Solitude is a Source of Healing
Dear Schmaltz,
I understand your wish very well, but must tell you at once that it does not fit in with my situation.
I am now getting on for 82 and feel not only the weight of my years and the tiredness this brings, but even more strongly, the need to live in harmony with the inner demands of my old age.
Solitude is for me a fount of healing which makes my life worth living. Talking is often are a torment for me, and I need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words.
I have got my marching orders and only look back when there’s nothing else to do.
This journey is a great adventure in itself, but not one that can be talked about at great length.
What you think of as a few days of spiritual communion would be unendurable for me with anyone, even with my closest friends.
The rest is silence!
This realization becomes clearer every day as the need to communicate dwindles.
Naturally I should be glad to see you one afternoon for about two hours, preferable in Kusnacht, my door to the world. Around August 5th would suit me best, as I shall be at home then in any case.
Meanwhile with best greetings,
Yours ever, Jung. [Letter written May 30, 1957]
Note: Schmaltz an old acquaintance of Jung’s asked if he could spend a few days with him at Bollingen for an exchange of ideas.
Carl Jung on “Solitude.” [Anthology]
Everyone who becomes conscious of even a fraction of his unconscious gets outside his own time and social stratum into a kind of solitude. ~Carl Jung; Mysterium Coniunctionis; CW 14: Page 258.
I am no longer alone with myself, and I can only artificially recall the scary and beautiful feeling of solitude. This is the shadow side of the fortune of love. ~Carl Jung; ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Introduction, Page 196.
It is always important to have something to bring into a relationship, and solitude is often the means by which you acquire it. ~Carl Jung; Letters, Vol. II, Page 610.
Everything to come was already in images: to find their soul, the ancients went into the desert. This is an image. The ancients lived their symbols, since the world had not yet become real for them. Thus they went into the solitude of the desert to teach us that the place of the soul is a lonely desert. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 236.
You should call me if you want to live with men, but the one God if you want to rise above the human world to the divine and eternal solitude of the star. ~Carl Jung’s Soul, The Red Book, Page 371.
In this bloody battle death steps up to you, just like today where mass killing and dying: fill the world. The coldness of death penetrates you. When I froze to death in my solitude, I saw dearly and saw what was to come, as clearly as I could see the stars and the distant mountains on a frosty night. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 73.
The individual must now consolidate himself by cutting himself off from God and becoming wholly himself Thereby and at the same time he also separates himself from society: Outwardly he plunges into solitude, but inwardly into Hell, distance from God” ~Carl Jung, CW 18, §1103.
We should become reconciled to solitude in ourselves and to the God outside of us. If we enter into this solitude then the life of the God begins. If we are in ourselves, then the space around us is free, but filled by the God. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 245.
But now, if you are in solitude, your God leads you to the God of others, and through that to the true neighbor, to the neighbor of the self in others. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 245.
What occurs between the lover and the beloved is the entire fullness of the Godhead. Both are unfathomable riddles to each other. For who understands the Godhead? / But the God is born in solitude, from the secret / mystery of the individual. / The separation between life and love is the contradiction between solitude and togetherness. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Feb. 23, 1920, Page 88.
No one besides you has your God. He is always with you, yet you see him in others, and thus he is never with you. You strive to draw to yourself those who seem to possess your God. You will come to see that they do not possess him, and that you alone have him. Thus you are alone among men-in the crowd and yet alone. Solitude in multitude-ponder this. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 329.
I am no longer alone with myself, and I can only artificially recall the scary and beautiful feeling of solitude. This is the shadow side of the fortune of love. ~Carl Jung; ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Introduction, Page 196.
