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Art Is A Kind Of Innate Drive That Seizes A Human Being And Makes Him Its Instrument. The Artist Is Not A Person Endowed With Free Will Who Seeks His Own Ends, But One Who Allows Art To Realize Its Purpose Through Him. As A Human Being He May Have Moods And A Will And Personal Aims, But As An Artist He Is "man" In A Higher Sense— He Is "collective Man"— One Who Carries And Shapes The Unconscious, Psychic Forms Of Mankind.

-Carl Jung

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Art Is A Kind

Carl Jung

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Art Is A Kind Of Innate Drive That Seizes A Human Being And Makes Him Its Instrument. The Artist Is Not A Person Endowed With Free Will Who Seeks His Own Ends, But One Who Allows Art To Realize Its Purpose Through Him. As A Human Being He May Have Moods And A Will And Personal Aims, But As An Artist He Is "man" In A Higher Sense— He Is "collective Man"— One Who Carries And Shapes The Unconscious, Psychic Forms Of Mankind.

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Collective Unconscious

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I Cannot Love Anyone If I Hate Myself. That Is The Reason Why We Feel So Extremely Uncomfortable In The Presence Of People Who Are Noted For Their Special Virtuousness, For They Radiate An Atmosphere Of The Torture They Inflict On Themselves. That Is Not A Virtue But A Vice.

If One Does Not Understand A Person, One Tends To Regard Him As A Fool.

For, In Order To Turn The Individual Into A Function Of The State, His Dependence On Anything Beside The State Must Be Taken From Him.

I Have Never Since Entirely Freed Myself Of The Impression That This Life Is A Segment Of Existence Which Is Enacted In A Three-dimensional Boxlike Universe Especially Set Up For It.

Not Only Does The Psyche Exist, But It Is Existence Itself. It Is An Almost Absurd Prejudice To Suppose That Existence Can Only Be Physical...we Might Well Say, On The Contrary, That Physical Existence Is A Mere Inference, Since We Know Of Matter Only In So Far As We Perceive Psychic Images Mediated By The Senses.

Astrology Is Assured Of Recognition From Psychology, Without Further Restrictions, Because Astrology Represents The Summation Of All The Psychological Knowledge Of Antiquity.

To The Critical Intelligence, Nothing Is Left Of Absolute Reality.

The Starry Vault Of Heaven Is In Truth The Open Book Of Cosmic Projection.

To Be Normal Is The Ultimate Aim Of The Unsuccessful.

I Can Still Recall Vividly How Freud Said To Me, "my Dear Jung, Promise Me Never To Abandon The Sexual Theory. That Is The Most Essential Thing Of All. You See, We Must Make A Dogma Of It, An Unshakable Bulwark" ... In Some Astonishment I Asked Him, "a Bulwark-against What?" To Which He Replied, "against The Black Tide Of Mud"-and Here He Hesitated For A Moment, Then Added Of Occultism.

The Psychic Depths Are Nature, And Nature Is Creative Life.

By A Symbol I Do Not Mean An Allegory Or A Sign, But An Image That Describes In The Best Possible Way The Dimly Discerned Nature Of The Spirit. A Symbol Does Not Define Or Explain; It Points Beyond Itself To A Meaning That Is Darkly Divined Yet Still Beyond Our Grasp, And Cannot Be Adequately Expressed In The Familiar Words Of Our Language.

The Answer To Human Life Is Not To Be Found Within The Limits Of Human Life.

My Work As A Psychoanalyst Is To Help Patients Recover Their Lost Wholeness And To Strengthen The Psyche So It Can Resist Future Dismemberment.

The Curve Of Life Is Like The Parabola Of A Projectile Which, Disturbed From Its Initial State Of Rest, Rises And Then Returns To A State Of Repose... Like A Projectile Flying To Its Goal, Life Ends In Death. Even Its Ascent And Its Zenith Are Only Steps And Means To This Goal... For, Enlightenment Or No Enlightenment, Consciousness Or No Consciousness, Nature Prepares Itself For Death.

My Own Understanding Is The Sole Treasure I Possess, And The Greatest. Though Infinitely Small And Fragile In Comparison With The Powers Of Darkness, It Is Still A Light, My Only Light.

I Am Astonished, Disappointed, Pleased With Myself. I Am Distressed, Depressed, Rapturous. I Am All These Things At Once, And Cannot Add Up The Sum. I Am Incapable Of Determining Ultimate Worth Or Worthlessness; I Have No Judgment About Myself And My Life. There Is Nothing I Am Quite Sure About. I Have No Definite Convictions - Not About Anything, Really. I Know Only That I Was Born And Exist, And It Seems To Me That I Have Been Carried Along. I Exist On The Foundation Or Something I Do Not Know.

Creative Powers Can Just As Easily Turn Out To Be Destructive. It Rests Solely With The Moral Personality Whether They Apply Themselves To Good Things Or To Bad. And If This Is Lacking, No Teacher Can Supply It Or Take Its Place.

A Collection Of A Hundred Great Brains Makes One Big Fathead.

Nobody Can Fall So Low Unless He Has A Great Depth. If Such A Thing Can Happen To A Man, It Challenges His Best And Highest On The Other Side; That Is To Say, This Depth Corresponds To A Potential Height, And The Blackest Darkness To A Hidden Light.

People Will Do Anything, No Matter How Absurd, In Order To Avoid Facing Their Own Souls. They Will Practice Indian Yoga And All Its Exercises, Observe A Strict Regimen Of Diet, Learn The Literature Of The Whole World - All Because They Cannot Get On With Themselves And Have Not The Slightest Faith That Anything Useful Could Ever Come Out Of Their Own Souls.

We Live In A World Which In Some Respects Is Mysterious; Things Can Be Experienced Which Remain Inexplicable; Not Everything Which Happens Can Be Anticipated. The Unexpected And The Incredible Belong In This World. Only Then Is Life Whole. For Me The World Has From The Beginning Been Infinite And Ungraspable.

Mysterious Things

I Must Also Have A Dark Side If I Am To Be Whole.

There Is, However, A Strong Empirical Reason Why We Should Cultivate Thoughts That Can Never Be Proved. It Is That They Are Known To Be Useful. Man Positively Needs General Ideas & Convictions That Will Give A Meaning To His Life & Enable Him To Find A Place For Himself In The Universe. He Can Stand The Most Incredible Hardships When He Is Convinced That They Make Sense; He Is Crushed When On Top Of All His Misfortunes, He Has To Admit That He Is Taking Part In A ‘tale Told By An Idiot.’

Real Work Is Completed In Silence And Strikes A Chord In The Minds Of Only A Very Few.

No Matter What The World Thinks About Religious Experience, 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.

The Primordial Image, Or Archetype, Is A Figure--be It A Daemon, A Human Being, Or A Process--that Constantly Recurs In The Course Of History And Appears Wherever Creative Fantasy Is Freely Expressed. Essentially, Therefore, It Is A Mythological Figure. . . . In Each Of These Images There Is A Little Piece Of Human Psychology And Human Fate, A Remnant Of The Joys And Sorrows That Have Been Repeated Countless Times In Our Ancestral History. . . .

A Residual Sea Of Symbols Which Is Shared By All Mankind, Usually Accessed Through Dreams Or Altered States, And From Which Cultures Draw Images On Which To Found Their Religions.

The Facts Of Nature Cannot In The Long Run Be Violated. Penetrating And Seeping Through Everything Like Water, They Will Undermine Any System That Fails To Take Account Of Them, And Sooner Or Later They Will Bring About Its Downfall. But An Authority Wise Enough In Its Statesmanship To Give Sufficient Free Play To Nature - Of Which Spirit Is A Part - Need Fear No Premature Decline.

We Can Hardly Escape The Feeling That The Unconscious Process Moves Spiral-wise Round A Centre, Gradually Getting Closer, While The Characteristics Of The Centre Grow More And More Distinct.

Man Positively Needs General Ideas And Convictions That Will Give A Meaning To His Life And Enable Him To Find A Place For Himself In The Universe.

You Must Go In Quest Of Yourself, And You Will Find Yourself Again Only In The Simple And Forgotten Things.

Forgotten Things

Finding Yourself

The Girl Dreams She Is Dangerously Ill. Suddenly Birds Come Out Of Her Skin And Cover Her Completely ... Swarms Of Gnats Obscure The Sun, The Moon, And All The Stars Except One. That One Start Falls Upon The Dreamer.

Everything Good Is Costly, And The Development Of Personality Is One Of The Most Costly Of All Things. It Is A Matter Of Saying Yes To Oneself, Of Taking Oneself As The Most Serious Of Tasks, Of Being Conscious Of Everything One Does, And Keeping It Constantly Before One's Eyes In All Its Dubious Aspects.

In Studying The History Of The Human Mind One Is Impressed Again And Again By The Fact That Its Growth Keeps Pace With A Widening Range Of Consciousness, And That Each Step Forward Is An Extremely Painful And Laborious Achievement. One Could Almost Say That Nothing Is More Hateful To Man Than To Give Up The Smallest Particle Of Unconsciousness. He Has A Profound Fear Of The Unknown. Ask Anybody Who Has Ever Tried To Introduce New Ideas!

Liverpool Is The Pool Of Life, It Makes To Live.

Even A Happy Life Cannot Be Without A Measure Of Darkness, And The Word Happy Would Lose Its Meaning If It Were Not Balanced By Sadness. It Is Far Better Take Things As They Come Along With Patience And Equanimity.

Knowledge Does Not Enrich Us; It Removes Us More And More From The Mythic World In Which We Were Once At Home By Right Of Birth.

Neurosis Is The Natural By-product Of Pain Avoidance.

Only By Discovering Alchemy Have I Clearly Understood That The Unconscious Is A Process And That Ego's Rapport With The Unconscious And Its Contents Initiate An Evolution, More Precisely, A Real Metamorphosis Of The Psyche.

In Such Doubtful Matters, Where You Have To Work As A Pioneer, You Must Be Able To Put Some Trust In Your Intuition And Follow Your Feeling Even At The Risk Of Going Wrong.

The Least Of Things With A Meaning Is Worth More In Life Than The Greatest Of Things Without It.

The Little World Of Childhood With Its Familiar Surroundings Is A Model Of The Greater World. The More Intensively The Family Has Stamped Its Character Upon The Child, The More It Will Tend To Feel And See Its Earlier Miniature World Again In The Bigger World Of Adult Life. Naturally This Is Not A Conscious, Intellectual Process.

The Whole Nature Of Man Presupposes Woman, Both Physically And Spiritually. His System Is Tuned Into Woman From The Start, Just As It Is Prepared For A Quite Definite World Where There Is Water, Light, Air, Salt, Carbohydrates Etc.

All The Most Powerful Ideas In History Go Back To Archetypes.

One Finds One's Destiny On The Path One Takes To Avoid It.

The Dream Is A Series Of Images, Which Are Apparently Contradictory And Nonsensical, But Arise In Reality From Psychologic Material Which Yields A Clear Meaning.

When You Walk With Naked Feet, How Can You Ever Forget The Earth?

Observance Of Customs And Laws Can Very Easily Be A Cloak For A Lie So Subtle That Our Fellow Human Beings Are Unable To Detect It. It May Help Us To Escape All Criticism, We May Even Be Able To Deceive Ourselves In The Belief Of Our Obvious Righteousness. But Deep Down, Below The Surface Of The Average Man's Conscience, He Hears A Voice Whispering, 'there Is Something Not Right,' No Matter How Much His Rightness Is Supported By Public Opinion Or By The Moral Code.

It Is A Bewildering Thing In Human Life That The Things That Cause The Greatest Fear Is The Source Of The Greatest Wisdom.

If You Want To Understand The Jungle, You Can't Be Content Just To Sail Back And Forth Near The Shore. You've Got To Get Into It, No Matter How Strange And Frightening It Might Seem.

Rebirth Is An Affirmation That Must Be Counted Among The Primordial Affirmations Of Mankind. The Concept Of Rebirth Necessarily Implies The Continuity Of Personality. Here The Human Personality Is Regarded As Continuous And Accessible To Memory, So That, When One Is Incarnated Or Born, One Is Able, Potentially, To Remember That One Has Lived Through Previous Existences, And That These Existences Were One's Own, Ie, They Had The Same Ego Form As The Present Life. As A Rule, Reincarnation Means Rebirth In A Human Body.

...it Seemed To Me I Was Living In An Insane Asylum Of My Own Making. I Wnt About With All These Fantastic Figures: Centaurs, Nymphs, Satyrs, Gods And Goddesses, As Though They Were Patients And I Was Analyzing Them. I Read A Greek Or Negro Myth As If A Lunatic Were Telling Me His Anamnesis.

In Order To Know The Light, We Must First Experience The Darkness.

The Whole Point Of Jesus's Life Was Not That We Should Become Exactly Like Him, But That We Should Become Ourselves In The Same Way He Became Himself. Jesus Was Not The Great Exception But The Great Example.

The Secret Of Artistic Creation And The Effectiveness Of Art Is To Be Found In A Return To The State Of 'participation Mystique' - To That Level Of Experience At Which It Is Man Who Lives, And Not The Individual.

Be Simple And Always Take The Next Step. You Needn't See It In Advance, But You Can Look Back At It Afterwards.there Is No 'how' Of Life, One Just Does It.

The Divine Process Of Change Manifests Itself To Our Human Understanding . . . As Punishment, Torment, Death, And Transfiguration.

Process Of Change

The Afternoon Of A Human Life Must Have A Significance Of Its Own, And Cannot Be Merely A Pitiful Appendage To Life's Morning.

Everyone Carries A Shadow, And The Less It Is Embodied In The Individual's Conscious Life, The Blacker And Denser It Is. At All Counts, It Forms An Unconscious Snag, Thwarting Our Most Well-meant Intentions.

Modern Man Is Battered By The Fundamental Forces Of His Own Psyche.

Wherever An Inferiority Complex Exists, There Is A Good Reason For It.

Inferiority Complex

The Man Of Today, Who Resembles More Or Less The Collective Ideal, Has Made His Heart Into A Den Of Murderers, As Can Easily Be Proved By The Analysis Of His Unconscious, Even Though He Himself Is Not In The Least Disturbed By It.

Nothing Has A Stronger Influence Psychologically On Their Environment And Especially On Their Children Than The Unlived Life Of The Parent.

We Discover Ourselves Through Others.

Every Psychic Advance Of Man Arises From The Suffering Of The Soul.

Science...is Part And Parcel Of Our Knowledge And Obscures Our Insight Only When It Holds That The Understanding Given By It Is The Only Kind There Is.

There Is A Thinking In Primordial Images, In Symbols Which Are Older Than The Historical Man, Which Are Inborn In Him From The Earliest Times, Eternally Living, Outlasting All Generations, Still Make Up The Groundwork Of The Human Psyche. It Is Only Possible To Live The Fullest Life When We Are In Harmony With These Symbols; Wisdom Is A Return To Them.

Enlightenment Doesnt Occur From Sitting Around Visualizing Images Of Light, But From Integrating The Darker Aspects Of The Self Into The Conscious Personality.

Our Mind Has Its History, Just As Our Body Has Its History. You Might Be Just As Astonished That Man Has An Appendix, For Instance. Does He Know He Ought To Have An Appendix? He Is Just Born With It....our Unconscious Mind, Like Our Body, Is A Storehouse Of Relics And Memories Of The Past. A Study Of The Structure Of The Unconscious Collective Mind Would Reveal The Same Discoveries As You Make In Comparative Anatomy. We Do Not Need To Think That There Is Anything Mystical About It.

And What Shall We Know Of This Life On Earth After Death? The Dissolution Of Our Timebound Form In Eternity Brings No Loss Of Meaning. Rather, Does The Little Finger Know Itself A Member Of The Hand.

The Gods Have Become Our Diseases.

Memories Dreams Reflections

Conflicts Create The Fire Of Affects And Emotions; And Like Every Fire It Has Two Aspects: That Of Burning And That Of Giving Light.

Life Is Crazy And Meaningful At Once.

You Must Live Life In Such A Spirit That You Make In Every Moment The Best Of Possibilities.

It Isn't Possible To Kill Part Of Your “self” Unless You Kill Yourself First. If You Ruin Your Conscious Personality, The So-called Ego-personality, You Deprive The Self Of Its Real Goal, Namely To Become Real Itself. The Goal Of Life Is The Realization Of The Self. If You Kill Yourself You Abolish That Will Of The Self To Become Real, But It May Arrest Your Personal Development Inasmuch It Is Not Explained. You Ought To Realise That Suicide Is Murder, Since After Suicide There Remains A Corpse Exactly As With Any Ordinary Murder. Only It Is Yourself That Has Been Killed.

That Which We Do Not Confront In Ourselves We Will Meet As Fate.

The 'squaring Of The Circle' Is One Of The Many Archetypal Motifs Which Form The Basic Patterns Of Our Dreams And Fantasies. But It Is Distinguished By The Fact That It Is One Of The Most Important Of Them From The Functional Point Of View. Indeed, It Could Even Be Called The Archetype Of Wholeness.

The Christian Missionary May Preach The Gospel To The Poor Naked Heathen, But The Spiritual Heathen Who Populate Europe Have As Yet Heard Nothing Of Christianity.

It Is Astounding That Man, The Instigator, Inventor And Vehicle Of All These Developments, The Originator Of All Judgements And Decisions And The Planner Of The Future, Must Make Himself Such A Quantité Negligeable.

A Patient Doesn't Select His Physical Ailments. They Happen To Him. You Could Just As Well Ask When You Are Eaten By A Crocodile, 'how Did You Select That Crocodile?'. Nonsense. He Has Selected You. The Patient Doesn't Even Select The Symptoms Unconsciously. That Is An Extraordinary Exaggeration Of The Subject To Say He Was Choosing Such Things. They Get Him.

Life Is Teleology Par Excellence; It Is The Intrinsic Striving Towards A Goal, And The Living Organism Is A System Of Directed Aims Which Seek To Fulfill Themselves.

A Man Likes To Believe That He Is The Master Of His Soul. But As Long As He Is Unable To Control His Moods And Emotions, Or To Be Conscious Of The Myriad Secret Ways In Which Unconscious Factors Insinuate Themselves Into His Arrangements And Decisions, He Is Certainly Not His Own Master.

Whoever Is Afraid Must Needs Be Dependent; A Weak Thing Needs Support. That Is Why The Primitive Mind, From Deep Psychological Necessity, Begot Religious Instruction And Embodied It In A Magician Or A Priest.

A Man's Hatred Is Always Concentrated Upon That Which Makes Him Conscious Of His Bad Qualities.

Our Heart Glows, And Secret Unrest Gnaws At The Root Of Our Being. Dealing With The Unconscious Has Become A Question Of Life For Us.

I Had To Make A Confession Of Faith In Stone. That Was The Beginning Of The Tower, The House I Built For Myself At Bollingen.

What We Do Not Make Conscious Emerges Later As Fate.

Memories Dreams Reflections

Enlightenment Consists Not Merely In The Seeing Of Luminous Shapes And Visions, But In Making The Darkness Visible. The Latter Procedure Is More Difficult And Therefore, Unpopular.

No Psychic Value Can Disappear Without Being Replaced By Another Of Equivalent Intensity.

The Biographies Of Great Artists Make It Abundantly Clear That The Creative Urge Is Often So Imperious That It Battens On Their Humanity And Yokes Everything To The Service Of The Work, Even At The Cost Of Health And Ordinary Human Happiness. The Unborn Work In The Psyche Of The Artist Is A Force Of Nature That Achieves Its End Either With Tyrannical Might Or With The Subtle Cunning Of Nature Herself, Quite Regardless Of The Personal Fate Of The Man Who Is Its Vehicle.

I Want To Be Freed Neither From Human Beings, Nor From Myself, Nor From Nature; For All These Appear To Me The Greatest Of Miracles.

The Time Is A Critical One, For It Marks The Beginning Of The Second Half Of Life, When A Metanoia, A Mental Transformation, Not Infrequently Occurs. (on Being 36 Yrs Old)

We Want To Have Certainties And No Doubts- Results And No Experiments- Without Even Seeing That Certainties Can Arise Only Through Doubt And Results Only Thorough Experiment.

The Mass State Has No Intention Of Promoting Mutual Understanding And The Relationship Of Man To Man; It Strives, Rather, For Atomization, For The Psychic Isolation Of The Individual. The More Unrelated Individuals Are, The More Consolidated The State Becomes, And Vice Versa.

Knowing Your Own Darkness Is The Best Method For Dealing With The Darknesses Of Other People.

Thoroughly Unprepared, We Take The Step Into The Afternoon Of Life. Worse Still, We Take This Step With The False Presupposition That Our Truths And Our Ideals Will Serve Us As Hitherto. But We Cannot Live The Afternoon Of Life According To The Program Of Life’s Morning, For What Was Great In The Morning Will Be Little At Evening And What In The Morning Was True, At Evening Will Have Become A Lie.

Our Souls As Well As Our Bodies Are Composed Of Individual Elements Which Were All Already Present In The Ranks Of Our Ancestors. The "newness" In The Individual Psyche Is An Endlessly Varied Recombination Of Age-old Components.

Only A Few Individuals Succeed In Throwing Off Mythology In A Time Of A Certain Intellectual Supremacy--the Mass Never Frees Itself.

The Woman Is Increasingly Aware That Love Alone Can Give Her Full Stature, Just As The Man Begins To Discern That Spirit Alone Can Endow His Life With Its Highest Meaning. Fundamentally, Therefore, Both Seek A Psychic Relation To The Other, Because Love Needs The Spirit, And The Spirit Love, For Their Fulfillment.

The Creative Mind Plays With The Object It Loves.

Nature Seemed To Me Full Of Wonders, And I Wanted To Steep Myself In Them. Every Stone, Every Plant, Every Single Thing Seemed Alive And Indescribably Marvelous. I Immersed Myself In Nature, Crawled, As It Were, Into The Very Essence Of Nature And Away From The Whole Human World.

The Symbols Of The Self Arise In The Depths Of The Body, And They Express Its Materiality Every Bit As Much As The Perceiving Consciousness. The Symbol Is Thus A Living Body

Hitler Is A Shy And Friendly Man With Artistic Tastes And Gifts.

We Don't Really Heal Anything; We Simply Let It Go.

We Do Not Know Whether Hitler Is Going To Found A New Islam. He Is Already On The Way; He Is Like Muhammad.

In All Chaos There Is A Cosmos, In All Disorder A Secret Order.

I Feel Very Strongly That I Am Under The Influence Of Things Or Questions Which Were Left Incomplete And Unanswered By My Parents And Grandparents And More Distant Ancestors. It Often Seems As If There Were An Impersonal Karma Within A Family Which Is Passed On From Parents To Children. It Has Always Seemed To Me That I Had To Answer Questions Which Fate Had Posed To My Forefathers, And Which Had Not Yet Been Answered, Or As If I Had To Complete, Or Perhaps Continue, Things Which Previous Ages Had Left Unfinished.

We Are Convinced That Certain People Have All The Bad Qualities We Do Not Know In Ourselves.

Consciousness Succumbs All Too Easily To Unconscious Influences, And These Are Often Truer And Wiser Than Our Conscious Thinking.

There Is No Coming To Consciousness Without Pain. People Will Do Anything, No Matter How Absurd, In Order To Avoid Facing Their Own Soul. One Does Not Become Enlightened By Imagining Figures Of Light, But By Making The Darkness Conscious.

To This Day God Is The Name By Which I Designate All Things Which Cross My Willful Path Violently And Recklessly, All Things Which Upset My Subjective Views, Plans And Intentions And Change The Course Of My Life For Better Or Worse.

Simple Things Are Always The Most Difficult.

The Creation Of Something New Is Not Accomplished By The Intellect But By The Play Instinct Acting From Inner Necessity. The Creative Mind Plays With The Objects It Loves.

Nobody Doubts The Importance Of Conscious Experience; Why Then Should We Doubt The Significance Of Unconscious Happenings? They Also Are Part Of Our Life, And Sometimes More Truly A Part Of It For Weal Or Woe Than Any Happenings Of The Day.

If There Is A Fear Of Falling, The Only Safety Consists In Deliberately Jumping.

Trust That Which Gives You Meaning And Accept It As Your Guide

The Gigantic Catastrophes That Threaten Us Today Are Not Elemental Happenings Of A Physical Or Biological Order, But Psychic Events. To A Quite Terrifying Degree We Are Threatened By Wars And Revolutions Which Are Nothing Other Than Psychic Epidemics. At Any Moment Several Million Human Beings May Be Smitten With A New Madness, And Then We Shall Have Another World War Or Devastating Revolution. Instead Of Being At The Mercy Of Wild Beasts, Earthquakes, Landslides, And Inundations, Modern Man Is Battered By The Elemental Forces Of His Own Psyche.

Projection [of Our Own Shadow] Makes The Whole World A Replica Of Our Own Unknown Face.

The Descent Into The Depths Always Seems To Precede The Ascent.

Life Is Something That Has To Be Lived And Not Talked About.

We All Must Do What Christ Did. We Must Make Our Experiment. We Must Make Mistakes. We Must Live Out Our Own Version Of Life. And There Will Be Error. If You Avoid Error You Do Not Live.

I Think That One Should View With Philosophic Admiration The Strange Paths Of The Libido And Should Investigate The Purposes Of Its Circuitous Ways.

Personality Is The Supreme Realization Of The Innate Idiosyncracy Of A Living Being. It Is An Act Of High Courage Flung In The Face Of Life, The Absolute Affirmation Of All That Constitutes The Individual, The Most Successful Adaptation To The Universal Conditions Of Existence Coupled With The Greatest Possible Freedom For Self-determination.

The Dream Is A Little Hidden Door In The Innermost And Most Secret Recesses Of The Soul, Opening Into That Cosmic Night Which Was Psyche Long Before There Was Any Ego-consciousness, And Which Will Remain Psyche No Matter How Far Our Ego-consciousness Extends.

To Confront A Person With Their Own Shadow Is To Show Them Their Own Light.

What Is Essential In A Work Of Art Is That It Should Rise Far Above The Realm Of Personal Life And Speak To The Spirit And Heart Of The Poet As Man To The Spirit And Heart Of Mankind.

Follow That Will And That Way Which Experience Confirms To Be Your Own.

Follow Your Heart

A Book Of Mine Is Always A Matter Of Fate. There Is Something Unpredictable About The Process Of Writing, And I Cannot Prescribe For Myself Any Predetermined Course.

All True Things Must Change And Only That Which Changes Remains True.

When Goals Go, Meaning Goes. When Meaning Goes, Purpose Goes. When Purpose Goes, Life Goes Dead On Our Hands.

A 'scream' Is Always Just That - A Noise And Not Music.

It Will Seem As If You Were Making The Visions Banal — But Then You Need To Do That — Then You Are Freed From The Power Of Them Then When These Things Are In Some Precious Book You Can Go To The Book And Turn Over The Pages And For You It Will Be Your Church — Your Cathedral — The Silent Places Of Your Spirit Where You Will Find Renewal. If Anyone Tells You That It Is Morbid Or Neurotic And You Listen To Them — Then You Will Lose Your Soul — For In That Book Is Your Soul.

Never Diagnose A (client) Until After Their Therapy Is Over.

Everyone Can Afford To Give Away A Smile.

I Came To Freud For Facts. I Read 'the Interpretation Of Dreams' And I Thought- 'oh, Here Is A Man Who Is Not Just Theorizing Away, Here Is A Man Who Has Got Facts.

One Of The Most Difficult Tasks Men Can Perform, However Much Others May Despise It, Is The Invention Of Good Games.

Faith, Hope, Love, And Insight Are The Highest Achievements Of Human Effort. They Are Found-given-by Experience.

Faith Hope Love

The World Begins To Exist When The Individual Discovers It.

Learn Your Theories As Well As You Can, But Put Them Aside When You Touch The Miracle Of The Living Soul

It Had Become Clear To Me, In A Flash Of Illumination, That For Me The Only Possible Goal Was Psychiatry. Here Alone The Two Currents Of My Interest Could Flow Together And In A United Stream Dig Their Own Bed. Here Was The Empirical Field Common To Biological And Spiritual Facts, Which I Had Everywhere Sought And Nowhere Found. Here At Last Was The Place Where The Collision Of Nature And Spirit Became A Reality.

Freedom Stretches Only As Far As The Limits Of Our Consciousness.

Memories Dreams Reflections

To Become Conscious Of It Involves Recognizing The Dark Aspects Of The Personality As Present And Real.

The Woman Who Fights Against Her Father Still Has The Possibility Of Leading An Instinctive, Feminine Existence, Because She Rejects Only What Is Alien To Her. But When She Fights Against The Mother She May, At The Risk Of Injury To Her Instincts, Attain To Greater Consciousness, Because In Repudiating The Mother She Repudiates All That Is Obscure, Instinctive, Ambiguous, And Unconscious In Her Own Nature.

Instinct Is Like Nature Herself - Prodigiously Conservative, And Yet Transcending Her Own Historical Conditions In Her Acts Of Creation.

It All Depends On How We Look At Things, And Not How They Are In Themselves.

I Have Always Tried To Make Room For Anything That Wanted To Come To Me From Within.

I Think It Is Better For All People To Live On, To Look Forward To The Next Stage (after Death), As If He Had To Spend Centuries, Then He Lives Properly... Looking Forward To The Great Adventure Ahead, Then He Lives!

Every Form Of Addiction Is Bad, No Matter Whether The Narcotic Be Alcohol Or Morphine Or Idealism.

Overcoming Addiction

The Healthy Man Does Not Torture Others.

We Should Not Pretend To Understand The World Only By The Intellect. The Judgement Of The Intellect Is Only Part Of The Truth.

I Do Not Believe...i Know.

On The Level Of The Son There Is No Answer To The Question Of Good And Evil; There Is Only An Incurable Separation Of The Opposites. . . . It Seems To Me To Be The Holy Spirit's Task And Charge To Reconcile And Reunite The Opposites In The Human Individual Through A Special Development Of The Human Soul.

The Conscious Mind Allows Itself To Be Trained Like A Parrot, But The Unconscious Does Not — Which Is Why St. Augustine Thanked God For Not Making Him Responsible For His Dreams.

It Is Often Tragic To See How Blatantly A Man Bungles His Own Life And The Lives Of Others Yet Remains Totally Incapable Of Seeing How Much The Whole Tragedy Originates In Himself, And How He Continually Feeds It And Keeps It Going. Not Consciously, Of Course—for Consciously He Is Engaged In Bewailing And Cursing A Faithless World That Recedes Further And Further Into The Distance. Rather, It Is An Unconscious Factor Which Spins The Illusions That Veil His World. And What Is Being Spun Is A Cocoon, Which In The End Will Completely Envelop Him.

The Creative Process, So Far As We Are Able To Follow It At All, Consists In The Unconscious Activation Of An Archetypal Image And Elaborating And Shaping The Image Into The Finished Work. By Giving It Shape, The Artist Translates It Into The Language Of The Present And So Makes It Possible For Us To Find Our Way Back To The Deepest Springs Of Life.

We Should Know What Our Convictions Are, And Stand For Them. Upon One's Own Philosophy, Conscious Or Unconscious, Depends One's Ultimate Interpretation Of Facts. Therefore It Is Wise To Be As Clear As Possible About One's Subjective Principles. As The Man Is, So Will Be His Ultimate Truth.

I Readily Admit That I Have Such A Great Respect For What Happens In The Human Soul That I Would Be Afraid Of Disturbing And Distorting The Silent Operation Of Nature By Clumsy Interference.

How Can I Be Substantial If I Do Not Cast A Shadow? I Must Have A Dark Side Also If I Am To Be Whole

The Psychiatrist Knows Only Too Well How Each Of Us Becomes The Helpless But Not Pitiable Victim Of His Own Sentiments. Sentimentality Is The Superstructure Erected Upon Brutality.

The Collective Unconscious Appears To Consist Of Mythological Motifs Or Primordial Images, For Which Reason The Myths Of All Nations Are Its Real Exponents. In Fact The Whole Of Mythology Could Be Taken As A Sort Of Projection Of The Collective Unconscious. We Can See This Most Clearly If We Look At The Heavenly Constellations, Whose Originally Chaotic Forms Are Organized Through The Projection Of Images. This Explains The Influence Of The Stars As Asserted By Astrologers. These Influences Are Nothing But Unconscious Instrospective Perceptions Of The Collective Unconscious.

I Deliberately And Consciously Give Preference To A Dramatic, Mythological Way Of Thinking And Speaking, Because This Is Not Only More Expressive But Also More Exact Than An Abstract Scientific Terminology, Which Is Wont To Toy With The Notion That Its Theoretic Formulations May One Fine Day Be Resolved Into Algebraic Equations.

The True Leader Is Always Led.

In The Second Half Of Life The Necessity Is Imposed Of Recognizing No Longer The Validity Of Our Former Ideals But Of Their Contraries. Of Perceiving The Error In What Was Previously Our Conviction, Of Sensing The Untruth In What Was Our Truth, And Of Weighing The Degree Of Opposition, And Even Of Hostility, In What We Took To Be Love.

We Know That The Wildest And Most Moving Dramas Are Played Not In The Theatre But In The Hearts Of Ordinary Men And Women.

The Healthy Man Does Not Torture Others - Generally It Is The Tortured Who Turn Into Torturers.

We Cannot Change Anything Until We Accept It. Condemnation Does Not Liberate, It Oppresses.

Part Of The Human Self Or Soul Is Not Subject To Laws Of Space And Time.

I Am Looking Forward Enormously To Getting Back To The Sea Again, Where The Overstimulated Psyche Can Recover In The Presence Of That Infinite Peace And Spaciousness.

Looking Forward

So Often Among So-called "primitives" One Comes Across Spiritual Personalities Who Immediately Inspire Respect, As Though They Were The Fully Matured Products Of An Undisturbed Fate.

In Sleep, Fantasy Takes The Form Of Dreams. But In Waking Life, Too, We Continue To Dream Beneath The Threshold Of Consciousness, Especially When Under The Influence Of Repressed Or Other Unconscious Complexes.

The Sure Path Can Only Lead To Death.

Memories Dreams Reflections

In Each Of Us There Is Another Whom We Do Not Know.

Memories Dreams Reflections

There Was Need Of A Phantastic, Indestructible Optimism, And One Far Removed From All Sense Of Reality, In Order, For Example, To Discover In The Shameful Death Of Christ Really The Highest Salvation And The Redemption Of The World.

Dream Analysis Stands Or Falls With [the Hypothesis Of The Unconscious]. Without It The Dream Appears To Be Merely A Freak Of Nature, A Meaningless Conglomerate Of Memory-fragments Left Over From The Happenings Of The Day.

The Unconscious Wants To Flow Into Consciousness In Order To Reach The Light, But At The Same Time It Continually Thwarts Itself, Because It Would Rather Remain Unconscious. That Is To Say, God Wants To Become Man, But Not Quite.

The Reason For Evil In The World Is That People Are Not Able To Tell Their Stories.

It Was Most Essential For Me To Have A Normal Life In The Real World As A Counterpoise To That Strange Inner World. My Family And My Profession Remained The Base To Which I Could Return.

No Concept Is A Carrier Of Life.

It Is Not For Us . . . To Send Out Missionaries To Foreign Peoples; It Is Our Task To Build Up Our Own Western Culture.

Western Culture

Not Nature, But The "genius Of Mankind," Has Knotted The Hangman's Noose With Which It Can Execute Itself At Any Moment.

Loneliness Does Not Come From Having No People About One, But From Being Unable To Communicate The Things That Seem Important To Oneself, Or From Holding Certain Views Which Others Find Inadmissible.

There Are All Too Many Who, On Account Of Their Notorious Ineptitude, Thrive Better In A Rationalist System Than In Freedom. Freedom Is One Of Those Difficult Things.

Obviously Astrology Has Much To Offer Psychology, But What The Latter Can Offer Its Elder Sister Is Less Evident. So Far As I Judge, It Would Seem To Me Advantageous For Astrology To Take The Existence Of Psychology Into Account, Above All The Psychology Of The Personality And Of The Unconscious.

One Looks Back With Appreciation To The Brilliant Teachers, But With Gratitude To Those Who Touched Our Human Feelings. The Curriculum Is So Much Necessary Raw Material, But Warmth Is The Vital Element For The Growing Plant And For The Soul Of The Child.

The Great Problems Of Life — Sexuality, Of Course, Among Others — Are Always Related To The Primordial Images Of The Collective Unconscious. These Images Are Really Balancing Or Compensating Factors Which Correspond With The Problems Life Presents In Actuality. This Is Not To Be Marveled At, Since These Images Are Deposits Representing The Accumulated Experience Of Thousands Of Years Of Struggle For Adaptation And Existence.

Collective Unconscious

Archetypes Resemble The Beds Of Rivers: Dried Up Because The Water Has Deserted Them, Though It May Return At Any Time. An Archetype Is Something Like An Old Watercourse Along Which The Water Of Life Flowed For A Time, Digging A Deep Channel For Itself. The Longer It Flowed The Deeper The Channel, And The More Likely It Is That Sooner Or Later The Water Will Return.

If There Is Anything That We Wish To Change In The Child, We Should First Examine It And See Whether It Is Not Something That Could Better Be Changed In Ourselves.

Who Has Fully Realized That History Is Not Contained In Thick Books But Lives In Our Very Blood?

The Foundation Of All Mental Illness Is The Unwillingness To Experience Legitimate Suffering.

Synchronistic Events Provide An Immediate Religious Experience As A Direct Encounter With The Compensatory Patterning Of Events In Nature As A Whole, Both Inwardly And Outwardly.

The Bigger The Crowd, The More Negligible The Individual.

As Far As We Can Discern, The Sole Purpose Of Human Existence Is To Kindle A Light Of Meaning In The Darkness Of Mere Being. Your Vision Will Become Clear Only When You Look Into Your Heart ... Who Looks Outside, Dreams. Who Looks Inside, Awakens. The Dream Is The Small Hidden Door In The Deepest And Most Intimate Sanctum Of The Soul, Which Opens To That Primeval Cosmic Night That Was Soul Long Before There Was Conscious Ego And Will Be Soul Far Beyond What A Conscious Ego Could Ever Reach.

It Is A Fact That Cannot Be Denied: The Wickedness Of Others Becomes Our Own Wickedness Because It Kindles Something Evil In Our Own Hearts.

Magic Is The Science Of The Jungle.

The Cinema, Like The Detective Story, Makes It Possible To Experience Without Danger All The Excitement, Passion And Desirousness Which Must Be Repressed In A Humanitarian Ordering Of Life.

When We Assume God To Be A Guiding Principle Well, Sure Enough, A God Is Usually Characteristic Of A Certain System Of Thought Or Morality. For Instance, Take The Christian God, The Summum Bonum: God Is Love, Love Being The Highest Moral Principle; And God Is Spirit, The Spirit Being The Supreme Idea Of Meaning. All Our Christian Moral Concepts Derive From Such Assumptions, And The Supreme Essence Of All Of Them Is What We Call God.

Guiding Principles

Every Victory Contains The Germ Of Future Defeat.

Perhaps, I Myself Am The Enemy Who Needs To Be Loved.

Dawn Is Born At Midnight.

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Baltasar Gracian

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