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Here And There It Happened In My Practice That A Patient Grew Beyond Himself Because Of Unknown Potentialities, And This Became An Experience Of Prime Importance To Me. I Had Learned In The Meanwhile That The Greatest And Most Important Problems Of Life Are All In A Certain Sense Insoluble. They Must Be So Because They Express The Necessary Polarity Inherent In Every Self-regulating System. They Can Never Be Solved, But Only Outgrown.

-Carl Jung

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Here And There It

Carl Jung

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Here And There It Happened In My Practice That A Patient Grew Beyond Himself Because Of Unknown Potentialities, And This Became An Experience Of Prime Importance To Me. I Had Learned In The Meanwhile That The Greatest And Most Important Problems Of Life Are All In A Certain Sense Insoluble. They Must Be So Because They Express The Necessary Polarity Inherent In Every Self-regulating System. They Can Never Be Solved, But Only Outgrown.

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Just As Man As A Social Being, Cannot In The Long Run Exist Without A Tie To The Community, So The Individual Will Never Find The Real Justification For His Existence, And His Own Spiritual And Moral Autonomy, Anywhere Except In An Extramundane Principle Capable Of Relativizing The Overpowering Influence Of External Factors.

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

Dreaming Is A Philogenetically Older Mode Of Thought.

Anyone Who Wants To Know The Human Psyche Will Learn Next To Nothing From Experimental Psychology. He Would Be Better Advised To Abandon Exact Science, Put Away His Scholar's Gown, Bid Farewell To His Study, And Wander With Human Heart Through The World.

The Idea Of Suicide, Understandable As It Is, Does Not Seem Commendable To Me. We Live In Order To Gain The Greatest Possible Amount Of Spiritual Development And Self-awareness. As Long As Life Is Possible, Even If Only In A Minimal Degree, You Should Hang Onto It, In Order To Scoop It Up For The Purpose Of Conscious Development. To Interrupt Life Before Its Time Is To Bring To A Standstill An Experiment Which We Have Not Set Up. We Have Found Ourselves In The Midst Of It And Must Carry It Through To The End.

The Problem Of Synchronicity Has Puzzled Me For A Long Time, Ever Since The Middle Twenties, When I Was Investigating The Phenomena Of The Collective Unconscious And Kept On Coming Across Connections Which I Simply Could Not Explain As Chance Groupings Or "runs." What I Found Were "coincidences" Which Were Connected So Meaningfully That Their "chance" Concurrence Would Represent A Degree Of Improbability That Would Have To Be Expressed By An Astronomical Figure.

Collective Unconscious

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.

I Shall Not Commit The Fashionable Stupidity Of Regarding Everything I Cannot Explain As A Fraud.

The True Leader Is Always Led.

Our Intellect Has Created A New World That Dominates Nature, And Has Populated It With Monstrous Machines.

The Separation Of Psychology From The Premises Of Biology Is Purely Artificial, Because The Human Psyche Lives In Indissoluble Union With The Body.

We Are So Accustomed To The Apparently Rational Nature Of Our World That We Can Scarcely Imagine Anything Happening That Cannot Be Explained By Common Sense. The Primitive Man Confronted By A Shock Of This Kind Would Not Doubt His Sanity; He Would Think Of Fetishes, Spirits Or Gods

Perhaps This Sounds Very Simple, But Simple Things Are Always The Most Difficult. In Actual Life It Requires The Greatest Discipline To Be Simple, And The Acceptance Of Oneself Is The Essence Of The Moral Problem And The Epitome Of A Whole Outlook Upon Life.

We Do Not Feel As If We Were Producing The Dreams, It Is Rather As If The Dreams Came To Us. They Are Not Subject To Our Control But Obey Their Own Laws.

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

Solitude Is For Me A Fount Of Healing Which Makes My Life Worth Living. Talking Is Often A Torment For Me, And I Need Many Days Of Silence To Recover From The Futility Of Words.

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.

Individualization Does Not Shut One Out From The World, But Gathers The World To Oneself.

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 You Succeed In Awakening The Kundalini, So That It Starts To Move Out Of Its Mere Potentiality, You Necessarily Start A World Which Is Totally Different From Our World. It Is The World Of Eternity.

Everyone Is In Love With His Own Ideas

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.

Our World Has Become Dehumanized. Man Feels Himself Isolated In The Cosmos, Because He Is No Longer Involved In Nature.

One Does Not Become Enlightened By Imagining Figures Of Light, But By Making The Darkness Conscious.

The Christian Religion Seems To Have Fulfilled Its Great Biological Purpose, In So Far As We Are Able To Judge. It Has Led Human Thought To Independence, And Has Lost Its Significance, Therefore, To A Yet Undetermined Extent.... It Seems To Me That We Might Still Make Use In Some Way Of Its Form Of Thought, And Especially Of Its Great Wisdom Of Life, Which For Two Thousand Years Has Proven To Be Particularly Efficacious.

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

Healing Proceeds From The Depths To The Heights.

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

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.

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

Overcoming Addiction

The Greater The Contrast, The Greater The Potential. Great Energy Only Comes From A Correspondingly Great Tension Of Opposites.

No One Should Deny The Danger Of The Descent, But It Can Be Risked. No One Need Risk It, But It Is Certain That Someone Will. And Let Those Who Go Down The Sunset Way Do So With Open Eyes, For It Is A Sacrifice Which Daunts Even The Gods. Yet Every Descent Is Followed By An Ascent.

Free Will Is The Ability To Do Gladly That Which I Must Do.

Wisdom Accepts That All Things Have Two Sides

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.

It Seems As If It Is Only Through An Experience Of Symbolic Reality That Man, Vainly Seeking His Own “existence” And Making A Philosophy Out Of It, Can Find His Way Back To A World In Which He Is No Longer A Stranger.

Whenever We Touch Nature We Get Clean. People Who Have Got Dirty Through Too Much Civilization Take A Walk In The Woods, Or A Bath In The Sea. Entering The Unconscious, Entering Yourself Through Dreams, Is Touching Nature From The Inside And This Is The Same Thing, Things Are Put Right Again.

The Brain Is Viewed As An Appendage Of The Genital Glands.

The Greater The Tension, The Greater Is The Potential.

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.

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

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.

Shame Is A Soul Eating Emotion.

Our Unconscious Is The Key To Our Life's Pursuits.

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.

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.

...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.

The Maintenance Of Secrets Acts Like A Psychic Poison Which Alienates The Possessor From The Community.

Life Has Always Seemed To Me Like A Plant That Lives On Its Rhizome. Its True Life Is Invisible, Hidden In The Rhizome. The Part That Appears Above Ground Lasts Only A Single Summer. Then It Withers Away—an Ephemeral Apparition. When We Think Of The Unending Growth And Decay Of Life And Civilizations, We Cannot Escape The Impression Of Absolute Nullity. Yet I Have Never Lost A Sense Of Something That Lives And Endures Underneath The Eternal Flux. What We See Is The Blossom, Which Passes. The Rhizome Remains.

But What Will He Do When He Sees Only Too Clearly Why His Patient Is Ill; When He Sees That It Arises From His Having No Love, But Only Sexuality; No Faith, Because He Is Afraid To Grope In The Dark; No Hope, Because He Is Disillusioned By The World And By Life; And No Understanding, Because He Has Failed To Read The Meaning Of His Own Existence?

The Angel Personifies Something New Arising From The Deep Unconscious.

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

Intuition Is One Of The Four Basic Psychological Functions Along With Thinking, Feeling,and Sensing.

The Dynamic Principle Of Fantasy Is Play, A Characteristic Also Of The Child, And As Such It Appears Inconsistent With The Principle Of Serious Work. But Without This Playing With Fantasy No Creative Work Has Ever Yet Come To Birth. The Debt We Owe To The Play Of Imagination Is Incalculable. It Is Therefore Short-sighted To Treat Fantasy, On Account Of Its Risky Or Unacceptable Nature, As A Thing Of Little Worth.

The Sight Of A Child…will Arouse Certain Longings In Adult, Civilized Persons — Longings Which Relate To The Unfulfilled Desires And Needs Of Those Parts Of The Personality Which Have Been Blotted Out Of The Total Picture In Favor Of The Adapted Persona.

Here And There It Happened In My Practice That A Patient Grew Beyond Himself Because Of Unknown Potentialities, And This Became An Experience Of Prime Importance To Me. I Had Learned In The Meanwhile That The Greatest And Most Important Problems Of Life Are All In A Certain Sense Insoluble. They Must Be So Because They Express The Necessary Polarity Inherent In Every Self-regulating System. They Can Never Be Solved, But Only Outgrown.

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

Creativity Is The Art That Can Give Rise To Visionary Metaphorical Relationships, As Opposed To Purely Psy-chological Ones.

God Has Fallen Out Of Containment In Religion And Into Human Hearts—god Is Incarnating. Our Whole Unconscious Is In An Uproar From The God Who Wants To Know And To Be Known.

Often The Hands Will Solve A Mystery That The Intellect Has Struggled With In Vain.

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.

Far From Being A Material World, This Is A Psychic World, Which Allows Us To Make Only Indirect And Hypothetical Inferences About The Real Nature Of Matter. The Psychic, Alone Has Immediate Reality, And This Includes All Forms Of The Psychic, Even

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.

In Fact, The Whole Of Mythology Could Be Taken As A Sort Of Projection Of The Collective Unconscious

Collective Unconscious

...the Soul Does Not Require The Organs Of Sense In Order To See, Hear, Smell, Taste And Feel, In A Much More Perfect State; But With This Great Difference, That In Such A State, It Stands In Much Nearer Connection With The Spirtual Than The Material World.

Science Is Not ... A Perfect Instrument, But It Is A Superb And Invaluable Tool That Works Harm Only When Taken As An End In Itself.

Children Are Educated By What The Grown-up Is And Not By His Talk.

When One Is Not Understood One Should As A Rule Lower One's Voice, Because When One Really Speaks Loudly Enough And Is Not Heard, It Is Because People Do Not Want To Hear. One Had Better Begin To Mutter To Oneself, Then They Get Curious.

Special Knowledge Is A Terrible Disadvantage.

Explore Daily The Will Of God.

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

Anthropologists Have Often Described What Happens To A Primitive Society When Its Spiritual Values Are Exposed To The Impact Of Modern Civilisation. Its People Lose The Meaning Of Their Lives, Their Social Organisation Disintegrates, And They Themselves Morally Decay. We Are Now In The Same Condition. But We Have Never Really Understood What We Have Lost, For Our Spiritual Leaders Unfortunately Were More Interested In Protecting Their Institutions Than In Understanding The Mystery That Symbols Present.

Without Freedom There Can Be No Morality.

Memories Dreams Reflections

When You Are Up Against A Wall, Put Down Roots Like A Tree, Until Clarity Comes From Deeper Sources To See Over That Wall And Grow.

Positive Thinking

Archetypes, In Spite Of Their Conservative Nature, Are Not Static But In A Continuous Dramatic Flux. Thus The Self As A Monad Or Continuous Unit Would Be Dead. But It Lives Inasmuch As It Splits And Unites Again. There Is No Energy Without Opposites!

Just Imagine What Would Happen If Practicing Physicians, The Ones Who Have Come Into Contact Directly With Suffering Humanity, Had Some Acquaintance With Eastern Systems Of Healing. The Spirit Of The East Surges Through Every Pore As A Balm For All Afflictions.

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.

People Cannot Stand Too Much Reality.

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.

It Is Only Our Deeds That Reveal Who We Are.

Famous Inspirational

Intuition Does Not Denote Something Contrary To Reason, But Something Outside Of The Province Of Reason.

No Dream Symbol Can Be Separated From The Individual Who Dreams It, And There Is No Definite Or Straightforward Interpretation Of Any Dream.

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.

However Far-fetched It May Sound, Experience Shows That Many Neuroses Are Caused By The Fact That People Blind Themselves To Their Own Religious Promptings Because Of A Childish Passion For Rational Enlightenment.

Since Psyche And Matter Are Contained In One And The Same World, And Moreover Are In Continuous Contact With One Another And Ultimately Rest On Irrepresentable, Transcendental Factors, It Is Not Only Possible But Fairly Probable, Even, That Psyche And Matter Are Two Different Aspects Of The Same Thing.

At Present We Educate People Only Up To The Point Where They Can Earn A Living And Marry; Then Education Ceases Altogether, As Though A Complete Mental Outfit Had Been Acquired. ... Vast Numbers Of Men And Women Thus Spend Their Entire Lives In Complete Ignorance Of The Most Important Things.

Primitive Superstition Lies Just Below The Surface Of Even The Most Tough-minded Individuals, And It Is Precisely Those Who Most Fight Against It Who Are The First To Succumb To Its Suggestive Effects.

The Great Decisions Of Human Life Have As A Rule Far More To Do With The Instincts And Other Mysterious Unconscious Factors Than With Conscious Will And Well-meaning Reasonableness. The Shoe That Fits One Person Pinches Another; There Is No Recipe For Living That Suits All Cases. Each Of Us Carries His Own Life-form- An Indeterminable Form Which Cannot Be Superseded By Any Other.

Nature Does Not Deceive Or Conceal, But Reveals.

If Only Simplicity Were Not The Most Difficult Of All Things. It Consists Of Watching Objectively The Development Of Any Fragment Of Fantasy.

A Purely Psychological Explanation Is Ruled Out... The Discs Show Signs Of Intelligent Guidance, By Quasi-human Pilots.

It Is On The Whole Probably That We Continually Dream, But That Consciousness Makes Such A Noise That We Do Not Hear It.

I Know That Previously I Would Not Have Dared To Express Myself So Explicitly About So Uncertain A Matter. I Can Take This Risk Because I Am Now In My Eighth Decade, And The Changing Opinions Of Men Scarcely Impress Me Any More; The Thoughts Of The Old Masters Are Of Greater Value To Me Than The Philosophical Prejudices Of The Western Mind.

Synchronistic Phenomena Prove The Simultaneous Occurrence Of Meaningful Equivalences In Heterogenous, Causally Unrelated Processes; In Other Words, They Prove That A Content Perceived By An Observer Can, At The Same Time, Be Represented By An Outside Event, Without Any Causal Connection. From This It Follows Either That The Psyche Cannot Be Localized In Time, Or That Space Is Relative To The Psyche.

The Need For Mythic Statements Is Satisfied When We Frame A View Of The World Which Adequately Explains The Meaning Of Human Existence In The Cosmos, A View Which Springs From Our Psychic Wholeness, From The Co-operation Between Conscious And Unconscious. Meaninglessness Inhibits Fullness Of Life And Is Therefore Equivalent To Illness. Meaning Makes A Great Many Things Endurable - Perhaps Everything.

Fullness Of Life

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

Gnosticism Was Stamped Out Completely And Its Remnants Are So Badly Mangled That Special Study Is Needed To Get Any Insight At All Into Its Inner Meaning.

To Find Out What Is Truly Individual In Ourselves, Profound Reflection Is Needed; And Suddenly We Realize How Uncommonly Difficult The Discovery Of Individuality Is.

Synchronicity: A Meaningful Coincidence Of Two Or More Events Where Something Other Than The Probability Of Chance Is Involved.

It Is In Applied Psychology, If Anywhere, That Today We Should Be Modest And Grant Validity To A Number Of Apparently Contradictory Opinions; For We Are Still Far From Having Anything Like A Thorough Knowledge Of The Human Psyche, That Most Challenging Field Of Scientific Enquiry. For The Present We Have Merely More Or Less Plausible Opinions That Defy Reconciliation.

In The Last Analysis, The Essential Thing Is The Life Of Individual. This Alone Makes History, Here Alone Do The Great Transformations Take Place, And The Whole Future, The Whole History Of The World, Ultimately Springs As A Gigantic Summation From These Hidden Source In Individuals.

The Totality Of The Psyche Can Never Be Grasped By The Intellect Alone.

Wo Die Liebe Herrscht, Da Gibt Es Keinen Machtwillen, Und Wo Die Macht Den Vorrang Hat, Da Fehlt Die Liebe. Das Eine Ist Der Schatten Des Andern. Translation: Where Love Rules, There Is No Will To Power; And Where Power Predominates, There Love Is Lacking. The One Is The Shadow Of The Other.

Conflict Exists Strictly As An Opportunity To Raise Our Consciousness.

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.

One Might Expect, Perhaps, That A Man Full Of Genius Could Pasture In The Greatness Of His Own Thoughts, And Renounce The Cheap Approbation Of The Crowd Which He Despises; Yet He Succumbs To The More Powerful Impulse Of The Herd Instinct. His Searching And His Finding, His Call, Belong To The Herd.

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

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.

We Do Not Know Whether Hitler Is Going To Found A New Islam. He Is Already On The Way; He Is Like Mohammad. The Emotion In Germany Is Islamic; Warlike And Islamic. They Are All Drunk With Wild God. That Can Be The Historic Future.

I Am The Triple Owner Of The World, The Finest Turkey, The Lorelei, Germania And Helvetia Of Exclusively Sweet Butter And Naples, And I Must Supply The Whole World With Macaroni.

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.

So Far As The Personality Is Still Potential, It Can Be Called Transcendent, And So Far As It Is Unconscious, It Is Indistinguishable From All Those Things That Carry Its Projections...that Is, Symbols Of The Outside World And The Cosmic Symbols. These Form The Psychological Basis For The Conception Of Man As A Macrocosm Through The Astrological Components Of His Character.

Do Not Compare, Do Not Measure. No Other Way Is Like Yours. All Other Ways Deceive And Tempt You. You Must Fulfill The Way That Is In You.

No Nation Keeps Its Word. A Nation Is A Big, Blind Worm, Following What? Fate Perhaps. A Nation Has No Honor, It Has No Word To Keep.

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

Dreams Are The Facts From Which We Must Proceed.

The Most Dangerous Things In The World Are Immense Accumulations Of Human Beings Who Are Manipulated By Only A Few Heads.

Art Is A Kind Of Innate Drive That Seizes A Human Being And Makes Him Its Instrument.

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.

For A Woman, The Typical Danger Emanating From The Unconscious Comes From Above, From The "spiritual" Sphere Personified By The Animus, Whereas For A Man It Comes From The Chthonic Realm Of The "world And Woman," I.e., The Anima Projected On To The World.

We Have Forgotten The Age-old Fact That God Speaks Chiefly Through Dreams And Visions.

Invited Or Not, God Is Present.

As Soon As The Dialogue Between Two People Touches On Something Fundamental, Essential, Numinous, And A Certain Rapport Is Felt, It Gives Rise To A Phenomenon Which Lévy-bruhl Fittingly Called Participation Mystique. It Is An Unconscious Identity In Which Two Individual Psychic Spheres Interpenetrate To Such A Degree That It Is Impossible To Say What Belongs To Whom.

What Happens After Death Is So Unspeakably Glorious That Our Imagination And Our Feelings Do Not Suffice To Form Even An Approximate Conception Of It. The Dissolution Of Our Time-bound Form In Eternity Brings No Loss Of Meaning.

The Unexpected And The Incredible Belong In This World. Only Then Is Life Whole.

In My Case Pilgrim's Progress Consisted In My Having To Climb Down A Thousand Ladders Until I Could Reach Out My Hand To The Little Clod Of Earth That I Am.

To Make What Fate Intends For Me My Own Intention

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.

Intuition Is Perception Via The Unconscious That Brings Forth Ideas, Images, New Possibilities And Ways Out Of Blocked Situations.

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

Astrology Is One Of The Intuitive Methods Like The I Ching, Geomantics, And Other Divinatory Procedures. It Is Based Upon The Synchronicity Principle, Meaningful Coincidence. ... Astrology Is A Naively Projected Psychology In Which The Different Attitudes And Temperaments Of Man Are Represented As Gods And Identified With Planets And Zodiacal Constellations.

Nothing Worse Could Happen To One Than To Be Completely Understood.

Error Is Just As Important A Condition Of Life's Progress As Truth

It Is Indeed Time For The Clergyman And The Psychotherapist To Join Forces.

I Live In My Deepest Hell And From There I Cannot Fall Any Further.

Great Talents Are The Most Lovely And Often The Most Dangerous Fruits On The Tree Of Humanity. They Hang Upon The Most Slender Twigs That Are Easily Snapped Off.

The Word 'happiness' Would Lose Its Meaning If It Were Not Balanced And Contrasted And Compared To Sadness. In Comparing How An Experience Could Have Been Worse We Develop Gratitude And Happiness, While If We Compare It How It Could Have Been Better We Develop Bitterness And Sadness.

When An Inner Situation Is Not Made Conscious, It Appears Outside As Fate.

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

An Old Man Who Cannot Bid Farewell To Life Appears As Feeble And Sickly As The Young Man Who Is Unable To Embrace It.

The Mandala Is An Archetypal Image Whose Occurrence Is Attested Throughout The Ages. It Signifies The Wholeness Of The Self. This Circular Image Represents The Wholeness Of The Psychic Ground Or, To Put It In Mythic Terms, The Divinity Incarnate In Man.

The Platonic World Of Ideas Corresponds To Thinking And Sensation On The Mystical Level.

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 Angels Are A Strange Genus: They Are Precisely What They Are And Cannot Be Anything Else. They Are In Themselves Soulless Beings Who Represent Nothing But The Thoughts And Intuitions Of Their Lord.

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.

I Think There Will Be A Reaction - A Reaction Will Set In Against This Communal Dissociation. You Know, Man Doesn't Stand Forever, His Nullification. Once, There Will Be A Reaction, And I See It Setting In, You Know, When I Think Of My Patients, They All Seek Their Own Existence And To Assure Their Existence Against That Complete Atomization Into Nothingness Or Into Meaninglessness. Man Cannot Stand A Meaningless Life.

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.

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

In The End, The Only Events Of My Life Worth Telling Are Those When The Imperishable World Erupted Into This Transitory One All Other Memories Of Travels, People And My Surroundings Have Paled Beside These Interior Happenings But My Encounters With The 'other' Reality, My Bouts With The Unconscious, Are Indelibly Engraved On My Memory. In That Realm There Has Always Been Wealth In Abundance, And Everything Else Has Lost Importance By Comparison.

Criticism Can Be Effective When There Is Something That Must Be Destroyed Or Dissolved, But It Is Capable Only Of Harm When There Is Something To Be Built.

How Can Anyone See Straight When He Does Not See Himself And The Darkness He Unconsciously Carries With Him Into All His Dealings?

The Less We Understand Of What Our Fathers And Forefathers Sought, The Less We Understand Ourselves, And Thus We Help With All Our Might To Rob The Individual Of His Roots And His Guiding Instincts, So That He Becomes A Particle In The Mass, Ruled Only By What Nietzsche Called The Spirit Of Gravity.

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.’

From The Middle Of Life Onward, Only He Remains Vitally Alive Who Is Ready To Die With Life.

But What If I Should Discover That The Least Amongst Them All, The Poorest Of All Beggars, The Most Impudent Of All Offenders, Yea The Very Fiend Himself— That These Are Within Me, And That I Myself Stand In Need Of The Alms Of My Own Kindness, That I Myself Am The Enemy Who Must Be Loved— What Then?

What We Do Not Make Conscious Emerges Later As Fate.

Memories Dreams Reflections

The More Veiled Becomes The Outside World, Steadily Losing In Colour, Tone And Passions, The More Urgently The Inner World Calls Us

The Privilege Of A Lifetime Is To Become Who You Truly Are.

Our Mania For Rational Explanations Obviously Has Its Roots In Our Fear Of Metaphysics, For The Two Were Always Hostile Brothers. Hence, Anything Unexpected That Approaches Us From The Dark Realm Is Regarded Either As Coming From Outside And, Therefore, As Real, Or Else As A Hallucination And, Therefore, Not True. The Idea That Anything Could Be Real Or True Which Does Not Come From Outside Has Hardly Begun To Dawn On Contemporary Man.

All My Writings May Be Considered Tasks Imposed From Within, Their Source Was A Fateful Compulsion. What I Wrote Were Things That Assailed Me From Within Myself. I Permitted The Spirit That Moved Me To Speak Out.

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

Memories Dreams Reflections

What You Resist Persist.

I Cannot Define For You What God Is. I Can Only Say That My Work Has Proved Empirically That The Pattern Of God Exists In Every Man And That This Pattern Has At Its Disposal The Greatest Of All His Energies For Transformation And Transfiguration Of His Natural Being. Not Only The Meaning Of His Life But His Renewal And His Institutions Depend On His Conscious Relationship With This Pattern Of His Collective Unconscious.

Collective Unconscious

The Self Is Our Life's Goal, For It Is The Completest Expression Of That Fateful Combination We Call Individuality.

Water Is The Commonest Symbol For The Unconscious.

In The History Of The Collective As In The History Of The Individual, Everything Depends On The Development Of Consciousness.

Ultimate Truth, If There Be Such A Thing, Demands The Concert Of Many Voices.

The Underlying, Primary Psychic Reality Is So Inconceivably Complex That It Can Be Grasped Only At The Farthest Reach Of Intuition, And Then But Very Dimly. That Is Why It Needs Symbols.

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.

A Complex Is A Cluster Of Energy In The Unconscious, Charged By Historic Events, Reinforced Through Repitition, Embodying A Fragment Of Our Personality, And Generating A Programmed Response And An Implicit Set Of Expectations.

Psychiatrists Classify A Person As Neurotic If He Suffers From His Problems In Living, And A Psychotic If He Makes Others Suffer.

The Wrong We Have Done, Thought, Or Intended Will Wreak Its Vengeance On Our Souls.

What Is Not Brought To Consciousness, Comes To Us As Fate.

I Saw That Everything, All Paths I Had Been Following, All Steps I Had Taken, Were Leading Back To A Single Point - Namely, To The Mid-point. It Became Increasingly Plain To Me That The Mandala Is The Center. It Is The Exponent Of All Paths. It Is The Path To The Center, To Individuation. I Knew That In Finding The Mandala As An Expression Of The Self I Had Attained What Was For Me The Ultimate.

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

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 Of Something I Do Not Know. In Spite Of All Uncertainties, I Feel A Solidity Underlying All Existence And A Continuity In My Mode Of Being.

We Carry Our Past With Us, To Wit, The Primitive And Inferior Man With His Desires And Emotions, And It Is Only With An Enormous Effort That We Can Detach Ourselves From This Burden. If It Comes To A Neurosis, We Invariably Have To Deal With A Considerably Intensified Shadow.

The Self As The Essence Of Individuality Is Unitemporal And Unique; As An Archetypal Symbol It Is A God-image And Therefore Universal And Eternal.

Only A Life Lived In A Certain Spirit Is Worth Living. It Is A Remarkable Fact That A Life Lived Entirely From The Ego Is Dull Not Only For The Person Himself But For All Concerned.

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.

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

The Serious Problems In Life...are Never Fully Solved. If Ever They Should Appear To Be So It Is A Sure Sign That Something Has Been Lost. The Meaning And Purpose Of A Problem Seem To Lie Not In Its Solution But In Our Working At It Incessantly.

We Can Keep From A Child All Knowledge Of Earlier Myths, But We Cannot Take From Him The Need For Mythology.

Yoga In Mayfair Or Fifth Avenue, Or In Any Other Place Which Is On The Telephone, Is A Spiritual Fake.

But The Meaning Of Life Is Not . . . Explained By One's Business Life, Nor Is The Deep Desire Of The Human Heart Answered By A Bank Account.

Meaning Of Life

It Is Just Man's Turning Away From Instinct--his Opposing Himself To Instinct--that Creates Consciousness. Instinct Is Nature Andseeks To Perpetuate Nature; While Consciousness Can Only Seek Culture Or Its Denial.

From The Living Fountain Of Instinct Flows Everything That Is Creative; Hence The Unconscious Is Not Merely Conditioned By History, But Is The Very Source Of The Creative Impulse. It Is Like Nature Herself - Prodigiously Conservative, And Yet Transcending Her Own Historical Conditions In Her Acts Of Creation.

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

Process Of Change

From The Viewpoint Of Analytic Psychology, The Theatre, Aside From Any Aesthetic Value, May Be Considered As An Institution For The Treatment Of The Mass Complex.

Even If The Whole World Were To Fall To Pieces, The Unity Of The Psyche Would Never Be Shattered.

But India Did Not Pass Me By Without A Trace: It Left Tracks Which Lead Me From One Infinity To Another Infinity.

How Else Could It Have Occurred To Man To Divide The Cosmos, On The Analogy Of Day And Night, Summer And Winter, Into A Bright Day-world And A Dark Night-world Peopled With Fabulous Monsters, Unless He Had The Prototype Of Such A Division In Himself, In The Polarity Between The Conscious And The Invisible And Unknowable Unconscious?

One Cannot Free Oneself By Bowing To The Yoke, But By Breaking It.

The Mind Has Grown To Its Present State Of Consciousness As An Acorn Grows Into An Oak, Or As Saurians Developed Into Mammals.

No Concept Is A Carrier Of Life.

Without This Playing With Fantasy No Creative Work Has Ever Yet Come To Birth. The Debt We Owe To The Play Of The Imagination Is Incalculable.

One Must Be Able To Let Things Happen.

I Cannot Prove To You That God Exists, But My Work Has Proved Empirically That The Pattern Of God Exists In Every Man And That This Pattern In The Individual Has At Its Disposal The Greatest Transforming Energies Of Which Life Is Capable. Find This Pattern In Your Own Individual Self And Life Is Transformed.

Mind And Matter Are Two Different Aspects Of One And The Same Thing.

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

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Robert Griffin III

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