, like Moses on Mount Sinai, for instance, with the people down below worshipping the divine miracle; they all have their arms outstretched to the Indian as if in supplication, so we must assume that the animus as well as the bull have taken on a spiritual or divine significance. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 143
079 As we are expecting the manifestation as the children of God, a revelation of the Holy Ghost within us, so all creation, even the animals and the plants, are waiting for it too; that spiritual miracle of redemption or completion which happens in man means the crowning of all nature at the same time. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 144
080 The idea is that man is the representative of the whole of creation, and whatever happens to him happens in a magic way to the whole world. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 144
081 That brings us to a very paradoxical idea: you see, on this plane of consciousness we feel single and as if collectivity were just the opposite.
Inside it is different, there is a multitude, and there the situation is reversed: it is as if we were the multitude there, and as if the Indian on his bull were opposed to us. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 145
082 When you really get in touch with these figures in the collective unconscious, you feel how terribly real they are and how utterly ungovernable. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 145
083 There is the fact that rays are still wandering in the sky which portray, say, the French Revolution.
You still could see the light of the guns of the World War at a certain distance from the earth, because light has a limited speed.
So somewhere out in space you can go back in history.
If you could put yourself at a distance of only about four hundred light years from the earth, you would see Columbus discovering America; if you had a good telescope you could see him just now landing.
You could see the destruction of Mexico, and the great fire of Rome if you could take your stand about two thousand five hundred light years away and had a particularly good telescope. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 146
084 In the mysteries, veiling means that the initiate dies, and the unveiling means the resurrection.
So for a nun to take the veil means that she is dying to the world. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 148
085 The eyes of very primitive and unconscious men have the same strange expression of a mental state before consciousness, which is neither pain nor pleasure; one doesn’t know exactly what it is.
It is most bewildering, but undoubtedly here she sees into the very soul of the animal, and that is the experience she should have. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 154
086 One could say that these are the eyes of the beginning, of the creator, who was unconscious because in the beginning all was unconsciousness.
One cannot know what it is in itself because, from our standpoint, an animal has no consciousness, it is exactly what we call unconsciousness.
I cannot go into a philosophical discussion about it, but it is quite possible that in what we call the unconscious-the sum of autonomous contents-each of those contents has a consciousness in itself. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 154
087 So wherever there is such a center it is quite possible that there is consciousness; therefore what we call the unconscious would be another form of consciousness of something else in somebody else. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 154
088 But we can at least imagine that getting as deep as that, down below all history, into the regions of the blood, must be rather an overwhelming experience; for there one enters a mental or psychological sphere that is still at one with nature, and that is an utterly different thing from our consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 155
089 There had been, before, the descent into the past, the descent through the ages into primitive culture, till finally she had that vision of looking into the eyes of the animal; in other words, she reached a sort of animal consciousness, a most remote instinctive feeling amounting to almost complete unconsciousness. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 171-172
090 But what the ant heap has to say about its own highest principle, its own supreme factor, is exceedingly important, because that shows its conception of itself, and we can be sure that the ant heap will be influenced by the conception. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 172
091 When we say our God is love, we know it is not true.
We say that in order to compensate for the fact that we do not love enough, that we hate too much. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 172
092 For instance, the cleanest, purest religion-literally clean, on account of its numerous washing ceremonials-is the Persian religion, and the Persians were known throughout the antique world as the dirtiest dogs that ever existed; their religion was compensatory.
The most fanatical monotheists were the Jews, and it was the Jews who always fell for the foreign gods. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 172
093 This is again the vine, the Dionysian principle, the fruit of the earth, that is growing into the church.
The altar is where one drinks the wine, the spirit of the earth, and it is assumed that the wine is inspiring, that it gives one good thoughts. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 173
094 Now this vision of the god Pan is a part of the initiation; it is the experience of the living presence, of the absolutely objective psyche. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 174
095 But if you can train yourself to take psychical contents as objective, you will feel a presence.
For then you know that the psychical contents are not things you have made, they really occur, they are there, and so you are not alone; then you can be in perfectly good company, most entertaining company. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 174
096 In the psychical world, one can experience two suns, split the universe in twelve parts if one pleases, because there physical facts have no value.
But one must know that one is in an abnormal condition, and be able to switch it off and get into one’s so-called normal condition again. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 179
097 I am no Catholic, my father was a Protestant clergyman, so I know something about Protestantism, and it is not a real religion, it is a protest against a real religion. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 178
098 But if one studies antique or primitive religions, one sees how those people were given the opportunity of an exalted life and had cause to remember it; and inasmuch as there have always been such religions or such ritual forms, we can say that there has always been an absolute need in man for that dual life. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 180
099 But in the exalted condition they could feel the blessing of heaven upon what was a horrible crime; to them it was an act of the greatest devotion.
In the excavations of old Carthage they found a series of pots in the temple of Astarte containing the remains of hundreds of slaughtered little children that had been sacrificed to the goddess.
That was not mere cruelty, it was great devotion. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 184
100 But the baptism of the adult was originally a very serious business, so it had to be in a mysterious and secluded place, where the few who were present were in the proper mood. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 180
101 You notice that I say physical or conventional and perhaps you are astonished that I make them practically identical.
But convention is nothing but the average truth. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 181
102 People are always complaining that other people are unkind and unfriendly with them.
But look at them! They are the unkind and unfriendly ones, and naturally they bring that out in others. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 185
103 In the higher states of exaltation one really does forget oneself, but that is not only the self-forgetfulness arising from some form of intoxication.
That could be said of the Dionysian cult, but in Indian psychology it is a consequence of the detachment of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 186
104 And when consciousness becomes detached from objects, the particular object does not matter so much.
This accounts for the Eastern attitude of indifference, which on the practical side has bad consequences; human life and health do not matter enough, they are far too much disregarded. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 186
105 I don’t know exactly what the reasons are, but if you ask people what they consider the most important
event in their lives, if they are not confined to common sense only, they usually tell you particular experiences which clearly indicate an exalted condition.
Therefore it has often been said that nothing matters but the union with God, or heaven, or something of the sort.
And so the relationship on the exalted level reaches into greater depths, it is unforgettable, it burns itself into the flesh. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 181
106 As long as they are done within the mystery and are understood as a holy ritual, they are not perversities; but the moment they are seen under a more human or banal aspect, they become perversities.
Like throwing the children to Moloch.
That might be called ordinary murder and a terrible perversity, and then it would be perversity.
But before that it was a divine sacrifice and most efficacious because it was real; it was not murder, because in that exalted condition it meant something most wonderful. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 184
107 As I told you, the youth in the leopard skin is again the animus, who now realizes a sort of divine enthusiasm, he is starting out on a new adventure.
You have already seen that the animus is practically always sent ahead when our patient is faced with a particularly difficult undertaking. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 187
108 The opinions of a woman are also not very human; they have something of the coldness of the cosmic spaces because they are apart from herself, they are from the collective unconscious, beyond the warmth of the human individual. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 188
109 This is simply a demonstration of two contrasting movements: the Dionysian or extraverted way, leaping into things, jumping over obstacles, slurring over difficult facts; and the other principle, the introverted or Apollonian principle, doing nothing, not moving on, not being enthusiastic, but being contemplative. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 189
110 So it is better to contemplate with blind eyes, with the eye turned inward, that is.
The white eye means an ecstatic condition in which the pupil is turned up and disappears under the lid.
By turning the eye inward, one prevents the intellect from seeing things too closely or too acutely and thus destroying them.
One should never look at things in a seeing way if one wants them to grow; it is much better to be deaf in one ear and blind in one eye than to have too acute and concise perceptions. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 190
The seeing eye of the intellect perceives most accurately, yet it kills the growth; it has the quality of the eye of the basilisk, which-according to the legend shriveled up whatever he looked at. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 190
111 For quite long enough our ancestors, and we ourselves, have been taught that this life is not the real thing, that it is provisional, and that we only live for Heaven.
Our morality is based upon the negation of the flesh, and so our unconscious often tries to convince us of the importance of living here and now.
In the course of the centuries man has repeatedly experienced the fact that the life that is not lived here, or the life lived provisionally, is utterly unsatisfactory. It leads into neurosis. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 193
112 The ancient mother, as I said, means the earth, and the earth psychologically means the body, the corporeal sphere of our psychology, as it were, where the psyche is detached from the psychological and touches the body. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 195
113 Beholding the image of the deity has the magic effect of deification; that is the reason why icons have always been used in churches.
In Catholic churches praying to the image of the saint is still a means of acquiring spiritual merit, it draws grace down upon the worshipper. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 195
114 The first sign of the zodiac, the sign of the renewed sun after the winter solstice, is Capricorn, the aigkeros, a Babylonian symbol. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 197
115 There are stories about the initiates of the Dionysian cult-particularly the women, the maenads-having done very bloody things, tearing the living flesh of deer or young goats with their teeth, for instance. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 197
116 Our patient’s animus has been exalted to a divine condition through the immediate neighborhood of the satyr, that powerful fetish, from whom he received a lot of grace or mana and became deified himself, and then naturally got into that Dionysian condition; but he was checked by the Apollonian principle and had to go down to be washed in the waters. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 198
117 There is an astrological interpretation of Delilah as the sign of Virgo, in which the sun loses its power, Virgo being followed by the autumnal equinox when the sun is definitely becoming weaker; the sun then loses its hair, its rays. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 198
118 So the hair is understood to be an emanation of the head, having to do with the mind and the most spiritual as well as magical forces.
Black hair gives the idea of darkness, black thought, or an obscured mind; and golden hair means shining with bright thought or consciousness. In the state of exaltation one loses consciousness of oneself and one’s mind becomes obscure. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 198-199
119 Figures in the unconscious are to be considered as mere functions, yet they are also in a way personal factors, because nothing in the unconscious is abstract, it is all personal. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 203
120 That is also true of the voices which lunatics hear; they speak in a personal way, and the more distinct they are, the more it is a matter of functional dissociation, or even of a real psychosis. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 204
121 The animus is in this respect rather difficult to deal with because it is a plurality.
One can compare the animus, as I have said, to a group of people, a court, or a limited company, or an organization; while the anima is very definitely one person and therefore more clearly to be seen.
The anima behaves exactly like a definite person, yet she is also a function, her true function being the connection between the conscious and the unconscious; there the anima is in her right place. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 204
122 We are bewildered by the concept of the collective unconscious, and therefore I say: You should not begin at those abstract ideas of functions and archetypes; in order to have a correct idea of its nature, you should begin at the very simple idea of ghosts, or the souls of objects, say, or thought forms. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 205
123 For practical uses, it is really best-though terribly shocking, I admit-to assume that everything has a double existence: a known tangible surface and at the same time an invisible, unknown existence. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 206
124 The best thing is, as I say, to assume that we are standing in between two worlds, a visible tangible world, and the other invisible world, which somehow has a peculiar quality of substantiality; but very subtle, a sort of matter that is not obvious and is not visible, that penetrates bodies and apparently exists outside of time and space. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 206
125 It (Collective Unconscious) is here and everywhere at the same time, and yet nowhere because it has no extension; it is a complete annihilation of space and time, which makes it a very different thing from our conception of an obvious world. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 206
126 So when you are concerned with a relationship to another human being, you are in connection with two things really, with the conscious obvious person and the unconscious person at the same time. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 205
127 My anima may twist my impressions of reality, and she may twist my image in the eyes of the object.
It is like a moving, deceitful thing in between oneself and reality if wrongly placed.
But the anima as a bridge, as a function of relationship between the conscious and the unconscious, is rightly placed. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 207
128 There is only one collective unconscious, it is always one and the same, so if my anima is rightly placed behind my back, between the collective unconscious and the conscious, then the relationship is right everywhere. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 207
129 The gods, the spirits, the demons are all illusions according to the Eastern idea.
Yet they are real inasmuch as you can perceive them.
When you have penetrated those veils, you are right at the one thing and there are no such discrete particles any longer. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 208
130 You see, the animus is not created by the conscious, it is a creation of the unconscious, and therefore it is a personification of the unconscious. It is the gate to the collective unconscious, and by a certain attitude one can provoke that function to appear; but if it returns to itself, pulls up the bridge, that locks the gate. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 208
131 Already in 1904 I remember writing to Freud to tell him that what he called repression was often not exactly repression, because there were many cases where one could not find any traces of it.
I said it was an automatic function which had its roots in the unconscious and where the conscious is a perfectly detached spectator. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 209
132 The very primitive man is still identical with the collective unconscious, he is just a piece of this world, a part of visible nature, and values himself as one among the other animals; so he is like an indistinguishable part of the collective unconscious and naturally there is no such dissociation as with us. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 211
133 The sorcerer or medicine man is himself such a link; he deals with ghosts and if anything difficult occurs, say a war or a pestilence, he has recourse to that method; that is, he tries to reestablish the lost connection with the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 209
134 Therefore those many Eastern pictures where the holy man in his meditation is visited by all sorts of animals, and birds fly down and alight on him. So here, all alone with herself, she is together with her instincts. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 213
135 For the Self in that divine form is the balance and the necessary counterpart to the animal instincts.
So the figure of the Self is the divine above and the animal below, like the vision of the satyr-god. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 213
136 Through being with the animals, one is lower down than the brain, because the farther one reaches back into the ages, the more one has the animal feeling, the intuition of what the animal is. One might go back even to the lizard, farther than the warm-blooded animal, where one probably loses consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 213
137 The purpose of the antique mysteries was to make the initiate into Helios; the upshot of the whole mystery ceremonial was that the initiate should become the sun itself, like Apuleius in The Golden Ass. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 215
138 So the next thing we could expect would be an attempt at reconstructing the Christian experience in an entirely new way, as we have already seen the reconstruction of the Dionysian experience, which is as a modern person would experience those things; and still it is amazingly like the accounts of the experiences at Eleusis. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 216
139 That is what Synesius held: that when the spiritus phantasticus in man, his creative fantasy, reaches beyond man in every respect, below or above, he really becomes divine. Then he says something extraordinary: “And being divine, as such he has to undergo the divine punishment.” And the divine punishment is dismemberment. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 217
140 You see, the religious experience of antiquity was the experience of the individual as being divine; that was the enormous discovery they made and that was a living truth to them.
They probably said to one another: Have we not been gods together?
And it was a tremendous thing; they were exalted, they were no longer little citizens, they were lifted up to a higher condition, as the Christians were through baptism. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 217
141 And inside, the walls are covered with representations of the inner events of his life, showing how he is born from the god-mother, etc.; he functions there as a sort of mediator between human beings and the gods.
So there was already the idea of the mediator, that was also an anticipation of Christ really; the pharaoh was a messiah, the son of God, the twice-born. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 219
142 It is like the Christ myth; the baptism of Christ in the Jordan was the second birth.
Also the myth of Dionysus is in a way an anticipation: after he was dismembered by the Titans, Hera gave his heart to his father, Zeus, who swallowed it.
Then his wife Semele gave birth to the new Dionysus. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 219
143 It is true that Christ performed the same miracles that were usually performed in the temples of Dionysus, such as the transformation of water into wine; and there are representations of Christ that are like Dionysus. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 219
144 A famous goblet (which is now in a safe in America) was found down in a well in Damascus, probably having been hidden there in the sixth century, as part of the treasure belonging to a church, during the persecution of Julian the Apostate.
The goblet is of very thin hammered silver, argent repousse, and on it Christ is depicted sitting in a sort of pergola of grapevines and looking exactly like Dionysus. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 219
145 Originally human beings were sacrificed, and then animals, and then the fruits of the field, and finally in India the sacrifice has become a mere gesture, decorating the altar with flowers.
Nowadays the sacrifice that we bring before the altar consists mainly of ten-cent pieces; it has completely degenerated. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 220
146 Therefore the next sacrifice was of exactly the experience which was the real spiritual life of antiquity.
That was completely abolished.
I put that very strongly because we are in a time now where the old things are again beginning to crumble away, so we should not imagine, if anything new comes, that it will come with sugar or honey. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 220
147 We have no historical evidence, as far as my knowledge goes, except that concerned with the Black Mass; in the Black Mass, children were really sacrificed as late as the seventeenth century.
There is historical evidence that Madame de Montespan sacrificed three
children in order to retain the king’s love. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 223
The Black Mass originated in the thirteenth century, or near that time, when there was war and famine and terrible epidemics.
148 Everything went wrong, so people lost their belief in the good will of God; and since God was not helpful they thought the devil might do something for humanity, and therefore they celebrated the Black Mass. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 223
149 We know that sacrifices of children were very frequent in early antiquity.
For instance, when the French excavated the temple of Astarte at Carthage, they found hundreds of skulls of little children, which is evidence that child sacrifices were often carried out there. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 223
150 For instance, there was a rumor that the early Christians sacrificed children in their ceremonials.
The Romans told that story in order to disqualify the Christian heresy which was so horrible to them; for those Christians worshipped an awful god that was hanging on a cross, and that was only done to criminals. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 223
151 Dr. Baynes: Is it not possible that the projection upon the Jews in the Middle Ages of the idea of child murder comes from this pagan root?
Dr. Jung: Absolutely. That idea of the ritual murder of little children was projected onto the Jews in the Middle Ages and in Russia just before the war. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 224
152 On 25 December we put lights on our Christmas tree in order that the sun may rise; and we have an evergreen tree so that it will bring forth fruit; it is a magic ceremonial to produce or increase the sun.
It has now become a sort of festival that produces Christ again, it is the birthday of Jesus.
But that was originally the birthday of Mithra, the invincible sun-it is a borrowed birthday. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 225
153 As I explained, the Christian necessity of self-sacrifice was on account of the antique assumption of being divine. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 226
154 So if the leg or the tail of a salamander is cut off, it makes a new one, but a bit less differentiated, a bit more archaic.
Apparently that is happening in Russia since they did away with their more or less civilized religion.
And so in this case what comes up from the collective unconscious as a sort of restitution is far more primitive than the highly evolved symbolism of the Catholic church, but the advantage is that it is thoroughly alive, immediately impressive, and the historical symbolism does not work any longer for most educated people. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 227
155 The entrails and the liver, then, were supposed to be the seat of psychic life and of secret knowledge; they were the seat of the abdominal soul, as the brain to us represents the seat of consciousness.
You see, we identify brain and consciousness more or less; we assume that our consciousness is located in the brain, but the consciousness of those very primitive people was located decidedly below the brain.
In the time of Homer-astonishingly enough to us as boys-the psychical centre was located in the diaphragm, as I told you recently. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 228
156 And I know of a number of cases of abdominal disturbances because people did not do what they should
have done, people who got a bit lazy, for instance, who really should have organized their lives on a somewhat larger scale perhaps. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 229
157 So the abdomen is the most primitive localization we know of, though Indian speculation goes a little deeper. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 229
158 In those days all the early teachers, like Christ or John the Baptist, were concerned with the same task which we unfortunate analysts are concerned with.
We must make people conscious, we must fight against that gregariousness. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 229
159 Yes, blood always means the life force, it is the symbol of the soul. According to primitive belief, blood is the real seat of life; therefore drinking the blood of an enemy is supposed to give one his mana. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 231
160 You can make extraordinary discoveries about the psychology of women from the rings they wear, you could almost make an analysis. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 231
161 Christ himself condemned that which bears no fruit, when he cursed the barren fig tree.
People who live sterile lives are like that fig tree, they do not fulfill the will of the Lord. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 232
162 But you go to the psychoanalyst just to find out what you are. That is another mistake of our times.
We are inflated because we don’t know or because we have forgotten what we are.
We substitute our ignorance with gas; modern people are all gas bags inasmuch as they are ignorant of what they really are. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 235
163 We have now taken to investigating the psychology of non-European peoples, so we learn what they think about us; we make the discovery that we are bloodhounds or pirates, all sorts of evil things. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 235
164 You see, the phenomena of the uncontrollable animus and anima are absolute tests from which to measure the degree of distance between your conscious and your shadow.
In order to control your anima or your animus, you must bring the shadow close to consciousness and so liberate the shadow from their possession. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 237
165 Mrs. Baynes asked me to tell you that Watkins is publishing a new edition of Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, by Mead, a standard work on Gnosticism.
There is no other book that can compare with it, it is written with love and great understanding.
There is a certain admixture of theosophy, but one hopes that this will have disappeared in the new
edition. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 237
166 One might say that Gnosticism was the first systematic attempt to formulate basic psychological facts and therefore it should be particularly interesting to us… There is nothing in German equal to this book by Mead; it is well worth reading. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 237
167 The animus showed her she should sacrifice the divine lamb, meaning a sort of self-sacrifice-that is, her participation in the divine totem animal-and the animi were performing that ceremony. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 240
168 We are not ideal, we are in the flesh; we are not only eternal spirits living on the tops of skyscrapers,
we are living on this earth; so if anything is to be solved, it should necessarily be solved on this earth here and now, not somewhere in a future heaven. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 242
169 People must be initiated or baptized into that which they are not, or which they do not possess and which they ought to possess. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 240
170 When people have such a vivid experience, it is as if the unconscious were emphasizing it by the additional quality of sensation in order to make the thing absolutely real. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 241
171 You see being in the blood means being in the instincts, being in primitive man, and in the animals that lived before primitive man, being in nature as it always was.
Then only does one realize that appalling fear which we have escaped through civilization. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 241
172 You see, it is not so simple for civilized man to reach reality. For most civilized people reality is a sort of dream, far away. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 242173
The man who discovered the mathematical law of the spiral is buried in my native town, Basel, and on his tombstone a spiral is carved with this very significant and beautiful inscription: “eiidem mutiitii resurgo,” which means, literally translated: in an identical way, changed, I lift myself up. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 243
174 She passed out of Christianity in the former visions and went deep down to the animal; then she came up again through antique cults, and we have just left the area where she realized the deification of the sun, Helios. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 244
175 The early Christians in Asia Minor were still sun-worshippers, and that was true in certain places in Italy.
Christ was supposed to be the newly risen sun. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 244
176 There is a mana that is peculiar to gold, as there is a mana that is peculiar to silver, and a mana peculiar to precious stones.
They have an intrinsic value which people cannot deny. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 244
177 But people can be lured by precious stones and gold because it has a real effect upon human beings.
Also on animals: magpies steal golden rings and stones to decorate their nests because they find them beautiful; they don’t believe in the exchange theory of merchandise, they believe in the obvious. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 247
178 The details in dreams often lead to certain implications, subtleties, which we are unable to understand; limitations enter into them which it is impossible to discern.
But in visions there are, relatively, more simple conditions: on the one side we have the very complex fact of the unconscious, but on the other side we have the conscious, and the impact of the two-the clash of the two-brings about the fantasy.
So the vision is always clearer, more accessible to interpretation than the dream. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 247
179 As you know, life develops mainly in either the animal form or the plant form, and since we all belong to the same life, plants and animals belong together.
Moreover we live on plants, we are parasites on the forests of the earth. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 248
180 In other words, the life of the plant is also within us, and it becomes the symbol for a sort of nonbiological quality, for the thing we call spirituality.
Plant life becomes the symbol for spiritual life. The unfolding of the spirit is based upon the analogies of plant life. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 250
181 The soul is always supposed to come out of the mouth, the spirit comes out of words.
Words are air-bodies, invisible sounds, so they are assumed to be spirit.
But those are all animal misconstructions, for the true spiritual things are absolutely invisible to us, they are the antipodal principle to us, the principle of plant life which is entirely contrary, a different form of life. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 249
182 Think of the manifestation of the spirit of Islam, of Christianity-many rivers of blood spilled-because the life of the plant has a different growth from that of the animal. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 251
183 Dr. Barker: There seems to be an association with this idea in the cult of vegetarianism. Vegetarians consider themselves much more spiritual than meat eaters.
Dr. Jung: Yes, like those people who think they are more spiritual when they don’t drink wine. But the contrary is true. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 251
184 What the plant does is called breathing, but the breath of an animal actually causes the air to move, and that is specifically an animal characteristic.
For instance, one feels the impact of the wind, yet one does not see the wind; so it becomes a simile for things that cannot be seen although their effects are obvious. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 253
185 While if you leap into the flames, you are entangled in the world of desirousness.
But inside you are in the cloister, a garden, with animals and flowers, inside is peace.
So that circle of blood or of fire is a sort of protection inasmuch as you do not identify with it. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 254
186 One is subordinate to one’s individual genius or daemon, according to the ideas of antiquity, yet it is as if dwelling in oneself; it was even supposed to die with the individual. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 256
187 Everyone speaks of my unconscious, even of my collective unconscious, which is perfect nonsense; one might as well say my stars, my planets, my continents. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 257
188 Now, it is a fact that mankind has since time immemorial considered that the process of individuation, the production of the magic circle with that center, is man’s greatest value, the most desirable good. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 257
The aim of all Eastern philosophy is the production of that pool of gold, that center within the magic circle.
It is considered the highest attainment, for instance, in Tantric yoga, in Lamaistic philosophy, and in Chinese philosophy. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 257-258
189 People who are a bit pathological produce disturbed mandalas instead of normal ones. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 258
190 That is one of the reasons for the primitive ghost theory: they explain every possible disturbance of body or mind as possession by evil spirits, which simply describes the fact that autonomous contents of the collective unconscious come in and take possession of a part of the self. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 258
191 As the lotus rises from the dark depths in the slime below and comes to the surface of the water, so the sun rises.
Because the lotus is an image of the rising sun, it has become the most current symbol in the East for the birth vessel of the god.
And if you look down upon the lotus, you see the mandala. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 261
192 I have evidence for that in the fact that later on, when she began to draw mandalas, she produced several irregular ones; one was like an inflammation, as if the mandala had been half eaten by fire, which shows that her perception of a mandala was very troubled. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 261
193 Well, the union of opposites in the unconscious means a state of peace, but it is a peace which cannot be realized because there is no consciousness.
So it does not really exist, it is existent nonexistence; no one has the benefit of it because no one perceives. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 262
194 I showed you a mandala that represented the primordial chaos.
That was a medieval mandala from a book which contains the secret psychology of the Cinquecento. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 262
195 For we may assume that the collective unconscious is in absolute peace until the individual appears.
Therefore individuation is a sin; it is an assertion of one particle against the gods, and when that happens even the world of the gods is upset, then there is turmoil. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 262
196 Prof Demos: The mandala goes against the principle of life with the idea of stopping this turmoil.
Dr. Jung: Absolutely, that is perfectly true. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 263
197 The individual is the manifestation of the trouble, and an individual consciousness appears from nowhere.
You don’t know where that thing came from, you just find it.
You can call it the individual and assume that the individual is the instigator of all that trouble. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 264
198 I would speak of the principle of individuation, which was obviously in the world long before the appearance of any kind of organic life.
For instance, I would say a stone or the plant was an individuation. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 264
199 The point is that one draws in the forces from outside, depotentiates the factors of external life, and for
that one must have gates for things to enter by.
These gates are identical with the four functions and they are always characterized by four different colors, the particular colors usually representing particular functions.
This is not my explanation, it is in the Bardo Thodol, the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
So the four functions are really the four gates through which libido may come in or go out. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 264
200 The Eastern idea is to be in harmony with the functions, to be central, to disidentify with the functions and feel apart from them. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 266
201 The snake might be a symbol for the psychical tail of man reaching down into history. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 271
202 The reason why primitives are so hellishly afraid of anything new is because it contains unknown powers, indefinite dangers. Of course we think we like new ideas but it is not true.
Everybody is afraid, nobody likes new ideas; they always throw people into a panic, and where there is panic, there is bloodshed. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 272
203 Zarathustra is a great psychological tragedy, and in a way it is the tragedy of modern man.
Of course, it has never been understood as such, because the people who read it have not the symbolical knowledge necessary to understand it, but with analytical psychology one can really get at it. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 274
204 In the Orphic cult there was a snake crawling on the table amongst the little loaves of bread, but I don’t know whether they ate it. ~Toni Wolff, Seminar, Page 275
205 The early Christian, or probably pre-Christian, Gnostics, celebrated the communion in the presence of a snake who was supposed to be the Savior; the snake was amongst the sacred bread that was eaten, as a sort of Host.
Then I have spoken of that interesting sect who believed that the Savior was the serpent on the tree in Paradise, where it gave good advice to our first parents, advice which made them conscious. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 275
206 But there are other stories from antiquity about the serpent which come closer to this symbol; for instance, one of the early Fathers tells of the mysteries of Sabazios, an Orphic cult, where they put a golden snake down through their clothes and pulled it out from under the garment below. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 275
207 And a similar cult was celebrated in Eleusis; there the initiate had to kiss a huge snake.
Kissing means a very close and intimate acquaintance, and it means also a certain assimilation, either the assimilation of the snake to the human being, or perhaps the assimilation of the human being to the snake, since the snake was supposed to be a heroic soul. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 275
208 Many of the old Greek heroes were supposed to have snakes’ souls.
The soul of the hero appeared after death in the form of a snake that dwelt near his tomb.
Therefore the famous serpent of Erechtheus, and the snake of Cecrops on the Acropolis at Athens. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 276
209 So eating the snake in dreams, as well as in fantasies and visions and ceremonials, means assimilation.
It is the same idea as eating the body of the Lord in the communion, in order to participate in its strength. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 276
210 That was also the original meaning of cannibalism, which was by no means instinctive; it was a magic ritual, and that is still the case wherever it prevails.
Those who eat human flesh and drink human blood acquire additional human strength. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 276
211 So the serpent usually symbolizes the darkness of the human soul that is connected with the earth. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 276
212 The life of the earth is our past, and psychologically the snake means our connection with the past; it is a long historical tail that links us with that past existence, with the primeval forests and caves. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 276
213 Also, it has a particular connection with the vegetative nervous system, because snakes are cold-blooded animals and have chiefly a vertebrate consciousness, one could say; that is, their main accumulation of nervous substance is in the spinal column, it is not in the brain. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 276
214 The snake is called the soul of the abdomen.
In the Kundalini yoga, which is a branch of the Tantric system, the Kundalini serpent is supposed to be coiled up in the lower basin. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 276
215 And in the temples of the Cabiri, they were kept in the adyton, a place where nobody was allowed to enter, like the most secret place in the Jewish temple at Jerusalem. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 278
216 Prof Demos: What is the new form which religion will take?
Dr. Jung: I don’t know, but it is quite possible that it will regress pretty far.
We have that one interesting piece of evidence from Russia, where the destruction of their religion forced the people to regress to paganism.
And in Germany those National Socialists, those swastika people, are building Wotan’s fires again. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 288
217 It is true that during thirty years now, I have had hundreds of patients, of whom the minority were Jews and the majority were Protestants, and I have not had more than four or five real Catholics among the whole lot. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 289
218 And it still happens that in the night of the new moon, farmers draw their sick babies through the hole in order to cure them.
That is a rite of rebirth which is used as a cure, as sick people were given new names for that purpose. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 290
219 That black snake is the earth factor in man, and we might assume that it is seeking rebirth, or perhaps it penetrates the body as a sort of phallic demon in order to impregnate it, or to transform it. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 291
220 For instance, the worship of the ram in the Egyptian city of Mendes meant prostitution with the animal.
And the high priestesses of the Apis cults were buried in cohabitation with the bull-god; the phallus of a bull was put into the genitals of the dead high priestess, and there they were found-meaning that she was buried in an eternal embrace with the god, a very beautiful idea but of course represented in a terribly naïve way. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 292
221 You may have come across the Chinese expression “the lead of the water region” in The Golden Flower.
The water region in Chinese or in the Indian yoga philosophy is generally the lower part of the abdomen, or the bladder; lead is the heaviest substance and not of a noble nature, it has a very chthonic, passive quality, the inertia of the earth; it is really death in inorganic matter.
The snake symbolizes the peculiar life of that matter, the life in the inertia of the body. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 293
222 Yes, it is the phoenix miracle.
It is the utter destruction of the specific life of the snake and what is left is just the inorganic matter of the body.
Like the phoenix when he had burned up his nest with himself in it; the end is a heap of ashes, with apparently no life left whatever. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 293
223 The disk of gold already suggests a mandala but inasmuch as it is chthonic, still lying on the ground, it is apparently insufficient; the serpent evidently wants to go further, it is crawling up higher and higher on the tree of life.
What is it reaching for?
Answer: Immortality.
Dr. Jung: No, something far more human. Consciousness.
For it is at the same time the thing which happens in ourselves, a thing that is almost physiological.
Therefore Hindu philosophy holds that there is such a snake in the human body that creeps up the spinal cord and seeks to attain the light of wisdom, or consciousness.
That it wants to be recognized in the light, in consciousness, would be the psychological interpretation. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 296
224 We can never decide whether God is or not, but we make a mistake when we say “merely a psychological phenomenon.”
Do you know what that is?
To say a thing is merely psychological is extremely modest, for a miserable little thought might be greater than the greatest power on earth. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 297
225 I say the greatest truth we know is the paradox that truth both is and is not; the ultimate truth must needs be an antinomy. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 298
226 I would say that the only way in which we are able to perceive anything that has anything whatever to do with religious experience must be in the soul. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 299
227 You see, my purpose in psychology is not to elaborate a certain psychological system, or what one might
call a science, it is only a sort of method to free the way for individual experience, for that fact which to each individual will be decisive. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 301
228 Our eye or our ear synthesizes the psychical Factor with the phenomena. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 302
229 Therefore, the extravert would rather explain from without-by the milieu, heredity, etc.-while the introvert makes a tremendous fuss over the freedom of the will, because his point of view seems to derive from the fact that, according to the Eastern meaning, the whole world starts from within, from an energic point which they call the Shiva Bindu, the point of unextended intensity. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 306
230 But the Hindu mind thinks of it in an absolutely different way.
To him the world is an ever-existing illusion, but always created from the central point of energy. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 306
231 Now I will read you something which gives one an idea; here is your great American mind, Emerson:
The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end.
It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 306
232 Another analogy we shall now trace, that every action admits of being outdone.
Our life is an apprentice ship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens.
Now we conclude from that that the creative eye, which is in everybody, is the same everywhere, because that creative point of Shiva Bindu is the world itself reduced to a nonspatial intensity-that is the way the Eastern mind looks at the enigma of the world. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 307
233 Miss Wolff In Catholic churches one often sees the Trinity with the eye of God in the center.
Dr. Jung: Yes, you see that in every Catholic church practically.
It is the eye of Horus again. It is the creative eye that sees everything and creates everything. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 307
234 So when the number seven occurs in a dream, it refers to the quality seven, which simply means mana, just as the number four, or three, or any other of the primary numbers are supposed to contain mana. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 310
235 Now the highest center in the Tantric yoga system is between the eyes, the so-called ajna center, the center of knowledge or of knowing, and that is represented by a circle, a mandala, with two wings. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 310
236 You see rain in popular superstition is used as a charm, it is magic, and that is not to be rationalized; it is an entirely psychological effect. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 312
237 It seems as if one-half of the world had been made by an engineer and the other half by a foolish poet. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 313
238 It is mana emanating from the head, and therefore you often see sunlike structures upon the head.
And what people cannot do with hair they try with hats-by way of expressing something with the head.
Naturally one always tries to make up for whatever is lacking.
One can almost tell the condition of their mind from the kind of hats women wear. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 313
239 That is a reference to the famous old institution where prostitution in the temple was thought to be highly creditable; the women were called hierodules, the servants of the god or of the sanctuary.
In Babylon, it was the prerogative of the women of the nobility to sleep on the roof of a temple in turn, being ladies-in-waiting of the god, so to speak.
Every night another woman was ready on the roof of the temple in case the god should descend and want her. That was such an offering of the body. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 315
240 As the Bishop of York recently said: “Sex is not only wholesome, it is holy.”
But that the Bishop of York said such a thing means that it is a modern point of view, with nothing holy about it. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 316
241 You see, it is a chthonic animus-behind the conscious attitude is a club of old beasts to whom she is simply delivered over as if she were the worst street prostitute.
There is something like that in the animus, he really can prostitute a woman. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 316
242 Too many women have lost their instincts altogether and only live for what is useful and applicable. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 317
243 For if you have no form, nothing has form, nobody has form; if you are not definite, nothing is definite; if you are chaotic, everything is chaotic; if you have no meaning, nothing has meaning.
Your world depends upon yourself; even the meaning of the world depends upon yourself having a meaning.
Being individuated, having form, is indispensable.
Also it is indispensable that objects have a form, and that simply would not appear to you if you had no form. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 319
244 People have a transference to their analyst because they suppose that he is in possession of the treasure.
It is like rubbing up against the shrine containing the bones of the saint; they get the grace, as if he were the
savings bank of divine treasures.
~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 319
245 You cannot dissolve a transference by analyzing it away, that is quite impossible.
You only get over a transference if you get the projected value out of the object. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 319
246 And when a man projects his anima into a woman, he has to accept it; even if he knows it is the anima, it is a projection.
Only through personal contact do people become able to extract the value which is behind the projection; only in that way can they integrate whatever is their own in the projection. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 320
247 For the unconscious always produces an impossible situation in order to force the individual to bring out his very best. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 321
248 This man is of legendary age, I don’t know how many centuries old; he is the personification of the collective unconscious which is of immense age, and in his eyes she sees with the vision of the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 321
249 Now why are those men standing on the bank? Why are they not all in that chaotic river?
Mrs. Schlegel: Perhaps they are conscious.
Remark: They are individuated.
Dr. Jung: Yes, these are the people of detached consciousness, people who are conscious of themselves and of life.
And that they call to the struggling masses in the rushing water produces the effect that a few souls are cast upon the bank-they wake up and leave the great river. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 321
250 Then the men who stand there lift them up and show them a star and a sun.
What does that mean?
Remark: Consciousness and individual fate.
Dr. Jung: Exactly.
The star is the individual fate, and the sun means the light of day, and it is also the symbol of the deity. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 322
251 And so in our world only a few are standing upon the bank and really understand, see with their eyes what is happening; all the others are just toiling on as blind as ever.
The unconscious emphasizes here the extraordinary importance of consciousness, consciousness as a sort of redemption from the eternal wheel of death and rebirth.
Like the wheel in Buddhistic philosophy, death and rebirth, the curse of that eternal illusory meaningless
existence.
In this vision we find the same principle as in Buddhism, the consciousness of what is happening as a redeeming principle. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 322
252 Consciousness redeems one from the curse of that eternal flowing on in the river of unconsciousness.
This is an exceedingly important idea and is the next parallel to the central Buddhist teaching. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 323
253 Moreover, most of the matter in space devours itself without producing anything but radiation; it just goes on in an eternal aimless radiation, and only a very little matter forms ashes. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 323
254 The goal of the universe would seem to be that all the splendid feu d ‘artifice which one sees in the heavens is merely transforming matter that ends in a silly kind of eternal radiation. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 323
255 If you don’t accept your whole life in all its chaotic entanglements you don’t live it, so how can you become conscious of it?
You cannot detach from the entanglement of life if you are not in it; only through an intimate knowledge of it can you detach from it. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 324
256 You know in the centuries just preceding and immediately after the birth of Christ, the two main religions in the Roman Empire were the cult of Mithras, a religion for men; and the cult of the Great Mother, the so-called Magna Mater, a religion for women; she was called the Dea Syria in Asia Minor, where the cult originated and whence it was introduced into Rome. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 327
257 We are very badly informed about the origin of the Mass, but some of the details were taken from the cult of Mithras-those little bells designating the particular moment of transformation, for instance.
And our Communion, which seems to be quite specifically Christian, was like the one celebrated in the cult of Mithras; they also had a Communion table, and the Host, little round loaves of bread marked with a cross. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 327
258 In about the thirteenth century the cult of Mary developed tremendously, and it was at that time that the famous Lorettanian Litany was invented, that invocation to the mother, where she is called the vas in signe devotionis, the excellent vessel of devotion, or the Jons signatus, the sealed fountain, or the hortus conclusus, the hidden garden, or the rosa mystica. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 328
259 The rosa mystica is a mandala, a magic circle, called in the East the yoni, a female symbol and a symbol of the mother.
It is difficult to tell how much of this has been taken directly from the cult of the Great Mother, but we know that the vas is analogous to the life-giving chalice in the legend of the Holy Grail, and this goes right back to two sources: to the Celtic source where the sacred vessel was a conspicuous symbol, and to the so-called Vase of Sin in the Gnostic cults. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 328
260 Of course the designation ”Vase of Sin” is entirely Christian nomenclature.
In Egypt the idea has often been repeated in the form of the jars on the water wheels by which water is brought up from the Nile; they are always represented with sort of ligamenta or ribbons on the sides.
Their origin is uncertain, but they can probably be explained as the ligamenta lata of the uterus, because this jar was a symbol of the uterus, the life-giving vase. It is very often found on Gnostic gems. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 328
261 You can be your own object.
There have always been external objects, but even if there had been nothing, man himself was there, and from the way in which he lived he acquired definite empirical contents, images, by which he grasped the world. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 331
262 The idea of magic causation is known there, because it plays a role in black magic, as when a person causes an illness or a death by magic means.
But the higher philosophical idea is synchronicity ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 334
263 At a certain depth of the unconscious mind, one cannot fail to meet that inherited treasure of wisdom. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 336
264 I have told you several stories of people with compartment psychology who live one thing in one compartment, another in another, never knowing it because they never confront these facts. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 339
265 And if you get as far as that, if you reach out to your own truth, down to your own blood, to your own law, if you know how far you are real, you will then have your own experiences, and you will understand what things are.
Then you will see that everything real, everything alive, really grows out of the blood; they are not just there, self-evident. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 339
266 I have seen several cases where serious attempts at suicide have occurred, and just as they thought: now it is the end, they understood what life was, and they never tried it again.
Sometimes people have to injure themselves very badly in order to awaken to what life really is. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 339
267 I had another case many years ago, an hysterical girl who tried to burn herself with methylated spirits.
But when she was all in flames, she suddenly understood the terrific nonsense she was doing, and she never
tried it again, she became reasonable. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 340
268 Often it takes the death of the father or mother, who have guaranteed things for them, to bring the provisional life to an end; then it is borne in upon them that things depend upon themselves, and they begin to revise their former lives. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 340
269 Yes, and it [Wheat] is also the symbol for the one that resurrects, for Iacchus, the divine son of the earth that is born in the winnowing fan; and for Osiris out of whose sarcophagus wheat grew; and for Christ inasmuch as he is the Host, made of the flour of wheat.
St. Augustine called Mary the virgin earth which had not yet been fertilized by the rain, and so Christ is the son of the earth, the wheat. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 341
270 The best-known form of the transitus is Christ carrying the cross, the cross being the tree again; that symbol is in Christianity as well as in the cult of Attis, where the tree has the meaning of the mother. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 362
271 It is a fact that most spiritual cults lead to an alienation of feeling from the world.
In early Christianity thousands and thousands isolated themselves in the desert, whole cities were depopulated. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 353
272 You cannot create when you withdraw into thin air entirely, you need the world, because that is the raw material, the materia, and you have to get your hands dirty in order to do a serious job; so you must touch the world, you must get entangled in the materia. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 353
273 A spiritual existence is really a suspended condition.
You can be a hermit and live in the spirit, and it is a certain life, but it is not a visible creation.
On the other hand, though people say that is doing nothing, I am not quite convinced of it; I
am sure that those hermits in the Syrian and Libyan deserts did a mighty good thing. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 354
274 But the withdrawal from the world is only useful in a time when the spirit must be demonstrated, or when the power of thought has to be developed in contradistinction to the mere operation of natural law.
Then when the times change, when the power of the spirit is amply demonstrated and mankind is convinced of its advantages, naturally the usefulness of that withdrawal from the world becomes obsolete. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 354
275 In our epoch there are many symptoms of the growing importance of the Yin. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 354
276 That tremendous giant lying on the ground symbolizes an enormous power associated with the earth.
Giants are always chthonic powers, like those in Nordic mythology, or the Titans in Greek mythology. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 358
277 For instance, when Christ spoke of the treasure in the field, he meant the Kingdom of Heaven that is within us.
And this small light, a germ of life, a little plant, will grow into a powerful tree, it is the beginning of a new consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 358
278 The Eastern mind is absolutely aware of the fact that Yang is just as dangerous as Yin; it is our prejudice that we think that Yang is all good and Yin is all evil. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 357
279 It is the hero, really, who is swallowed by the dragon yet always reappears, having destroyed the dragon from within.
That tiny thing, that unique individual, that Self, is small as the point of a needle, yet because it is so small it is also greater than great. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 358-359
280 What is the Sahara without the grains of sand?
What is the ocean without the drops of water?
Man acknowledges that God is indispensable to him; but man is just as indispensable to God.
They depend upon each other. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 359
281 Now when that spark of light, a new consciousness, enters the world, it naturally finds itself, as I said, up against the great powers of banality. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 359
282 a better example would be the conquest of Rome by Asia Minor and Egypt.
And the same thing is happening to us: we conquered the East, and the East is now conquering us.
Here in the heart of European civilization we are talking Chinese philosophy and declaring ourselves unable to find anything better. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 362
283 GNOSTIC
284 You see, the egg is in a way a sort of cosmogonic system; the yellow substance in the form of a globe might be the earth, and the albumen in which the nucleus is suspended would be celestial space. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 364
285 for the egg is the eternal example of the perfect germ in a dormant potential condition.
It is often represented on antique Gnostic gems encircled by the snake. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 365
286 If mankind had not suffered from living in caves or in the branches of trees, they would never have invented houses.
So even if suffering is not inflicted from outside, it is inflicted by people upon themselves with the unconscious purpose of feeling themselves. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 368
287 The idea of Christian suffering, I mean intentional martyrdom, was to deny the egotistical interests of man and his avoidance of pain. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 369
288 Christian martyrdom meant the complete abnegation of the ego, which was absolutely necessary at that time.
It is impossible to live as an ego forever, it is too childish.
Of course, many people often make the great mistake of taking the ego for the Self.
The ego is nothing but the artificial self. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 369
289 If we don’t assert ourselves, if we don’t create a new head, the past will be an overwhelming body that crushes us.
But by putting a head on the body, we give sense and meaning to the whole thing. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 371
290 The spiritual sun in Christianity is the specific truth of Christianity, it is the Logos, and it is symbolized as the circle with the cross, which in the East is called a mandala. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 372
291 That is the new light which shines in the darkness, as is said in the beginning of the Gospel of St. John.
In the centuries around the time of Christ, there was, as you know, an entirely different kind of psychology. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 373
292 Then Christ meant the discovery of a new attitude, a new hypothesis about the meaning of life, and therefore he was called the new light; he was even compared with the sun, so much so that the early Christians saluted the rising sun as if it were Christ himself. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 373
293 The idea that Christ was that new sun was encouraged by the church in order to assimilate the Mithraic cult, just as they usurped the birthday of Mithra (25 December) and made it into Christ’s birthday.
This is the origin of the sun symbolism in Christianity. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 373
294 The word pious really means obedient, so impia vita would mean the life that is not obedient or does not conform to the new light; but if he succeeds in fulfilling the new meaning, in living by the new Logos, then the light of day will shine upon him in eternity. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 373
295 Look at our dances!
The N’goma dance in the African forest has exactly the rhythm of jazz, and the peculiar way of moving the body, though it is done much better by the primitive, is imitated by our ladies quite successfully.
296 But we must accept the statement of Isaiah and other prophets, that the savior always comes from the place where we least expect him, as being eternally true. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 377
297 But after the removal of many prejudices, this head, or mind, has a chance of developing, and it fills her with words of fire, like the tongues of fire in the miracle of Pentecost, when the disciples were permeated by the fire of the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 376-377
298 When one gets a new insight, a new impulse in life, it is as if one were setting out for an unknown goal.
That is an archetypal situation which often occurs in human life. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 380
299 You see, snakes are always the most unexpected and the most startling of animals, and they have the disagreeable quality of being so close to the ground that one is always in danger of stepping on them.
A very primitive instinct makes us utter an exclamation when we come across a snake in the grass-naturally it is startling. So, as I said, the snake is apt to be a sort of danger signal. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 380
300 The apparition of a snake since the beginning of the world, has been at least very dubious.
And as a psychological symbol, it always portrays something deeply unconscious, because it is associated with the intestines and with everything obscure in our psychology. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 380
301 The snake, particularly the green snake, very often means the path of life, as the river means the flow of
life, or the path of fate; it has a source, it follows a potential, and it finally ends in the infinite sea. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 380
302 The river of life sounds very hopeful, very optimistic, but it is always a little uncertain; therefore most
people try to remain upon the bank or even farther away if possible. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 381
303 Then the game would not be worth the candle, it would not be worthwhile to open the egg or to bother about such fantasies at all.
But we have to bother about them because they really contain those germs of life without which that particular life would remain mutilated or sterile; it only becomes living and real through the admixture. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 383
304 The animus assumes again the role of the leader of souls, the Hermes psychopompos.
He takes her by the hand, leaves the river, and enters a temple which is on the bank. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 383
305 The first part of the new development is that she has to trust herself to the natural course of events, to the potential, so she is led by the psychopompos or the animus in vias naturalis, following the natural flow of things. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 384
306 But one should not trust normality too far; when people are very normal it is often a compensation-they are concealing insanity. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 386
307 If a person asks why the police have brought him to the asylum, and he is told it is because he is crazy, he goes up into the air and there is hell to pay; then he becomes definitely insane.
I have seen quite a number of cases where the very mention of their disease was enough to drive them mad. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 386
308 I could give you names of famous people with latent psychoses, and their chief topic of conversation is normal living.
Generally they are reformers. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 387
309 Naivete is a vice in ordinary life, but in psychology one cannot be naïve enough, because these things are based on the primitive mind. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 387
310 Baptism does not mean quenching fire, but bestowing fire.
Therefore it is said in the New Testament, not baptism by water but by fire. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 388
311 You are not redeemed by repentance, you remain the same old Adam, because by repentance you are not changed; you may get baptized, but that is not a real change.
It must be a complete change of the system, an acceptance of the things that were unacceptable before.
When you accept the fact of your inferiority, it lives with you; you are it too, but not exclusively. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 391
312 Christ helped the woman to accept herself as she was, and that is what the animus is doing here when he assumes the gesture of Christ.
Now we will see the effect of the cure. He says: “Arise and hold communion with the people.” ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 392
313 You see, people who have feelings of inferiority are not accepted because they do not accept themselves. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 392
314 To people who say: “Oh, I am very much interested in people, I love them, but I hate myself,”
I always reply: “Nobody can stand you because you bring with you the stench of your stables; go first and clean your stables, and then we will accept you as a clean human being; then we will like you if there is anything likable.” ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 392
315 Since you are alive, there is something good in you, there is the Self in you.
That is the greatest treasure. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 392
316 Therefore Meister Eckhart says that one should not repent too much of one’s sins because it might keep one away from grace. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 394
317 if you want to catch the pearl-dew of the noble Godhead
, you must cling imperturbably to his mankind. ~ Angelus Silesius, Visions Seminar, Page 394
318 The head is, of course, only a part of the body.
It means consciousness or vision or idea, but it does not include all the other functions; nor does it include the unconscious without which there is no full realization of a thought. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 395
319 Usually my patients have no knowledge of painting or drawing, but when a picture suggests itself that expresses a particularly comprehensive idea, all the faculties of the individual are called forth, and it is as if the body itself were supporting them in their endeavor. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 395
320 One doesn’t see a god when the flowers spring up, but that is what one’s psyche makes of it.
It is a kind of reverberation in one’s psyche, a psychological phenomenon which originally coincided with the processes of nature-that is, so long as man was like animals, in complete participation mystique with nature. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 397
321 There is the south wind which comes over the mountains, the Fohn, as we call it here, during which the electricity in the air really accounts for certain psychological and nervous phenomena. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 398
322 The voices the insane hear have an absolutely personal character, though they are obviously part of their own psychology. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 399
323 There are texts which speak of the King’s or the Pharaoh’s Osiris, meaning his immortal substance, the thing he had in common with the god who died like man and overcame death by resurrection. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 400
324 One could say: Live your life to the full and then you can die.
This idea was expressed by Cicero, the idea that the fullness of life brings about the fullness of time and the moment which is ripe for death. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 402
325 “The fowls of the air and the beasts that are upon the earth or under the earth, and the fishes in the sea, these are they that will draw you into the Kingdom.”
That means the instincts, one could almost say the blind instincts; the way of nature will bring you quite naturally wherever you have to go. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 401-402
326 Who created the religions of the world?
Who produced Christ? Who produced the Buddha?
All that is the natural growth of man.
If left to himself, he can bring about his own salvation quite naturally; he has always produced symbols that redeemed him. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 403
327 Nature is not especially interested in man, not in such a way that we feel it; yet since nature is also in man, we must admit that she is interested in his existence, otherwise she would not have produced him. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 404
328 The lowest region is muladhara, which is down in the perineum.
That is the root center where the whole system starts, where everything takes its origin.
The next region above is physiological, that is the water region, the region of the bladder; we cannot call it psychical because we have no evidence that psychical values were at any time attached to it.
~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 407
329 The spleen has also been regarded as a place in which the soul lived, and in old English that word designated a mood; it was thought that when the spleen went wrong, one was affected by particular moods, just as the liver, which is also an abdominal organ, is supposed to be connected with the emotions. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 407
330 You see, when man developed out of that lowest center, muladhara, he got into the pre-psychological region, the condition which is characterized by the psychology of the emotions. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 408
331 A germ of higher consciousness contained originally in the fire below can become air-like and rise to the head, or perhaps to a great height above the head.
That is the idea which gave rise to the Tantric system and to the alchemist system of philosophy in the Middle Ages. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 409
332 The poets of the Court of Frederick II in Salerno and those in Dante’s group complained that the medieval church withheld the sweet secret of the rose.
An interesting article was published in the Europaische Revue by Luigi Valli, a modern commentator on Dante, about the secret language used by the poets of Dante’s time in order to designate the mystical rose. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 412
333 The rose means love. And this red is the color of passion.
It is not a light red, it is a strong red, a burning color.
It is also the color of the muladhara region, the lowest center according to the Kundalini yoga. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 413
334 It is quite possible that John, being the teacher or initiator of Jesus, was convinced that such truths would be incomprehensible to the crowd and therefore should be withheld.
But Jesus thought that it would be cruel to withhold such a light from humanity, so he identified himself
with the Messiah and went out into the world to teach people the truth.
And we know the results, how it has worked.
As a matter of fact it was not understood-even the disciples misunderstood it.
~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 413
335 But in the Manda-which means gnosis or knowledge-there is no personal savior; the savior there is called by a name which is of particular interest for us: Manda d ‘haje, meaning understanding of life; that is an impersonal figure, a sort of Poimen, representing the wisdom or the consciousness of life, an exceedingly modern conception. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 413-414
336 And very conscious people are particularly inclined to identify themselves with their consciousness, losing sight of what they are unconsciously.
That is the handicap of any strong consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 414
337 The persona is a sort of mental system which consists partially of oneself and partially of what one is forced to be by one’s surroundings.
One would not have a persona if one were alone; usually people who are quite alone lose it altogether. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 414
338 Therefore I say the persona is both consciously and unconsciously a product of the surroundings; it is a sort of compromise between the incomparable and incomprehensible ego, and the milieu, the surrounding conditions. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 416
339 Of course we all cling to something.
We live through our eyes, we live in the field of consciousness; in other words, one half is living outside of ourselves. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 416
340 And also before the invisible world, for it is in the mysteries that these things happen; there is no actual audience, but before the invisible onlooker she should be naked.
You see, she is never alone in these visions, she is accompanied by animals, or the animus, or several animus figures; and before these observers nothing should remain concealed. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 417
341 For instance, a person tells me that in the year so-and-so he made a fatal mistake.
But there is no such thing, that is fate; fate is greater than we are, it was just what had to occur at that moment, and it was no mistake looked at from his inner structure. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 417
342 Your conscious processes as well as your unconscious-that is, the power from the back, of your instincts-are always pushing you out with a centrifugal momentum against which you must have some protection.
The only protection is the knowledge or consciousness of your individual limitations, what you are without a veil. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 418
343 As long as things are in a quiescent condition the serpent does not get the fire that is dormant in the creative point of Shiva; but when it receives the living spark from the god that is hidden in the creative center, in that moment the snake leaps up and mounts through the different centers of the abdomen, as well as the thorax. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 419
344 People sometimes assume that there really are such centers, but the Hindu himself
says ‘Just as if” there were such centers; it is not to be taken literally. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 420
345 People in whom the Kundalini serpent has reached the heart region will most probably suffer from neurotic symptoms in the heart; and as long as the Kundalini is unconscious they suffer from abdominal difficulties.
As I told you, there is hardly any case of hysteria that is not accompanied by abdominal trouble; also peculiar sex excitements. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 420
346 When the Kundalini starts there is sex trouble, and the next thing would be bladder trouble, like forced urination.
Then comes the stomach, and then the heart, and then the higher psychological regions.
To repeat: first the perineum, at the base of the small basin; then the region of the bladder at the entrance of the basin; then the solar plexus; then the region just above, the diaphragm; then the larynx; and then the forehead.
There is something beyond, but these are the practical examples. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 420
347 In the beginning of life, in early childhood, one sees what an individual really is; children who are already introspective at an early age have an intuition about themselves which perhaps never leaves them.
They know exactly what they are.
Later on they usually lose this knowledge; it is partially squeezed out of them, and partially they succumb to certain illusions, and it is only much later that they discover it again. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 420
348 Of course in a way nothing ever happens to you which you are not. The life you live is your life.
All your experiences are yourself-that is exactly what you are. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 420
349 Therefore it is probable that few yogis reach the stage when the snake enters the ajna center of consciousness.
That should not be mixed up with our ordinary consciousness, which has nothing to do with this particular kind of experience.
One can be quite conscious, yet one has not the consciousness which is brought about by the serpent. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 421
350 You see, the experience of the awakening of the serpent is not merely a sex experience; there are millions of sex experiences, and there is not one real yoga experience among them.
That is something apart, it is a particular kind of sex experience. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 421
351 Should one reach the lowest place, muladhara, for instance, one might be caught in the roots.
Such experiences are so real that people who have not the faintest knowledge of Eastern philosophy have painted pictures of a human figure caught in the roots of a tree; there is one in The Secret of the Golden Flower, a recumbent female figure dormant in the roots, in muladhara. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 422
352 “Many are called but few are chosen”; that is an esoteric truth.
It is true that the neurotic can only be really cured by supernormal psychology, additional psychology; if that cannot be accomplished they are just maimed.
They are either crippled, or they are supernormal. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 423
353 You see children of a certain age, if they have any introspection at all, have far more knowledge of these things than adult people, who are getting blind.
Young children have a consciousness which is remarkable. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 424
354 Children have the vision still hanging over them of things which they have never seen, and could not possibly have seen, and which are in accordance with the theory of reincarnation.
It is just as if reminiscences of a former life were carried over into this life, or from the ancestral life
perhaps, we don’t know. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 424
355 I could tell you children’s dreams which are simply uncanny, and if you want to interpret them at all, you have to use uncanny means.
They cannot be explained even by the psychology of the parents.
They must come from the psychology of the collective unconscious; one could say they were remnants of things they had seen before they were born, and that is really vision. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 424
356 I know a case where a vision affected a whole life.
Individuals can be stunted all through their lives by a vision in childhood.
Such children are not quite born-their birth takes place much later, when they can detach. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 424
357 But many people are never quite born; they live in the flesh but a part of them is still in what Lamaistic philosophy would call the Bardo, in the life between death and birth, and that prenatal state is filled with extraordinary visions. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 425
358 Oh, yes. Initiation rituals do purposely drive people mad in order that they may have that extraordinary experience and be liberated from it at the same time, which, of course, is the very best protection. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 425-426
359 Before we leave, I want to call your attention to a new book by Charles Aldrich, The Primitive Mind and Modern Civilization.
It is an excellent exposition of primitive psychology.
He has done some work with me here and has a psychological point of view, so he presents his subject in a
way which is useful to us. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 427
360 In the cult of Dionysus the blood is the wine; in the Christian cult the wine is the blood.
The blood in the cult of Dionysus is really the blood, the juice of the earth, the blood of the Great Mother, and then it becomes the wine, and the wine in itself is the concrete sacred object. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 432
361 Yes, the Christian idea abstracts or spiritualizes substance into spirit; the wine, meaning the blood, is something abstract because that blood is not real, in spite of the dogma of transubstantiation, which still exists in the Lutheran as well as in the Catholic church. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 432
362 It is an assertion of spiritual reality over and above the concrete reality, which one finds also in many primitive cults: in the totemic cults, for instance, where they eat the totem animal once every year.
It is eaten at the totemic meal, and it is one and the same animal or bird that is eaten in every village of the tribe. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 432
363 Americans hardly ever notice that wine has individuality; it is just hock, or claret, or champagne, and nothing more, which is an exceedingly barbarous assumption. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 434-435
364 Wine has soul, wine is something living, and it is spiritual. To her that was a great discovery, and the spiritual effect that good wine could have was a discovery too.
I am not trying to persuade you to become alcoholics, but there really is something special about wine. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 435
365 One finds it in those famous fragments of papyrus dating from the first century A.D., which were excavated at Oxyrhynchus in about 1904.
In a talk between Christ and the disciples, they ask him first how they shall get to the Kingdom of Heaven, and he explains in that wonderful passage about the animals leading them there.
Then he says: “Therefore strive ye to know yourselves and ye shall be aware that ye are the sons of the Father; and ye shall know that ye are in the city of God, and ye are the city.” ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 444
366 Why have we neuroses? The ego consciousness is too narrow. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 445
367 Is this not an exact parallel to the Indian conception of Atman-Brahman, being the spark of Life eternal within man, to find which in oneself is the most individual experience and at the same time the most collective one, as Brahman is Life in all creation and beyond creation?” ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 447
368 The legend of the youth of Krishna, who was contemporary with Christ, is such a close parallel that Christians say it originated in Christian countries or was affected by Christian influences, while the Hindus assert just the opposite. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 447
369 This idea of the city of Brahman-which means Brahma himself, of course-is very much older than Christianity. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 447
370 No scholar in our days will deny the Persian influence on the conceptions of early Christianity; the Christian idea of heaven and hell, for instance, is typically Persian.
The influence of Hindu philosophy is still questionable, however, though it is a fact that there were Buddhist monasteries in Persia about two hundred years before the birth of Christ. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 447
371 Nothing has ever been projected, that is a wrong conception really, the term projection is wrong; it has always been outside, it was never inside.
A so-called projection is simply a thing which is discovered to be outside, and it then becomes integrated by the discoverer with himself.
Our psychology was all found outside, it was never in our pockets. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 450
372 Whereas my book or my pipe, particularly my pipe, is teeming with life, it is sacred, nobody may touch it. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 451
373 It is the law of enantiodromia, the law of Heraclitus, that when things have reached their culmination they transform into their own opposite.
That is the teaching of the I Ching. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 457-458
374 How could you ever understand yourself without realizing the animal that is within you? But you avoid the knowledge of yourself. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 458
375 There is nothing without spirit, for spirit seems to be the inside of things. Dionysus is concerned with the outside of things, with tangible forms, with everything that is made of earth, but inside is the spirit, which is the soul of objects.
Whether that is our own psyche or the psyche of the universe we don’t know, but if one touches the earth one cannot avoid the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 458
376 We assume that we will be in a blissful state when redeemed; if not here, then at least after death.
But in reality it is not so simple as that. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 460
378 It shows the very interesting female nature, also a bit of the hidden story of the Holy Ghost.
Her name was Sophia originally, and according to Gnostic teaching Sophia was the last form of a rather scandalous series of women.
It has always been terribly shocking, but we must mention it. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 476
379 Sophia was the Gnostic idea of wisdom, a sort of abstract concept, yet it was very much personified.
You find her in the Bible.
She is described in that last chapter of Proverbs and in Ecclesiastes, it is almost a personal figure, most tangible. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 477
380 It is the highest form of the anima, one could say-the spiritual woman, or the universal mother-but originating in the beginning of things as Chawwa, or Eve, the primordial earthly mother. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 477
381 Simon Magus is a tremendous figure who appears even in modern theology; the famous Tubingen school suggests that he was no other than St. Paul.
That is doubtful, yet it is discussed as a real possibility. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 478
382 According to legend Simon Magus was a great sorcerer, he was called the arch-heretic, and he was supposed to be the father of the Gnosis. As a matter of fact he was not; he was apparently a contemporary of the Apostles, and the Gnosis existed before that time; Gnostic monasteries were described by Philo the Jew in 20 A.D. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 478
383 Helen, then, was an adulterous woman, and if you look at it with unprejudiced eyes, Mary was an adulterous woman too; she had an illegitimate relation with the Holy Ghost, and Christ would be the illegitimate child.
This story is found in old Jewish traditions about the origin of Jesus, in the Toldoth Jeshu, a book which was burned by the church a number of times in the Middle Ages because it was considered to be most blasphemous. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 479
384 The syncretistic cults of that era were based very largely upon astrological facts.
On the Mithraic altar-stones, for instance, are the sun and the moon and the signs of the zodiac, and it is evident that they are meant as astrological symbols.
In the Christian cult it was more hidden, but the philosophical systems of that time were filled with astrological connotations. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 486
385 The bull in astrology is an earthly sign, it is the domicilium Veneris.
The cult of Attis belongs to that great group of mother cults, Attis is very much the son of the Great Mother; so the bull is very much connected with the cult of the Magna Mater. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 486
386 First I will repeat the Gnostic classification of the anima.
It begins, as you remember, with Chawwa, the earth-the earth not being meant, of course, as the terrestrial globe; it is also called Eve, and it is the furrow in the field that is to be fertilized.
It really has the meaning of the female genitals, it is the yoni, so this lowest stage could be called the yoni stage.
The next is Helen of Troy. The third stage is Mary, the Mother of God. And the fourth is Sophia. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 489-490
387 There is a famous book, one of the very few Gnostic books that has been saved in its entirety, called Pistis Sophia, the Gnosis of the Light. Pistis means faith. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 490
388 Now Hermes is at the same time a phallic god; it was a phallic worship to begin with.
His name plays a great role in the history of Greek art; for instance, you all know that Greek style of bust, the head of a man upon a long pedestal tapering at the lower end.
It is called a herm because such phallic columns were the original statues of Hermes. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 490
389 A man’s anima must fit the woman somewhere, or such a figure would never have originated, and a man could never conform to a woman, nor a woman to a man. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 491
390 Then is there any more beautiful love story than the love story of Mary?
Wonderfully secret, divine, it is the only love affair of God that we know about.
He is the illegitimate divine lover who produces the Redeemer. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 492
391 The worship of the bull is always an earthly cult, and I said last time that astrologically the bull is an earthly sign; Taurus is the house in which Venus dwells. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 492
392 You know missionaries in primitive countries admonish the natives to wear clothes.
The European women knit woolen socks and pants and jumpers for those little Negroes, because they are so terribly naked, and the fools here send money over for that purpose.
Those perfectly natural beautiful beings who are so much more decent than we are, going about naked like animals or beautiful flowers, are taught by our Christianity to wear clothes; it is abominable, apart from the bad taste. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 493
393 Naturally, then, we are not inclined to give great importance to the sacred things of the earth, and therefore that Gnostic scale is to us a scale of values-the vicious thing at the bottom and the divine thing at the top.
But that is a mistake.
The beginning is divine and the end is divine, and between the two is the human being, the more earthly and
the more heavenly being. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 494
394 Yes, we said last time that the lion was a Mithraic symbol and it is often the counterpart of the snake; the lion would be the Yang principle, the fiery, male principle in contrast to the humid, shadowy, earthly principle of the serpent. ~ Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 494
395 The enormous machines in factories, the enormous steamers and trains and automobiles, all that has become so overwhelming that man is the mere victim of it.
Look at the city of New York. Nobody can tell me that man feels like a king in New York. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 502
397 A big city is like a holocaust of humanity, as Zola expressed it. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 502
398 So the relation between that Hermes, called the thrice-greatest Hermes, and the Greek god Hermes is very remote; they are not identical. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 505
399 The medicine man in primitive tribes is the first form of the leader of souls, and then later on the healer, or the priest, or the analyst.
In modern times every analyst is in the very disagreeable situation of being a psychopompos, or being understood as such even if he is not at all what he seems to be; it is an effect of the transference of that archetypal figure. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 506
400 It is a fact that the medicine men are often very spiteful and apt to resort to poisons. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 507
401 When things are left to themselves we always revert to type, to the archetypal form of life.
So we instinctively revert, in any dark and uncanny matter, to the medicine man; our first reaction is to the man who is initiated into the secret knowledge, the man who has access to the dark sides of human nature, to the unconscious.
Therefore the making of the primitive medicine man is a strange procedure, which is designed to open up the unconscious.
They are almost driven crazy. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 507
402 It is as if one were free to say: I don’t want this communion with the earth, it is too barbarous and primitive, therefore I lift myself out of it. That is will to power. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 508
403 So whether one lives the life of the body, or whether one suppresses the principle of the body and becomes a spirit, has been evolved along the line of instinctive force.
At first we were those laws of human nature, and only afterwards did man give a name to them; only very much later did they evolve into moral or philosophical principles; first they were the forces themselves. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 508
404 So the instincts themselves produce repression, it is not an invention of man. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 508
405 People living in towns never see a snake but they all dream of them, and particularly those who live in a straight line have dreams and fears about snakes.
So the snake is the symbol of the great wisdom of nature, for it is not the direct way, but the crooked way, the detour, that is the shortest way. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 510
406 The sphinx is a religious object, it is partially a temple, which shows that it is not only a sort of chthonic dragon or a devouring monster, it is also a spiritual fact. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 511
407 But the plant is identical with the basic laws of nature because it is entirely rooted in the earth; it is a helpless victim or absolutely at one with nature.
An animal has the faculty of moving away and seeking its own place, it is literally less attached to the laws of the earth. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 513
408 Yes, so the tree is really the soul of the sphinx, and it is that thing which solves the riddle of the sphinx.
It is the union of opposites which is interrupted in a way in animal and human life, but which is expressed by the symbol of the tree. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 513
409 The way of yoga is compared to plant life, because it is not always running towards a certain goal, devouring whatever seems good; it is a very silent growth and in absolute submission to the laws of the earth. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 513
410 So the tree of the Kundalini is the particular yoga that deals with the assimilation of the Kundalini serpent, and the ultimate reunion of the god with the Shakti that in the intervening space were separated into creator and created, into the creative god and the phantasmal illusionary world. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 514
411 But in dealing with the figures of the unconscious-those phantasmal veils-you must play the role, no matter how inflated.
If you are inflated to the size of a god, well, step into your unconscious as a god and you are a god.
But you can only know god on that level, and to Mrs. Smith you are no god. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 515
412 If one literally could go from the brain down through the spinal cord and follow the fibers which lead from the spinal cord, one would come to the ganglia of a nervous system which is much older than the spinal nervous system. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 516
413 In primitive legends the old mother in the West is often a sort of cannibal, and primitive man eats the flesh of the dead.
He celebrates cannibal feasts as a sort of sympathetic magic, he does what the earth does in order to increase fertility.
That is still practiced in our days.
Just recently there was a case in north Kenya.
They ate a grandmother who was particularly beloved.
You see, they had a grandmother in the family whom they worshipped, so they gave her very good food, they fed her well till she grew quite fat, and when she died the family ate her.
Then all the fools were disgusted and horrified at such a terrible thing, but they ate her in the end out of sheer love in order to give her continuation of life.
It was a supreme act of devotion; they continued her life by embodying her body in theirs, really a very touching idea.
One should not disturb people in such acts of devotion, it is very foolish, it destroys their morality completely. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 517
414 Man wishes that were not true, and therefore he always tries to make something intellectual and masculine of the spirit.
But the spirit in its original form is always female, it comes from the Great Mother. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 518
415 Generally a mirror symbolizes the mind or the intellect. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 524
416 It is also the Eastern idea that through understanding one finds the roots of suffering which lie in the fire of desirousness, and if they are denied or uprooted, the world, inasmuch as the individual makes the world, comes to a standstill; if the individual comes to a standstill and recedes into nirvana, the world represented by that individual is at an end. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 524
417 And Jakob Boehme, that famous mystic and philosopher of the sixteenth century, said that the basis of the world is the nil, the Nichts, the non-being, and that it cannot be otherwise because the beginning is desire, longing, and only an absolute vacuum can have longing. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 525
418 Anything that is beyond the human is animal and divine, and neither animal nor divine: therefore the animal symbols for the divine, the Holy Ghost as a dove, for instance; all the antique gods have their animal counterparts. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 525
419 So that natural mind is not a function of man; it is a part of nature, the mind of trees or rocks or water or the clouds or the winds, and so ruthless, so absolutely beyond man that it hardly takes him into account. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 525
420 The natural mind is very apparent in prophetic women.
Tacitus says of the old Germanic women that they were reverenced for their wisdom and their gift of prophecy. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 525
421 Walburga is a typical German name, and the Sibylla was the prophetic woman of a household.
So she was probably a German woman who had been sold to a powerful man in Egypt for the guidance of his life, a woman analyst for his personal use. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 525
422 So now that the Christian point of view is no longer indubitably valid, we see that woman increases in importance and in psychological dignity.
It is the prerogative of our times to discover that woman has a psychology, and that there is another viewpoint outside the masculine world. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 527
423 I think the most psychological aspect of the Reformation is that it was the reaction to the regression of Rome, which was quite serious in every respect, in morals, in art, even in the language; the humanists, for instance, began to write a curious mixture of Latin and Italian. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 527-528
424 Therefore [it is said in the Book of Revelations 3:16], “Woe unto those who are neither hot nor cold, for the Lord will spit the lukewarm ones out of his mouth.”
Those lukewarm people never constellate the opposites. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 528
425 Therefore I once said that it looked to me as if the human mind had grown out of external objects all over the world, as if our consciousness really started with the stars and not in the brain, and as if we were beginning to assimilate these psychological facts only in our time. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 530
426 A medicine man is always made by projection. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 530
427 People used to say that Mars had made them angry, or Eros had pierced their heart.
But now the god of wrath is simply my own emotion. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 531
428 The inhabitants of Olympus are now all integrated into my poor psyche.
That accounts for our inflation nowadays; our size has increased enormously because we are now housing the upper and lower gods. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 531
429 Human consciousness becomes almost divine, people believe that we are really on top of the world.
Instead of doubting more and more about our own identity, we really think that we are Venus and Mars and the whole astrological heavens.
We should disidentify, we should not identify with those grand powers which were once great gods worshipped in temples. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 531
430 Only when we learn that the soul or psyche is really a world with its own laws, like the world in which we live and move, can we reduce to our natural proportions. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 531
431 It has been pointed out many times that the bust of Socrates looks like a faun or like Silenus; even to the people of antiquity he was of a grotesque ugliness, yet he was the father of wisdom. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 533
432 All those examples show that chthonic wisdom has always been associated with grotesque form.
And it is not only legend, it is true that the medicine man or the dwarf is especially wise. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 534
433 The spiritual contents of the cult of Attis, for instance, and of Mithra, and of the Great Mother, were taken over into Christianity.
The Great Mother became first Isis and then Mother Mary.
And Horus, and the old Asiatic priest-kings, and the Roman emperor, were all sons of God; those mystical kings were kings by the grace of God. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 536
434 The Norman style is closer to nature, the stone prevails, the buildings are more like caverns-while in a Gothic building one is hardly aware of the nature of the stone because it is transformed into a living tree, it is alive, it is permeated by the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 537
435 in the early medieval representations of Elijah’s ascent to heaven, the design is practically the same as in the representations of the god Helios taking his daily flight over the sky. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 538
436 The serpent was the sacred animal of Aesculapius, the god of the doctors, who had a famous clinic for all diseases at Epidaurus.
There a huge serpent was kept, and in the time of the great pestilence, when Diocletian was the Roman emperor, they brought that serpent-it was not a mythical serpent, it was a real snake-from Epidaurus to Rome as a sort of apotropaic charm. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 539
437 For snakelike means animal-like, and animal-like meant divine.
It was not human, therefore it was represented as divine, as the Holy Ghost was represented by a dove, or the Evangelists by their animal emblems, only one of which was human. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 539
438 So the serpent is a soul demon, and the idea is that when the doctor prepares his medicine it is human work, and it is quite nice, perfectly all right, yet it has no virtue-until the doctor’s soul demon puts at least a drop of that poison into it; then it works, then there is magic power in it. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 539
439 The solar plexus has been associated with the sympathetic nervous system since times immemorial.
It is the sym-pathein which means to suffer with; sym means with, and pathein means to suffer. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 540
440 It is a Gnostic idea that Christ was the healing serpent.
His blood is the essence of his life and the healing poison for the world.
Only when Christ puts that magic drop of his essence into the chalice is the wine the blood, only then is it magic, the medicine of immortality. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 541
441 So when one finds the dragon or the serpent there, one can be quite certain that it means Christ.
The Gnostic interpretation was taken over, more or less unconsciously, by the early church-at the time, for instance, when there was a very important movement of the Marcionites who were persecuted by the church as heretics.
But always the persecutor cannot help taking into his psychology a part of that which he has overcome. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 541
442 Man as he is, is the frog form of the superior man to be, of the beautiful being that is in man but that has not yet revealed itself.
We are the ugly repulsive husks that surround the golden kernel, the divine soul of man. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 544
443 But wisdom begins only when one takes things as they are; otherwise we get nowhere, we
simply become inflated balloons with no feet on the earth.
So it is a healing attitude when we can agree with the facts as they are; only then can we live in our body on this earth, only then can we thrive. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 545
444 So the idea in the vision is that the medicine of redemption, which issues from the sacred chalice, is merely man as he is, incomplete, a first attempt of nature and a very embryonic attempt at that.
You see, when frogs were made man had not yet appeared; they are a sort of incipient attempt on a low cold-blooded level at the warm-blooded man-to-be. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 544-545
445 We are just like a swarm of tadpoles.
Each tadpole wants to do something, but because it is a mob of tadpoles we can do nothing; for a mob has no brain, and the so-called leaders are identical with the mob psychology. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 546
446 This is again that extraordinary Gnostic idea of Jesus as the serpent in Paradise, which was considered heretic and utterly rejected by the early church.
But it never really died, it has come up again and again.
It is the Kundalini serpent, and the Kundalini is identical with the Agathodaimon, the serpent of Egypt and of the later Hellenistic syncretism of the first century before and after Christ. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 547
447 In about 1940 we shall be approaching the first stars of the next sign, Aquarius.
Of course there are no definite lines in the sky which would indicate the exact borderline but in 1940 / 1950 we shall be in the vicinity of Aquarius. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 548
448 Therefore when the spring point was in the middle of the commissura, it was the year 1500, the time of the Renaissance followed by the Reformation.
And we entered the tail of the horizontal fish in about 1720, when the French Enlightenment began, when Christianity was overthrown and the Goddess of Reason was enthroned in Paris instead. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 549
449 Man has covered the earth, and everything is subservient to him.
But we are still under the influence of the first fish, we have not yet accepted the earth, we are like spirits hovering over the earth and above ourselves.
And now we have to accept ourselves. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 549
450 We cannot conceive of matter as a spiritual entity, or even imagine that it could have a spiritual connotation or a spiritual value. It seems an absolute paradox.
But when one studies Hindu philosophy, one sees that matter, as the opposite of spirit, is really pretty much the same thing. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 552
451 To us matter is exceedingly unspiritual, we always assume that it has nothing whatever to do with
spirit, but to the Indian mind this is not so; in Tantric philosophy matter and spirit are supposed to be essentially the same. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 552
452 Therefore it does not matter whether one worships the most abstract, absolutely inexplicable idea of Brahman, or the most definite statue of a god with sixteen arms; they are essentially identical. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 552
453 And so one can discover God in the perfume of flowers or even in the flavor of wine, because taste may be just as precious as hearing or seeing. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 554
454 That center of the mandala is what Hindus would designate as “smaller than small yet greater than great.”
There is a text in the Upanishads: “Inside of the heart of the size of a thumb, outside covering the world on all sides two handbreadths high.” ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 555
455 The fate of Angelus Silesius is quite comprehensible, it could easily happen in our days.
He was overcome by the vision, and, like a medium, he expressed it, yet he was quite unable to live it humanly, to assimilate the tremendous truth he had discovered. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 557
456 He [Angelus Silesius] lived at about the same time as Jakob Boehme, the medieval mystic, who was one of the first to create a mandala consciously; he called it the reversed eye of the philosophical globe, or the mirror of wisdom. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 557
457 You see, Aesculapius was among the healers or redeemers who were human beings; he was a man-of course, a sort of semidivine personage-yet he was simply the great medicine man.
But he would not be that great medicine man if he were not a snake on the other side, because every hero is a serpent. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 558
458 So looked at from a human point of view Aesculapius was a semidivine man; looked at from the standpoint of nature he was a serpent.
His essential quality was nonhuman, it was superhuman and therefore symbolized by an animal figure. 558
459 The serpent has the meaning of the space-giving or the visibility-giving factor.
Naturally all pictures of mandalas have a certain extension, which is due to the fact that the god can only be represented in the Hindu or Tantric pictures when in the state of creation. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 559
460 One has an overwhelming impression of the omnipresence of God, that All-seeing Eye of the Deity.
One gets a deep impression of the religious feeling of Islam which always seems so foreign to us, one feels a most intense endeavour to liberate the idea of the deity from the definiteness of material form.
Islam is in that respect far more advanced than Christianity. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 559-560
461 Medieval Christianity was a compromise with paganism, Catholicism is still imbued with it.
Protestantism tried to spiritualize the deity, and succeeded to such an extent that it vanished altogether. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 560
462 As long as the animus is a multitude, it cannot possibly be projected, unless one is by chance concerned with a board of trustees or some such group. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 561
463 She ought to be in relation to the animus as she ought to be the proprietor of her own shadow.
You see, people who are not in possession of their shadow, who are not aware of their inferior shadow side, may apparently be marvellously good people; one cannot discover any flaw in them, they are as white as milk. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 563
464 You can never arrive at the animus unless you see the shadow, unless you see your own inferior sides.
When you see your shadow, you can detach from the anima or the animus, but as long as you don’t see it you have not a ghost of a chance. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 563
465 And the tongue, which is sharp like a knife, would be gossip, slander, public criticism or depreciation, anything that kills, so one might call this dragon another form of the animus. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 565
466 You see, the shadow is practically the same as the personal unconscious; those two concepts are more or less identical, one must allow for the fact that the personal unconscious is a sort of distortion of the shadow because it consists of repressed material. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 566
467 We usually make the mistake of assuming that the shadow coincides with our repressions, we explain it in those terms. It may be so, but it is not necessarily so.
The real evil in people is often quite different; they repress something which perhaps is not even evil, it is only a mistake, an illusion. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 567
468 The shadow is the negative of the conscious personality, but it may be much more decent and have many more positive qualities than the conscious. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 568
469 People say that at bottom man is good but that is not true, one could just as well say that he was the devil from the very beginning.
Are the untold millions spent for armies and weapons and poisons only because of the absence of good? ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 568
470 The fact is that if one tries beyond one’s capacity to be perfect, the shadow descends into hell and becomes the devil.
For it is just as sinful from the standpoint of nature and of truth to be above oneself as to be below oneself. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 569
471 You see, in analysis one naturally has to deal with gossip all the time, and one finds that there is usually a sting in it because it contains an element of truth. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 575
472 When a woman is wedded to the animus, she is usually lifted up into a mental sphere where she is only concerned with spiritual things, as if everything could be done through a spiritual attitude.
But that is a wrong kind of spirituality, because behind it is a secret joy that she has escaped the awkward problem of the body. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 576
473 When women begin to think, they often dismiss the heart altogether, and if the animus functions all alone, it is as if the world contained no feeling at all, or anything like Eros. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 576
474 That is, the animus now reaches her heart, there is a union between the animus and the feeling; the animus is no longer the mere Logos function, he now contains feeling, which is a tremendous asset.
For then the woman’s thought, her conception of things, is not a mere abstraction; it is adapted and adjusted through feeling values, and that corrects the essential mistakes of the animus. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 578
475 The animus causes the illusion that a woman is absolutely given over to the spirit or the mind, while in reality she is more in the body, more swept by passion, more in the actual heat of hell than any other woman.
The so-called Eros woman may be comparatively cool beside her, even cold. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 579
476 Later on he [Saturnus] became identified with the Greek god Chronos, who was the god of creation, having exactly the meaning of what Bergson calls la duree creatrice.
So one could say that Bergson’s intuitive idea was only a recrudescence of that archetypal idea of creative time. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 580
477 Occasionally a herd begins to stampede for no obvious reason, it is as if they were suddenly frightened by something.
That happens to us also; at certain moments in the midst of real nature one is suddenly seized with terror without knowing why. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 581
478 People nowadays go to the woods and the mountains just in order to become unconscious; to identify with nature is a great relief from
the strain of consciousness in the life of the city. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 582
479 The Christian spirit is the Western attempt-still very modest-to deny the flesh; it is one stage on the road which the East has already accomplished, the denial of reality. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 582
480 You see that terror of nature comes, not from nature herself, but from the nature of man.
The panic terror is due to the fear of being overcome by the unconscious; it is the terror of solitude where one might really go crazy. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 582
481 Christ is the symbol of the man who shoulders the cross, who goes to his death with a deliberate consciousness, a clear conscious vision that things must be as they are and that one must accept one’s individual suffering. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 586
482 The point is that you should assimilate yourself and not project half of yourself into other people or institutions.
Of course you are far from being perfect, or perfectly conscious. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 585
483 In the Hindu cosmogonic myth, for instance, part of the creation of the world consists of Indra pulling up the big serpent that is deep down in the sea, and with it he pulls up the seven great treasures, enumerated as seven gods, among whom is Mani, which means the jewel in Sanskrit. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 590
484 Mani is a title of Buddha in Mahayana Buddhism, and the famous Tibetan prayer formula: Om mani padme hum, means: Oh, the jewel in the Lotus.
But the jewel Mani of the cosmogonic legend is Vedic, it is of most venerable age. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 590
485 So after the birth of Apollo the terrible dragon Python pursued him in order to swallow him.
And as soon as Christ was born, he narrowly escaped being killed by the Herodian mass murder of boys. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 591
486 That is the doubt of Nicodemus in the New Testament when he asked how a man could enter his mother’s womb a second time.
It is impossible, so that rebirth must have been against nature, and therefore nature takes her revenge.
That is the danger, and the question is how to combat the evil result.
For the birth of the redeemer means an awful catastrophe to the world because it is against nature. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 591
487 The Christian cross has the meaning of sacrifice, but this is the crux ansata, the cross with the loop, the Egyptian symbol of life.
That symbol appearing in the smoke above the crater means that this is the crater of life; it does not
mean destruction only, because the crux ansata always denotes life given by the gods, or life given by the pharoahs to the gods.
There are representations where the gods bestow life upon the pharoahs by offering them the crux ansata, or where life is offered thus by the pharoahs to the gods. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 592
488 He [Empedocles] was one of the very early Greek philosophers and a sort of savior.
He had a tremendous following; it is said that when he traveled from town to town about ten thousand people accompanied him, so he was a very famous man of those days.
And when he was old he climbed Mount Aetna and threw himself down into the crater in order to be reborn.
There we see the double meaning of the crater again in Greek legend. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 595-596
489 You know Cybele is another form of Astarte or Ishtar, the goddess of love, a goddess of Asia Minor. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 595
490 Therefore I always warn people not to use this [Yoga] Eastern method, for I have never seen a case which was not applied with the wrong purpose of getting still more on top, of acquiring more power or more control, either of their own body, or of other people, or of the world. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 599
491 You see, people may have most extraordinary experiences in the course of analysis, but when they go out into the world they forget all about them.
The further they get away from that mountain the less impressive it seems, it just smokes, so they forget the experience. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 606
492 Yes, the realization of Tao has this quality of being in a sort of synchronistic relation with everything else, as if the same stream of events, or the same stream of life went through everything, so that everything has, as it were, the same rhythm, the same meaning. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 608
493 Only by means of discrimination can one be conscious, whereas Tao might be formulated as the condition of things before consciousness.
So the expression, the consciousness of Tao, is paradoxical. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 609
494 Therefore Tao is the beginning of things, the mother of everything, and also the crowning effect of everything; it is the beginning and the end.
But that is what we call the unconscious, where the ego consciousness simply comes to an end. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 609
495 Jewels have always had that magic quality, and medieval science tried to find out their individual secret virtues.
Amethyst, for instance, was good to wear against getting drunk; and the opal is still not welcome because it is supposed to bring bad luck; and one must not give pearls because they bring tears. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 610
496 For instance, this ring of mine with the snake engraved on it is two thousand years old; it is the Agathodaimon, and it is also the Kundalini serpent, and it gives me special satisfaction to wear such a historical ring, it conveys a particular meaning to me.
Of course it has artistic quality and that is very interesting, but it appeals to my nocturnal side particularly,
it expresses something unconscious, and so it is thoroughly alive and full of mana. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 611
497 You know what love is long before you find out the science of love; it has its magic, its spell, despite the fact that there is no such thing in science as feeling. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 611
498 The animus in his real form is a hero, there is something divine about him, but usually we have had to deal with a very unreal animus, an opinionating substitute. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 612
499 The motif of the imprisonment of the animus has its counterpart in masculine psychology in the imprisonment of the anima, but that is naturally different in that it is concerned with emotions and moods. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 612
500 When a man is able to make a difference between the objective situation and his mood, when he no longer allows his mood to blindfold his mind, when he can set it apart, acknowledge that he has a peculiar mood, that is the beginning of the imprisonment of the anima. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 612
501 So I quite recognize what an extraordinary accomplishment it is for a woman to put the animus aside, to say: “I will put you into a test tube for later analysis.”
Now putting the thing into a test tube, or into a cauldron, is the beginning of the alchemistic procedure; the imprisonment of the animus or of the anima is for the purpose of transformation. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 613
503 Don’t forget that to be possessed by the animus or the anima was the original condition of man. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 615
504 We don’t know to what extent we are possessed; it is probable that our liberation is very relative.
So the suppression of the anima or the animus is an act of extreme violence and cruelty; only by being hard and cruel can one suppress these powers even to that relative degree. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 615
505 If an American woman lived for a considerable time in Switzerland, she might acquire a Swiss animus, as a Swiss living in South America would acquire a South American anima. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 616
506 In Africa, they asked me why I came there to study the natives; they said if I studied the white man I would learn very much more.
Subsequently, that idea was absolutely confirmed. It is amazing what happens, yet it is so subtle that only the clever people who live there or imaginative writers grasp it. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 617
507 So it is almost unavoidable that the animus of an American woman should be a red Indian, because he really demonstrates the American soil; he is the older man on the soil, and as the soil has fashioned him, so that fashion conquers the soil. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 618
508 The idea of souls becoming stars, or descending from the stars, is very old.
The star of Bethlehem was the soul of Christ that descended upon the earth. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 635
509 You see, when a man controls his anima, or a woman her animus, they are doing a thing which nobody would dream of doing, because since the world began, mankind has been possessed.
And when you dare to dispossess yourself you get into a different order of things, which means a challenge to the old order. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 624
510 If a man makes a modest attempt at controlling his anima, he will at once be faced with a situation where he is tested to the limit; all the devils of the world will try to get into his anima in order to bring him back into the fold of Mother Nature. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 623
511 Controlling the animus or anima is like creating a vacuum; if you lift yourself out of a certain volume of space, it leaves a vacuum and everything rushes in to fill it. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 624
512 A participation mystique is created through not controlling them, because one allows a piece of one’s own self to wander about, to be projected into other people, which gives one a feeling of being connected. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 624-625
513 The dwarf is always a subordinate creative power in the unconscious that may either be helpful and bring things up from the unconscious, or it may steal things away. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 626
514 You see, the power of the animus consists, as a rule, in the possession of a woman’s feeling; that is, when she is not responsible for her feeling, when she does not look out for it consciously, the animus eats it; and then he becomes powerful and may devour her or any other innocent prey. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 627
515 There are certain women who just despair because they cannot tackle the animus anywhere, he is so utterly elusive, he is surrounded by the taboo of a thing that is almost divine.
As a man is often mercilessly subjugated by his anima, because she is
equally elusive and divine; he simply cannot tackle her, for since the beginning of time he has had a system of taboos against feelings in himself. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 628
516 People who are under a taboo can live along the lines that are prescribed by the taboo, but if they once break through, they can only live by the way of their consciousness.
And if they violate that way they are completely lost, for they have then violated the unconscious, the all-giving mother, and there is nothing for them any longer. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 633
517 This is because of the original fact that astrology is a projection of man’s unconscious psychology into the stars.
There is an amazing knowledge of unconscious functioning there, which we consciously do not possess, and it appeared first in the remotest stars, the stars of the zodiacal constellations. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 636
518 When I discover that my sun is in Leo and my moon in Taurus, for instance, something has been explained to me; and when I find that I have a particular touch with modern times, and the rising sign in my horizon is Aquarius, it is as if I had learned something more than I already knew of myself. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 636
519 So the fact that we project something into the stars means that we must possess something of the stars.
You see, we really are part of the universe.
We must never forget that we are living on a planet, and a planet is a satellite of the sun, it is just a body moving about in space, and we are a kind of living slime on the surface of that body flying through the eternal heavens. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 637
521 So we are cosmic in every particle of our bodies, we are the dust of eternity and of limitless space.
All that is within us, and that is why we can project it, why we can perceive space at all, and why we have such ideas as infinite space or infinite time. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 637
522 And so the symbol of stars falling down has the eternal meaning of the soul of man descending.
The star that appeared at the birth of Christ announced a cosmic phenomenon, a cosmic soul had descended. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 636
523 Dante had to go through fire to burn away the last remnant of earthly love; then only could he enter heaven.
So this is an outburst of passion, the wildest concupiscentia, and that will bring the eternal law down upon her.
Then she will meet her fate, then she will be in her own place, she will be exactly what she is meant to be.
Concupiscentia is the expression of the Self as long as you are in the ego-consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 638
524 One might call it the shadow of the individual monad.
For the individual could not be a reality without casting a shadow, and this casts a tremendous one. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 651
525 The Persian Zoroastrian religion is based upon the opposition between the powers of light and the powers of darkness.
And the same fundamental idea, the conflict between the light and the darkness, was taken up again in Manichaeism. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 660
526 We know very little of Manichaeism as yet, but it was once a very powerful religion in the East, and it also reached far into the West.
It was founded by Mani, a Persian, in the third century A.D. Recent German expeditions, the Turfan expedition in particular, have unearthed a number of Manichaean remains in India; and a translation of a Manichaean book into Chinese has been discovered, showing that those ideas were known as far East as China. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 660
527 In Mexico they flayed a criminal every year, and the priest then got into the skin of the flayed victim, thus representing the god.
The symbolical meaning is that man must be denaturalized in order to attain to the god.
In all religions there is the same idea of the denaturalization of man in favor of the god, that the god may be born in man, or in witness of his power, his light. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 664
528 I have told you about the Egyptian autumn festival, the day on which the left eye of the goddess is prepared for the god to enter in order to be reborn.
And that the eye is the place of rebirth is the meaning of the eye of Horus, which plays such a mystical role in Egyptian mythology. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 675
529 The word Lao-tze means “old man,” it is not his individual name,
it is a title; so she comes from the Tao-teh-king to Lao-tze. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 678
530 You know Lao-tze never wrote anything until very late in his life.
The legend is that he withdrew from his public position and went to the western slope of the mountain with a dancer, there to spend the evening of his life.
But when he felt death approaching, he left the mountain in order to disappear, and so had to pass through the western gate of the kingdom; and the officer at the gate would only let him pass under the condition that he would write a report of his wisdom to leave behind him.
It is said that Lao-tze then wrote the book of five thousand words, the Tao-teh-king.
Then he disappeared into the western land. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 679
531 The writings of Hermes Trismegistus, for instance, was a book of lost wisdom which had to be rediscovered; that also contained the great secrets, an attempt at a formulation of the ultimate truth.
There really are such ultimate truths in the so-called tabula smaragdina, the tablet of emerald,
that legacy from Hermes Trismegistus. “As above, so below” is a quotation from it. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 679
532 Knowledge means power, and if that knowledge remains unconscious, it operates in the way of nature, and nature is cruel, perfectly regardless of the human being.
Nature simply seeks the shortest way, as water never considers whether its course is opportune; it chooses its own way just there whether one wants it or not. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 681
533 Wisdom and the instincts are forever the same; every word of wisdom is the truth of the instincts, it simply reveals the image which is buried behind the instincts.
Instinct is the dynamic side of the images. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 684
534 But consciousness did not come into consideration in old Egypt, there was only the consciousness of the pharaoh and of nobody else, because he was the only individual. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 684
535 Burnt offerings are the subtle bodies of the animals or the fruit that are sacrificed; the sacrificial offerings rise as smoke and as smell to the upper atmosphere where the gods are supposed to dwell. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 687
536 Everything is broken up because the vessel has a soul which goes to heaven when they break it, to meet the dead and to serve them again.
That was the origin of those terrible human sacrifices when one of the prehistoric kings of Ur died.
They discovered, in excavating, about fifty corpses of soldiers, women of the court, and slaves, who were killed in order to accompany the soul of the dead king.
The kings of the Huns were always accompanied by soldiers, slain with their horses, and buried near the king.
In Egypt human sacrifices were substituted by ushabti, small clay figures of workmen. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 688
537 Yes, whenever snakes, toads, or any such witchcraft animals are boiled or distilled or burned to ashes, it is done in order to get the essence, the spirit, one could call it. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 690-691
538 The spirit of the snake is its essential magic quality, and that quality is the power of rebirth; they are supposed by many primitive tribes to be immortal on account of the fact that they can shed their old skins, thus apparently acquiring a new life every year. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 691
539 It is the age-old truth that a true religion, expressed by a true symbol, works magic; it has mana, it is convincing, it is the expression of the power of life.
But if the symbol no longer conveys life, it is as if the mana fell out of that form and existed all by itself, and then it immediately degenerates into low forms like witchcraft. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 693
540 The early Taoism of Lao-tze is a marvellous philosophy, and also the Taoism of Chuang-tze two hundred years later, but in the course of the centuries it degenerated slowly into the most absurd sorcery, so Taoists fifty or a hundred years ago were the lowest kind of ordinary tricksters or swindlers.
Of course, among them and behind them were true Taoists, and in recent years there has been a religious movement in China which is a very curious parallel to what is going on in Europe, namely, the decay of the official church-in China that would be the decay of Confucianism-and a return to Taoism in a renewed and far more positive form. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 693
541 In the course of history, one repeatedly sees the contamination of the very high symbol with the low magic performances, as if it were sucking up all the low magic; then when the symbol becomes lame, outworn, when it no longer holds the forces of life, it immediately sinks down and takes on the lower forms again.
In Christianity the critical time was reached in the time of the Reformation when the great schism occurred; then witchcraft and sorcery, black magic in all forms, sprang up. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 693
542 Trials for witchcraft appeared only in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in that critical time of the transition of the universal church, but ever since, such side developments have become more and more manifest. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 693
543 Nowadays we are investigating all that very freely, we discuss the possible truth in dreams and visions, but that is all wrong from the historical point of view.
It is a symptom of the fact that the mana, or the magic power of life, has left the symbol. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 694
544 Magic has always been the source of science; science developed out of magic, not out of religion.
Religion is too complete, but magic is very incomplete. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 694
545 If you can be conscious of the stream of life, if you see how the whole thing moves, you are naturally at variance with things; otherwise you could not be conscious…Nothing is more deadly than to be always in harmony with things, it kills one, but to feel at least a difference, or really a conflict, is refreshing. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 696
546 Have you noticed that in the whole of the New Testament nothing is said about the fate of animals when they die, excepting in one rather hidden allusion? What happens to your faithful dogs, or to your horses?
In just one place, St. Paul speaks to the Apostles of the apokatastasis, the reinstatement or redemption of all creatures. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 698
547 The idea is that all creatures are lying in fetters with us, and as we, the children of God, are expecting the revelation of the Holy Ghost within us, so the whole of nature is expecting that spiritual miracle; as man will be redeemed ultimately, so the nature of the animals will be redeemed too. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 698
548 In the Christian religion the sacrifice of the lamb was merely metaphorical; what was meant was the human sacrifice, or the divine sacrifice, the sacrifice of God’s only Son.
While in the Mithraic religion it is true that the bull is in a way Mithra himself, yet it is decidedly a bull. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 700
549 You have probably read in The Secret of the Golden Flower that at a certain stage of the yoga practice, the state of concentration and contemplation, the constituents of the unconscious mind begin to dissociate, they split up into a series of figures. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 706
550 It could be the diamond center, or the jewel in the Lotus, and the jewel in the Lotus is the child Buddha.
On the third day after his birth he stepped into the Lotus in order to announce the law to the worlds here and beyond. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 708
551 Thought, the product of man, is like a flower, so she is a plantlike form holding up the flower of thought, and that is the idea of the diamond center; it is the Lotus or the Golden Flower. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 708
552 All nature was teeming with life, and with a life which was darkly felt to be their own.
It was as if the nervous system had tentacles in objects, as if the nerves were not only under the skin but extended far into the outside world. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 739
553 A symbol is not its contents, they are not identical; the symbol is a man-made image, an honest attempt of man to express a certain influence or impression, a strange psychical experience; just as all the terrible Greek monsters, like the chimera, were attempts of man to characterize certain specific local impressions. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 740
554 One must always make that difference between the contents and the symbolic form. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 743-744
555 Suppose you are in a haunted house or a place that has a spell, and are caught by it; you behave queerly, you get pale and tremble, you are under the spell of the place.
That is the lived archetype. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 744
556 And the same thing happens here, people often come to me for one consultation, just wanting to hear the name of their disease.
I tell them it is a compulsion neurosis, for instance, and they walk away and pay me a fee.
As if they knew what a compulsion neurosis was! ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 746
557 You see, that is the lived archetype, and it has always been so.
For instance, the old Gnostics must have searched the Orient in order to find the extraordinary names they use in their strange invocations to the deity If they called God JaldabaothJao, or Abrasax, or Chnoubis, or Aeeie, or Arioriph, instead of the ordinary Javeh or Theos, they thought he would be more likely to listen. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 747
558 Now if you can accept that shadow, which apparently was the non-ego, you will encounter more of the real non-ego in your later development. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 749
559 A dream of a little child, for instance, may contain something which the child does not know, and will recognize only very much later; it may forecast his whole future life.
Now that material comes from the collective unconscious, and most definitely not from the personal unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 750
560 Then you must assume that your ego is exceedingly extended in time, and that means in space also, so you reach a conception of the ego which is absolutely inconceivable; it reaches out to such an extent that you are everything, you are the creator himself, you are time and space.
But the result is that you get an enormous inflation; it is a neurotic condition. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 750
561 For most people are still wrestling with their shadows; they have not experienced the fact that their shadows are real, they have the greatest trouble to see this.
But only when they are able to see this can they encounter the wider non-ego. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 752
562 Therefore Buddhism holds that you can never attain to redemption, whatever you do, you must first grow up to it; even Buddha himself had to go through more than five hundred incarnations in order to attain to nirvana. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 753
563 So the Self is part of the collective unconscious, but it is not the collective unconscious; it is that unit which apparently comes from the union of the ego and the shadow. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 754
564 We can never say: “I know this Self of mine.” We don’t know it, we can never know it because it is the bigger circle that includes the smaller circle of our consciousness.
Just as the Self is a unit in the collective unconscious, so we are units in the Self.
And how can we know the whole of which we are only a part? ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 754
565 When, however, one is beyond the personal, when one foot is, as it were, in another type of living, the aim of such a life can be discussed with more intelligence and with a better result. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 756
567 You can only be really conscious of things which you have experienced, so individuation must be understood as life. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 757-758
568 Only life integrates, only life and what we do in life makes the individual appear.
You cannot individuate, for instance, by locking yourself up in a cell, you can only individuate in your concrete life, you appear in your deed; there you can individuate and nowhere else. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 758
569 Real consciousness can only be based upon life, upon things experienced, but talking about these things is just air.
It is a sort of conscious understanding, but it is not individuation. Individuation is the accomplishment through life. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 758
570 Individuation is not to be considered as a preparation.
Individuation is the law of your life, life in every stage is it, and it is not to be understood as a preparation. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 758
571 Life is an eternal cycle, it is in every moment-there are always people dying or being born and people living.
So one really could not say that individuation was a preparation, it is also the real end; it is both the beginning and the end of life, it is the process of life itself. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 758
572 A plant that is meant to produce a flower is not individuated if it does not produce a flower, it must fulfill the cycle; and the man that does not develop consciousness is not individuated, because consciousness is his flower, it is his life, it belongs to our process of individuation that we shall become conscious. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 759
573 One is always looking forward, the pleasure is always in anticipation, and in the meantime one lives the provisional life; that is Happy Neurosis Island, where the great thing is still ahead. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 759
574 But the great thing is here and now, this is the eternal moment, and if you do not realize it, you will have missed the best part of life.
You will have missed the realization that you are the carrier of a life contained between the poles of an unimaginable future and an unimaginably remote past. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 759
575 To look at life as a mere preparation for things to come is like not enjoying your meal while it is hot. That is really the disease of our time. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 760
576 One should take each moment as the eternal moment, as if nothing were ever going to change, not anticipating a faraway future.
For the future always grows out of that which is, and it cannot be sound if it grows in morbid soil; if we are morbid and don’t feel this here and now, we shall naturally build up a sickly future. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 760
577 You must live life in such a spirit that you make i
n every moment the best of the possibilities. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 760
578 So if one is allowed to speak of complete individuation at all, I should say that it would be a conscious experience of the totality of nature.
But such a thing is only possible if the individual in every moment of existence fulfills his complete being, lives the primitive pattern, fulfills all the expectations that he was originally born with. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 760
579 What is the most supreme experience to one part of the personality is the most terrible destruction to another part; the spiritual beauty kills the beauty of the life of the earth, and the beauty of the earth kills the spirit.
This is an eternal truth. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 763
580 Like the relationship of John the Baptist to Christ. John the Baptist was born six months before Christ, which would be the time of the summer solstice, and John says of
Christ: “He must grow but I must decrease.” ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 764
581 There are certain people whose individual task is not the ordinary personal life; sometimes a person is meant to be a monk, for instance. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 771
582 Buddha began his career as a worldly man and was later converted to Brahmanistic asceticism; he became a fakir, a saint, and mortified his body for many years, until he experienced enlightenment.
Then suddenly he understood that that was wrong.
And it was at that time that he preached his famous sermon in the garden of the gazelles at Benares. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 773
583 Those are old Egyptian concepts: the ka soul is the substantial terrestrial soul; and
the ba soul, represented as a bird-man, or a bird with a human head, is the spiritual soul.
They are like the kuei and the shen in Chinese metaphysics, which separate after death, the kuei being the physical soul and the shen the spiritual soul.
The kuei is the ghost-being that precedes or follows death, and the shen disappears into the Yang principle, one could say; it goes up to the light, to the spiritual worlds. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 778
584 The ka is supposed to be a sort of heavy substance and therefore the dead were given a little ladder in order to climb out of the grave and up over the horizon into heaven; the ka is supposed to remain in the grave as a ghost, it hovers round until it decays in the wind and rain and air. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 778
585 Yes, an animus form appearing under the disguise of a god, as the animus can easily do because of his divine qualities.
It is owing to these divine qualities that women are so completely under the spell of the animus, utterly helpless victims of his power, and of course the more they identify with him the more they are done for.
The same thing is true of the anima. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 778
585 And so it is with the animus and the anima.
They are divine as the ancient deities were divine, having the quality of being beyond good and evil. They can never be envisaged from any moral point of view. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 779
586 You see, a great symbol is an entirely collective thing.
The animus alone can never produce it; what he brings up is merely an approach, or an approximate attempt, at creating something like the symbol. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 781
587 Whenever the earth mother appears it means that things are going to happen in reality; this is an absolute law.
Therefore she is the Greek goddess of the underworld, Hecate, which means the one whose arrows reach one from afar.
She is a moon goddess, the goddess of all things dark and uncanny, and of fear, fear of the actual happening. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 790
588 If that eye containing the seed is in the possession of the earth mother, it will grow in reality, and whatever that tree means or has led to, whatever the Great Mother insinuates, will come to her in real life. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 790-791
589 You know I explained that first heavenly mother in blue as a spiritual form, referring
to the air element into which the patient was first taken up; that is, she experienced first by thought and by intuitions, and therefore the blue mother was associated with white birds. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 792
590 And the fourth is always the devil; there is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, and the fourth figure in heaven is the devil.
A hell, a separate asylum was made for him, and we always forget that he is an important member of that company in heaven. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 795
591 Hell is a great distillation apparatus-inasmuch as it is not a permanent institution. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 795
592 Here I can only contribute a statement made by Tacitus that the Germanic women were all very wise and gifted with second sight, so it is possible that in very ancient times, perhaps in the time of a matriarchy, women had a greater influence on the formation of the myths. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 798
593 That is perfectly true, it is the specific difference; the corresponding experience of a man is always the conception, receiving the seed as if he were a woman, but his brain is his womb.
With a woman it is very different; she gives her eye as the seed and the goddess takes it. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 798
594 Later on in history one sees that the Germanic women definitely influenced the fairy tales, which are really old myths; all the famous German fairy tales were made by women, they are full of feminine symbolism. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 798-799
595 So I think that in those very remote times, feminine psychology played a great role, and it is quite possible that the Wotan myth is a remnant of the original feminine imagination, which was then transformed by poets, men who had heard such stories from their mothers. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 799
596 The first center of objective consciousness, where you can see that you are under an emotion.
People who are just moody or grouchy are in manipura, but those who say: “Don’t talk to me, I am grouchy today,” are in anahata; that is just the difference. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 802
597 This is symbolized in the chakras by the fact that you can see the Purusha, that is the characteristic feature of the three upper chakras; while in the lower three you are nothing but ego in the clutch of elementary powers.
Above the diaphragm you become aware of the Purusha, the Theos Anthropos, the god-man, Adam Kadmon. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 803
598 It is most interesting that Christ, who was called Theou hyios, the son of god, called himself the son of man; it is exactly the idea of the Purusha; if there is any doubt as to
the possible Indian influence on Christianity, the proof of the influence might be just there-that Christ designated himself as the son of the Purusha. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 803
599 The child is the beginning, and it is first in the form of a seed or an egg; then in the water, in svadhisthana, it grows; in the fire it develops; and out of the fire-or the smoke-of manipura, rises the subtle body, the Purusha. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 803
600 Yes, the child has grown into a peculiar tree which is human above and snake below who will surely poison you.
That is the manipura condition; when you have that point of view, you are inside of the monster.
But when you come through the diaphragm you are outside of the monster, and then
you can see that what really held you was that divine being, which appeared to you, when looked at from the inside, as a big snake. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 806
Dream Analysis Seminar
The Rosicrucians probably represented a half-baked attempt to make up for the dry Protestantism of that day with its lack of imagination. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 240
Heraclitus, the Dark One, the most intelligent of the old philosophers, said, “It is death to the soul to become water.” ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 90
It is death to the soul to become unconscious. People die before there is death of the body, because there is death in the soul. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 90
She wanted me to tell her husband that she was no longer hysterical, and it was true she had no problems, no troubles; she had sucked them in, converted them into her body. Certain people cannot take life seriously, as if they were born to be eternal children. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 90
Those with a ‘motor imagination’ can take a mandala (or other motif) and make it into a beautiful dance. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis, Page 474
Savages are not dirty-only we are dirty. Domesticated animals are dirty, but never wild animals. Matter in the wrong place is dirt. People who have got dirty through too much civilization take a walk in the woods, or a bath in the sea. They may rationalize it in this or that way, but they shake off the fetters and allow nature to touch them. It can be done within or without. Walking in the woods, lying on the grass, taking a bath in the sea, are from the outside; entering the unconscious, entering yourself through dreams, is touching nature from the inside and this is the same thing, things are put right again. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 142
A patient once brought me a drawing of a mandala, telling me that it was a sketch for certain movements along lines in space. She danced it for me, but most of us are too self-conscious and not brave enough to do it. It was a conjuration or incantation to the sacred pool or flame in the middle, the final goal, to be approached not directly but by the stations of the cardinal points. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 304
The way of the individual . . . is symbolized by the serpentine way of the sun through the Zodiac, and the Zodiacal serpent is Christ, who said “I am the way.” He is the serpent, so in the early Christian church he is the sun, and the signs of the Zodiac, the apostles, are the twelve months of the year. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 307
Christ is represented as a great serpent who carries twelve signs on his back, meaning the twelve signs of the zodiac and also the twelve apostles. He says, “I am the vine, ye are the branches.” He is the zodiacal serpent and they are the manifestations of the months. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 434
Henri IV of France said, “My ideal is that every French peasant has his chicken in the pot on Sunday.” I say, “Every man must be concerned with his own morality, and not with the welfare of other people.” ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 218
The spirit was there before man’s consciousness. It makes people do certain things in certain ways that you can never explain. Animals do not lift their paws to the rising sun, but men do. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 221
The new Gnostic churches are all new inventions of old things, like soup warmed up again, they have no direct relation. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 240
King’s Gnostics and Their Remains and Mead’s Fragments of a Faith Forgotten are two books dealing with the old Gnostics. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 240
The last trace pf the Gnostic. teaching. probably died out with the Cathar and the Albigenses. They were the Manichaeans; Gnostics called Bougres in France. “Bougre” derives from the word for Bulgarian and came into southern France. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 240
Some people, and particularly introverts, always put the wrong foot forward. They have a particular genius for putting their finger on the sore spot. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 258
In Christianity we are taught to throw all our burdens on Jesus, and he will bear them for us, and in such a way we maintain a suckling psychology. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 263
Yellow is the colour of envy, jealousy, anger, all things negative with us but in the East just the opposite. There is a reversal between the East and the West. The colour of mourning with us is black, there it is white. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 268
Wagner for instance never realized, while he was sitting there writing about Siegfried, that he was revealing his own shadow for anyone who saw him to look at. He wore a crinoline while hammering out the sword of Siegfried! ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 283
As soon as you see your own shadow and admit that you are not perfect, you cannot identify yourself with the “Great Wise Man” and create a Puer Aeternus with your anima. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 283
The old mystical meaning of Christ was the perfect man who was the realization of the gnostic Adam Kadmon, the Primordial Man, lifted up and perfected to the most perfect man. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 286
We have all been taught that our minds and other virtues are wings we put on, so we get to flying about above ourselves, and we live as if the body did not exist. This happens often with intuitives, with everybody in fact. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 288
It is quite possible that it is a quotation from some magic book in a sort of Hebrew. The Gnostics fabricated any number of them in faulty Syriac, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, even inventing artificial words. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 293
We consist of a lot of particles which must come together as in the magic cauldron or melting-pot where all the dissociated parts of our personality are welded together. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 294
In the beginning everything was in the form of a vaporous cloud, so he drew that together till it became more and more condensed, and suddenly a light burnt through, and that was the Son, the first ray of Light. (Cf. The Gospel of St. John.) ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 612.
The idea that God was perfectly helpless and lost in his loneliness and had to create man in order to become or to be is expressed in many myths or philosophical parabola, and thus is explained how man is in a way the indispensable means of God’s becoming. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 612.
That is beautifully expressed by Meister Eckhart where he says that God in his very divinity is not God, he must be born through the soul of man again and again. “Without me God cannot live.” ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 612
Look at the men in Wall Street! At forty-five they are completely exhausted. Modern life in America is more efficient than in any place in the world, but it completely destroys the man. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 621-622
I don’t say that we should accept an Eastern philosophy. Many people do go in for Indian theosophy and such stuff, but I am an opponent of that because I know that for us it is not healthy. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 622.
One could say that Eastern psychology suffers from an introversion neurosis. All those terrible epidemics out there, or the awful famines, and the fact that the West is able to conquer those peoples, all that is a sort of rebellion of objects against their introversion. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 622
We speak of Chinese philosophy in terms of the highest appreciation but we forget how cruel the Chinese are. I am glad that such things do not happen with us, though since the Great War we can say nothing. We have organized cruelty; there they do it in a more dilettantic way. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Page 623.
If the personal unconscious is cleared up, there is no particular pressure, and you will not be terrorized; you stay alone, read, walk, smoke, and nothing happens, all is “just so,” you are right with the world. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis, Page 75.
Doubt is the crown of life and all is merely one-sided. For in uncertainty and doubt, truth and error come together. Doubt is life, truth is often stagnation and death. When you are in doubt you have the greatest opportunity to unite the dark and the light sides of life. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis, Page 89
Carl Jung – Cornwall Seminar
Where one is identified with the collective unconscious, there is no recognition of the things which come from the unconscious, they cannot be distinguished from those of the self. Such a condition is a possession by the anima or animus. Possession by the animus or anima creates a certain psychological hermaphroditism. The principle of individuation demands a dissociation or differentiation of the male and the female in ourselves. We must dissociate our self from the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 26.
When the new revelation has lost its life, it means that the fire has devoured all the old wood of the past, then there still remains the Institution or Church (Ecclesia means Society). Thus what we call Church may have the form of any Society, e.g. for amusement, etc. Ecclesia means a gathering of people for any common purpose. ~Carl Jung; Cornwall Seminar; Page 19.
The Catacombs: Many rich women went; it became a sort of fashion to join in this mystery cult. The mysteries were celebrated underground because of their nature, rather than on account of the persecution. Fashion molded many things in the early Church, for example, the form of the robes; the Church hood was worn to denote that we were all one, of the same standing. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 19.
Fanaticism is due to an unconscious doubt threatening the conscious attitude. For example, dogmatism is merely to protect a creed against an unrecognized doubt. True conviction needs nothing of the sort. Fanaticism is due to a threatened conviction. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 18.
The Animals. We appreciate them much more. We think of the psychology of animals. In the 19th century they made laws for their protection, and began to treat them more decently, but it is only in recent years that we begin to think of a few animals as our brothers. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 21.
Paradise, here, means the new impersonal attitude that is needed. The white magician cannot find the keys, because the way that seemed to be the wrong way led into the right way; for they needed the completion of things. ~Carl Jung; Cornwall Seminar; Page 26.
The repressed libido for animal relationship is living in the unconscious. It appears in dreams either as animals; or we appear as having animal reactions, for example, the panic fear of animals; or we have inhibited movements due to being in water, a racial memory; also many flying dreams are really swimming. ~Carl Jung; Cornwall Seminar; Page 23.
The primitives say the real scale of values begins with the elephant, lion, eagle, perhaps cobra, then man and monkey. They recognize the fact that man is one of the animals. To say that man is on top is megalomaniac. ~Carl Jung; Cornwall Seminar; Page 24.
The getting away from the respect for brother animal begets in us the animal. A man is only human when he is accompanied by brother animal. He is only individual in relationship to other individuals. ~Carl Jung; Cornwall Seminar; Page 23.
At the Reformation two things happened which upset the absolute attitude of that day: (a) Crucifixes were found in Mexico, which undermined the belief in the uniqueness of the Christian religion where the crucifixion was the central teaching, (b) The rediscovery of Gnosticism, the Dionysian myth and so forth, which showed that teachings similar to Christianity had been prevalent before the birth of Christ. ~Carl Jung; Cornwall Seminar; Page 15.
Relationships must be fostered as far as possible and maintained, and thus a morbid transference can be avoided. ~Carl Jung; Cornwall Seminar; Page 5.
Introvert and Extrovert: The introvert discovers the possibility of being extroverted in the transference. The extrovert draws back on himself; he will become aware of the possibility of experiencing himself. The introvert discovers himself by learning the possibility of pouring himself out to the analyst. It is a discovery of his unconscious. ~Carl Jung; Cornwall Seminar; Page 8.
In states of excitement we speak to ourselves as though to an excited horse, that bit is the part possessed by the anima. In a woman the animus is multiform so that he cannot be nailed down so well as the anima. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 27.
Collective relationships must be based on individual relationships, for an individual cannot exist without relatedness, for we are each cells in an organism. When we make individual relationships we lay the foundations for an invisible church. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 20.
People vary very much in their relation to these problems; some prefer the settled thing, while others, the revolutionaries, prefer the fire. But to the Old Man in us it is painful to walk into the fire. He seeks an institution because of its regularity and safety. The revolutionaries will find a sword not peace. They must go out and fight; they are on fire; but they repel, even each other. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 19.
When we suffer from lack of psychic energy, we say we have a depression or an inhibition, not realising that part of our mental hierarchy has one away beyond our control, that we have, in fact, lost our soul. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 13.
She is legendary, that is to say, the anima-fact is unknown, the anima is that part of the soul which is unknown to our age. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 25.
Christ contains all projections. Men projected head and called him the Logos, and women projected heart and called him Love. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 16.
This Christianizing of the unconscious is observable through analysis. The unconscious becomes more manageable. In time we shall have the whole Christian church in our unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Lecture, Page 25.
But the real anima of a man is shown by psychological experience to be like the primitive idea of soul; something between earth and heaven, as black as it is white; ghostlike; ill defined. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Lecture, Page 25.
When the fire has burnt all that should be burnt, the balanced people of common sense naturally settle down and control the fiery ones because they are a nuisance. Yet the fire remains alive in certain people, e.g. Meister Eckhart whose teaching lay dormant for six hundred years. Around Eckhart grew up a group of Brethren of the Free Spirit who lived licentiously. The problem we face is: “Is analytical psychology in the same boat?” “Are the second generation like the Brethren of the Free Spirit?” If so, it is the open way to Hell, and analytical psychology has come too soon and it will have to wait for a century or two. ~Carl Jung, The Cornwall Seminar, Page 20.
We can never enter the collective unconscious, but we can send the anima or animus to bring us information. By making things with your hands without conscious intent you find a vision of the things of the unconscious. The inspiration working through your hands is the Animus or Anima. ~Carl Jung, The Cornwall Seminar, Page 26.
If you want to go to heaven, your feet will grow into hell. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 12.
So we should talk to our animus or anima…so you listen to the inner mentor, you develop your inner ear; or you write automatically, and a word is formed by your hand, or your mouth speaks that which you have not thought ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 26.
Carl Jung: Psychology Yoga Meditation Seminar:
We find similar ideas in the ancient Asclepius cult. That is why medical clinics in antiquity had incubation chambers in which the ancients would have a dream that proffered the correct diagnosis, or often even indicated the right cure for healing. Similar practices are still used today by Indians and medicine men of primitive tribes. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 4
We live through our eyes. However, that is not characteristic for all peoples, but simply a peculiarity of the West. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 4-5
In principle, this is nothing other than the usual technique of creating the dream’s context. I elicit the entire texture in which the dream is embedded. As it appears to the dreamer. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 5-6
Active imagination is a making conscious of fantasy perceptions that are manifesting at the threshold of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 6
We must imagine that our perceptions possess a certain energy through which they can become conscious at all. It is a great achievement to be conscious. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 6
Occidental man is not educated to use this technique, but rather to observe all external sense perceptions and one’s own thoughts, although not to play host to the perception of the background processes. The East is way ahead of us in this respect. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 7
And the word meditatio actually means to consider or ponder. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 7
The old alchemists—by which you must by no means imagine just any old crazy gold makers but rather natural philosophers—defined the term meditation as a dialogue with another who is invisible. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 7
St. Victor had such a conversation with his own soul. The Middle Ages thus already had the inner counterpart in contrast to the external counterpart; and that inner counterpart possesses a meaning in its own right, so that one can, in a sense, have a conversation with this other. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 7-8
By concentrating on the chemical matter, the image that is within us is imprinted upon matter. This image within us is the soul, and it is round. Roundness is perfection, therefore gold has a round form because it is a perfect body. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 8
In the Rigveda it says: tapas is seen among the things that carry the earth. The earth is carried through truth, size, strength, through rita, i.e., the law of right action, tapas, brahman, and sacrifice. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 9
The classic text offering an overview of yoga teaching is a work from the second century BCE: the Yoga Sûtra by the grammarian Patañjali. It is an exceptionally deep book containing a plenitude of profound ideas, incredibly difficult to translate because it presents the secrets of yoga in an exceptionally concise language: four texts for a total of 195 tenets. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 11
In the Yoga Sûtra 2.3 Patañjali lists the five kleshas: ignorance (ávidyâ), egoism (asmitâ), attachment (râga), aversion (dvesha), and the fear of death (abhinivesha). ~Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 11-12, fn 118
kleshas: By this term one understands instinctive elements in the unconscious that actually should be repressed or at least diminished. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 11-12
The Yoga Sûtra says: egoism, ignorance, attachment, aversion, and fear of death weaken you. Ignorance (ávidyâ) is the ground for all other vices or kleshas. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 12
Klesha, Sanskrit, meaning “trouble” or “affliction.” “These factors, which can be compared to the drives of an earlier generation of psychologists, provide the cognitive and motivational framework for the ordinary individual enmeshed in conditional existence (samsâra) and ignorant of the transcendental Self.” According to Patañjali, kriya-yoga aims at the attenuation of the kleshas. ~Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 11-12, fn 117
A hymn from the Rigveda says:
What was hidden in the shell,
Was born through the power of fiery torments.
From this first arose love,
As the Germ of knowledge,
The wise found the roots of existence in non-existence,
By investigating the heart’s impulse.
Goethe said the same:
You follow a false trail;
Do not think that we are not serious;
Is not the kernel of nature
In the hearts of men?
These verses from the Rigveda propose that the existence of the world is in fact a psychic function. They would have us understand that these human qualities constantly generate heat, and that this glow begets the world. The world to our way of thinking is not begotten in this way, but to the Indian that’s what the world is: namely, consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 9-10
Another passage where the concept of the tapas plays a role occurs in the myth of the creator of the world, Prajâpati. In the beginning, he was alone. Apart from him there was nothing:
Pragâpati had the desire of creating beings and multiplying himself. He underwent (consequently) austerities. Having finished them, he created these worlds, viz., earth, air and heaven. He heated them (with the lustre of his mind, pursuing a course of austerities); three lights were produced: Agni from the earth, Vayu from the air, and Aditya from heaven. He heated them again, in consequence of which the three Vedas were produced. This means “he heated himself with his own heat,” in commutatio. “He brooded, he hatched.” He incubates himself. This is the word used for the technical concentration exercises out of which yoga developed. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 10
Patañjali, who wrote the Yoga Sûtra, is sometimes referred to as the author of Mahâbhâshya (Sanskrit for great commentary), a commentary on Panini’s grammar Astadhyayi. As this was written in the second century BCE Jung dates the Yoga Sûtra to around the same time. However, it is disputed that Patañjali was also the author of the Mahâbhâshya. Recent research dates the Yoga Sûtra between 325 and 425 CE. See Maas (2006), p. xix; also introduction p. l. 58, ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 11, fn 115
In the East, the guru, i.e., the leader, gives the tschela, i.e., the student, a particular instruction about the object he is to meditate upon. Guru and student are not outlandish peculiarities. Every moderately educated person in the East has his guru who instructs him in this technique. It has been this way since ancient times, a form of education practiced by one whose qualifications as a leader are not endorsed by any university. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 11
This is a technique used by the ancient Egyptian priests, for example, who stared into a bowl of water. There is nothing present in the water, but the intense gazing arouses the soul into seeing something. It has a hypnotic and fascinating effect. For this purpose, the ancient magicians used a glass button or jewel, or Egyptian priests a beautiful blue crystal, in order to impart unconscious perceptions to their clientele. It was not understood in this way back then but was employed for the purposes of prophecy, divination, and healing. The ancients were well aware that to heal the soul, or even the body, a certain assistance from psychic experiences was necessary. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 4
You may not know this, but yoga is principally a philosophy. When we speak about it in Europe we always imagine something half-acrobatic: a half-naked man sitting cross-legged on a pedestal; people who are capable of remarkable physical contortions… This is the lowest form of popular titillation and is never taken seriously by educated Indians. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 13
Yoga itself is India’s oldest practical philosophy; it is the mother of all philosophy, psychology, theology, etc. You cannot be a philosopher there without practicing Yoga. Yoga is the foundation of all spiritual development. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 14
It [Yoga] is the sacred practice of a nation of 380 million people. It is the foundation of all Eastern cultures, not only in India but also in China and Japan. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 14
For people in the East, this world is not as real as it is for us. They are not so attached to life as we are, they do not have anxiety as we do, it is much more natural for them. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 15
In India, the Self is the ultimate meaning, the highest good. Here we consider things that lead us away from our Self to be the highest good, but not things that lead us to our Self. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 16
Prana-yama also ranks among this restraint of body. It is the art of breathing. This involves the rhythm of the breath of which we are mainly unconscious. There are many people among us who cannot really breathe. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 22-23
It is simply that people breathe so little from above, so a lack of oxygen occurs and one sighs. Then one has a spasm, which even leads to TB, because the apex of the lungs is not ventilated enough. This can lead to very far-reaching health consequences. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 23
It is, of course, the same in India, and this is the reason for this exercise of making conscious the rhythm of the breath by greatly speeding it up or greatly slowing it down or stopping it. This training naturally takes years. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 23
Pratyâharaor the retracting of the senses, by which is meant that, through concentration, one sets aside every interest, every attachment to objects, curiosity, the compulsion to look. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 23
[H.G.] Wells sent a copy of Anatomy of Frustration to Jung, who thanked Wells in a letter from 25 September 1937 (published in Wells, 1998, vol. 4, p. 170). ~Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 19, fn 135
On the practice of yoga:
(1.) Yama. This is moral self-control, ethical conduct. Not in the sense of a certain morality, but an ethos. We always confuse these.
(2.) Niyama This applies especially to the individual who is subject to egoism. Yoga is also practiced externally in the
(3.) Asanas (postures). ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 22
Kâlî, also Kâlikâ, Hindu goddess of time, change, and destruction. Kâlî is the violent and fierce aspect of Parvati, the gentle manifestation of Shakti, the consort of Shiva. She is said to have destroyed the demon Raktabija by sucking the blood from his body. Drunken from his blood, she danced over the bodies of the slain, thereby stepping on Shiva’s body. When she recognized her consort, her rage and blood thirst left her immediately. The moment of the blood-drunken Kâlî standing on Shiva’s body is a well-known iconographic representation of the goddess. For her worshippers Kâlî is the highest reality of Brahman. As Kâlî is associated with death and cremation, her devotees cover their bodies with the white ash of the cremation grounds. When Jung was in India in 1937/38 the temples of Kâlî had an enormous emotional impact on him. His travel companion Fowler McCormick (see n. 27) noted: “As we would go through temples of Kâlî, which were numerous at almost every Hindu city, we saw the evidences of animal sacrifice: the places were filthy dirty—dried blood on the floor and lots of remains of red betelnut all around, so that the colour red was associated with destructiveness. Concurrently in Calcutta Jung began to have a series of dreams in which the colour red was stressed. It wasn’t long before dysentry overcame Dr. Jung and I had to take him to the English hospital at Calcutta.… A more lasting effect of this impression of the destructiveness of Kâlî was the emotional foundation it gave him for the conviction that evil was not a negative thing but a positive thing …,The influence of that experience in India, to my mind, was very great on Jung in his later years.” ~Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 13, fn 121
In connection with the Yoga Sûtra, I told you last time that the practice consists of overcoming and subduing the kleshas. Klesha can be translated as compulsive urges—an instinctive type of impulse, or an inescapable mechanism, things that man is subject to, specifically understood as ignorance about the being of man and of the world. It is (1) ignorance (ávidyâ). It is not to be confused with the unconscious—it has nothing to do with that, rather it is a not-knowing about the causes and their identification.
The further kleshas are:
(2) egoism (asmitâ): egocentricity, a certain subjectivism, attachment to the I;
(3) attachment to sensory objects (râga);
(4) hate (devsha);
(5) compulsion to live (abhinivesha) in the sense of an attachment to life, not being able
to separate, this life anxiety, something that we all know only too well. If a dark cloud
appears somewhere, half the civilized world trembles. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 14
The kleshas are karma, a highly remarkable concept. It describes the disposition that we take with us into life, which causes us to live out a certain meaning, in a certain way. Our entire life destiny is dependent on this karma. It is the sum of the consequences of earlier existences, in particular the last existence before this one. What I lived there, I take over into my new existence with me. What we call “I” is an illusion and is ended by death. But karma remains, a complex of the consequences of life, which arises anew, being carried over into a new existence. This is how Buddhism explains it. It is its intention to bring karma to an end, namely by recognizing that I act in such and such a way for certain reasons and therefore that I might stop doing this in order to be free of this karma that compels me to take up a new existence over and over again. Through the kleshas a burdensome karma is created. But if it is possible for me to quell these kleshas through yoga so that they no longer have an effect, then I do not create karma for myself that compels me to live. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 16
By concentration (dharana), Patañjali understands the captivation of the cittam (i.e., ordinary consciousness) in a specific place, in other words, concentration through meditation (dhyâna), i.e., through contemplation of what I observe in the state of captivation and then through meditative consciousness (samâdhi), i.e., introversion, i.e., the focusing of all my interests upon this point. Through this total restraint comes into being, i.e., in this way I can get hold of the kleshas by concentrating so that the kleshas no longer function automatically and can no longer cause me to lose myself in some sort of worldly interest. In brief, this is the purpose of the yoga method. Until recently every educated Indian experienced this. Every superior Indian has his guru who instructs him in this method. No one can be a priest, philosopher, or psychologist if they have not practiced this method. No one would ever just settle down in a quiet corner and read a few volumes of periodicals. This concerns one’s own body. It has different levels and practices, e.g., Râja Yoga or Hatha Yoga. I don’t want to comment on this—this is a matter for the Indians. I have never met a European who has really benefitted from this method. Read Brunton’s book or the author of Bengal Lancer. This latter has described with refreshing openness a white man’s experiences with yoga exercises. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 17
From perfect discipline of the strength of an animal such as an elephant, one gains that strength. [YS 3.24, p.66]
There is a whole further series of similarly amazing wonders. There are many such texts that have been circulated today by the Ramakrishna order. Sri Ramakrishna—Sri means “his eminence,” “the great,” even “the holy one”—you may know him from Romain Rolland and Annie Besant. In Bengal there is a large monastery where the order has its headquarters. The order is well-provided for with American money and distributes all sorts of texts about yoga in
Europe. Here in Europe there are countless missionaries, some of whom have quite substantial followings. In America these followers have three temples. Hinduistic syncretism with Hindu-Buddhist religious services. You can read these things there also. One of these prophets, Vivekananda, says, among other things, that the practitioner would look beautiful, would find the right words, etc. There is always this shameless advertising for the splendid power of yoga. I
don’t want to say the same about this ancient text. For all these things that are naively said of the effect of yoga are simply symbolic statements, and people who are really familiar with yoga are completely aware of that. But they say to themselves: Let’s make allowance for these ways of expressing things. It’s good for people. Through this they will be enticed and thus live out their karma. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 20-21
Ramakrishna (1836–1886), also Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Indian mystic, born Ramkrishno Pôromôhongśo into a poor orthodox Bengali Brahmin family, became a devotee and priest of the goddess Kâlî at the Dakshineswar Kâlî Temple. Ramakrishna had mystical experiences from his childhood days on and attracted many followers throughout his life, among them his wife Sarada Devi and Swami Vivekananda. His quest for God was not confined to Hinduism, but led him to contemplate other religions such as Christianity and Islam. He concluded that the realization of God was the ultimate goal for any spiritual path. His legacy has lived on through the brotherhood known as Ramakrishna Math. Though he himself did not write down his experiences and teachings, his disciple Mahendranâth Gupta noted down Ramakrishna’s conversations and published them under the pseudonym M. The Sri Râmakrishna Kathâmrita [The gospel of Ramakrishna] consists of five volumes transcribed between 1897 and 1932. The first complete English translation by Swami Nikhilânanda was published in 1942 (Gupta, 1942). In his introduction, the translator expressed his gratitude to Joseph Campbell and Margaret Woodrow Wilson, the daughter of the U.S. president, for their help. Jung’s library in Küsnacht contained the following books related to Ramakrishna: Life of Sri Ramakrishna. Compiled from various authentic sources (1925) by Swami Madhavananda, Teachings of Sri Ramakrishna (1934), Worte des Ramakrishna (Pelet, 1930), and Romain Rolland’s La vie de Ramakrishna [The life of Ramakrishna] (1929). ~Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 20, fn 136
We won’t meet next Friday. Being Swiss, I am part of a national commission, and I must attend their meeting and so sadly cannot be here next time. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 26
“This, O Bhikkhus, is that middle path, avoiding these two extremes, discovered by the Tathâgata − that path which opens the eyes, and bestows understanding, which leads to peace of mind, to the higher wisdom, to full enlightenment, to Nirvâna!” ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 29
You see, the writer takes it for granted that the reader knows what a meditation is. The Western European has no such training, we are not raised with meditation, and what we do here in its name is usually so comically imitative as to be amazing. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 30-31
Of course, we don’t want to believe this—that one can generate a vision oneself—because we lack the training. However, through their education, people of the East acquire the ability to visualize, an ability we lack…The exercitia of the Catholic church can probably engender something similar. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 31
These are the four forms of the suffering of existence, namely: suffering, ignorance, nonbeing, impermanence (i.e., the deceitful mâyâ, the illusion of the world, which we accept instead of the Self). ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 33
A yuga consists of 4800, 3600, 2400, and 1200 years.178 These 12,000 years179 × 360 are 1 mahâyuga and that is already 4.3 million years.180 A kalpa however is 2000 × 4.32 million. That is 8.64 million years. And now one must work off his sinful deeds over the course of many million kalpas. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 35
It is therefore the purpose of yoga practice to create this land with this aspect; and by thinking it, it is created in actuality. India imagines the psychic much less hazily than we do; in fact, it somehow has substance. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 35
So, from the English translation by the famous Pali specialist, Rhys David, in the eleventh volume, p.146, of the Sacred Books of the East, here is an authentic speech of the Buddha embellished in the style of that time:
Reverence to the Blessed One, the Holy One, the Fully-Enlightened One.
- Thus have I heard. The Blessed One was once staying at Benares, at the hermitage called Migadâya. And there the Blessed One addressed the company of the five Bhikkhus, …
- “There are two extremes, O Bhikkhus, which the man who has given up the world ought not to follow − the habitual practice, on the one hand of those things whose attraction depends upon the passions, and especially of sensuality − a low and pagan way (of seeking satisfaction) unworthy, unprofitable, and fit only for the worldly-minded —and the habitual practice, on the other hand, of asceticism (or self-mortification), which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable.”
- “There is a middle path, O Bhikkhus, avoiding these two extremes, discovered by the Tathâgata
That is the habitual title of the Buddha, even today. Tathâgata, from Tathâ, “so” and gata “goes,” meaning “to conduct oneself in this way.” He is an examplar. It’s always translated as the perfect one, but that’s not what it means.
“…—a path which opens the eyes, and bestows understanding, which leads to peace of mind, to the higher wisdom, to full enlightenment, to Nirvâna!”
- “What is that middle path, O Bhikkhus, avoiding these two extremes, discovered by the Tathâgata − that path which opens the eyes, and bestows understanding, which ‘leads to peace of mind, to the higher wisdom, to full enlightenment, to Nirvâna?’ Verily! it is this noble eightfold path that is to say:
Right views;
Right aspirations;
Right speech;
Right conduct;
Right livelihood;
Right effort;
Right mindfulness;
and Right contemplation.” ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 29
A kalpa is an infinitely long series of world ages, each one being 2000 mahâyugas. A mahâyuga is 360 normal yugas. Every few hundred years at the beginning, and a few hundred years at the end of such a period, comes what we would call the twilight of the gods. At present, we are in the Kâli yuga. We have a bad prognosis. Now the majority of people lie, there remain only a few who can bear the truth. In the first yuga, everyone spoke the truth, in the second and
the third ever fewer. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 35
The expression used here is rather difficult to understand. Darmadhâtu-kâya, i.e., a subtle body corresponding to the principle of nature, is identical with it, and for this reason is able to penetrate into the consciousness of all beings, such that the Buddha’s full identity with the body is present, which accords with the principle of all beings and for this reason can penetrate into all beings. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 37
Jung quotes the German translation of Patañjali’s by Paul Deussen (1908), in the following abbreviated as YSD. On Jung and the German translations of the Yoga Sûtras, see introduction, pp. xlix–l. The English translation is by Barbara Stoler Miller (1996). Quotations from the Yoga Sûtras are subsequently referenced as YS followed by the number of the book, aphorism, and the page number from Miller’s translation. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 15, Fn 124
Ignorance is misperceiving permanence in transience, purity in impurity, pleasure in suffering, an essential self where there is no self. [YS 2.5, p. 45]
From perfect discipline of the heart, one has full consciousness of one’s thought. [YS 3.4, p. 67]
Knowledge of the past and future comes from perfect discipline of the three transformations of thought. [YS 3.16, p. 64]
… knowledge of the cries of all creatures comes through perfect discipline of the distinctions between them. [YS 3.17, p. 64]
… one has knowledge of former births. [YS 3.18, p. 64]
Through direct perception of the cognitive process, one has knowledge of the thoughts of others. [YS 3.19, p. 64]
From perfect discipline of the strength of an animal such as an elephant, one gains that strength. [YS 3.24, p.66]
“When each sense organ severs contact with its objects, withdrawal of the senses corresponds to the intrinsic form of thought. From this comes complete control of the senses” [YS 2.54–55, p. 59].
Ignorance is the field where the other forces of corruption develop, … [YS 2.4, p. 45]
Ignorance is misperceiving permanence in transience, purity in impurity, pleasure in suffering, an essential self where there is no self [YS 2.5, p. 45].
“Worldly experience is caused by a failure to differentiate between the lucid quality [sattva-guna] of nature [prakriti] and the spirit [purusha]. From perfect discipline of the distinction between spirit as the subject of itself and the lucid quality of nature as a dependent object, one gains knowledge of the spirit.” [YS 3.35, p. 68]
From perfect discipline of the receptive, intrinsic, egoistic, relational, and purposive functions of the sense organs, one attains mastery over them. [YS 3.47, p. 71]
From perfect discipline of moments and their sequence in time, one has the knowledge born of discrimination. [YS 3.52, p. 72]
From this one acquires quickness of mind, perception without the aid of the senses, and mastery over primordial matter. [YS 3.48, p. 71]
From perfect discipline of moments and their sequence in time, one has the knowledge born of discrimination. [YS 3.52, p. 72]
Through discrimination one comprehends differences of origin, characteristic, or position that distinguish two seemingly similar things. [YS 3.53, p. 73]
One who sees the distinction between the lucid quality of nature and the observer ceases to cultivate a personal reality. [YS 4.25, p. 80]
Then, deep in discrimination, thought gravitates toward freedom. [YS 4.26, p. 80]
This infinite knowledge means an end to the sequence of transformations in material things, their purpose now fulfilled. [YS 4.32, p. 82]
Sequence corresponds to a series of moments perceivable at the end of a process of transformation. [YS 4.33, p. 83]
Freedom is a reversal of the evolutionary course of material things, which are empty of meaning for the spirit; it is also the power of consciousness in a state of true identity. [YS 4.34, p. 83]
The sûtras are a teaching document. They are part of the Tripitaka canon, being the three baskets in which the sûtras are gathered, i.e., speeches of the Buddha and so on. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 30
You will note here that meditation is in no way about spiritual truth or philosophy, but rather it is about the Buddha’s body. This is an absolute characteristic of the East, namely that truth of any kind, even ultimate spiritual truth (in which it is well known that Buddhism is poor) is developed as arising out of the body and not out of the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 41
Everything, even the highest spirituality, grows out of the deep roots of the body. This is one of those differences between the Eastern and the Western spirit. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 41
Bodhi is complete enlightenment, Buddha is the enlightened one, the wise one, the clever, the intelligent. So here, enlightenment is personified by the feminine. It is plausible that it could also manifest in a female form. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 46
So, you see that that ultimate good of India, the spirit of self-denial, proceeds from the body, not from the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 37
You see, the gods in no way take the highest position, they do not even have the level of the bodhisattvas, but function essentially as auxiliary powers. This is a characteristic of Buddhism. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 37
One day after his arrival in Bombay on 17 December 1937 Jung took the overnight train to Hyderabad, where he was awarded an honorary doctorate degree by Osmania University. He left on 20 December for Aurangabad (Sengupta, 2013, pp. 99– 102, 108–109). ~Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 29, Fn 192
These are now the meditations anticipated by the practice of Bardo Thödol. This is a collection of those prayers read by the priest for the dead and also for the dying, but as a rule for the dead, as in Mahâyâna Buddhism it is the view that when someone has died, as a rule they are not aware that they are dead and must have it explained to them: “If you have a body, then pass through the walls.” ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 37
When Buddha had finished this speech, Vaidehî, together with her five hundred female attendants, could see, as guided by the Buddha’s words, the scene of the far-stretching World of the Highest Happiness, and could also see the body of Buddha and the bodies of the two Bodhisattvas. With her mind filled with joy she praised them, saying: “Never have I seen such a wonder!” Instantaneously she became wholly and fully enlightened, and attained a spirit of resignation, prepared to endure whatever consequences might yet arise. [p. 199] ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 37
The highest gods come to Buddha for instruction. They must become human in order to be able to be redeemed. They are humans who lead a god-like life for uncountable aeons. Then their karma is ended, and they must be born again like any other mortal. It is said that Buddhism is a religion without gods. In truth, however, that’s not the case. The highest god is the god reborn in man, Buddha himself. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 47
This circle of the Bodhis is the so-called round terrace of enlightenment. This circle is the ground upon which the Bodhi tree stands, that tree under which Buddha fought off the attack of Mâra, the devil. By not being present, he did not allow himself to get lost in existence, but was non-existing. For this reason, the seat of the Buddha is empty. And the devil also tries in vain to attack this seat. There are pictorial representations of this situation in Indian art. You see Mâra under the tree where the empty lotus seat of the Buddha stands. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 48
The bodhi mandala is also known as the bodhi mandavara. Vara means circular flow, which alludes to the fact that this circle is not only something static, but is also in circulatory motion, turning clockwise. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 51
This is an enormous difference between the East and us. Consciousness for us is simply an absolutely present conditio sine qua non. In the East, on the other hand, the phenomenon of consciousness is the absolute center of the world. It is the Buddha, the world-creating god. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 59
That which light is outwardly, consciousness is inwardly. There you have a fundamental concept of the East. Buddha is the inner sun, consciousness is the inner sun. Naturally you must not think that this philosophy means our everyday consciousness—including that of Eastern people—is Buddha. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 59
Mani means pearl or great treasure, padme is the lotus and hûm, like Om, has no single definition. The humming of the bees: humkana, snoring likewise. Both words, mani and padme, are framed with chanting. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 52
For the East, the psychic is not something inexpressible as it is with us, but something quite definite, something half physical. Through the imagination an existent image of the Buddha is created out of psychic material. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 54
The being of one’s own Self, as the text also shows, is at the same time a universal being. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 62
We know only a little about it [Tantric Yoga], and this comes from Sir John Woodroffe. He writes under the pseudonym of Arthur Avalon, Avalon being that town in southern England. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 62
The Indians are very critical of Tantric yoga because it deals exclusively with the physiology of the body and especially with sex, although it is full of exceptionally interesting symbolism. Little is known about tantrism. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 62
In Calcutta I met a series of advocates, among them some very dubious characters. It has very much ousted Mahâyâna Buddhism from Indian scholasticism and is in fact very widespread in Tibet. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 63
The text is called Shrî-chakra-sambhâra Tantra. Shrî means holy; chakra is the wheel, also mandala; sambhâra means bringing together, and also signifies the gathering; and tantra means weaving loom, leaf of paper, the woven, in other words, text. Thus, “the sacred wheel gathering text.” ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 63
The individual exists. What is community? It is a crowd. Only the individual gives it meaning and value. When all is said and done, it is absolutely exclusively the Christ in us. Otherwise we turn idols into gods and deliver ourselves up to idolatry. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 60
Stupas are hemispheric central structures, graves, with three parasols one above the other, representing the three worlds, namely: dharmakâya (i.e., the purely spiritual world, the world of absolute truth), sambhoga kâya (i.e., the intermediate world, the world of subtle bodies) and the nirvana kâya (i.e., the world of objects, the world of created things). One could also describe the three as Self, anima and body. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 52
Tantra means book, a leaf of paper or weaving loom. It is used for educational books or text books utilized for this special purpose. In its whole style Tantrism corresponds to the scholasticism of our Western culture. It plays a very great role in Tibetan Buddhism. They have a particular yoga, described as Kundalini Yoga or Serpent Fire Yoga. But this is Hindu, not Buddhist. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 56
Lamaistisches Vajramandala. This Yantra was used by Jung and Wilhelm as frontispiece to The Secret of the Golden Flower (Wilhelm & Jung, 1929); also in Jung, 1944, fig. 43; Jung, 1950, fig. 1 and §§ 630–638. Jung also presented it at the seminar on dream analysis on 19 February 1930 (Jung, 1928–1930, p. 479). The image was part of a greater number Jung collected, which he presented in his seminar series in Berlin in 1933. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 57 Image 94
the âtman is the absolute origin of being. The particular: that he is not only the universal being like that of the highest Buddha, the essence of the world itself, but he is also a personal being. Everyone has a personal Self, this âtman within, but this is only one aspect of the universal. Whoever immerses himself in the practice of yoga, flows in a way out of the personal âtman into the general, and then considers himself a universal being. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 62
Not at all: rather, the consciousness that is quickened through yoga, that enlightened consciousness (bodhi), that is for them the inner sun. Here we can make a bridge to the West where we have a similar concept in Christianity: the concept of the inner Christ as the inner sun, the inner light. This view is not exactly official; in fact theologians rather like to avoid it. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 59
Jung’s remark can be seen as a critical statement regarding Nazi Germany and other fascist states at the time. At least the audience in the auditorium understood it that way. ES commented in his script: “Great applause.” In 1933, Jung also emphasized the importance of the self-development of the individual in order to fulfil its task within a collective movement: “The self-development of the individual is especially necessary in our time. When the individual is unconscious of himself, the collective movement too lacks a clear sense of purpose. Only the self-development of the individual, which I consider to be the supreme goal of all psychological endeavor, can produce consciously responsible spokesmen and leaders of the collective movement.” [Interview with Adolf Weizsäcker, 26 June 1933 in McGuire/Hull, 1977, p. 64] ~Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 60, fn 218
On the occasion of his visit of the Shakti temple in Trichur, Jung noted: “a so-called flagstaff (dhvâjastambha), a pillar divided into segments, standing on an altar and slightly curved at the top, bedecked with little bells at the upper end. These apparently depict the centers of the senses and the segmented pillars the spinal cord. But this is a great secret. All of this is related to the physiology of the body” (Jung’s copybook “Excerpta,” vol. 7, p. 18). See also Jung’s sketch of the flagstaff; reproduced in Shamdasani (2012), p. 180. ~Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 55, Fn 210
Vajra means thunderbolt or diamond (vaj, hard; ra, wedge). The thunderbolt of the Indra is called vajra; yogini means female consort, a divine being that appears as a consort, the yoked one; shrî means holy and mahâ large; mâyâ is the Shakti, the feminine being that emanates from the masculine creator god and represents the world, a sort of mother of the world, a building material, a material—the word “materia” belongs here—of the visible god, but different from god inasmuch as it depicts his femininity. This femininity is called world. We speak of mother earth or even madam world; shrî mahâmâyâ is therefore the holy great illusion or also the great reality that is also an illusion; Târâ is a specific Mahâyâna goddess. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 63-64
Sattva, i.e., an entity, a being. This term belongs to the three so-called gunas but I will spare you all that. This Buddha has as an epithet the name vajra sattva which means diamond being or thunderbolt being. I prefer the first meaning. It is on the primitive level of the Bon that the thunderbolt is important as a magic missile, but later on a higher philosophical level the diamond meaning plays a much greater role: as the enduring, hardest being that is not subject to change. For example, in Chinese philosophical yoga it describes it as the subtle body, the spiritual body, which is no longer subjected to any changes. There this vajra takes on absolutely the meaning of the lapis philosophorum, the philosophers’ stone, that eternal being brought forth from man, that arises from the striving of his life, from the laboratorium, and then somehow outlives it. The body of the sleeping one is therefore the body of the Buddha vajra sattva—of the diamond being Buddha. Which is to say that this is a matter of a transformation of the body into the diamond being, this eternal, enduring thing. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 66
Feminine divinities were invoked at the beginning. Here is the place where it becomes clear that this is not the usual question of a god who is identical with the yogin, but also of his consort, so that the yogin transforms himself into a feminine being, into the consort of the god, even at the beginning of the experience. This god is described as yogini, i.e., the corresponding feminine. If he imagines his body as that of the devatâ,249 this is the blessedness that belongs to the body. If he says: Shrî Heruka aham, I am the holy Heruka, he should meditate on every syllable of the mantra, identifying himself with the god of the ritual so as to become a dyad, i.e., a form both feminine and masculine. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 69
In Mahâyâna Buddhism Târâ is a female bodhisattva. She plays an important role in Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism, where she is understood as the bodhisattva of compassion and action representing the female aspect of Avalokiteśvara. She has been venerated as a Tantric goddess since the seventh century. As Hindu goddess she is worshipped in Shaktism. ~Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 64, Fn 230
The three gunas (“string,” “strand,” also “quality”) are sattva (i.e., the pure principle), rajas (i.e., the dynamic principle), and tamas (i.e., the principle of inertia), and are seen as the primary constituents of nature. ~ Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 66, Fn 235
He [Evans-Wentz] also translated the Bardo Thodol and generally acquired great benefits through this translation of this text. Nonetheless, due to the grueling climate of Calcutta, which he as a native Tibetan could not withstand, he died. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 67
Advaita means non-dual, therefore “two-less.” So, for example, it is said of Brahman, the world principle: apart from it there is no other. So already with the expression of the prefix syllable shrf, the yogin must realize that his “two-lessness” is being expressed, that there is nothing apart from him. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 70-71
“Ka” is not abiding anywhere. “Ka” abides nowhere and is everywhere. It is the essence of the world, concentrated nowhere but present everywhere. One being permeating everything, the so-called Buddha essence diffused through the whole world. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 71
Our Self seems to us the most defined, singular thing, since only an individual can say of itself that it is the Self. Yet is this Self supposed to be the original being that is uncompounded yet also dispersed through the entire world? ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 71
Vishaya jnana. This is the world acquaintance with objects, a dubious knowledge. For this reason, it is connected with the moon. It is well-known that the moon has a particular relationship to the mind or manas. There is an Upanishad text: “The moon was engendered from his mind.” ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 73
When the yogin imagines the bright lunar disc, he is saying that all knowledge is doubt, deceptive, like moonlight. The word manas is linked to the Middle High German name for the moon: “mane.” Also, both the English word “mind” and the German “Mensch” are linked with this root. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 73
Four points depicting the horizon. The yogi in the center. Here he speaks the mystical syllable “hum.” It depicts a quality of consciousness, namely initial consciousness, the original consciousness, representing the world principle itself. The four colors disseminate from this consciousness in four different directions. These colors are qualities of consciousness; we would say: functions of consciousness-the four possible functions of consciousness that I have amply covered in this lecture. What is depicted here in a vivid form is simply psychology. These rays permeate the four heads of the devata. It is thought of as four divine beings that are permeated by this radiant light. From there, these rays gradually fill the universe, i.e., via this magic circle they go out into the whole world. An image arises like the one we already encountered earlier. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 75
In Indian and Tibetan ritual, these things are still in use. But from antiquity we have a very nice piece of evidence of this in the Mithras liturgy (second century AD): After you have repeated the second prayer, in which Silence is called for twice, whistle twice and snap your fingers twice and you will at once see stars coming forward from the disc of the sun, many, many stars, five pointed, filling the whole air. Say again “Silence, silence” and when the disc of the sun has opened you will behold an infinite circle and fiery doors that are closed. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 76
You can still find Swiss peasants who use the magic circle to prevent evil spirits from doing them harm. ~Barbara Hannah, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 77
When the native Americans say there were animals that were not normal animals, they are saying that sometimes animals have behavior attributed to them, which in fact could only have been attributed to humans. The coyote is a very shy animal. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 78
The animal forms are there because the animals imagine about us what we do not like to imagine about ourselves. This is why the gods also have giraffe and elephant heads, because these are psychological things that are not human. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 78
Rupa is the form, skandha is the element. Again, this is also a psychological term of the East: the form element. It is this element that initiates forms, thus: forms of imagination, ideas. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 80
The Rupa-skandha is Vairochana, so one of those beings who are called to once become a Buddha, thus one of the great bodhisattvas. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 80
Vedana-skandha is the element of the senses. Vajra-suryya is the diamond sun. This amounts to analysis of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 80
Samjna-skandha is the feeling element. Whether samjna can be described as a feeling, I do not know, it has more the meaning of harmony and understanding. Padme is the lotus; nateshvara is the lord of the dance. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 80
Sangskara-skandha is the instinctual element that differentiates itself from the awareness element. Raja-Vajra is the royal diamond. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 80
The awareness element vijnana-skandha is the vajra-sattva, the diamond being, the actual ultimate being that emerges from these functions sort of as a key, as a conclusion: the Buddha. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 80
The text seeks to establish the quaternity of consciousness in the form of an analysis of functions, with a fifth, the Buddha element, in the center. This fifth element serves to dissolve the quaternity, which is still form, in order to bring it into this center, into the innermost being of the yogin, so that he no longer has any distinguishing function of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 80
Then comes an incorporation of the environment into the corpus incorruptibile. I am translating what is described in the East as vajra-sattva (from the root vay, i.e., hard), as diamond being or also as the subtle body. It is also a thunderbolt, a missile that the gods send out, hard as a diamond and penetrating. This plays a particular role in the later course of this Yoga exercise. This corpus incorruptibile is what we know from Paul in the New Testament as the incorruptible body. In the Middle Ages it was called the corpus glorificationis, i.e., the body that one will put on at the Last Judgment.
Alchemy set itself the task of creating this body by chemical means. One assumed that it must be a kind of subtle substance. The yogi or lama thus experiences that, as Buddha, he is simply vajra-sattva, i.e., the diamond being, and as such he can now incorporate the entire environment into himself, rather as if I would incorporate you as a part of my own personality. So, he extends his personality over his entire environment. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 82-83
The identification with Mahasukha and yogini. This is a declaration that the yogi or lama delivers to his own address: I am the god of ultimate happiness and at the same time its feminine counterpart, i.e., Shakti, who is also paired with the god. The god always appears as masculine and feminine simultaneously, in particular also in Tibetan. In Greece, it is the same. To a particularly high degree this is the case with the gods of Babylon who are always paired with the nameless feminine. This is the yoking together, in Greek: the syzygy, a permanent union of the masculine and the feminine. This is an important psychological motif, which we also encounter in the psychology of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 83-84
The declaration “Shd Heruka Aham”: “I am the divine being who is the lord of this mandala.” Psychologically Mahasukha or Heruka would correspond to what one describes as the Self, namely the whole that one assembles through ego consciousness and the totality of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 84
This four-part meditation climaxes in a fifth. This scheme occurs frequently. There are four points, but they are not arranged sequentially in Eastern psychology as we would order them. The East thinks in a circular way, not in rows. This mode of perception was lost to us at the moment when actual scientific thinking began. In the Middle Ages we too thought in a circular way. Quinta essentia, that is the ultimate, not simply number 5. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 84
1 Corinthians 15:41-46: “There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual” [KJV]. On the discussion of this infallible Christian doctrine in eighteenth-century psychology, see Vidal (2011), pp. 325-350. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page Fn 283
In his 1939 Eranos lecture Jung mentions the corpus glorificationis in connection with the idea of the resurrection: “It may be a carnal body, as in the Christian assumption that this body will be resurrected. On a higher level, the process is no longer understood in a gross material sense; it is assumed that the resurrection of the dead is the raising up of the corpus glorificationis, the ‘subtle body,’ in the state of incorruptibility.” (Jung, 1940, § 202) ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page fn 284
So, these are the four parts of the meditation upon which the fifth follows: the analysis of knowledge. Likewise, in the second part B there are four individual functions and then comes, fifth, the analysis of the functions. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 86
Through this the yogi is moved in faith or into an ecstatic state in which he feels one with the highest being. In this state of course, he is at huge risk. For it is impossible for [an] individual human being in a body to be an absolute being. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 87
In fact, this is the critique of pure reason by means of which, apparently, Kant affirmed his religious conviction. He proved that one can assert nothing about an ultimate being because all of this is only thoughts. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 87
“The concept of God is an ‘idea’, an ‘ideal’ of reason. Like all objects of ideas, God is unknowable. For theoretical reason, ‘God’ is not a principle serving the explanation of phenomena, but rather a ‘regulatory’ concept, in order to bring ultimate unity into experience by regarding all connection in the world as if it emerged out of one essential principle. This ‘as if’ occurs frequently in Kantian theories of God; ultimately Kant describes God as something which is only an idea, something that manifests itself in reason; it does not have existence (at least in a categorial sense), which however does not preclude a supernatural ideal God-being. We are not able to perceive God but we probably consider him, in an analogous way to our mind, by means of a symbolic anthropomorphism, as a sentient and intentional being in order to make him more accessible to us. But chiefly, God is a postulate of practical-ethical reason, an object of belief. The ethical world view ultimately requires the idea of God for its completion (not as a foundation) in the sense of a moral theism.” (Eisler, 1930, pp. 216-217) ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page fn 288
Vishaya jnana: knowledge of doubt-everything is doubt, or doubtful. For this reason, there is there the symbol of the moon. One recognizes everything rather as if through moonlight. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 87
Dharma-Dhatu-Jnana. Dharma means truth or law; Dhatu is the element; hence: the perception of principal truth. Within this, my assertion that I am myself the being of Buddha or the diamond being is assured. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 87
The light of four colors emerges from the “hum.” That knowledge is first dissolved into four colors. These correspond in the Tibetan mandala to the points of the compass. At the same time, it is four psychological functions, four ways of knowledge, four ways to truth, etc.; i.e., this light has four different qualities. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 87
In the fourth phase he takes into himself, and also receives, the emanation of the light that he had created through the “hum” and then radiated. Thus arises the Self. All emanation is absorbed back into the Self. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 87
That is the analysis of the four functions:
Rupa-skandha: Thinking; the so-called form function, the individual function par excellence
Vedana-skandha: Sensation; the Tibetan translator explains vedana as the sensing faculty: perception through sensation, the sensing function
Samjna-skandha: Feeling; the translator says “agreement, harmony”
Sangskara-skandha: Intuition; creation of mind ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 88
The Buddha has testified to reaching back into early aeons before the foundation of the world. The hundreds of thousands of lives he has lived, as an animal, an ape, a frog, and many other forms. All this has gradually developed into consciousness. The ability to recall these traces of earlier lives signals a higher consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 88
That’s an unconscious function in us-intuition-a perception through the unconscious. But the East has not applied intuition to the external as much as we have. There, everything goes inwards. An actual perception of sangskara is intuition; such would be the essential correspondence that we have in the West. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 89
Vijnana-skandha: Buddha Vjara-sattva (perception). This is once again the quinta essentia. So, in conclusion: “I perceive all my psychic functions, the eternal being of Buddha is the same as their quintessence.” With this, the cirucmambulatio is again completed, and it is certain that he is the Buddha. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 89
When the East declares this to itself, it’s not in the least bit crazy, absolutely not, because it does not proclaim “I am,” but rather, “I, as an eternal being, am the Buddha, for if I move into this state of being, then I am the ultimate being.” ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 90
One has long believed that primitives get up to dance simply when the mood takes them or when the moon shines. Not a word of it! They must first get into the state that lets them perform the dance. I observed this with the Pueblos. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 90
One must say, then, that all these Tibetan and Indian gods have both a positive and a negative aspect, a benevolent and a vengeful aspect. The goddess of goodness is also a goddess of hell. In the vengeful aspect, they have all the vices that humans may not have. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 90
The body is eternal jealousy and all senses are vajra ishvara, the eternal lord. The sense organs are precisely what bind man to the world, through the so-called nidana chain. This is a technical term in Buddhist psychology, the chain of causation. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 93
So, we encounter here this element that is thoroughly negative. One can simply say that the claim “I am the Buddha” collides with the experience of the body. I draw your attention to the fact that this claim is outrageous if one realizes it. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 93
That is why the antithesis begins with this explanation: the body arises with temporal and spatial limitation and rages against the claim that it is the eternal Buddha. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 93
When I was a student, everything was explained by ether. One believed that it was a scientific term. But that was not the case, for it was rather metaphysical, having precisely all the qualities that matter does not have. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 94
Souls are flying around and seeking places where sexual intercourse is happening and then they are caught. The Bardo Thodol considers souls in the same way. When they fall into erotic fantasies, they are suddenly snapped up by the uterus. One is in the prison of the sensual world of Maya, the dancing Shakti. It is the goddess Maya who creates the visible realm. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 95
For the Buddhist, the visible is illusory. Maya com.es from the root Ma, i.e., to build. Maya is the built world, and it is created out of the stuff of thoughts. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 95
It is not an actual world in our sense, but rather it is an actual world of illusion, actual but all the same an illusion because it is built of the forms of thoughts. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 95-96
This is why Tantric yoga, which has many connections with Mahayana Buddhism, also says that maya is nothing other than the form of divine thoughts-also a very interesting way of thinking. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 96
When one succeeds through active imagination in making the various intellectual and sensory functions autonomous by saying: seeing is not my function but rather it is a devata, i.e., an autonomous being, then this is a great gain. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 96
We have already encountered the idea that one should imagine the four basic functions of our consciousness as Buddha, and thus as a being in our consciousness, as if the various functions were beings in their own right. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 96
If you imagine this, then it boils down to the idea that through this imagination, every psychic action is transformed into a distinct entity: the process of imagination, of thinking, feeling, etc., this is a distinct entity. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 96
If you imagine that the thinking of the I is no longer your own activity but an autonomous being, then the entire psychic process is completely cumbersome as if I were to dissolve myself into separate parts. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 96
In this way, one empties oneself of these functions. One no longer has them. One pushes them away. Instead of being a personality one is now an entire theater represented by a troupe of actors who are these distinct functions. The whole personality, all my functions, are paraded before me as autonomous figures. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 96
Everything that we do not wish to be true of ourselves, we always see in a dear neighbor. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 97
That’s why we need our dear relations. They are also simply stand-ins that we like to use unconsciously to mirror everything that one hates to see in oneself. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 97
Even the Heruka, the lord of the mandala, is absolutely not only a purely positive apparition, for he also reflects every evil leading into birth, death, illness, and the totality of life. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 97
This personification has been undertaken here for the senses. If that personification is successful, the same effect is achieved, I place my sensory functions as it were all around me. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 97
Schizophrenia is constructed along these lines. Only there it is an illness, involuntary. For when one leaves this process simply to the unconscious, it just goes on operating, and for people with this disposition a multiplication occurs. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 100
However, if I succeed in dissolving my psychic limitation into so and so many personalities, then it is as if I disperse my entire spiritual possession into so and so many beings throughout the universe and I sit in the midst of many gods. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 100
This is the invocation of the tathagata. “All perfecting holy wheel concentrating Mandala” is the title of the text, but it is also a state. Then: “The wheel is every man and woman,” which means: Invocation of the
Buddha who is at the same time this wheel, this mandala, man and woman, i.e., the feminine belonging to him. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 100-101
After these magical procedures comes the invocation, calling upon that being who is to be formed by the lama. This is an utterly remarkable psychological situation. He himself is this Samanta Bhadra Buddha, this Buddha of likeness. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 105
After all, everyone is a mixture of pairs of opposites, and anyone who believes otherwise is only one-sided, they live only one half-side, and they don’t want to know anything about the other side. This is the disease of the West; it arises from the person as such, with all contradictions, not from logic. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 105
There are no completely healthy people. In humanity there is always a certain degree of illness present. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 106
Yoga is not only used to transform oneself into a Buddha, but extensively as a training of the will in which the whole of the actual world is largely removed. One becomes an actor of oneself; one can actually put on such a show. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 106
It is an absolutely typical process in the East: that is, their tendency to allow something to seem objective which for us is purely subjective, while also acknowledging the fact that indeed, in fact, it is objective too. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 106
Dharma is the truth, the law. Sangha is the community, the original Buddhist community, later the enclosure of the monastery. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 109
Shravakas are pupils of the Buddha; Pratyeka Buddhas are mavericks. These are Buddhas who did not come to earth for humanity but who achieved perfection for themselves. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 109
They [Pratyeka Buddhas] do not preach, they do not belong to any community, but they are ones who have stepped clear of the turning of the wheel in their cycle of existence, who have left the world of suffering, of appearance, completely. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 109
In this section a dialogue with the devatas is anticipated. It is often the case that when such ecstatic states are created through active imagination that the generated form achieves so much activity and spontaneity that it responds with a reply, occasionally in a very shocking way. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 110
In order to prevent this-because if something like this happens it would be dangerous for the dogma,-what the devatas would have had to say is now uttered, i.e., they must respond in accord with the dogma…That is how the spontaneous expressions by figures from the unconscious are anticipated and intercepted. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 110-111
The very intention of the exercise is to yoke the kleshas, the unconscious drives. If such an unconscious figure should dare to declare something on its own, the yoking would be interrupted, and the protective power of the dogma would be broken. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 111
In the text at hand, the lama informs his psyche about its own nature and how it ought to behave. Provided that it also befits the psyche, the unconscious willingly flows into these forms. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 111
But if the dogma takes on such a form, through further differentiation of consciousness, that it no longer corresponds to the nature of the objective psyche, then the unconscious can no longer flow into it. Then it’s not the dogma that breaks down, but the psyche. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 111
So very many lives are broken because the living unconscious can no longer enter into the sacred form. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 111
But in India it has been wrapped in the mantle of Hinduism again. The Buddha is now the ninth recognized incarnation of Vishnu. The tenth is on the way, that is the white horse. But it comes only after the Buddha. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 112
Buddhism and its doctrine are now recognizable under the cloak of Hinduism. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 112
But its [Buddhism] achievements, its supreme integration, its clarity of consciousness, are not known any longer even in India, where it is now a private affair for individual enlightened ones. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 112
You almost dare not speak its name because so much chicanery is perpetrated in India. Today in India, the yoga thing is a business, and woe betide us if this flummery is set loose in Europe. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 112
In Ceylon the faith still has a dogmatic form. As to why India was not able to sustain Buddhism as the ultimate expression of the religious creative will, I have no idea. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 112
But the fact is that polytheism, this unending richness in the form of the divine essence, is somehow a more exact expression of the Indian soul than that of the perfected Buddha. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 112
That is why we are in the situation today where all those who no longer express their unconscious in this imaginal way demonstrate the highest number of neuroses. That absolutely certain fact stems from the perpetual disquiet caused by things that one cannot, rather than will not, reveal. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 112
Whereas if the unconscious can be contained in a dogmatic form, then we have those forms of life, ceremonies, and rituals in which the soul’s activity can find expression. For example, the central Australians spend two-thirds of their time in ceremonies of a symbolic nature. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 112
We say: Well, those are just primitives, we do more useful things. But such things are less meaningful, they are always only about doing business. Whereas those people take care of the business of the world. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 113
A native Pueblo-Indian wrote to me once that Americans should stop getting involved in tribal religious ceremonies. Otherwise in ten years the sun would no longer rise, since they make that happen with their prayers. Therefore one dare not stop them from doing that. There is something in this. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 113
It has become apparent in the West, in complete contrast to the East, that women in particular elaborate such symbols in their unconscious. In the East this occurs only exceptionally. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 114
These symbols of roundness, the mandalas that you find in the East, are produced in Buddhism exclusively by men. The women have fundamentally nothing to do with it. On the other hand, in the matriarchal South, in the area south of Hyderabad, it’s the prerogative of women. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 114
I have seen quite new mandalas, of modern vintage, drawn on that very day. In the great temple of Madurai I observed a woman at work. She could not understand why a man might take it up: in her view only women know all the many significances involved in how the mandala comes into being. But that is the matriarchal South. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 114
In the North you can still find these matriarchal traces, but not by a long stretch to such a degree, because the North has been strongly penetrated by Islam following the Mogul invasion. But in the South it is practiced much more. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 114
There is an exception in the South, where one can penetrate into this mandala symbolism, and where men in fact still practice it. That’s more to the North, in the region of Bengal, where one finds quite a few followers of a certain yoga practice more closely linked to Tibetan yoga, namely Tantric yoga, laya yoga or kundalini yoga. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 115
For the medieval philosopher, spiritual man is a microcosm. Thus, the individual human soul is of the
same roundness as the soul of all-being that surrounds the entire universe. The Platonic notion is identical to the Eastern philosophy of the atman or purusha who surrounds the whole world two bandwidths high and yet still lives in the heart of every individual person; he is the size of a thumb, a thumb ling. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 115
The idea of roundness, however, is not conceived of as being present from the beginning, but is to be created by the yogi. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 115
Through this invocation he seeks to place himself at one with that being containing within itself the entire cosmos as a transpersonal atman. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 115
And hermetic philosophy itself is not without blame in this. They practiced chemistry in their own way and sought the soul of the world in matter, thereby becoming the fathers of modern science. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 115
The sixteenth-century ascent into a purely intellectual Western philosophy no longer had room for a way of salvation or doctrine of redemption unless it came via knowledge. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 116
Henceforward one philosophized with the head. Whereas the ancients philosophized with the whole person. From then on they philosophized only about the person, not out of the person. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 116
These days we are blinded by the fear of superstition. Magic is objectionable to us. If someone uses the word “magic,” it is construed as being opposite to science. But “magical” simply means “psychological.” ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 116
Vajra-Muh is a specific type of invocation: muh means to deceive or to blind. Maha, i.e., the blinding, comes from the same root. A moha mantra is the memorized formula for blinding, i.e., it effects what is spoken: blinding. This invocation vajra-muh, causing blinding, is a moha mantra, a spell-binding word. It is used by adherents to blind the demons who could imperil the sacred exercise, shielding the yoga practitioner from the influence of demons. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 118
And in order to be completely liberated he must also create his female unconscious. This, then, takes place through the ten female devatas. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 119
Kandha means the multitude (at the zenith), while roha is the ascending out of the growing (nadir). We visualize the concept, namely, that above or at the top occurs the unfolding, while below grows the root-where the plant grows upwards. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 119
This is evidently the description of a square mandala with doors. The mandala is surrounded by fire, the heavenly flames. This is the fire of concupiscentia, of desire, that gets entangled in new births. This must burn outwards to defend against external temptation. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 119
This is a crucial point for the real magic of the Tibetan: the imagination of magic projectiles. They are conjured up for the purpose of this numinous emanation. It is granted, apart from all these forms, that one can also create magical entities through yoga, projectiles that are taken as vajra, which can be imaginally produced so as to harm certain people or even kill them. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 120
You see to what a huge extent the East honors consciousness as the light benevolently supporting man in the terrible darkness surrounding him. This darkness of the unconscious is what the East construes as the epitome of evil. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 120
All evil comes from ignorance. All evil, the entire sum of life, comes from not knowing. You will find this doctrine in the original words of the Buddha. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 120
The two causal rewards are the holiness of effort and jnana, i.e., enlightenment. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 121
These devatas are exactly like the buddhas and bodhisattvas who all fill the heavens so powerfully, just like maya, i.e., deceit, illusion, like the being that populates this world. All this multiplicity is illusion. That is what he should think. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 121
“Man as the measure of all things,” the origin of all aspects of the world. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 121
This means that one’s own consciousness, streaming from the ground of the heart, is the source of all perceptible things, whether seen or otherwise perceived through the senses. Not that they are not, but that our perception of them is nothing but illusion. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 122
Again, meditating on Maya (Gyuma, that is the world) as being Shunyata (the Void) inconceivable by thought, say-Om: I am of the nature of the Void and Varja knowledge. [SCST, p. 15] This is the knowledge that anything that we can know of the world, in either the physical or spiritual sense, is psychic. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 122
And while certain psychic things originate in a material world of images and others in a spiritual one, who can say what is physical and what is spiritual? ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 122
We simply have one psychic world of images with two labels, “physical in origin” and “spiritual in origin,” whose reality, however, is purely psychic. If that were not so one wouldn’t know that the world
Shunyata means void. It is an absolute nothing, but a nothing of positive being, a paradox that we simply cannot imagine. Whenever Buddha himself was asked about eschatological concepts, his answers were mostly evasive; he was tight-lipped towards his pupils about certain things, for whatever reasons. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 124
Out of the ultimate spiritual concept of shunyata the earth emerges as quinta essentia, as if the imagination did not have spiritualization as its goal but aimed instead at the becoming-real of the tangible earth. That is fabulously different from the Western attitude. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 125
This square earth is also a foundation for the architecture of temples in the Tantric system and for another form of yoga, namely the so-called Kundalini yoga. . ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 125
Herakleitos of Ephesos, pre-Socratic philosopher, who lived around 500 BCE, is reported to have said: “For it is death to souls to become water, and death to water to become earth. But water comes from earth; and from water, soul” ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 125, fn 332
North=white West=green East= yellow South=red
These four different colors also occur in the Bardo Thodol, the four paths to salvation via enlightenment. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 126
The ultimate ideal of the Western intellect is to think without feeling, because feeling is a cosmetic blemish that destroys thinking. In the East that is not the case. The East always thinks as a totality and much more substantially, from the whole person. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 126
We violate the psychic phenomenon if we don’t grasp it with the whole person. Otherwise we’ve understood only one quarter of it, for the intellect amounts to only a quarter of the functions. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 126
For if something is imbued with feeling then you can be sure that in practice it will play a great role, even if the intellect sees it as madness. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 127
Mark Twain, I believe, enumerated every last condemnation of Christian Science. He believed it was complete nonsense. A distillation of human stupidity. But he added that it’s this stupidity that rules the world. A thing need only be really stupid for it to be believed. Everyone understands stupid, whereas intelligent things reach only a few. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 127
Love is warm, otherwise, as is well known, it is not love (South). Sensation has to do with the green earth; it perceives the actual being (West). Thinking is cold and white like snow (North). Intuition is yellow, luminous, radiant, through the sweepingly immediate perception one encounters with this function (East). ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 127
A typical example are Goethe’s eyes in Stieler’s painting, which do not see but rather look; that’s the intuitive glance. It is not directed towards the concrete phenomenon, but keenly absorbs the reality, the whole atmosphere. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 127
The East uses yellow to illustrate the quality of intuition-for with it one feels being rather than formulating it intellectually or more abstractly. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 127
As you see, then, the symbol for the mind is not a masculine symbol as it us for us. Think of logos, God the father, or think of the male Greek god Hermes. It is much more a feminine symbol that characterizes the mind. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 130
And there you see what sort of mind is characteristic for the East, a type of feminine mind (as seen by the man), a sort of unconscious mind. Not the generation of a creation or figure of consciousness but much more a creation of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 130
This is now, as you see, a complete unification of the masculine consciousness with the unconscious feminine mind. We also have certain reference points in Western culture, in that the Holy Spirit would be called upon as mother by the early Christian Gnostics in the Acts of Thomas. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 130-131
The Holy Spirit, Sophia, is a feminine being. There is even a famous love story between Bythos, the primal father, and Sophia, his youngest granddaughter, who falls terribly in love with him. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 131
Jung stayed in Puri with Fowler McCormick from 13 to 15 January 1938, on which occasion he visited the Jagannath and Konarak temples. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 132, fn 343
One often finds wheels on Buddhist monuments because it is said that Buddha set the wheel of the law in motion in his first sermon in the grove at Benares. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 133
The ancient stupa form is similar to the baroque church towers of the Jesuits. It emerges out of a lingam. The stupa building stands exactly at the place where the lingam stands in a Hindu temple. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 133
Krishna as an incarnation of Vishnu is blue, like Osiris in Egypt. The blue body symbolizes the body of a god. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 135
Kamaloka is the world of the senses, rupaloka is the world of form, arupaloka is the formless, spiritual world. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 135
The Indian gods are often represented with three eyes. Here we learn that this is in order to see the three times: past, present, and future. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 135
Rupaloka, i.e., the world of forms or ideas, corresponding to the Platonic world of ideas. According to Plato there is “a place beyond the skies” when the soul lifts above heaven and leaves behind the outer surface of the world, thus arriving at that place where one sees the forms, the eternal ideas; so, that is the world of the manifold ideas, or forms ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 137
Arupa, i.e., the world in which there are no more forms, where everything becomes Maya, passing away into nothing. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 137
In Western iconography we have a similar representation of the Trinity: a three-headed divine being in the Christian church. Although this vivid representation has been banned by the pope, in the monastery at Stein am Rhein such a tricephalous Trinity can still be seen. But in India this is still quite common. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 138
These twelve hands represent the so-called twelve projections. According to the Tibetan definition these are twelve ways in which one can transfer oneself into the consciousness of another human being. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 138
The twelve nidanas point to one of the basic teachings of Buddhism: this is the so-called nidana chain. This is a doctrine that goes back directly to the Buddha. The classic representation can be found in Nidana Samyutta, one of the collections of the Buddha’s talks. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 138
Here you see how the entire world-form is derived from the inner realm, from the unknowing or ignorance about the cause of things (avidya). Out of this arise the forms (rupa). Out of these forms arises consciousness that perceives the world. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 139
The power is Shiva, the creative and destructive god, and his wisdom is Shakti, his consort. The spirit is considered female. This corresponds to the ancient Christian conception of the Holy Spirit as female, as Sophia. Also as sapientia, i.e., wisdom. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 140
Vajra means eternal, and varaht is the feminine of varaha, the third incarnation of Vishnu. In this incarnation, God has taken on the form of a boar named varaha, and is represented as having a human body and a boar’s head. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 140
The demon is called Hiranyaksha. Hiranya means gold, aksha is the sense organ, akshi is the eye. So this would be translated as golden eye. So this is the demon who sits beneath the sea and holds down the earth beneath it. The remarkable thing is that in the Upanishads, a Hiranyagarbha appears, a golden seed comes out of the womb of the world and has a redemptive significance. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 140
It can happen that you might wake out of sleep with the feeling that half your soul has wandered off. It must be found again. Among primitives the medicine men have their ways and means of reclaiming lost souls. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 141
This submersion of consciousness is described here as an extremely unfortunate state. This is due to the primitive fear of the end of the world, for when consciousness perishes the world also perishes, because no one is there to perceive this consciously. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 141
We do not realize the importance of our consciousness; it is a cosmogonic factor of extraordinary significance. The ancient Indians knew this, and that is why they experienced the end of the world, i.e., of consciousness, as an evil trick played upon them by their evil demon. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 141
Hiranyaksha is related to Hiranyagarbha. Hiranyagarbha is one of the most significant symbols of the Self, corresponding to the atman-purusha in the atman philosophy. There it is a thoroughly positive
figure, but here it is negative. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 141-142
Yoga is one such technique that aims at creating just that: namely, this descent of consciousness into the depth of the unconscious in order to find God there, for then the Lord of blessedness will arise as Mahasukha. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 142
In the famous cliff temples of Mamallapuram on the eastern coast of the Gulf of Bengal there is a wonderful figure of the Varaha with the boar’s head, his small Shakti sitting upon him, kindly embracing and kissing him on the snout. This seems grotesque to us, but in no way is it repulsive to the Indian. For he sees the idea. Such images are not made for beauty. For an Indian the idea is ceaselessly meaningful and holy. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 143
The mandala devatas, those divine figures that we have seen so often, are sambhogakaya beings. Sambhogakaya means embrace, relationship, unification, joy in connection. One might very suitably translate it with the alchemical expression of the coniunctio. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 143-144
We have already seen in Buddha’s talks that the nidana chain unites both worlds. On the one side is nirmanakaya, the kamaloka, the visible world, and on the other side the dharmakaya, the arupaloka, the formless spiritual world of perfect truth. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 144
Between the formless and the fullness of form stands sambhogakaya. Psychologically expressed: between the one unknowable unity of psychic being and the one essence split into the multiplicity of psyche is a world of form and idea. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 144
Sambhogaka corresponds precisely to the concept of the collective unconscious. There one finds archetypal forms corresponding to the devatas, those divine beings who represent the intermediary world. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 144
The gods too disappear again, they are only temporary forms. That is why the gods come to the birth of Buddha and to his death, that is why they need the teaching of the Buddha. They must even become human in order to be redeemed, for that leads to perfection. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 147
Then follows the analysis of perception. There it is demonstrated that the lama is in possession of all of his forms of perception. This is rather like an examination that he conducts upon himself. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 150
The four functions are described as horizon lights. These exist in all religions. In Islam these are the angels of the North, South, West, and East. Here it is the essential components of the all-Buddha. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 151
Out of the void (shunyata) the four elements are brought forth. Out of this Mount Meru is constructed. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 152
I am hoping that when you think of alchemy you do not conjure up the art of gold making. That’s an understandable prejudice, a chronic misconception that one can count on. But it is quite doubtful that the making of gold has anything to do with it. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 152
Alchemy has existed since the first century BC, probably longer. It was a peculiar process of initiation, a form of practical yoga, but regarded superficially it can in no way be compared with Indian yoga. However, if one looks into the symbolism more closely, one sees the same initiatic intention. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 152
Yet the procedure is completely different. In alchemy, substances were always worked with. In yoga it happens within the person. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 152
“Our gold is not common gold,” a saying that Arnold de Villanova (c. 1240-1301) in the Rosarium Philosophorum attributed to “Senior,” which was the Latin name under which the Arab alchemist Muhammad Ibn Umail (900-960) was known. ~Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 152, fn 369
One of the earliest alchemists who is well-known to us is Zosimos. He belongs in the third century. A series of Greek texts originates with him. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 153
Women played a great role in alchemy. That is something completely foreign to Eastern yoga, with the exception of Kundalini yoga where the devotion of the community is also shared by women. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 154
“To divide philosophy into four.” Matter was divided into four elements and therefore philosophy had to be divided into four parts. This division into four was described as the series of the four colors: nigredo, i.e., darkness; albedo, i.e., the ascent of light, becoming light; citrinatis, i.e., becoming yellow, and finally the strange color suggested by the Greek word “iosis”: “becoming iosis.” Berthelot sometimes translated it as violet, but that is questionable. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 155-156
An idea one also finds among primitives who differentiate the subtle body, the breath body, from the visible body. The subtle body is also described as anima. In Latin, animus, in Greek anemos, meaning wind or breath, thus a being of breath. This notation runs through the whole of alchemy. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 156
This separatio elementorum was also equated with the four seasons. The four seasons are the attributes of homo philosophicus. So this primordial man is also paired with time. We find the same ideas in India where Prajapati is connected with the year. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 156
“Knowest thou not that heaven and the elements were formerly one, and were separated by a divine act of creation from one another, that they might bring forth thee and all things.” ~Gerhard Dorn, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 158
In Buddhism it is the sacrifice of the dvidya, of the unknowing, unconsciousness. Out of this arises a differentiated conscious awareness. The instinctive unity is therefore quartered and re-unified. This second unity is Mount Meru. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 160
The mountain was also used symbolically. For example, there is a point in Michael Maier where a vulture sits on the mountain top and says: “I, says he, am the black from the white / and the yellow from the red / the veritable truth that does not deceive.” ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 161
So Christ is the small stone out of which an entire mountain has come. Conversely, Mary is also described as a mountain because the small stone comes from her. ~St. Ambrose, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 162
The four elements that emerge from shunyata are the division into four psychic functions or four elements of nature. This corresponds to the divisio aqaue of the primordial water into four elements. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 163
Then to Mount Meru. You know many parallels related to this: Mons, upon which the lapis philosophorum is found, or where the miraculous plant lunaria (flax or darnel) grows. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 164
In the book of Daniel. This stone was always related to the cornerstone, the lapis angularis, and hence Christ was also called lapis angularis or parvulus or exillis in mediaeval language. It was hewn from the mountain, and for this reason the mountain is also Mary. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 164
We must know how the human spirit was originally created. This is a kind of comparative anatomy of the spirit. In comparative anatomy we cannot understand the form if we don’t know the biological antecedents. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 164
If we seek to understand the unconscious psyche, we must understand its history and hence reach back to the earlier functioning of the human spirit. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 164
In the summer we will have the opportunity to discuss the exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the only official medieval form of yoga in the West. The unofficial Western yoga that concurs fully with that of the East is precisely this yoga of alchemy. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 164
Now for the symbol of the city of Brahman. In alchemy we have parallels with civitas (city) or castrum (castle). Mainly we find that civitas or castrum is a symbol of Mary, therefore feminine in meaning, because the city is the cherishing one. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 165
The same idea was present in mediaeval alchemy, that the sapientia Dei was like four castles: one is crystal, the second silver, the third diamond (vajra), and the fourth beyond the domain of the senses, i.e., humanly indiscernible. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 165
The love of philosophy, the striving for truth, of transformation into incorruptible substance: for these natural philosophers, philosophy was a way to the inner transformation of man, and therefore, as I said, a problem we no longer know anything about. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 165
Hippolytus informs us that there used to be Gnostics who spoke of walls and a castle in which the human soul resides. There is in fact such a text in the Bodleian library in Oxford, the Codex Brucianus. There, a Coptic text has been discovered that is a proper gnosis. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 167
In Egypt, a series of such texts has been discovered in which there, too (thank god), the writings of Mani were found. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 167
In the Gospel of John, the Monogenes is replaced with Logos, the Word, the Son of God. This primal being corresponds absolutely to the Indian idea of the purusha, i.e., the original man. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 168
Already in Gnosticism, in this Codex Brucianus of Coptic Gnosticism, we encounter the idea that Christ is the Monogenes, standing on a four-legged podium. That’s the gnostic idea of Christ on the Tetramorph. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 169
This number four is the tetraktys. Other Gnostics describe man as a tetrad, probably referring to our four extremities. Also one revelatory goddess is the tetrad. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 170
“Leisegang says the word Barbelo comes from the Hebrew words: Barbhe Eloha=’In the four is God.'” Leisegang adds to this in a footnote: “The tetras of the Ophites: father, son and feminine pneuma, Christ or in the Baruch book: the good, Elohim, Eden, Baruch [ … ] . Barbelo is perhaps also play on words on ‘bar’ and baal.” ~Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 170, fn 411
What arises from the alchemical retort is the soul, and its ascent is called “blossoming.” Comarius, the archpriest, instructed Cleopatra that the dead who dwell in Hades, i.e., in chaos, will become spring blossoms by sprinkling chaos with the divine water. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 172
Of course, I’m fully aware that this problem of the active exercise of the imaginative capacity is a matter that is not exactly popular, especially these days while the world resounds with war and rumors of war, and our culture is gradually disappearing into obscurity or at least is threatening to disappear. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 177
Those of my audience who were here last semester will know that by active imagination we understand an active engagement with otherwise passive fantasy. By fantasy we mean something usually quite useless. Like a leisure activity for people with time on their hands. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 178
It must be admitted that fantasy is a game, a creative game. In Indian mythology the play of the gods is the making of the world. So, in microcosm, man can become creator? at least “the little god o’ the world” as Faust says. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 178
In the Middle Ages and in the East fantasy as imagination played a specific role. They trusted it more than we do today. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 178
The Amitayur-Dhyana-Sutra is the older text. We have a Chinese translation from the fifth century. The Sanskrit original is lost. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 179
I’d like to remind you that as far as Eastern fantasy is concerned everything has a different character than it does for us. The East, unlike us, does not suffer from a morbus sexualis, in this regard being absolutely normal. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 179
So when a lotus is imagined upon the firm floor of the real it means that the lotus is really made through the imagination. This is an extremely particular Eastern requirement, this imaginal exertion to create something psychically real through practice and the utmost concentration. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 179
As a rule it is accepted that psychic reality is nonspatial, for in the East psychic reality is a thing which exists in and for itself, it can be perceived and even induced to appear, but it cannot be invented. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 180
In the final chapter of the book With Mystics and Magicians in Tibet by Mme. David-Neel, there is a description of how she was guided to produce such a splinter figure within herself, who then however became truculent, and how it took several months to work free of this figure once again. The reality of this description cannot be doubted. I know Mme. David-Neel personally. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 180
When I went to East Africa to visit the Negroes, a medicine man asked me: “What, you want to study these negroes? That’s not interesting at all. Here you must study the Europeans who come to Africa!” And he was right. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 181
When the lama imagines something real and it succeeds, then he has made something real. He has created something with his fantasy that adheres to him. His conscious psychology has changed, and he has made another being. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 181
In any case it is evident that this Buddha corresponds absolutely to the mystical idea of the inner Christ. In the New Testament there are individual places referring to this idea, namely that everyone is in fact a Christ, inasmuch as he succeeds in identifying himself in imagination with Christ. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 181
Active imagination serves the purpose of introducing psychic enlightenment into this void and thus transforming the inner dark unknowing into the light so that one is not in nonexistence, but one knows that one exists. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 182
You can also divide the circle into sixteen parts, but the division into four is the simplest, and for this reason it is an archetypal, basic attitude of the human spirit. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 182
The moon is considered nearly everywhere to be feminine, although it is a masculine noun in German. However, in middle High German mane is feminine. It is the “reflecting light.” ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 183
With us, in the choir of Christian churches there is the high altar and suspended above it is the cross. In contrast, in the East the holy of holies is in a deep shaft in the earth, three to four meters deep: beneath is a yoni in a lotus, upon which is the lingam, the phallic symbol. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 183
We associate the spirit with above; in India it is below, in the muladhara, meaning in the root support from which the whole of life ascends. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 183
In samkhya philosophy, or in Vedanta altogether, the lingam means the subtle body containing the ancient idea of the anima. The subtle body is thought of as half matter. The soul has a fine subtle body, and it is called lingam. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 184
The moon (manas) means reflective knowledge, understanding, consciousness, truth. Consciousness ( or psyche) unified with the subtle body (lingam) creates the holy gathering. This is the reality of the Buddha. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 185
All researchers of alchemical history have overlooked the fact that the main point in what they said and thought was not the making of gold. The most important and most interesting thing is that it is a Western form of yoga. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 184
But in the Middle Ages no one in Europe understood Greek. Not until the time of the humanists, when Byzantium was conquered from the Turks, did part of this Eastern spiritual culture arrive in the West. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 192
A conjunctio now becomes the ultimate composition. Even the difference between the sexes is removed. I must add that the difference between sun and moon is not thought of as physical. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 192
Despite the palpable symbolism, the conjunctio is not to be thought of as a physical connection, but rather as a unification of the spiritus, the subtle body. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 193
Now follows the holy enclosure, the house, the secret chamber. The monastery vihara corresponds to the mysterious vas hermetis in alchemy in which the conjunctio took place. In the Chinese Book of the Yellow Castle it is described as the “purple room in the Nephrite city.” ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 193
Then, at last, in the Tibetan text the lord of the whole appears, the personality, the end product: identification with the Buddha. This is where the identification with Christ logically follows. Alchemy compared Christ with the lapis. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 193
This is that secret, feminine influence. He is also sometimes symbolized by some of the Church Fathers in a feminine way, as “the woman” (mulier), for he could not be the savior if man and woman had not been united in him. All opposites had to fuse within him. That is where the psychological secret gathers itself home. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 193-194
In the Greek alchemists, in particular with the philosopher Zosimos, a gnostic from the third century, we encounter the symbol of light: photeinos, i.e., of the luminous one or the man of light. This plays a great role in Gnosticism: the man of light is a spark from the eternal light that has plummeted into the darkness of matter (scintilla, i.e., the spark). Man is to redeem light out of the darkness. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 194
Alchemy has this belief in common with the East, as you will see: the individual works at what is necessary in order to deliver himself into the state of salvation. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 194
That is why Freud named his work psycho-analysis, i.e., the dissolution of the dark state. In that way one manages to bring a bit of order into the situation. And this bit of order is always a system of four. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 195
The circle signifies the encompassing of the individual who, through insight, has found himself to some degree and who has established his perimeter, his wholeness. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 198
This division of a circle is not only found in Tibetan symbolism but also in alchemical philosophy where the work is first described as [a] rota (wheel), as a circulating operation or circulating distillation. Somehow a circle had to be produced in order that, through this, the gold, the primal image of the sun, would be formed. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 199
In this center the four are combined. This corresponds psychologically to a situation where the boundary of the individual has been established through self-knowledge. One has realized: “I am like this and like that. I am not only a light but also a dark person, with positive and negative qualities.” Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 199
Within hermetic philosophy, the idea of colors belongs to this synthesis of the quaternity. Cauda pavonis, i.e., the peacock tail, as one calls the stadium. Here unfolds the fullness of colors. These are feeling values. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 199
This wholeness is first understood as a type of intuition about the wholeness of the personality. We must not imagine anything familiar by this. Only a small part of the human personality is known to us, and we do not know how far this unconscious expanse of the human personality reaches. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 199
There is only one intuitive apprehension of totality. This is the symbol in both the Tibetan and the alchemical series: the lotus, or the golden flower as it is called in Chinese. This is a living symbolization of the quinta essentia. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 200
The lotus has had a mystical meaning since time immemorial-the plant that arises from the mud and dirty water. The blossom towers above the surface of the water and unfolds itself onto that surface. For this reason it is always the seat of the gods. Buddha is always depicted enthroned upon the lotus. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 200
There are people who, being over-modest, always start off putting the wrong foot forward, always living beneath their level. This appears very modest. But beneath, a great list is hidden. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 201
The Self is never experienced as the I, but, in the ancient texts as well as in personal experiences, the Self is encountered as being quite other than the I, as something superordinate, in which the I is contained. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 201
This Self is greater than the I due only to its wholeness and expansive nature, with the consequence that it has often been symbolized, as gods always are, as that circle which alchemical philosophy proclaims as the “Circulus aeternitatis symbolum.” ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 202
The medieval philosophers said that every man carries his Eve hidden within him. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 205
Alchemy says that the work should be undertaken in the shadow of the sun. That is the moon. The work must be done out of the sun and the moon, which psychologically means that consciousness and unconscious are yet to be combined. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 205
A woman is made: in alchemy the femina alba (white woman), the anima or soror mystica, in the Tantric text in the form of the yoni. These extracts of both the masculine and of the feminine are put together, and out of this emerges a true wholeness. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 207
This is the same as what the East calls maya. Generally it is translated as illusion or delusion but comes from the root “ma,” i.e., to build, hence maya is the building material. Whatever I can touch and perceive is maya. It is a real illusion, an illusion that has become actual. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 209
The East thinks from inside out, not from outside in as we do. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 209
The process of sublimation is a process of evaporation where a solid or fluid component is converted into a volatile substance. Freud unwittingly borrowed this description from chemistry. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 209
Helena is not a feminine figure to be encountered in life, but rather the classical anima figure of Antiquity. She represents what he had first projected into Gretchen in a pure form. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 210
Namely, this union has a remarkable consequence: in the Gretchen tragedy the biological union leads to a pregnancy and in time a child is born. This ordinary event becomes essential symbolism in alchemy, which is not present in the Eastern series. Such is the secret pregnancy, the soul pregnancy. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 211
Christ is also worshipped as a child, an infant. In one hymn, Mary is compared with a sea flower. A water flower, growing up out of the water, holding Christ in its lap. Or as a sea flower in which Christ settles as a sea bird. We find the same symbol in Mahayana Buddhism where the Buddha is enclosed in the lotus blossom. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 212
Whoever has achieved enough merit will have their soul enclosed in a lotus blossom for countless aeons. Then it blossoms one day in the miraculous kingdom of the Amitabha. This is the child being raised from the coniunctio. In Chinese, it is a diamond being. In medieval philosophy it is the incorruptible body, the subtle body, which is seen as the result of this coniunctio. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 212
These remarkable ideas all point to the basic idea of the man of light, which we all know from gnosticism. For this man who is born is an illuminating being, comparable to the diamond or gemstone. The grail is also a gemstone in Wolfram von Eschenbach. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 212
For to the extent that this second personality develops, the I dissolves. According to the description in Indian texts, it is as if consciousness dissolves its ties to objectivity, as if abstracting itself from it, from its attachment to objects, so that it almost appears content-free. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 213
In Buddhism this emptying is taken so far that an unconscious state arises called the void, shunyata: the absolute void. Of course, that is a contradiction in adjecto. I cannot be conscious of the absolute void. But Eastern philosophy doesn’t fret over these nuances. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 213
There is a very fine Chinese text about this in the Secret of the Golden Flower, which says in poetic language what is also described in Indian yoga.
The Hui Ming King says of this letting-go:
A halo of light surrounds the world of the law.
We forget one another, quiet and pure, all-powerful and empty.
The emptiness is irradiated by the light of the heart of heaven.
The water of the sea is smooth and mirrors the moon in its surface.
The clouds disappear in blue space; the mountains shine clear.
Consciousness reverts to contemplation; the moon-disk rests alone. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 213
Western man is a good philologist, but he has no clue about yoga experiences. One must have already spoken to the people themselves, the practitioners, in order to pursue these practices. What we get to see in this country are acrobats, not philosophers. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 214
You know that India does not have a written history. The only historical dates we have about India come from the Buddhist chronicles, aside from which there are no historical records. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 214
We learn from certain evidence in the writings of Patanjali that he lived in the second century BCE. This comes from a battle report dating from 150 BCE ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 214
The aim of yoga as Patanjali formulates it is the promotion of the samadhi, contemplation, rapture. There is another word: dhyana, i.e., the state of extasis, rapture in an active sense. Samadhi is contemplation in the passive sense. Therefore the goal of yoga is so-called rapture. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 215
Ignorance comes down to esteeming or believing in the non-eternal, the impure, and suffering, all mistaken for being eternal, sensual, and the Self. That is why all those things are desired. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 215
Remarkably, in Buddhism the dominant belief is that karma is not personal in nature. I can accumulate merit in my life, but because I do not have a soul, when my life ends my karma survives and requires a new existence. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 215
Buddha left the answer absolutely open as to whether this survival of karma means a continued personal existence after death or not. He leaves the question open as to whether karma is not potentiality created by my life, causing another life that is absolutely not connected to me. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 215-216
Hauer translates “the ‘consumption of the world’ by the ‘man-in-himself.'” He means that if the two are not differentiated, the world is consumed by the purusha. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 216
According to Hauer:
“Man-in-himself” and the “luminous world substance” which forms the organ of the mind are eternally unalloyed. The “consumption of the world” by the “man-in-himself” is made possible by the fact that “luminous world substance” and “man-in-himself” are not differentiated in the conscious mind. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 216
If the concepts one has of sattvam and purusha are not differentiated, then a certain psychic state arises out of this, which Deussen translates as the “world’s pleasure” and Hauer as “eating the world.” Before we can understand this line, we must know what is meant by the terms sattvam and purusha. Page 219
There, in Krishna’s teaching, we learn what liberation from the gunas means. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 219
The Eastern spirit does not engage in logic, it is perceptual and intuitive. Purusha is better rendered as primal man, man of light, photein6s or luminosum. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 220
Tamas is the opposite: the dark, darkness, heavy, also a state. These are obviously opposites. Rajas is in-between, being dissatisfaction, energizing, because energy resides in dissatisfaction. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 220
Aside from the purusha, the primal man or man of light, there is a further, feminine principle: the so-called prakriti. This is nature or matter, the material phenomenon, also described as Shakti in another context. This is materia, the mater natura. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 221
Nous gazes down into the darkness and glimpses his reflection. Attracted by this, the loving arms of Physis reach him, entwining him and pulling him down. It cannot be ruled out that these gnostic ideas were associated with India, as there was some traffic with the Near East from ancient times. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 221
So when the purusha has come down into the darkness of the prakriti and then serves as a lamp to the sattvam, this is obviously a description of the unrecognized Self within man, who employs consciousness in order to orient himself in the darkness of his world. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 222
So when the purusha, this man of light, is located in the prakriti, it is not unitary but multiple. When it enters into material phenomena it splits into very many different figures. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 222
The unity of the purusha is an intuition in Eastern meditation about the nature of man. It is understood that all are only one and that the Self of man, despite all differences, is only ever the one. We find this idea in the philosophy of the Upanishads in the concept of the atman. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 223
At the same time, it is simply the general being of the world. So the purusha is also the individual being, but at the same time the maha-purusha, i.e., the great soul of the world, exactly like the atman. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 223
The idea of samkhya philosophy is that the purusha is always connected to matter. This state is described as samyoga (being yoked together, connected, fettered, bound). Without this connection with the purusha, the prakriti is absolutely inactive. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 223
It unfolds under the influence of, and the causal connection with, the purusha, the man of light. Out of this arises the so-called samsara. This is the result of births, the cycle of existences in which the prakriti unfolds. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 223
The purpose of this unfolding in samsara is to transmit self-knowledge to the purusha through the fullness of phenomena. This is why the prakriti is also portrayed as a female dancer who reflects the fullness of the world, and dances before the purusha so that the purusha can acquire self-awareness out of this fullness. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 223
The connecting link is now thought of as the subtle body, a finely ethereal body, which the purusha forms with the elements of the prakriti around the sattvam. This linking body is described as lingam. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, 224
It is eternal time, which runs alongside our time. The word for this is altjiranga mitjina. Aljira is the dream, the unconscious; it is also the place beyond, in which the ancestors, the primeval men live. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 227
The god of the Neoplatonists was called Chronos. He was a god of fire, light, and time. Equally, he was the first cause of all things, therefore the creator of the world, the demiurge. It is the same in gnosticism. There, the creator of the world has the name Abraxas. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 228
If we insert the numeric value of the letters of the word “Abraxas” in Greek, 365 is the result: the creative cycle, the course of the years. This idea also plays a great role in the Mithraic mysteries. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 227-228
This idea of the purusha reaches back into the very beginnings of human thought and represents an identification with nature which has long since become foreign to us. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 228
The non-differentiation between the representations of sattvam (as proponent of the prakriti) and of the purusha, which are both absolutely distinct, is pleasure [and suffering]: … [YSD 3.35, p. 532)Hauer translates it as: “Man-in-himself” and the “luminous world substance” which forms the organ of the mind are eternally unalloyed. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 230
Tamas is unconscious, for it is darkness. Rajas is energy, described in modern times as libido. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 231
Yoga therefore demands that the differentiation should be made between purusha and sattvam and that one recognizes that sattvam comes from prakriti. Psychologically, this means that one should differentiate between purusha and sattvam, in other words, between Self and I, because otherwise a connection with prakriti, the world, enters in which also devours one, as one devours it. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 231
So the non-differentiation of sattvam and purusha means the same as the eating of the world, which is yet the source of suffering. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 232
The meaning of both translations is that one uses yoga for mastery, yoking, containment of the drives, of the kleshas, so that the other’s interest in the prakriti is separated from one’s own interest in the purusha. In other words: knowledge of the purusha arises through the containment of the energies of the drives manifesting in the world. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 232
The Vedas speak of three Gunas: nevertheless, 0 Arjuna be thou indifferent concerning the three Gunas, indifferent towards the opposites (nirdvanda), ever steadfast in courage. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 232
In an old text, the Book of Manu, it says that the creator of the world created the opposites in order to bring about differentiation: Moreover, in order to distinguish actions, he separated merit from demerit, and he caused the creature to be affected by the pairs [of opposites], such as pain and pleasure. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 232
Now it is an essential ethical task not to be influenced by the opposites, but to rise above them, because liberation from the opposites leads to redemption. In the spirit of the Yoga Sutram, it means that if one separates from the sattvam, one comes to the purusha and finds redemption in the being of the world. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 233
I repeat this from the Book of Manu:
When by the disposition [ of his heart] he becomes indifferent to all objects, he obtains eternal happiness both in this world and after death. He who has in this manner gradually given up all attachments and is freed from all pain [ of opposites], reposes in Brahman alone. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 233
Through the containment of the drives the outflow is suppressed, the eye is turned away from the world. One differentiates oneself from one’s own desire for the world by liberating oneself from the attachment to and relationship with the world. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 234
We must not imagine that we can simply grasp the nature of Indian psychology with our consciousness. Impossible. The essential difference resides in the structure of consciousness: Western consciousness is an absolutely egoic, definite consciousness, which is different in many respects, especially as regards the intensity of Eastern consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 234
In the East, yoga is not exactly what we would describe as a religious matter. An Indian would laugh at us if yoga were considered a religious act. It is completely banal and quite as ordinary as brushing our teeth is with us; it is not exaggerated or even hysterical. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 235
The whole mysterious fuss over yoga in the West is seen as ridiculous in the East. These people are trained through education and habit to transport themselves into the void through corresponding education, breathing exercises, sitting exercises. When we do these things they are simply meaningless acrobatic contortions. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 235
Purusha is a super-consciousness. This is why it is almost impossible to translate the term “unconscious” into Hindi. There is a term: bodhi, i.e., enlightenment, a higher or super-consciousness, an extended superhuman consciousness, namely the consciousness of purusha. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 235
Meister Eckhart. In his meditation “On the Abandonment of Things” he says:
People say: “O Lord, how much I wish that I stood as well with God, that I had as much devotion and peace in God as others have, I wish that it were so with me!” Or, “I should like to be poor,” or else,
“Things will never go right for me till I am in this place or that, or till I act one way or another. I must go and live in a strange land, or in a hermitage, or in a cloister.” ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 235
Meister Eckhart has another term related to this: the concept of detachment. This is directly a differentiation between purusha and sattvam. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 237
[ … ] but God is apter to adapt himself to me and can easier communicate with me than I can communicate with God. Detachment forces God to come to me, and this is shown as follows. ~Meister Eckhart, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 238
And humility the masters laud beyond most other virtues. I rank detachment before any meekness and for the following reasons. Meekness can be without detachment but complete detachment is impossible without humility. ~Meister Eckhart, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 239
Another reason why I put detachment higher than humility is this: humility means abasing self before all creatures and in that same abasement one goes out of oneself to creatures. ~Meister Eckhart, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 239
Know, it was his loving meekness that made God stoop to enter human nature while it remained within itself as motionless, what time he was made man, as it was while he created the heavens and the earth, as I shall show you later. ~Meister Eckhart, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 239
When anyone asks me, why do we pray or why do we fast or do our work withal, I say, so that God may be born in our souls. What were the scriptures written for and why did God create the world and the angelic nature? Simply that God might be born in the soul. All cereal nature means wheat, all treasure nature means gold, all generation means man. ~Meister Eckhart, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 243
There is an extraordinary relationship between Eastern ideas and the ideas of Meister Eckhart, which is yet to be fathomed. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 244
These ideas about the soul as the kingdom of God, these surely already existed in the early Christian period; they were certainly heretical and gnostic in nature, for in them primal man, Adam Kadmon, is sometimes depicted in the soul. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 244
The purpose of the gunas is the carrying out of world events. This purpose is achieved when cittam sinks back into the prakriti and purusha has returned to its original state. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 249
This means that he has become eternity insofar as he no longer participates in the dance of the prakriti. Whoever liberates himself from the dance of the prakriti has become the light. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 251
Emptiness comes as the first of the three contemplations. All things are looked upon as empty. Then follows delusion. Although it is known that they are empty, things are not destroyed, but one attends to one’s affairs in the midst of the emptiness. But though one does not destroy things, neither does one pay attention to them; this is contemplation of the center. While practicing contemplation of the empty, one also knows that one cannot destroy the ten thousand things, and still one does not notice them. In this way the three contemplations fall together. But, after all, strength is in envisioning the empty. Therefore, when one practices contemplation of emptiness, emptiness is certainly empty, but delusion is empty also, and the center is empty. It needs a great strength to practice contemplation of delusion; then delusion is really delusion, but emptiness is also delusion, and the center is delusion too. Being on the way of the center, one also creates images of the emptiness; they are not called empty but are called central. One practices also contemplation of delusion, but one does not call it delusion, one calls it central. As to what has to do with the center, more need not be said. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 252
Purusha, eternal consciousness, combines itself with prakriti in absolute distinctiveness. The conjunction takes place through the co-joining of sattvam (luminous being) with cittam, where human consciousness is the mediator, in order to create a relationship between purusha and prakriti. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 254
The first question I received asks where one can look up the Upanishads. The best and most comprehensive translation is really Deussen’s. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 255
Whatever makes its way into the country is assimilated over centuries, and eventually there are 400 million Chinese, and then it partly vanishes, and it’s the same in India. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 255
India has an incredible continuity. Its gods and the basic philosophy of yoga are maybe 6000 years old, and the Hindu religion as we know it today carries within itself the roots of a primeval, primitive religion. It has truly grown up out of its roots. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 255-256
These are the Germanic peoples who were still absolute barbarians around 1500 years ago. They had a civilization, not a primitive one, but quite barbaric. Even when they began to have contact with the Romans, they were still completely barbaric. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 256
As you know, through this encounter with high Roman culture, Christianity spread throughout the Germanic territories and fundamentally modified a primitive polytheism that, not yet theistic but still in the stage of demonism, was obliterated by it except for a few traces. That never happened in India. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 256
An Indian god has never been obliterated, but instead, from the very beginning religion evolved peacefully and sequentially. It emerged out of the primitive stage. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 256
Brahman, purusha, Prajapati, atman. These stages all exist in India alongside each other. Just as tribes of people exist in India who still wear no clothes but alongside them are highly differentiated, cultured people. The whole of nature has grown along with the Indian. They have developed and differentiated themselves. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 256
When a young man says to his spiritual adviser: “I can’t believe this or that,” and he says, “You must believe,” then I ask myself: How can one say such a thing? I can believe because I know something, but if I do not know something, then I simply cannot believe it. Faith is a grace I have never had. Either I know something, or I don’t know it. A religious fact must be an experience; belief is not an experience. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 259
In the East, this is nature. Like flowers and animals. They obey the law of God as flowers do. Religion is everything, except an effort, and if it is an effort it is natural. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 260
… by this kingdom of God we understand the soul, for the soul is of like nature with the Godhead. Hence all that has been said here of the kingdom of God, how God is himself the kingdom, may be said with equal truth of the soul. St. John says: “All things were made by him.” This refers to the soul, for the soul is all things. The soul is all things in that she is an image of God and as such she is also the kingdom of God; as God is essentially in himself without beginning so in the kingdom of the soul he is, as essence, without end. “God,” says one philosopher, “is in the soul in such a fashion that his whole Godhead hangs upon her.” It is far better for God to be in the soul than for the soul to be in God. The soul is not happy because she is in God, she is happy because God is in her. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 242-243
Without me, this I know, God cannot live one minute; I perish, and God must as soon give up God’s spirit.
God would not make one worm without me;
yet if I Don’t help God to preserve it, it rots immediately.
I am as big as God, God is so small, like me.
God cannot be above me, I cannot below God be.
God is the fire in me and I in Him the shine; Are we not with each other, most inwardly entwined?
God loves me above all; if I love Him the same, I give Him just as much as I receive from him. For me God’s God and man, I’m man and God, indeed,
For God. I quench God’s thirst, God helps me in my need.
God pleasures us. God is, for us, whate’er we would.
Woe if we don’t become, for God, that which we should.
God is what God is, I am what I am, you see?
Yet if you knew one well, you’d know both God and me.
I am not outside God, God is not outside me.
God is my jewel, I God’s light and radiancy.
I am vine in the Son, the Father plants, manures,
The Holy Ghost’s the fruit which out of me matures.
I am God’s child and son, and yet my child is He.
How can it ever happen that both these things should be?
Myself I must be sun, whose rays must paint the sea,
The vast and unhued ocean of all divinity. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 244-245
As necessary as the state organization of the masses might be, the value of the whole also very much depends upon the value of the individual. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 266
So then-going over to the West-I have given a comprehensive portrayal of the Ignatian Exercises, which are a precise counterpart to Buddhist yoga, only in a Christian form and suited to the particular psychology of the West. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 266
More recently, the spirit has also been portrayed as the “antagonist of the soul” and as an anti-life principle (Klages). Inasmuch as the spirit forfeited its spontaneous revelatory activity, nature also became nothing but matter, the cpucm; (physis) became physics. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 266
When the “deesse raison,” so-called, arrogates violence, she becomes the murderous “raison d’etat,” which is useful only to rulers, but never any good to humanity. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 267
A deeper analysis of the phenomena makes us doubt whether spiritual nature is really that different from the physical. Indeed one often has the impression that, in the end, it is one and the same nature that confronts us in two modalities, both drawing upon so-called reason in order to infiltrate the human domain and make the kingship of reason illusory. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 267
Nature was originally not only matter, but also as much spirit as matter. For ancient man, nature was imbued with spirit, and the theologica naturalis still radiates the face of God out of nature. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 267
The democritean formula arises from the ancient feeling for nature in which the physical world was not yet devoid of soul. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 267
The nature of science is knowledge; it does not recognize the piety of faith, but that of research and Knowledge. This side of modern science originates in ancient astrology and alchemy. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 267
If, in a certain sense, the Exercises delineate a high point of Christian determination to elevate human being, then in alchemy they are countered, by an equally far-reaching effort towards the unconditional liberation of the unconscious spirit, through a spiritual methodology that in every respect is dissimilar to the former. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 268
“Chakra” is another word for mandala. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 273
The symbol, the dhvaja lying beneath, is a so-called mandala, which means a circle, a magic circle, and generally has the meaning in the East of a yantra, a cultic instrument for the purpose of supporting meditation. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 271
The Western counterpart of this is the rose window in the West wing of our Gothic cathedrals, or the rosa mystica in the Litany of Loreto. In the East the correspondence with this rose is the lotus or the
padma, which is another word for mandala. Mandala is a general description. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 271-272
As with us, in the center of the great wheel sits the rex gloriae, Christ the King, so in the East the Buddha either sits or stands in the lotus. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 272
According to the birth legend, Buddha stepped into the lotus immediately after birth and proclaimed the dharma law to the world. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 272
The text says: “In the end, it is your mind that becomes Buddha, nay, it is your mind that is indeed Buddha.” ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 272
Buddha is the inner sun, exactly as Christian mystics describe the experience of God as a rising inner sun. He is the inner Christ. He is the rising sun, for example, in the Acts of the Apostles: “For in him we live and move and have our being” ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 272
Shunyata is actually the nature of this world, the abysmal void, consciousness, which brings forth only illusory figures, reflections of our own psychic state. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 274