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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.

-Carl Jung

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Knowing Your Own Darkness

Carl Jung

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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.

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Religion Is A Defense Against The Experience Of God.

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

A Dream That Is Not Understood Remains A Mere Occurrence; Understood It Becomes A Living Experience.

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

People Learn From Who We Are, Rather Than What We Say, And To Believe Otherwise Is A Disease Of The Mind.

Madness Is A Special Form Of The Spirit And Clings To All Teachings And Philosophies, But Even More To Daily Life, Since Life Itself Is Full Of Craziness And At Bottom Utterly Illogical. Man Strives Toward Reason Only So That He Can Make Rules For Himself.

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

The Unsatisfied Yearning Of The Artist Reaches Back To The Primordial Image In The Unconscious Which Is Best Fitted To Compensate The Inadequacy And One-sidedness Of The Present.

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

The Word 'belief' Is A Difficult Thing For Me. I Don't Believe. I Must Have A Reason For A Certain Hypothesis. Either I Know A Thing, And Then I Know It - I Don't Need To Believe It.

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.

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

Enchantment Is The Oldest Form Of Medicine.

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

The Educated Man Tries To Repress The Inferior One In Himself, Without Realizing That By This He Forces The Latter To Become Revolutionary.

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

The Seat Of Faith, However, Is Not Consciousness But Spontaneous Religious Experience, Which Brings The Individual's Faith Into Immediate Relation With God.

There Is No Birth Of Consciousness Without Pain.

Collective Unconscious

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.

The Psychopathology Of The Masses Is Rooted In The Psychology Of The Individual

We Are A Psychic Process Which We Do Not Control, Or Only Partly Direct. Consequently, We Cannot Have Any Final Judgment About Ourselves Or Our Lives.

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.

Good Does Not Become Better By Being Exaggerated, But Worse; And A Small Evil Becomes A Big One Through Being Disregarded And Repressed.

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.

The World Will Ask You Who You Are, And If You Don't Know, The World Will Tell You.

A Man Who Has Not Passed Through The Inferno Of His Passions Has Never Overcome Them. As Far As We Can Discern, The Sole Purpose Of Human Existence Is To Kindle A Light In The Darkness Of Mere Being. Everything That Irritates Us About Others Can Lead Us To An Understanding Of Ourselves.

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

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.

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!

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?

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

The Apparently Unendurable Conflict Is Proof Of The Rightness Of Your Life. A Life Without Contradiction Is Only Half A Life; Or Else A Life In The Beyond, Which Is Destined Only For Angels. But God Loves Human Beings More Than The Angels.

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.

A [wo]man Who Is Unconscious Of [her/]himself Acts In A Blind, Instinctive Way And Is In Addition Fooled By All The Illusions That Arise When He Sees Everything That He Is Not Conscious Of In Himself Coming To Meet Him From Outside As Projections Upon His Neighbour.

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

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

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

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.

The Darkness Which Clings To Every Personality Is The Door Into The Unconscious And The Gateway Of Dreams, From Which Those Two Twilight Figures, The Shadow And The Anima, Step Into Our Nightly Visions Or, Remaining Invisible, Take Possession Of Our Ego-consciousness.

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.

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.

You Are A Slave Of What You Need In Your Soul.

Between The Dreams Of Night And Day There Is Not So Great A Difference.

The Healthy Man Does Not Torture Others.

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

Our Intellect Has Achieved The Most Tremendous Things, But In The Meantime Our Spiritual Dwelling Has Fallen Into Disrepair.

The Wine Of Youth Does Not Always Clear With Advancing Years; Sometimes It Grows Turbid.

What Did You Do As A Child That Made That Hours Pass Like Minutes? [herein Lies The Key To Your Earthy Pursuits.]

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.

Nights Through Dreams Tell The Myths Forgotten By The Day.

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.

The Fact That Astrology Nevertheless Yields Valid Results Proves That It Is Not The Apparent Positions Of The Stars Which Work, But Rather The Times Which Are Measured Or Determined By Arbitrarily Named Stellar Positions. Time Thus Proves To Be A Stream Of Energy Filled With Qualities And Not, As Our Philosophy Would Have It, An Abstract Concept Or Precondition Of Knowledge.

The Artist's Life Cannot Be Otherwise Than Full Of Conflicts, For Two Forces Are At War Within Him [or Her]-on The One Hand, The Common Human Longing For Happiness, Satisfaction And Security In Life, And On The Other A Ruthless Passion For Creation Which May Go So Far As To Override Every Personal Desire ... There Are Hardly Any Exceptions To The Rule That A Person Must Pay Dearly For The Divine Gift Of Creative Fire.

A Particularly Beautiful Woman Is A Source Of Terror. As A Rule, A Beautiful Woman Is A Terrible Disappointment.

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.

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.

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.

Sometimes You Have To Do Something Unforgivable Just To Be Able To Go On Living.

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

The More Uncertain I Have Felt About Myself, The More There Has Grown Up In Me A Feeling Of Kinship With All Things.

Man Needs Difficulties; They Are Necessary For Health.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Every Mother Contains Her Daughter In Herself And Every Daughter Her Mother And Every Mother Extends Backwards Into Her Mother And Forwards Into Her Daughter.

It Is Also Possible For The Unconscious Or An Archetype To Take Complete Possession Of A Man And To Determine His Fate Down To The Smallest Detail

For Better To Come, Good Must Stand Aside.

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

The More One Sees Of Human Fate And The More One Examines Its Secret Springs Of Action, The More One Is Impressed By The Strength Of Unconscious Motives And By The Limitations Of Free Choice

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

In Every Adult There Lurks A Child— An Eternal Child, Something That Is Always Becoming, Is Never Completed, And Calls For Unceasing Care, Attention, And Education. That Is The Part Of The Personality Which Wants To Develop And Become Whole.

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.

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

Collective Unconscious

The World Hangs On A Thin Thread, And That Is The Psyche Of Man.

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

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

It Is My Mind, With Its Store Of Images, That Gives The World Color And Sound; And That Supremely Real And Rational Certainty Which I Can "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, Translated, Filtered, Allegorized, Twisted, Even Falsified By It. We Are . . . Enveloped In A Cloud Of Changing And Endlessly Shifting Images.

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

Neurosis Is The Suffering Of A Soul Which Has Not Discovered Its Meaning.

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.

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

God Enters Through The Wound.

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

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

That Which You Do Not Bring To Consciousness Comes To You As Your Fate, That Which You Do Bring To Consciousness, Whether It Was What You Thought You Wanted Or Not, Is Your Destiny.

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

Memories Dreams Reflections

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.

Knowledge Rests Not Upon Truth Alone, But Upon Error Also.

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.

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.

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

Process Of Change

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

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.

Neurosis Is The Natural By-product Of Pain Avoidance.

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 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.

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.

In Knowing Ourselves To Be Unique, We Possess The Capacity For Becoming Conscious Of The Infinite. But Only Then!

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

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

Forgotten Things

Finding Yourself

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.

The Dream Arises From A Part Of The Mind Unknown To Us, But None The Less Important, And Is Concerned With The Desires For The Approaching Day.

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

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

The Self Is Defined Psychologically As The Psychic Totality Of The Individual. Anything That A [person] Postulates As Being A Greater Totality Than [oneself] Can Become A Symbol Of The Self. For This Reason The Symbol Of The Self Is Not Always As Total As The Definition Would Require.

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.

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

The Symbols Of The Self Arise From The Depths Of The Body.

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.

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

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

Nothing Affects The Life Of A Child So Much As The Unlived Life Of Its Parent

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 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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

As A Plant Produces Its Flower, So The Psyche Creates Its Symbols.

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?

The Dream Is The Small Hidden Door In The Deepest And Most Intimate Sanctum Of The Soul.

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

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

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

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

Magic Is The Science Of The Jungle.

The Only Thing That Really Matters Now Is Whether Man Can Climb Up To A Higher Moral Level, To A Higher Plane Of Consciousness, In Order To Be Equal To The Superhuman Powers Which The Fallen Angels Have Played Into His Hands. But He Can Make No Progress Until He Becomes Very Much Better Acquainted With His Own Nature.

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?.

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.

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

Mysterious Things

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.

The Teacher Pretended That Algebra Was A Perfectly Natural Affair, To Be Taken For Granted, Whereas I Didn't Even Know What Numbers Were. Mathematics Classes Became Sheer Terror And Torture To Me. I Was So Intimidated By My Incomprehension That I Did Not Dare To Ask Any Questions.

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.

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

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.

When An Individual Does Not Become Conscious Of Their Inner Contradictions, The World Acts Out The Conflict And Is Torn In Opposite Halves.

There Are Two Reasons Why Man Loses Contact With The Regulating Center Of His Soul. One Of Them Is That Some Single Instinctive Drive Or Emotional Image Can Carry Him Into A One-sidedness That Makes Him Lose His Balance...his One-sidedness And Consequent Loss Of Balance Are Much Dreaded By Primitives, Who Call It 'loss Of Soul.' Another Threat...circles Around Particular Complexes

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.

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

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.

No One Can Flatter Himself That He Is Immune To The Spirit Of His Own Epoch, Or Even That He Possesses A Full Understanding Of It. Irrespective Of Our Conscious Convictions, Each One Of Us, Without Exception, Being A Particle Of The General Mass, Is Somewhere Attached To, Colored By, Or Even Undermined By The Spirit Which Goes Through The Mass. Freedom Stretches Only As Far As The Limits Of Our Consciousness.

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.

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

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.

The Greatest Sin Is To Be Unconscious.

I Don't Aspire To Be A Good Man. I Aspire To Be A Whole Man.

The True Leader Is Always Led.

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.

So They Speak Soothingly About Progress And The Greatest Possible Happiness, Forgetting That Happiness Is Itself Poisoned If The Measure Of Suffering Has Not Been Fulfilled.

All Art Intuitively Apprehends Coming Changes In The Collective Unconsciousness.

Unconsciousness

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

Collective Unconscious

It Is The Individual's Task To Differentiate Himself From All The Others And Stand On His Own Feet. All Collective Identities . . . Interfere With The Fulfillment Of This Task. Such Collective Identities Are Crutches For The Lame, Shields For The Timid, Beds For The Lazy, Nurseries For The Irresponsible. . . .

Neurosis Is An Inner Cleavage-the State Of Being At War With Oneself.

I Find That All My Thoughts Circle Around God Like The Planets Around The Sun, And Are As Irresistibly Attracted By Him. I Would Feel It To Be The Grossest Sin If I Were To Oppose Any Resistance To This Force.

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.

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

Follow Your Heart

It Is Only Through The Psyche That We Can Establish That God Acts Upon Us, But We Are Unable To Distinguish Whether These Actions Emanate From God Or From The Unconscious. We Cannot Tell Whether God And The Unconscious Are Two Different Entities. Both Are Border-line Concepts For Transcendental Contents. But Empirically It Can Be Established, With A Sufficient Degree Of Probability, That There Is In The Unconscious An Archetype Of Wholeness.

In Each Of Us Is Another Whom We Do Not Know. He Speaks To Us In Dreams And Tells Us How Differently He Sees Us From The Way We See Ourselves.

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.

Who Looks Outside, Dreams; Who Looks Inside, Awakes.

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.

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.

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

What You Resist Persist.

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

Resistance To The Organized Mass Can Be Effected Only By The Man Who Is As Well Organized In His Individuality As The Mass Itself.

The Debt We Owe To The Play Of Imagination Is Incalculable.

Whatever Is Not Conscious Will Be Experienced As Fate.

Complexes Are Psychic Contents Which Are Outside The Control Of The Conscious Mind. They Have Been Split Off From Consciousness And Lead A Separate Existence In The Unconscious, Being At All Times Ready To Hinder Or To Reinforce The Conscious Intentions.

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

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

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

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

The Unconscious Is The Unwritten History Of Mankind From Time Unrecorded.

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 Images Of The Unconscious Place A Great Responsibility Upon A Man. Failure To Understand Them, Or A Shirking Of Ethical Responsibility, Deprives Him Of His Wholeness And Imposes A Painful Fragmentariness On His Life.

Nothing Is Possible Without Love.

Space Flights Are Merely An Escape, A Fleeing Away From Oneself, Because It Is Easier To Go To Mars Or To The Moon Than It Is To Penetrate One's Own Being.

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?

Commendation Heals; Condemnation Destroys.

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

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

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

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

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

Seldom, Or Perhaps Never, Does A Marriage Develop Into An Individual Relationship Smoothly And Without Crises; There Is No Coming To Consciousness Without Pain.

Everyone Is In Love With His Own Ideas

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. This Is The World Power That Vastly Exceeds All Other Powers On Earth. The Age Of Enlightenment, Which Stripped Nature And Human Institutions Of Gods, Overlooked The God Of Terror Who Dwells In The Human Soul.

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.

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

Insight That Dawns Slowly Seems To Me To Have More Lasting Effects Than A Fitful Idealism, Which Is Unlikely To Hold Out For Long.

The Person Who Looks Outward Dreams, The Person Who Looks Inward Awakens.

The Discussion Of The Sexual Problem Is Only A Somewhat Crude Prelude To A Far Deeper Question, And That Is The Question Of The Psychological Relationship Between The Sexes. In Comparison With This The Other Pales Into Insignificance, And With It We Enter The Real Domain Of Woman. Woman's Psychology Is Founded On The Principle Of Eros, The Great Binder And Loosener, Whereas From Ancient Times The Ruling Principle Ascribed To Man Is Logos.

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

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Jose Maria Aznar

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