Carl Jung: It is therefore a comfort to see that not a few seeds have fallen on fruitful soil.
To Gustav Graber
Dear Colleague, 14 July 1950
Your special issue for my birthday together with your kind foreword, was a great ·surprise and joy to me.
I am particularly impressed by the large number of contributors and their excellent contributions, and I appreciate the pains the editor has taken to bring together so many good things.
Anticipating my 75th birthday, which has yet to be celebrated, the Festschrift as a whole is a notable resume of such ideas of mine as have taken root in the minds of my contemporaries.
One’s 75th birthday is a moment when one looks back with one laughing and one lachrymose eye on the long path one has left behind, hoping also that it will be of some benefit to one’s fellows.
It is therefore a comfort to see that not a few seeds have fallen on fruitful soil.
I thank you with all my heart for having procured me this joy, as well as all the others whose exertions have contributed to the success of the work.
In gratitude,
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 561-562
Mustard Seed by Meister Eckhart
Meister Eckhart – Grain of the Mustard Seed
Mustard Seed by Meister Eckhart
I.
In the Beginning
High above understanding
Is ever the Word.
O rich treasure,
There the Beginning always bore the Beginning.
O Father’s Breast,
From thy delight
The Word ever flows!
Yet the bosom
Retains the Word, truly.
II.
From the two as one source,
The fire of love.
The bond of both,
Known to both,
Flows the All-Sweet Spirit
Co-equal,
Undivided
The Three are One.
Do you understand why? No.
It best understands itself.
III.
The bond of three
Causes deep fear.
Of this circle
There is no understanding.
Here is a depth without ground.
Check and mate
To time, forms, place!
The wondrous circle
Is the Principle,
Its point never moves.
IV.
The mountain of this point
Ascend without activity.
O intellect!
The road leads you
Into a marvelous desert,
So broad, so wide,
It stretches out immeasurably.
The desert has,
Neither time nor place,
Its mode of being is singular.
V.
The good desert
No foot disturbs it,
Created being
Never enters there:
It is, and no one knows why.
It is here, it is there,
It is far, it is near,
It is deep, it is high,
It is in such a way
That it is neither this nor that.
VI.
It is light, it is clear,
It is totally dark,
It is unnamed,
It is unknown,
Free of beginning or end.
It stands still,
Pure, unclothed.
Who knows its dwelling?
Let him come forth
And tells us what sort it is.
VII.
Become like a child,
Become deaf, become blind.
Your own something
Must become nothing;
Drive away all something, all nothing!
Leave place, leave time,
Avoid even image!
Go without a way
On the narrow path,
Then you will find the desert’s track.
VIII.
O my soul,
Go out, let God in!
Sink all my something
In God’s nothing.
Sink in the bottomless flood!
If I flee from You,
You come to me.
If I lose myself,
Then I find You,
O Goodness above being!
The lucidity of consciousness rests upon dark unconscious seeds
Four Eternal Women: Toni Wolff Revisited – A Study in Opposites
The lucidity of consciousness rests upon dark unconscious seeds out of which grow objective cultural values. It is this unconscious background that is perceived by medial woman’s structural form….
‘Medium’ means in between, neither this nor that, something intermediate….
The medial woman is immersed in the psychic atmosphere of her environment and the spirit of her period, but above all in the collective (impersonal) unconscious. The unconscious, once it is constellated and can become conscious, exerts an effect. The medial woman is overcome by this effect, she is absorbed and moulded by it and sometimes she represents it herself. She must for instance express or act what is “in the air,” what the environment cannot or will not admit, but what is nevertheless a part of it.
It is mostly the dark aspect of a situation or of a predominant idea, and she thus activates what is negative and dangerous. In this way she becomes the carrier of evil, but that she does, is nevertheless exclusively her personal problem. As the contents involved are unconscious, she lacks the necessary faculty of discrimination to perceive and the language to express them adequately. The overwhelming force of the collective unconscious sweeps through the ego of the medial woman and weakens it.
By its nature the collective unconscious is not limited to the person concerned further reason why the medial woman identifies herself and others with archetypal contents. But to deal with the collective unconscious demands a solid ego consciousness and an adequate adaptation to reality. As a rule the medial woman disposes of neither and consequently she will create confusion in the same measure as she herself is confused.
Conscious and unconscious, I and you, personal and impersonal psychic contents remain undifferentiated. As objective psychic contents in herself and in others are not understood, or are taken personally, she experiences a destiny not her own as though it were her own and loses herself in ideas which do not belong to her. Instead of being a mediatrix, she is only a means and becomes the first victim of her own nature.” ~Toni Wolff, Four Eternal Women: Toni Wolff Revisited – A Study in Opposites, Mary Dian Molton
