Background Image

...

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.

-Carl Jung

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Saw That Everything,

Carl Jung

...

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.

Views: 3

Topic

More From Carl Jung

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Caution Has Its Place, No Doubt, But We Cannot Refuse Our Support To A Serious Venture Which Challenges The Whole Of The Personality. If We Oppose It, We Are Trying To Suppress What Is Best In Man - His Daring And His Aspirations. And Should We Succeed, We Should Only Have Stood In The Way Of That Invaluable Experience Which Might Have Given A Meaning To Life.

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.

It Is High Time That We Realized That It Is Pointless To Praise The Light And Preach It If Nobody Can See It. It Is Much More Needful To Preach The Art Of Seeing.

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.

The Decisive Question For Man Is: Is He Related To Something Infinite Or Not? That Is The Telling Question Of His Life. Only If We Know That The Thing Which Truly Matters Is The Infinite Can We Avoid Fixing Our Interest Upon Futilities, And Upon All Kinds Of Goals Which Are Not Of Real Importance.

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

Process Of Change

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.

Everyone Is In Love With His Own Ideas

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.

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.

Whenever Justice Is Uncertain And Police Spying And Terror Are At Work, Human Beings Fall Into Isolation, Which, Of Course, Is The Aim And Purpose Of The Dictator State, Since It Is Based On The Greatest Possible Accumulation Of Depotentiated Social Units.

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

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

The Greater The Tension, The Greater Is The Potential.

Even A Lie Is A Psychic Fact.

That Which We Do Not Bring To Consciousness Appears In Our Lives As Fate.

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

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.

Securities, Certitudes And Peace Do Not Lead To Discoveries.

One Is Forced To Speak Not Of What Is Held In Common Between The Cultures, But What Is Held In Common Between The Myths, And That In Its Simplest Archetypal Forms.

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

Healing Proceeds From The Depths To The Heights.

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.

Special Knowledge Is A Terrible Disadvantage.

The Right Way To Wholeness Is Made Up Of Fateful Detours And Wrong Turnings.

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

Memories Dreams Reflections

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

Water Is The Commonest Symbol For The Unconscious.

The Spirit Is The Life Of The Body Seen From Within, And The Body The Outward Manifestation Of The Life Of The Spirit-the Two Being Really One.

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?

Every Living Soul Has Different Talents, Different Desires, Different Faculties. Be Yourself, For Even If You Deceive The Entire World, You Will Be Ten Thousand Times Worse Than Nothing.

I Had Always Been Impressed By The Fact That There Are Surprisingly Many Individuals Who Never Use Their Minds If They Can Avoid It, And Yet Are Not Stupid, And An Equal Number Who Obviously Do Use Their Minds But In An Amazingly Stupid Way.

The Creative Process Is A Living Thing, Implanted, As It Were In The Souls Of Men.

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

Everyone Can Afford To Give Away A Smile.

Midlife Is The Time To Let Go Of An Overdominant Ego And To Contemplate The Deeper Significance Of Human Existence.

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

It Is In The Nature Of Political Bodies Always To See The Evil In The Opposite Group, Just As The Individual Has An Ineradicable Tendency To Get Rid Of Everything He Does Not Know And Does Not Want To Know About Himself By Foisting It Off On Somebody Else. Nothing Has A More Diverse And Alienating Effect Upon Society Than This Moral Complacency And Lack Of Responsibility, And Nothing Promotes Understanding And Rapprochement More Than The Mutual Withdrawal Of Projections.

Someone Who Is Brave Enough To Withdraw All His Projections, [is] An Individual Who Is Conscious Of A Pretty Thick Shadow.

Unconscious Assumptions Or Opinions Are The Worst Enemy Of Woman; They Can Even Grow Into A Positively Demonic Passion That Exasperates And Disgusts Men, And Does The Woman Herself The Greatest Injury By Gradually Smothering The Charm And Meaning Of Her Femininity And Driving It Into The Background. Such A Development Naturally Ends In Profound Psychological Disunion, In Short, In A Neurosis.

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.

Recognition Of The Reality Of Evil Necessarily Relativizes The Good, And The Evil Likewise, Converting Both Into Halves Of A Paradoxical Whole.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Collective Unconscious

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.

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

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. . . .

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

There Is Rarely A Creative Man Who Does Not Have To Pay A High Price For The Divine Spark Of His Greatest Gifts... The Human Element Is Frequently Bled For The Benefit Of The Creative Element And To Such An Extent That It Even Brings Out The Bad Qualities, As For Instance, Ruthless, Naive Egoism (so-called "auto-eroticism"), Vanity, All Kinds Of Vices-and All This In Order To Bring To The Human I At Least Some Life-strength, Since Otherwise It Would Perish Of Sheer Inanition.

The Difference Between The "natural" Individuation Process, Which Runs Its Course Unconsciously, And The One That Is Consciously Realized Is Tremendous. In The First Case, Consciousness Nowhere Intervenes; The End Remains As Dark As The Beginning. In The Second Case, So Much Darkness Comes To Light That The Personality Is Permeated With Light And Consciousness Necessarily Gains In Scope And Insight. The Encounter Between Conscious And Unconscious Has To Ensure That The Light That Shines In The Darkness Is Not Only Comprehended By The Darkness, But Comprehends It.

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

One Is Always In The Dark About One's Own Personality. One Needs Others To Get To Know Oneself.

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.

Man Needs Difficulties; They Are Necessary For Health.

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

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

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

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.

As One Grows Older One Must Try Not To Work Oneself To Death Unnecessarily. At Least That's How It Is With Me... I Can Scarcely Keep Pace And Must Watch Out That The Creative Forces Do Not Chase Me Around The Universe In A Wallop.

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

Collective Unconscious

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

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

I Would Rather Be Whole Than Good.

Doesn't The World Bring Forth Thinking In Human Heads With The Same Necessity That It Brings Forth Blossoms On The Plant?

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.

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

I Use [heraclitus' Discovery Of] Enantiodromia For The Emergence Of The Unconscious Opposite In The Course Of Time. This Characteristic Phenomenon Practically Always Occurs When An Extreme, Onesided Tendency Dominates Conscious Life; In Time An Equally Powerful Counterposition Is Built Up, Which First Inhibits The Conscious Performance And Subsequently Breaks Through The Conscious Control.

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

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.

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

We Don't Get Wounded Alone And We Don't Heal Alone.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It Is My Mind, With Its Store Of Images, That Gives The World Colour And Sound; And That Supremely Real And Rational Certainty Which I Call "experience" Is, In Its Most Simple Form, An Exceedingly Complicated Structure Of Mental Images. Thus There Is, In A Certain Sense, Nothing That Is Directly Experienced Except The Mind Itself. Everything Is Mediated Through The Mind.

We Are Not What Happened To Us, We Are What We Wish To Become.

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.

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

One Of The Main Functions Of Formalized Religion Is To Protect People Against A Direct Experience Of God.

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

Too Much Of The Animal Disfigures The Civilized Human Being, Too Much Culture Makes A Sick Animal.

The Difference Between A Good Life And A Bad Life Is How Well You Walk Through The Fire

True Art Is Creation, And Creation Is Beyond All Theories. That Is Why I Say To Any Beginner: Learn Your Theories As Well As You Can, But Put Them Aside When You Touch The Miracle Of The Living Soul. Not Theories But Your Own Creative Individuality Alone Must Decide.

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.

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

Astrology Is Knocking At The Gates Of Our Universities: A Tübingen Professor Has Switched Over To Astrology And A Course On Astrology Was Given At Cardiff University Last Year. Astrology Is Not Mere Superstition But Contains Some Psychological Facts (like Theosophy) Which Are Of Considerable Importance. Astrology Has Actually Nothing To Do With The Stars But Is The 5000-year-old Psychology Of Antiquity And The Middle Ages.

When We Must Deal With Problems, We Instinctively Resist Trying The Way That Leads Through Obscurity And Darkness. We Wish To Hear Only Of Unequivocal Results, And Completely Forget That These Results Can Only Be Brought About When We Have Ventured Into And Emerged Again From The Darkness. But To Penetrate The Darkness We Must Summon All The Powers Of Enlightenment That Consciousness Can Offer.

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 Healthy Man Does Not Torture Others.

The Capacity For Inner Dialogue Is A Touchstone For Outer Objectivity.

In Some Way Or Other We Are Part Of A Single, All-embracing Psyche, A Single 'greatest Man. . . .'

Art Is A Kind Of Innate Drive That Seizes A Human Being And Makes Him Its Instrument. To Perform This Difficult Office It Is Sometimes Necessary For Him To Sacrifice Happiness And Everything That Makes Life Worth Living For The Ordinary Human Being.

We Cannot Change Anything Unless We Accept It.

There Are As Many Archetypes As There Are Typical Situations In Life. Endless Repetition Has Engraved These Experiences Into Our Psychic Constitution, Not In The Forms Of Images Filled With Content, But At First Only As Forms Without Content, Representing Merely The Possibility Of A Certain Type Of Perception And Action.

Situations In Life

Dreams Are Symbolic In Order That They Cannot Be Understood; In Order That The Wish, Which Is The Source Of The Dream, May Remain Unknown.

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

Man's Task Is To Become Conscious Of The Contents That Press Upward From The Unconscious.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

We Must Be Able To Let Things Happen In The Psyche. For Us, This Becomes A Real Art... Consciousness Is Forever Interfering, Helping, Correcting, And Negating, Never Leaving The Single Growth Of The Psychic Processes In Peace.

You Can Take Away A Man's Gods, But Only To Give Him Others In Return.

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 Most Intense Conflicts, If Overcome, Leave Behind A Sense Of Security And Calm Which Is Not Easily Disturbed, Or Else A Brokenness That Can Hardly Be Healed. Conversely, It Is Just These Intense Conflicts And Their Conflagration Which Are Needed In Order To Produce Valuable And Lasting Results.

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

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.

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

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

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.

The Puzzling Thing Is That There Is Really A Curious Coincidence Between Astrological And Psychological Facts, So That One Can Isolate Time From The Characteristics Of An Individual, And Also, One Can Deduce Characteristics From A Certain Time.

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.

Outlook On Life

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 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.

It Seems To Be Very Hard For People To Live With Riddles Or To Let Them Live, Although One Would Think That Life Is So Full Of Riddles As It Is That A Few More Things We Cannot Answer Would Make No Difference. But Perhaps It Is Just This That Is So Unendurable, That There Are Irrational Things In Our Own Psyche Which Upset The Conscious Mind In Its Illusory Certainties By Confronting It With The Riddle Of Its Existence.

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.

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

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

The More Intelligent And Cultured A Man Is, The More Subtly He Can Humbug Himself.

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.

We Are Living In What The Greeks Called The Kairos - The Right Moment - For A 'metamorphosis Of The Gods', Of The Fundamental Principles And Symbols. This Peculiarity Of Our Time, Which Is Certainly Not Of Our Conscious Choosing, Is The Expression Of The Unconscious Man Within Us Who Is Changing.

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

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

Religion Is A Defense Against The Experience Of God.

That Which Compels Us To Create A Substitute For Ourselves Is Not The External Lack Of Objects, But Our Incapacity To Lovingly Include A Thing Outside Of Ourselves

Mistakes Are, After All, The Foundations Of Truth, And If A Man Does Not Know What A Thing Is, It Is At Least An Increase In Knowledge If He Knows What It Is Not.

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

Life Really Does Begin At Forty. Up Until Then, You Are Just Doing Research.

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

The Principle Aim Of Psychotherapy Is Not To Transport One To An Impossible State Of Happiness, But To Help (the Client) Acquire Steadfastness And Patience In The Face Of Suffering.

Deeply Listening To Music Opens Up New Avenues Of Research I'd Never Even Dreamed Of. I Feel From Now On Music Should Be An Essential Part Of Every Analysis.

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.

Life Calls Not For Perfection, But For Completeness.

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.

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

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.

The True Leader Is Always Led.

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.

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.

It Is The Function Of The Church To Oppose All Original Experience, Because This Can Only Be Unorthodox.

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.

Nature Is Not Matter Only. She Is Also A Spirit

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.

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

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.

Every Human Life Contains A Potential, If That Potential Is Not Fulfilled, Then That Life Was Wasted.

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.

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.

A Man Who Has Not Passed Through The Inferno Of His Passions Has Never Overcome Them. They Then Dwell In The House Next Door, And At Any Moment A Flame May Dart Out And Set Fire To His Own House. Whenever We Give Up, Leave Behind, And Forget Too Much, There Is Always The Danger That The Things We Have Neglected Will Return With Added Force.

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.

Dreams Are The Facts From Which We Must Proceed.

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.

The World Begins To Exist When The Individual Discovers It.

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?.

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

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.

A Special Ability Means A Heavy Expenditure Of Energy In A Particular Direction, With A Consequent Drain From Some Other Side Of Life.

Whenever You Hear Anyone Talking About A Cultural Or Even About A Human Problem, You Should Never Forget To Inquire Who The Speaker Really Is. The More General The Problem, The More The Person Will Smuggle His Or Her Own Personal Psychology Into The Account He Or She Gives Of It.

We Don't So Much Solve Our Problems As We Outgrow Them. We Add Capacities And Experiences That Eventually Make Us Bigger Than The Problems.

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

What You Call Knowledge Is An Attempt To Impose Something Comprehensible On Life.

Only One Who Has Risked The Fight With The Dragon And Is Not Overcome By It Wins The "treasure Hard To Attain." He Alone Has A Genuine Claim To Self-confidence, For He Has Faced The Dark Ground Of His Self And Thereby Has Gained Himself. This Experience Gives Him Faith And Trust.

Self Confidence

What We Do Not Make Conscious Emerges Later As Fate.

Memories Dreams Reflections

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.

Myth Is More Individual And Expresses Life More Precisely Than Does Science.

The Best Political, Social, And Spiritual Work We Can Do Is To Withdraw The Projection Of Our Shadow Onto Others.

When Facts Are Few, Speculations Are Most Likely To Represent Individual Psychology.

A Criminal Becomes A Popular Figure Because He Unburdens In No Small Degree The Consciences Of His Fellow Man, For Now They Know Once More Where Evil Is To Be Found.

If I Accept The Fact That A God Is Absolute And Beyond All Human Experiences, He Leaves Me Cold. I Do Not Affect Him, Nor Does He Affect Me. But If I Know That A God Is A Powerful Impulse In My Soul, At Once I Must Concern Myself With Him, For Then He Can Become Important

Without Freedom There Can Be No Morality.

Memories Dreams Reflections

The Unconscious Is The Only Available Source Of Religious Experience. This In Certainly Not To Say That What We Call The Unconscious Is Identical With God Or Is Set Up In His Place. It Is Simply The Medium From Which Religious Experience Seems To Flow. As To What The Further Cause Of Such Experience Might Be, The Answer To This Lies Beyond The Range Of Human Knowledge.

Every Civilized Human Being, Whatever His Conscious Development, Is Still An Archaic Man At The Deeper Levels Of His Psyche.

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

No Concept Is A Carrier Of Life.

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.

All Neurotics Seek The Religious

If People Can Be Educated To See The Lowly Side Of Their Own Natures, It May Be Hoped That They Will Also Learn To Understand And To Love Their Fellow Men Better. A Little Less Hypocrisy And A Little More Tolerance Towards Oneself Can Only Have Good Results In Respect For Our Neighbor; For We Are All Too Prone To Transfer To Our Fellows The Injustice And Violence We Inflict Upon Our Own Natures.

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 Utter Failure Came At The Crucifixion In The Tragic Words, 'my God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?' If You Want To Understand The Full Tragedy Of Those Words You Must Realize What They Meant: Christ Saw That His Whole Life, Devoted To The Truth According To His Best Conviction, Had Been A Terrible Illusion. He Had Lived It To The Full Absolutely Sincerely, He Had Made His Honest Experiment, But It Was Nevertheless A Compensation. On The Cross His Mission Deserted Him. But Because He Had Lived So Fully And Devotedly He Won Through To The Resurrection Body.

Paul Hardly Ever Allows The Real Jesus Of Nazareth To Get A Word In.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

Overcoming Addiction

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.

Trending Author

Phylicia Rashad

Category