Meister Eckhart is about the first where the self begins to play a noticeable role.
To Herbert E . Bowman
Dear Dr. Bowman, 18 June 1958
Thank you ever so much for your kind and refreshing letter.
Believe me: there are rather few of this kind in my mail-bag.
As to your question “Why has the Self gone undiscovered?”
I must tell you that my American publisher had the grace to invent this title.
I would never have thought of it, as the self is not really undiscovered, it is merely ignored or misunderstood; but for the American public it seems to have been the right term.
The self is known in ancient and modern Eastern philosophy.
Zen philosophy is even fundamentally based on the cognition of the self.
In Europe, as far as I can make out, Meister Eckhart is about the first where the self begins to play a noticeable role.
After him some of the great German alchemists took up the idea and handed it down to Jacob Boehme and Angelus Silesius and kindred spirits.
Goethe’s Faust almost reached the goal of classical alchemy, but unfortunately the ultimate coniunctio did not come off, so that Faust and Mephistopheles could not attain their oneness.
The second attempt, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, remained a meteor that never reached the earth, as the coniunctio oppositorum had not and could not have taken place.
In the course of my psychiatric and psychological studies I could not help stumbling upon this very obvious fact and I therefore began to speak of the self again.
For about 1900 years we have been admonished and taught to project the self into Christ, and in this very simple way it was removed from empirical man, much to the relief of the latter, since he was thus spared the experience of the self, namely the unio oppositorum.
He blissfully does not know the meaning of the term.
If you are interested in the secret peripeteia of the spiritual development of Western man, I might mention to you my volume Aion (Rascher Verlag, Zurich, 1951), in which you find two essays, the one by M.-L. von Franz,concerning the transition of the antique mind into Christian form, and an essay of mine in which I deal with the transmutation of the Christian mind towards the end of the Christian aeon.
(The English version is on the way and is going to be printed by the Bollingen Press, New York.)
Thanking you again for your kind interest,
I remain,
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 453-454.
Jerusalem by Meister Eckhart
Jerusalem
A hand in my soul can reach out and touch Jerusalem
as my other hand tastes the beauty of the Rhine.
And my bare foot can stand upon the holy ashes of rain—each drop a
fallen Phoenix—that sang out from the fire of union
with clay.
The hills, the valleys, the beasts, the vineyards, the sacred meadows
on our earth and body—they shall pass and ascend as all form does,
tiring of the space within a cage;
for all crowds the soul but the infinite. Ascenders to God we are.
Look though how we enrich this planet with our melting organic
shadows, wondrous shadows are all but He.
What a womb God has—what wild love He must have made to
Himself for days and days without stopping
to have given birth to all you can imagine, and to all you cannot conceive.
Draw a circle around the frontiers of space, barely can God fit a
toe there.
All language has taken an oath to fail to describe Him;
any attempt to do so is the height of arrogance and will
always declare some kind of war:
the inner ones that undermine our strength, and the outer conflicts
that maim red.
I cried out one night in the madness of separation from love,
in the madness of doing, of trying to add to the Perfect;
for Perfect is All.
The awakened heart is like a luminous sphere—just giving without
thought to any who may come close or gaze at it.
The soul becomes blessedly lost to all
but its own holy
being.
When we cannot be who we are our divine senses become mute,
mute and sick from the insanity of judging
what He made Immaculate.
Who must God have made love to in order to have given birth to all this sound,
to this sacred spectrum of color, scents, and music from the
wind’s body and existence’s plea for mercy—that
plea for the real mercy, unbearable joy?
Once we had four legs and tails so useful to balance our raid into
heaven, and I found them again.
I am a swimming galaxy tonight. Angels prowl around me
hoping I will toss them a fresh piece of light—
here dears, here, my sack is full.
The universe rents space from me, and oceans are drawn
from my well. How can that be?
For I can touch Jerusalem while my other hand tastes
the beauty of the
Rhine.
Yes, I can kiss Jerusalem while my mouth
tastes the wonders of
the Rhine. ~Meister Eckhart
