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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.

-Carl Jung

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I Cannot Define For

Carl Jung

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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.

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Collective Unconscious

More From Carl Jung

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

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.

We Meet Ourselves Time And Again In A Thousand Disguises On The Path Of Life.

Law Of Attraction

It Is Really The Mistake Of Our Age. We Think It Is Enough To Discover New Things, But We Don't Realize That Knowing More Demands A Corresponding Development Of Morality.

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

The Starry Vault Of Heaven Is In Truth The Open Book Of Cosmic Projection, In Which Are Reflected The Mythologems, I.e., The Archetypes. In This Vision Astrology And Alchemy, The Two Classical Functionaries Of The Psychology Of The Collective Unconscious, Join Hands.

Collective Unconscious

A Man Who Has Not Passed Through The Inferno Of His Passions Has Never Overcome Them.

Whether You Call The Principle Of Existence "god," "matter," "energy," Or Anything Else You Like, You Have Created Nothing; You Have Merely Changed A Symbol. Eastern And Western Thinking, 1938

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Plants Were Bound For Good Or Ill To Their Places. They Expressed Not Only Beauty But Also The Thoughts Of God's World, With An Intent Of Their Own And Without Deviation. Trees In Particular Were Mysterious And Seemed To Me Direct Embodiments Of The Incomprehensible Meaning Of Life. For That Reason, The Woods Were The Places Where I Felt Closest To Its Deepest Meaning And To Its Awe-inspiring Workings.

Meaning Of Life

The Upheaval Of Our World And The Upheaval Of Our Consciousness Are One And The Same.

Self-reflection, Or - What Comes To The Same Thing - The Urge To Individuation, Gathers Together What Is Scattered And Multifarious And Exalts It To The Original Of The One, The Primordial Man. In This Way Our Existence As Separate Beings, Our Former Ego Nature, Is Abolished, The Circle Of Consciousness Is Widened, And Because The Paradoxes Have Been Made Conscious, The Sources Of Conflict Are Dried Up.

Thinking Is Difficult, That’s Why Most People Judge.

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

People Cannot Stand Too Much Reality.

If Our Religion Is Based On Salvation, Our Chief Emotions Will Be Fear And Trembling. If Our Religion Is Based On Wonder, Our Chief Emotion Will Be Gratitude.

The Shadow Is A Moral Problem That Challenges The Whole Ego-personality, For No One Can Become Conscious Of The Shadow Without Considerable Moral Effort. To Become Conscious Of It Involves Recognizing The Dark Aspects Of The Personality As Present And Real. This Act Is The Essential Condition For Any Kind Of Self-knowledge, And It Therefore, As A Rule, Meets With Considerable Resistance. Indeed, Self-knowledge As A Psychotherapuetic Measure Frequently Requires Much Painstaking Work Extending Over A Long Period Of Time.

The Inner Man Has Access To The Sense Organs Of God.

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.

Just As We Tend To Assume That The World Is As We See It, We Naively Suppose That People Are As We Imagine Them To Be.

I Studiously Avoided All So-called "holy Men." I Did So Because I Had To Make Do With My Own Truth, Not Accept From Others What I Could Not Attain On My Own. I Would Have Felt It As A Theft Had I Attempted To Learn From The Holy Men And To Accept Their Truth For Myself. Neither In Europe Can I Make Any Borrowings From The East, But Must Shape My Life Out Of Myself-out Of What My Inner Being Tells Me, Or What Nature Brings To Me.

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.

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

But We Cannot Live The Afternoon Of Life According To The Programme Of Life's Morning — For What Was Great In The Morning Will Be Little At Evening, And What In The Morning Was True Will At Evening Have Become A Lie.

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

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.

During My Medical Education At The University Of Basle I Found Vivisection Horrible, Barbarous And Above All Unnecessary

The Artist Is Not A Person Endowed With Free Will Who Seeks His Own Ends, But One Who Allows It To Realize Its Supreme Purpose Through Him.

We Cannot Imagine Events That Are Connected Non-causally And Are Capable Of A Non-causal Explanation. But That Does Not Mean That Such Events Do Not Exist.

The Attainment Of Wholeness Requires One To Stake One's Whole Being. Nothing Less Will Do; There Can Be No Easier Conditions, No Substitutes, No Compromises.

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 Have No Theory About Dreams. I Do Not Know How Dreams Arise. On The Other Hand, I Know That If We Meditate On A Dream Sufficiently Long And Thoroughly – If We Take The Boat With Us And Turn It Over And Over – Something Almost Always Comes Out Of It.

If A Man Knows More Than Others, He Becomes Lonely.

One Could Say, With A Little Exaggeration, That The Persona Is That Which In Reality One Is Not, But Which Oneself As Well As Others Think One Is.

Science Is The Art Of Creating Suitable Illusions Which The Fool Believes Or Argues Against, But The Wise Man Enjoys For Their Beauty Or Their Ingenuity, Without Being Blind To The Fact That They Are Human Veils And Curtains Concealing The Abysmal Darkness Of The Unknowable

The Main Interest Of My Work Is Not Concerned With The Treatment Of Neuroses But Rather With The Approach To The Numinous. But The Fact That The Approach To The Numinous Is The Real Therapy, And Inasmuch As You Attain To The Numinous Experience You Are Released From The Curse Of Pathology. Even The Very Disease Takes On A Numinous Character.

Man Is The Microcosm Of The Macrocosm ; The God On Earth Is Built On The Pattern Of The God In Nature. But The Universal Consciousness Of The Real Ego Transcends A Million Fold The Self-consciousness Of The Personal For False Ego.

Summoned Or Not, The God Will Come.

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.

The Judgment Of The Intellect Is, At Best, Only The Half Of Truth.

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.

Only A Fool Is Interested In Other People's Guilt, Since He Cannot Alter It. The Wise Man Learns Only From His Own Guilt. He Will Ask Himself: Who Am I That All This Should Happen To Me? To Find The Answer To This Fateful Question He Will Look Into His Own Heart.

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

Our Blight Is Ideologies — They Are The Long-expected Antichrist!

If You Are Unhappy, You Are Too High Up In Your Mind.

How Difficult It Is To Reach Anything Approaching A Moderate And Relatively Calm Point Of View In The Midst Of One's Emotions.

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

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.

In All Chaos There Is A Cosmos, In All Disorder A Secret Order... We Are Caught And Entangled In Aimless Experience... Only When All Props And Crutches Are Broken, And No Cover From The Rear Offers Even The Slightest Hope Of Security, Does It Become Possible For Us To Experience An Archetype That Up Till Then Had Lain Hidden Behind The Meaningful Nonsense Played Out By The Anima. This Is The Archetype Of Meaning, Just As The Anima Is The Archetype Of Life Itself.

The True Leader Is Always Led.

...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.

Astrologers Are Influenced By Theosophy, So They Say, "that Is Very Simple, It Is Just Vibration!" ... But What Is Vibration? They Say It Is Light Energy, Perhaps Electricity, They Are Not Quite Informed. At All Events The Vibrations That Could Influence Us Have Never Been Seen, So It Remains Just A Word.

We Discover Ourselves Through Others.

As A Child I Felt Myself To Be Alone, And I Am Still, Because I Know Things And Must Hint At Things Which Others Apparently Know Nothing Of, And For The Most Part Do Not Want To Know.

The Upheaval Of Our World And The Upheaval In Consciousness Is One And The Same. Everything Becomes Relative And Therefore Doubtful. And While Man, Hesitant And Questioning, Contemplates... His Spirit Yearns For An Answer That Will Allay The Turmoil Of Doubt And Uncertainty.

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

If You Think Along The Lines Of Nature Then You Think Properly." From The Video "carl Jung Speaks About Death

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Reason For Such An “unreasonable” Attitude With Me Is That I Am Not At All Sure What Will Happen To Me After Death. I Have Good Reasons To Assume That Things Are Not Finished With Death. Life Seems To Be An Interlude In A Long Story.

In Thirty Years I Have Treated Many Patients. Among All My Patients In The Second Half Of Life, Every One Of Them Fell Ill Because He Had Lost That Which The Living Religions Of Every Age Had Given Their Followers, And None Of Them Was Really Healed Who Did Not Regain His Religious Outlook.

Neurosis Is The Natural By-product Of Pain Avoidance.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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 Squaring Of The Circle Is A Stage On The Way To The Unconscious, A Point Of Transition Leading To A Goal Lying As Yet Unformulated Beyond It. It Is One Of Those Paths To The Centre.

It Is Sad But Unfortunately True That Man Learns Nothing From History.

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.

I Am An Orphan, Alone: Nevertheless I Am Found Everywhere. I Am One, But Opposed To Myself. I Am Youth And Old Man At One And The Same Time. I Have Known Neither Father Nor Mother, Because I Have Had To Be Fetched Out Of The Deep Like A Fish, Or Fell Like A White Stone From Heaven. In Woods And Mountains I Roam, But I Am Hidden In The Innermost Soul Of Man. I Am Mortal For Everyone, Yet I Am Not Touched By The Cycle Of Aeons.

Conflict Exists Strictly As An Opportunity To Raise Our Consciousness.

The Bigger The Crowd, The More Negligible The Individual.

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 Whole Educational Problem Suffers From A One-sided Approach To The Child Who Is To Be Educated, And From An Equally One-sided Lack Of Emphasis On The Uneducatedness Of The Educator.

I Do Not Believe...i Know.

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

Your Vision Will Become Clear Only When You Can Look Into Your Own Heart. Who Looks Outside, Dreams; Who Looks Inside, Awakes.

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.

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.

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.

The Distinction Between Mind And Body Is An Artificial Dichotomy, A Discrimination Which Is Unquestionably Based Far More On The Peculiarity Of Intellectual Understanding Than On The Nature Of Things.

I Could Well Imagine That I Might Have Lived In Former Centuries And There Encountered Questions I Was Not Yet Able To Answer; That I Had Been Born Again Because I Had Not Fulfilled The Task Given To Me.

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

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

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.

In All Earnestness I Asked Myself What Kind Of World I Had Stumbled Into.

Everything Psychic Is Pregnant With The Future.

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

Identification With One's Office Or Title Is Very Attractive Indeed, Which Is Precisely Why So Many Men Are Nothing More Than The Decorum Accorded To Them By Society. In Vain Would One Look For A Personality Behind The Husk. Underneath One Would Find A Very Pitiable Little Creature. That Is Why The Office Is So Attractive: It Offers Easy Compensation For Personal Deficiencies.

For Better To Come, Good Must Stand Aside.

Life Is A Luminous Pause Between Two Mysteries That Are Yet One.

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

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

All Ages Before Ours Believed In Gods In Some Form Or Other. Only An Unparalleled Impoverishment In Symbolism Could Enable Us To Rediscover The Gods As Psychic Factors, Which Is To Say, As Archetypes Of The Unconscious. No Doubt This Discovery Is Hardly Credible As Yet.

The Ability To Ask Questions Is The Greatest Resource In Learning The Truth.

The Experience Of The Self Is Always A Defeat For The Ego.

Please Remember, It Is What You Are That Heals, Not What You Know.

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.

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.

People Will Do Anything, No Matter How Absurd, To Avoid Facing Their Own Souls.

Nature Has No Use For The Plea That One 'did Not Know'.

Memories Dreams Reflections

Dream The Dream Onward.

Knowing Your Own Darkness Is The Best Method For Dealing With The Darkness's Of Other People. One Does Not Become Enlightened By Imagining Figures Of Light, But By Making The Darkness Conscious. The Most Terrifying Thing Is To Accept Oneself Completely. Your Visions Will Become Clear Only When You Can Look Into Your Own Heart. Who Looks Outside, Dreams; Who Looks Inside, Awakes.

All The Works Of Man Have Their Origin In Creative Fantasy. What Right Have We Then To Depreciate Imagination.

The Greatest Potential For Growth And Self-realisation Exists In The Second Half Of Life.

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

The Creative Mind Plays With The Object It Loves.

I Know That In Many Things I Am Not Like Others, But I Do Not Know What I Really Am Like. Man Cannot Compare Himself With Any Other Creature; He Is Not A Monkey, Not A Cow, Not A Tree. I Am A Man. But What Is It To Be That? Like Every Other Being, I Am A Splinter Of The Infinite Deity, But I Cannot Contrast Myself With Any Animal, Any Plant Or Any Stone. Only A Mythical Being Has A Range Greater Than Man's. How Then Can Man Form Any Definite Opinions About Himself?.

Wisdom Accepts That All Things Have Two Sides

...the Unconscious Has No Time. There Is No Trouble About Time In The Unconscious. Part Of Our Psyche Is Not In Time And Not In Space. They Are Only An Illusion, Time And Space, And So In A Certain Part Of Our Psyche Time Does Not Exist At All.

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.

The Majority Of My Patients Consisted Not Of Believers But Of Those Who Had Lost Their Faith.

Man Is In Need If A Symbolical Life- Badly In Need. We Only Live Banal, Ordinary, Rational Or Irrational Things- But We Have No Symbolic Life. Where Do We Live Symbolically? Nowhere Except Where We Participate In The Ritual Of Life

Life Calls Us Forth To Independence, And Anyone Who Does Not Heed This Call Because Of Childish Laziness Or Timidity Is Threatened With Neurosis. And Once This Has Broken Out, It Becomes An Increasingly Valid Reason For Running Away From Life.

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

St. Thomas Is Really A Great Man Quite Apart From His Saintliness.

Somewhere, Right At The Bottom Of One’s Own Being, One Generally Does Know Where One Should Go And What One Should Do. But There Are Times When The Clown We Call “i” Behaves In Such A Distracting Fashion That The Inner Voice Cannot Make Its Presence Felt.

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!

I Believe That We Have No Real Access To Who We Really Are Except In God. Only When We Rest In God Can We Find The Safety, The Spaciousness, And The Scary Freedom To Be Who We Are, All That We Are, More Than We Are, And Less Than We Are.

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.

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.

...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.

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.

Whatever Is Not Conscious Will Be Experienced As Fate.

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

When A Pueblo Indian Does Not Feel In The Right Mood, He Stays Away From The Men's Council. When An Ancient Roman Stumbled On The Threshold As He Left The House, He Gave Up His Plans For The Day. This Seems To Us Senseless, But Under Primitive Conditions Of Life Such An Omen Inclines One At Least To Be Cautious. When I Am Not In Full Control Of Myself, My Bodily Movements May Be Under A Certain Constraint; My Attention Is Easily Distracted; I Am Somewhat Absent-minded. As A Result I Knock Against Something, Stumble, Let Something Fall, Or Forget Something.

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

I Can Only Gaze With Wonder And Awe At The Depths Of And Heights Of Our Psychic Nature. Its Non-spatial Universe Conceals An Untold Abundance Of Images Which Have Accumulated Over Millions Of Years Of Living Development And Become Fixed In The Organism....beside This Picture I Would Like To Place The Spectacle Of The Starry Heavens At Night, For The Only Equivalent Of The Universe Within Is The Universe Without; And Just As I Reach This World Through The Medium Of The Body, So I Reach That World Through The Medium Of The Psyche.

No Tree, It Is Said, Can Grow To Heaven Unless Its Roots Reach Down To Hell.

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.

The Continuing, Direct Operation Of The Holy Ghost On Those Who Are Called To Be God's Children Implies, In Fact, A Broadening Process Of Incarnation. Christ, The Son Begotten By God, Is The First-born Who Is Succeeded By An Ever-increasing Number Of Younger Brothers And Sisters. There Are, However, Neither Begotten By The Holy Ghost Nor Born Of A Virgin. . . . Their Lowly Origin (possibly From The Mammals) Does Not Prevent Them From Entering Into A Close Kinship With God As Their Father And Christ As Their Brother.

There Is No Birth Of Consciousness Without Pain.

Collective Unconscious

It Is A Moral Achievement On The Part Of The Doctor Who Ought Not To Let Himself Be Repelled By Sickness And Corruption.

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.

Wholeness Is Not Achieved By Cutting Off A Portion Of One’s Being, But By Integration Of The Contraries.

Once Upon A Time Men Were Possessed By Devils. Now They Are Not Less Obsessed By Ideas

To Me Dreams Are Part Of Nature, Which Harbors No Intention To Deceive But Expresses Something As Best It Can.

What Was Given To Us By The Past Is Adapted To The Possibilities Of The Future.

No Concept Is A Carrier Of Life.

Whereas I Formerly Believed It To Be My Bounden Duty To Call Other Persons To Order, I Now Admit That I Need Calling To Order Myself.

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.

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.

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?

Whenever There Is A Reaching Down Into Innermost Experience, Into The Nucleus Of Personality, Most People Are Overcome By Fear And Many Run Away. . . The Risk Of Inner Experience, The Adventure Of The Spirit, Is In Any Case Alien To Most Human Beings. The Possibility That Such Experience Might Have Psychic Reality Is Anathema To Them.

I Have Always Said To My Pupils: "learn As Much As You Can About Symbolism; Then Forget It When You Are Analyzing A Dream."

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.

He Who Looks Without, Dreams; He Who Looks Within, Awakes.

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.

Language, In Its Origin And Essence, Is Simply A System Of Signs Or Symbols That Denote Real Occurrences Or Their Echo In The Human Soul.

My Mandalas Were Cryptograms Concerning The State Of The Self Which Was Presented To Me Anew Each Day...i Guarded Them Like Precious Pearls....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.

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

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

At Times I Feel As If I Am Spread Out Over The Landscape And Inside Things, And Am Myself Living In Every Tree, In The Plashing Of The Waves, In The Clouds And The Animals That Come And Go, In The Procession Of The Seasons.

My Evenings Are Taken Up Very Largely With Astrology. I Make Horoscopic Calculations In Order To Find A Clue To The Core Of Psychological Truth.

Every Individual Needs Revolution, Inner Division, Overthrow Of The Existing Order, And Renewal, But Not By Forcing Them Upon His Neighbors Under The Hypocritical Cloak Of Christian Love Or The Sense Of Social Responsibility Or Any Of The Other Beautiful Euphemisms For Unconscious Urges To Personal Power.

The World Of Gods And Spirits Is Truly 'nothing But' The Collective Unconscious Inside Me.

Collective Unconscious

Becoming Conscious Is Of Course A Sacrilege Against Nature; It Is As Though You Had Robbed The Unconscious Of Something.

Finding Yourself

For The Alchemist The One Primarily In Need Of Redemption Is Not Man, But The Deity Who Is Lost And Sleeping In Matter.

The Self Is Not Only The Centre But Also The Whole Circumference Which Embraces Both Conscious And Unconscious; It Is The Centre Of This Totality, Just As The Ego Is The Centre Of Consciousness.

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.

To Be Normal Is The Ultimate Aim Of The Unsuccessful.

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

Science Is The Tool Of The Western Mind And With It More Doors Can Be Opened Than With Bare Hands.

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.

Even A Lie Is A Psychic Fact.

Nothing Is More Repulsive Than A Furtively Prurient Spirituality; It Is Just As Unsavoury As Gross Sensuality.

Called Or Not, God Is Always There.

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.

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

The Collective Unconscious Contains The Whole Spiritual Heritage Of Mankind's Evolution Born Anew In The Brain Structure Of Every Individual.

Collective Unconscious

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

Active Imagination Requires A State Of Reverie, Half-way Between Sleep And Waking.

Every Man Carries Within Himself The Eternal Image Of Woman, Not The Image Of This Or That Particular Woman, But A Definite Feminine Image. This Image Is Fundamentally Unconscious, A Hereditary Factor Of Primordial Origin.

A True Symbol Appears Only When There Is A Need To Express What Thought Cannot Think Or What Is Only Divined Or Felt.

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.

In The Final Analysis, We Count For Something Only Because Of The Essential That We Embody. If We Do Not Embody That, Life Is Wasted.

Learn Your Techniques Well And Be Prepared To Let Them Go When You Touch The Human Soul.

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.

Collective Unconscious

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.

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.

Without Playing With Fantasy, No Creative Work Has Yet Come Into Being.

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

Synchronicity Is An Ever Present Reality For Those Who Have Eyes To See.

Warmth Is The Vital Element For The Growing Plant And For The Soul Of The Child.

The Meaning And Design Of A Problem Seem Not To Lie In Its Solution, But In Our Working At It Incessantly.

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

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