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Carl Gustav Jung, 1875-1961 : A Memorial Meeting, New York, December 1, 1961
A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961
Dr. Jung was never caught by the picture of himself as an important man.
Indeed, one of his daughters came home from school one day and told at the dinner table of her great surprise when her father had been mentioned, during a lesson on contemporary Switzerland, as one of the leading people in the country.
She said, “I thought Father was just a country doctor!” ~M. Esther Harding, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 4
He [Jung] imposed a similar probationary period on himself in regard to the role of mandala symbolism in the individuation process, while the material of his latest books, Aion and Mysterium Coniunctionis, was withheld for at least a decade.
For his sense of integrity and scientific accuracy was so strong that it could hold the flood of creative thought in check until the time seemed ripe for it to be given to the world. ~M. Esther Harding, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 5
He [Jung] loved to wear his old clothes, to work in his garden, to cook his own dinner, and he actually helped to build his house at Bollingen with his own hands, joining the masons’ labor union in order to do so.
He loved life, and he loved laughter and good fellowship.
He talked on equal terms with the simple people of the villages and mountains. ~M. Esther Harding, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 7
In Africa the medicine man called him brother; New Mexico a Navaho chief was his friend; in India a Tibetan lama in the far north and a Brahman priest in the south, both accepted him as one of themselves, an enlightened one, and spoke to him freely of the sacred mysteries of their religion. ~M. Esther Harding, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 7
The effect on all individuals, which one would like to see realized, may not set in for hundreds of years, for the spiritual transformation of mankind follows the slow tread of the centuries and cannot be hurried or held up by any rational process of reflection, let alone be brought to fruition in one generation. ~Carl Jung, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 9
What does lie within our reach, however is the change in individuals who have, or create, an opportunity to influence others of like mind in their circle of acquaintance.
I do not mean by persuading or preaching-I am thinking, rather, of the well known fact that anyone who has insight into his own actions, and has thus found access to the unconscious, involuntarily exercises an influence on his environment. ~Carl Jung, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 9
Jung was indeed a great-a wonderful-man.
His last word has been spoken, his last book written, but his spirit lives on; and it is our task to see that the light he has kindled shall continue to burn in the hearts of men. ~M. Esther Harding, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 9
It must by no means be forgotten that during the last ten or twelve years of his life Dr. Jung made massive revisions of his earlier works to prepare them for inclusion in his Collected Works in Bollingen Series, for whose existence we can all be so grateful to Mr. Mellon and his associates. ~Fowler McCormick, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 11
Although his analytical practice was reduced to a minimum, during his later years Jung had appointments almost every day, when he was at Kusnacht, with many of his former pupils and co-workers. ~Fowler McCormick, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 12
He [Jung] gave freely of himself in consultation and counseling, and was most generous of his time and effort in reading, correcting, and making suggestions in connection with the many manuscripts which were laid before him by their authors. ~Fowler McCormick, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 12
It is not widely known that Jung was a highly competent artist in working with stone.
In the garden of his house at Kusnacht are several of his sculptured works. ~Fowler McCormick, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 12
Also at Kusnacht is the beautiful plaque in limestone which Jung carved in the months following his wife’s death.
We see, delicately and tenderly done in bas relief, the branch of a fig tree with four leaves remaining and one which has just fallen off. ~Fowler McCormick, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 13
This is not the occasion to discuss the place of illness in Jung’s life, but anyone who was in close contact with him during his last years knows that he bore his infirmities with fortitude and patience. ~Fowler McCormick, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 13
Although it had its moments of serenity and rich enjoyment, his old age was by no means always tranquil and untroubled.
But meet it every day he did, with energetic and never-failing positiveness, with intense concentration on whatever he was engaged in, and with complete immersion in every activity, whether it was a philosophical discussion, the dictation of a letter, the carving of a roast, the chopping of kindling for his fire, or the detailed study of a map as preparation for our day’s drive. ~Fowler McCormick, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 14
It was here at Bollingen that Jung enjoyed being the highly competent cook that he was, producing with the devoted help of others the delectable dishes which he was capable of.
There was work to be done in the garden, firewood to be chopped, and all the other activities of country life which Jung enjoyed and which gave him so much.
And here, too, were quiet opportunities for meditation and for creative writing. ~Fowler McCormick, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 14
Two or three years ago, when Jung was attending an art exhibit in Zurich, a woman introduced herself to him and expressed her gratitude for what he had done for her.
Dr. Jung asked her if this had come about through reading his books. Her reply was: “Those are not books. That is bread.” ~Fowler McCormick, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 16
For forty years or more, men and women in distress, persons with blocked horizons, emotionally impoverished or crippled, were lured to Kusnacht from all parts of the earth with their anticipations raised to an extraordinary pitch by reading something Jung had written that excited, baffled, beckoned, all at once, or by hearing of his daring intellectual vigor, clairvoyance, and wisdom. ~Henry A. Murray, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 18
As foreseen, they found in Dr. Jung not only “a river of waters in a dry place and the shadow of a great rock in a weary land” but, in addition, wine from an ageless vineyard, which evoked in each of them “an echo and a glimpse of what he thought a phantom or a legend until then.” ~Henry A. Murray, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 18
Jung was humble before the ineffable mystery of each variant self that faced him for the first time, as he sat at his desk, pipe in hand, with every faculty attuned, brooding on the portent of what was being said to him. ~Henry A. Murray, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 18
And he never hesitated to acknowledge his perplexity in the presence of a strange and inscrutable phenomenon, never hesitated to admit the provisional nature of the comments he had to make or to emphasize the difficulties and limitations of possible achievement in the future.
“Whoever comes to me,” he would say, “takes his life in his hands.” ~Henry A. Murray, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 18
In the words of one young man who went to Kusnacht for the first time: “Dr. Jung was the first full-blooded, all-encompassing, spherical human being I had ever met, and I knew of no fit standards, no adequate operations by which to measure his circumference and diameters. ~Henry A. Murray, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 20
Instead of remaining framed by the standard judgments of my locality and time, I saw myself as the inheritor and potential bearer and promoter of mute historic forces struggling for emergence, consciousness, fulfillment, and communication.
All this and more I owe to Dr. Jung.” ~Paul Mellon, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 20
The Foundation was established by my first wife, Mary Conover Mellon, and myself.
We had spent the first winter of the war, 1939-1940, in Zurich, drawn there, and to Dr. Jung, by her overpowering attacks of asthma and by her conviction that her illness was largely a psychological rather than a purely physical affliction. ~Paul Mellon, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 25
In my own case, as we all know, a plurality of riches does not guarantee peace of mind and often makes common cause with a paucity of real values. In many ways Dr. Jung’s clear expositions of his theories, his deep wisdom, his humor, his great simplicity, opened out sunnier and wider vistas down which to view the world. ~Paul Mellon, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 25
I walked with him one spring for two or three days up in the hills behind Ascona and Locarno, in the Tessin taking a little train each day far up into places where one hardly ever saw a human being.
One heard the bells of a few goats and saw some of them grazing, or in the distance heard the sound of a mountain cataract.
He was peaceful, serene, and had a hearty and ribald humor. ~Paul Mellon, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 26
But the thing I remember most about Dr. Jung was his simplicity: the directness of his vision and the aptness of his descriptions. ~Paul Mellon, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 26
Of the simple religious shrines one saw everywhere, even on remote paths, he said something like this: they are in the same places where the forefathers of these people worshiped their nature gods-the gods of the crossroads or the forest, the tree or the stream-and often at places of potential danger.
These too are to ward off evil. It is man’s awareness of danger, of the Devil. ~Paul Mellon, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 26
We who are so civilized and unsuperstitious would do better perhaps to have a little more superstition and to be closer to nature to take the Devil into account.
He said, “Anyone who has lived in a primitive way and who also thinks will naturally come to know about the unconscious. It only goes to show how many silly asses have done it who don’t think.” ~Paul Mellon, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 26
As we were about to leave for America in the spring of 1940, he told me he had had a letter from a very good and intelligent American woman, a friend of his, who asked him to be on a committee of one hundred of the most intelligent people in the world to confer on how to bring about peace.
He said, “I wrote back to her on the reply postcard, ‘Dear—: Please don’t do it. One hundred intelligent people together in a room only makes one big idiot.’ ~Paul Mellon, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 27
Today we think of Jung the scientist, the explorer of men’s minds; Jung the philosopher and the humanist; Jung the deeply religious lover of all mankind.
It may well be, however, that without our being completely aware of our good fortune we have been in the company of the Socrates of our own day. ~Paul Mellon, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 27
The archetypal forms behind all myths belong to the mystery of the creative ground of everything that is.
Nevertheless, they give permanent determinations to the variable element, as in Christian thought the Logos is the mediator of creation; and the essences of all things, the eternal ideas, are contained in it. Paul Tillich, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 32
He once told me that his colleagues had warned him, “Lookout, Jung, that way lies lunacy!”
But like a true explorer, he felt that this background of all psychological experience held such importance for him that he must take any risk involved.
But not yet for his patients.
He would not lead them into unknown country until he had been there and charted it himself. Eleanor Bertine, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 34
The chef thing about the unconscious is that it is unconscious! But it reveals itself in these archetypal images. ~Carl Jung, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 35
But as Jung says, it is not the bomb that is the danger but the psychology of the men who control it.
For “when the individual does not become conscious of his inner contradictions, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposite halves.” ~Eleanor Bertine, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 36
Jung never addressed himself to the crowd but only to the individual.
For he knew that the influence of a great and devoted individual may produce effects far beyond any the power of the crowd can bring about. Eleanor Bertine, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 37
He knew that wars cannot be ended by those who are themselves dominated by the power motive.
And he knew that peace can come to an angry world only when the leaders of men give up hate and strife and serve some central value with a truly religious attitude.
But many people of these days have lost all religion along with their religious “beliefs.” Eleanor Bertine, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 37
The two most important developments of our century have occurred in mathematical physics with Planck and Einstein and their successors and in psychoanalytic psychology with Freud and Jung. ~F.S.C. Northrup, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 39
There are reasons for believing that none of us will be whole and healthy persons until the old, inadequate and conflicting, most deeply scientific and metaphysical beliefs that are fighting one another inside us are transcended or sublimated under a freshly creative and consistent philosophy of both what is and what ought to be. ~F.S.C. Northrup, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1,1961 Page 40
What I find particularly inspiring in all Dr. Jung’s work is the way he brings out the same fundamental elements of human psychology in many different contexts which might seem, at first sight, to be unrelated to each other. ~Arnold J. Toynbee, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 41
Rather than make dogmatic assertions about man and his nature, Jung chose to pursue truth as he saw it, believing that “truth can always stand on its own and that only opinions that have shaky foundations require the prop of dogmatizing.” ~John M. Billinsky, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 43
In the past nothing can be altered, and in the present little, but the future is ours and capable of raising life’s intensity to the highest pitch. ~Carl Jung, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 44
the most immediate effect of the discovered self is not that the mysteries of heaven are revealed but that we ourselves are revealed to ourselves. ~Carl Jung, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 44
Our strengths and weaknesses, our beliefs and unbeliefs, our greatness as children of God and our smallness as children of man come into recognition, and we stand at once humbled and strengthened in the presence of the very God Himself.” ~John M. Billinsky, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 44
No matter what the world thinks about religious experience,” he [Jung] wrote, “the one who has it possesses a great treasure, a thing that has become for him a source of life, meaning, and beauty, and that has given a new splendor to the world and to mankind.” ~John M. Billinsky, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 45
The epochal nature of Jung’s work still remains to be generally recognized, but when it is, we believe he will be considered as the originator of a whole new era in man’s understanding of himself. Jung the man is dead.
The consequences of his creative genius are just beginning. ~Edward F. Edinger, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 46