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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.

-Carl Jung

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No One Can Flatter

Carl Jung

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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.

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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.

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

His Retreat Into Himself Is Not A Final Renunciation Of The World, But A Search For Quietude, Where Alone It Is Possible For Him To Make His Contribution To The Life Of The Community.

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

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

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

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

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

Fidelity To The Law Of Your Own Being Is An Act Of High Courage Flung In The Face Of Life.

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 God-image In Man Was Not Destroyed By The Fall But Was Only Damaged And Corrupted (“deformed”), And Can Be Restored Through God's Grace. The Scope Of The Integration Is Suggested By The Descensus Ad Inferos, The Descent Of Christ's Soul To Hell, Its Work Of Redemption Embracing Even The Dead. The Psychological Equivalent Of This Is The Integration Of The Collective Unconscious Which Forms An Essential Part Of The Individuation Process.

Collective Unconscious

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.

About A Third Of My Cases Are Suffering From No Clinically Definable Neurosis, But From The Senselessness And Emptiness Of Their Lives.

The Unconscious Psyche Believes In Life After Death

The Unconscious Is Not A Demoniacal Monster, But A Natural Entity Which, As Far As Moral Sense, Aesthetic Taste, And Intellectual Judgment Go, Is Completely Neutral.it Only Becomes Dangerous When Our Conscious Attitude To It Is Hopelessly Wrong. To The Degree That We Repress It, Its Danger Increases.

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 Psychic Depths Are Nature, And Nature Is Creative Life.

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

The Fact Is That Certain Ideas Exist Almost Everywhere And At All Times And Can Even Spontaneously Create Themselves Quite Independently Of Migration And Tradition.

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.

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.

The Most Important Question Anyone Can Ask Is: What Myth Am I Living?

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.

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

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.

There Is No Such Thing As A Pure Extrovert Or A Pure Introvert. Such A Man Would Be In The Lunatic Asylum.

Lunatic Asylums

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.

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.

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 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.

People Cannot Stand Too Much Reality.

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

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

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

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

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

Psychoanalysis Cannot Be Considered A Method Of Education If By Education We Mean The Topiary Art Of Clipping A Tree Into A Beautiful Artificial Shape. But Those Who Have A Higher Conception Of Education Will Prize Most The Method Of Cultivating A Tree So That It Fulfils To Perfection Its Own Natural Conditions Of Growth.

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

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.

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

Collective Unconscious

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.

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.

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

Overcoming Addiction

Normality Is A Fine Ideal For Those Who Have No Imagination.

Every Civilized Human Being, Whatever His Conscious Development, Is Still An Archaic Man At The Deeper Levels Of His Psyche. Just As The Human Body Connects Us With The Mammals And Displays Numerous Relics Of Earlier Evolutionary Stages Going Back To Even The Reptilian Age, So The Human Psyche Is Likewise A Product Of Evolution Which, When Followed Up To Its Origins, Show Countless Archaic Traits.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Sensation Tell Us A Thing Is. Thinking Tell Us What It Is This Thing Is. Feeling Tells Us What This Thing Is To Us.

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.

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

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.

To Make What Fate Intends For Me My Own Intention

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

But, If You Have Nothing At All To Create, Then Perhaps You Create Yourself.

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

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.

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

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.

The Growth Of The Mind Is The Widening Of The Range Of Consciousness, And Each Step Forward Has Been A Most Painful And Laborious Achievement.

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

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

Western Culture

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

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

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

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 Descent Into The Depths Always Seems To Precede The Ascent.

We Are So Full Of Apprehensions, Fears, That We Don't Know Exactly To What It Points... A Great Change Of Our Psychoglocal Attitude Is Imminent, That Is Certain...because We Need More Understanding Of Human Nature Because ...the Only Real Danger That Exists Is Man Himself... And We Know Nothing Of Man - His Psyche Should Be Studied Because We Are The Origin Of All Coming Evil.

Perfection Belongs To The Gods; The Most We Can Hope For Is Excellence.

The Unconscious Is Not Just Evil By Nature, It Is Also The Source Of The Highest Good: Not Only Dark But Also Light, Not Only Bestial, Semihuman, And Demonic But Superhuman, Spiritual, And, In The Classical Sense Of The Word, "divine."

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

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.

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

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

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

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

In 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

If A Union Is To Take Place Between Opposites Like Spirit And Matter, Conscious And Unconscious, Bright And Dark, And So On, It Will Happen In A Third Thing, Which Represents Not A Compromise But Something New.

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

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

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

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

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

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

We 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.

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.

Thunder Is No Longer The Voice Of An Angry God... No River Contains A Spirit... No Snake The Embodiment Of Wisdom, No Mountain Cave The Home Of A Great Demon. No Voices Now Speak To Man From Stones, Plants And Animals, Nor Does He Speak To Them Thinking They Can Hear. His Contact With Nature Has Gone, And With It Has Gone The Profound Emotional Energy That This Symbolic Connection Supplied.

One Cannot Live Without Inconsistency.

Through Pride We Are Ever Deceiving Ourselves. But Deep Down Below The Surface Of The Average Conscience A Still, Small Voice Says To Us, Something Is Out Of Tune.

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 Only Important Thing Is To Follow Nature. A Tiger Should Be A Good Tiger; A Tree, A Good Tree. So People Should Be People. But To Know What People Are, One Must Follow Nature And Go Alone, Admitting The Importance Of The Unexpected. Still, Nothing Is Possible Without Love. . . . For Love Puts One In A Mood To Risk Everything, And Not To Withhold Important Elements.

What Happens In The Life Of Christ Happens Always And Everywhere. In The Christian Archetype All Lives Of This Kind Are Prefigured.

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

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

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

The General Function Of Dreams Is To Try To Restore Our Psychological Balance By Producing Dream Material That Re-establishes, In A Subtle Way, The Total Psychic Equilibrium.

I Would Rather Be Whole Than Good.

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

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

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

Embrace Your Grief. For There, Your Soul Will Grow.

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

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

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.

Shadow Work Is The Path Of The Heart Warrior.

Called Or Not, God Is Always There.

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

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.

Those Who Look Outside, Dream. Those Who Look Inside, Awaken.

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.

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

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

An Inflated Consciousness Is Always Egocentric And Conscious Of Nothing But Its Own Existence. It Is Incapable Of Learning From The Past, Incapable Of Understanding Contemporary Events, And Incapable Of Drawing Right Conclusions About The Future. It Is Hypnotized By Itself And Therefore Cannot Be Argued With. It Inevitably Dooms Itself To Calamities That Must Strike It Dead.

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

Find Out What A Person Fears Most And That Is Where He Will Develop Next.

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.

Man Needs Difficulties; They Are Necessary For Health.

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.

Healing Proceeds From The Depths To The Heights.

I Have Frequently Seen People Become Neurotic When They Content Themselves With Inadequate Or Wrong Answers To The Questions Of Life. They Seek Position, Marriage, Reputation, Outward Success Of Money, And Remain Unhappy And Neurotic Even When They Have Attained What They Were Seeking. Such People Are Usually Confined Within Too Narrow A Spiritual Horizon. Their Life Has Not Sufficient Content, Sufficient Meaning. If They Are Enabled To Develop Into More Spacious Personalities, The Neurosis Generally Disappears.

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

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

Sometimes A Tree Tells You More Than Can Be Read In Books.

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

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

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

The Sad Truth Is That Man's Real Life Consists Of A Complex Of Inexorable Opposites - Day And Night, Birth And Death, Happiness And Misery, Good And Evil. We Are Not Even Sure That One Will Prevail Against The Other, That Good Will Overcome Evil, Or Joy Defeat Pain. Life Is A Battleground. It Always Has Been And Always Will Be; And If It Were Not So, Existence Would Come To An End.

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.

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.

Without Consciousness There Would, Practically Speaking, Be No World, For The World Exists As Such Only In So Far As It Is Consciously Reflected And Considered By A Psyche. Consciousness Is A Precondition Of Being.

Memories Dreams Reflections

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.

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.

Most Of Our Difficulties Come From Losing Contact With Our Instincts, With The Age-old Forgotten Wisdom Stored Up In Us.

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

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

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.

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

Six Weeks After His Death My Father Appeared To Me In A Dream... It Was An Unforgettable Experience, And It Forced Me For The First Time To Think About Life After Death.

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

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

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

There Is No Light Without Shadow, And No Psychic Wholeness Without Imperfection.

...anyone Who Attempts To Do Both, To Adjust To His Group And At The Same Time Pursue His Individual Goal, Becomes Neurotic.

Protection And Security Are Only Valuable If They Do Not Cramp Life Excessively.

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

Music Is The Application Of Sounds To The Canvas Of Silence.

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

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.

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.

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

Collective Unconscious

Words Are Animals, Alive With A Will Of Their Own

I Do Not Believe...i Know.

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.

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

The Creative Person Is Overpowered, Captive Of And Driven By A Demon... They Become Our Legendary Heroes.

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

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

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.

...the Western 'god-image' Is A Representation Of The Collective Unconscious, An Archetype Of The Psyche That Undergoes A Continual Process Of Transformation...the God Image Evolves Through Its Relationship To Humanity. Whoever Knows God Has An Effect On 'him'. For The Individual, Knowing God, Is The Process Of Recognizing And Assimilating The Pressured And Paradoxical Contents Of The Self, Which Come To Consciousness- Seek Incarnation- Within The Ego.

Collective Unconscious

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

The Pendulum Of The Mind Alternates Between Sense And Nonsense, Not Between Right And Wrong.

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

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

Even A Lie Is A Psychic Fact.

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 Man Who Promises Everything Is Sure To Fulfil Nothing, And Everyone Who Promises Too Much Is In Danger Of Using Evil Means In Order To Carry Out His Promises, And Is Already On The Road To Perdition.

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.

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

Modern Man May Assert That He Can Dispense With Them, And He May Bolster His Opinion By Insisting That There Is No Scientific Evidence Of Their Truth. But Since We Are Dealing With Invisible And Unknowable Things (for God Is Beyond Human Understanding, And There Is No Mean Of Proving Immortality), Why Should We Bother With Evidence?

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

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

...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.

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

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

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

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

As Any Change Must Begin Somewhere, It Is The Single Individual Who Will Experience It And Carry It Through. The Change Must Indeed Begin With An Individual; It Might Be Any One Of Us. Nobody Can Afford To Look Round And To Wait For Somebody Else To Do What He Is Loath To Do Himself.

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

Memories Dreams Reflections

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

Simple Things Are Always The Most Difficult.

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

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

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

Every Human Being Is Inherently A Unique And Individual Form Of Life. He Or She Is Made Like That. But There Is Something Which A Person Can Do Over And Above The Given Material Of Her Nature, And That Is She Can Become Conscious Of What Makes Her The Person She Is, And He Can Work Consciously Toward Relating What Is Himself To The World Around Him.

At The Moment I Am Looking Into Astrology, Which Seems Indispensable For A Proper Understanding Of Mythology. There Are Strange And Wondrous Things In These Lands Of Darkness. Please, Don't Worry About My Wanderings In These Infinitudes. I Shall Return Laden With Rich Booty For Our Knowledge Of The Human Psyche.

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.

Show Me A Sane Man And I Will Cure Him For You.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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Harvey Fierstein

Robert Wilson Lynd

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