Science has never been able to grasp the riddle of life either in organic matter
Mind and body are presumably a pair of opposites and, as such, the expression of a single entity whose essential nature is not knowable either from its outward, material manifestation or from inner, direct perception.
According to an ancient belief, man arose from the coming together of a soul and a body.
It would probably be more correct to speak of an unknowable living being, concerning the ultimate nature of which nothing can be said except that it vaguely expresses the quintessence of “life.”
This living being appears outwardly as the material body, but inwardly as a series of images of the vital activities taking place within it.
They are two sides of the same coin, and we cannot rid ourselves of the doubt that perhaps this whole separation of mind and body may finally prove to be merely a device of reason for the purpose of conscious discrimination—an intellectually
necessary separation of one and the same fact into two aspects, to which we then illegitimately attribute an independent existence.
Science has never been able to grasp the riddle of life either in organic matter or in the mysterious trains of mental imagery; consequently we are still in search of the “living being” whose existence we must postulate somewhere beyond experience.
Anyone who knows the abysses of physiology will become dizzy at the thought of them, just as anyone who knows the psyche will be staggered by the thought that this amazing mirror-thing should ever attain anything approaching “knowledge.”
From this point of view one might easily abandon all hope of discovering anything fundamental about that elusive thing called “spirit.”
One thing alone seems clear: just as the “living being” is the quintessence of life in the body, so “spirit” is the quintessence of the life of the mind; indeed, the concept “spirit” is often used interchangeably with the concept “mind.”
Viewed thus, “spirit” exists in the same transliminal realm as “living being,” that is, in the same misty state of indistinguishableness.
And the doubt as to whether mind and body may not ultimately prove to be the same thing also applies to the apparent contrast between “spirit” and “living being.”
They too are probably the same thing. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 619-621
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