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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.

-Carl Jung

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The Difference Between The

Carl Jung

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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.

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I Hold The View That The Alchemist’s Hope Of Conjuring Out Of Matter The Philosophical Gold, Or The Panacea, Or The Wonderful Stone, Was Only In Part An Illusion, An Effect Of Projection; For The Rest It Corresponded To Certain Psychic Facts That Are Of Great Importance In The Psychology Of The Unconscious. As Is Shown By The Texts And Their Symbolism, The Alchemist Projected What I Have Called The Process Of Individuation Into The Phenomena Of Chemical Change.

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. . . .

People Cannot Stand Too Much Reality.

The Man Of Today, Who Resembles More Or Less The Collective Ideal, Has Made His Heart Into A Den Of Murderers, As Can Easily Be Proved By The Analysis Of His Unconscious, Even Though He Himself Is Not In The Least Disturbed By It.

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

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.

If We Feel Our Way Into The Human Secrets Of The Sick Person, The Madness Also Reveals Its System, And We Recognize In The Mental Illness Merely An Exceptional Reaction To Emotional Problems Which Are Not Strange To Us. --"the Content Of The Psychoses

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

One Finds One's Destiny On The Path One Takes To Avoid It.

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

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

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.

Shadow Work Is The Path Of The Heart Warrior.

Even A Lie Is A Psychic Fact.

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.

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 Think That One Should View With Philosophic Admiration The Strange Paths Of The Libido And Should Investigate The Purposes Of Its Circuitous Ways.

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.

I Have Treated Many Hundreds Of Patients. Among Those In The Second Half Of Life - That Is To Say, Over 35 - There Has Not Been One Whose Problem In The Last Resort Was Not That Of Finding A Religious Outlook On Life.

Finding The One

Outlook On Life

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.

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.

The Highest, Most Decisive Experience Is To Be Alone With One's Own Self. You Must Be Alone To Find Out What Supports You, When You Find That You Can Not Support Yourself. Only This Experience Can Give You An Indestructible Foundation.

The Self Then Functions As A Union Of Opposites And Thus Constitutes The Most Immediate Experience Of The Divine Which It Is Psychologically Possible To Imagine

The Psyche Is A Natural Phenomenon. All Aspects Of The Psyche, Even Those Which Seem Pathological Or Destructive, Actually Serve The Function Of Furthering Our Psychological Development.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Meaninglessnes S Inhibits Fullness Of Life And Is Therefore The Equivalent To Illness. Meaning Makes A Great Many Things Endurable--perh Aps Everything.

Fullness Of Life

The Angel Personifies Something New Arising From The Deep Unconscious.

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.

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 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.

Medicines Cure Diseases, But Only Doctors Can Cure Patients.

Be Simple And Always Take The Next Step. You Needn't See It In Advance, But You Can Look Back At It Afterwards.there Is No 'how' Of Life, One Just Does It.

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.

As Far As We Can Discern, The Sole Purpose Of Human Existence Is To Kindle A Light In The Darkness Of Mere Being.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Commendation Heals; Condemnation Destroys.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

I Would Rather Be Whole Than Good.

Continuous Creation Is To Be Thought Of Not Only As A Series Of Successive Acts Of Creation, But Also As The Eternal Presence Of The One Creative Act.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Modern Man Is Sick Because He Is Not Whole.

Every Victory Contains The Germ Of Future Defeat.

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.

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.

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.

A Mandala Is The Psychological Expression Of The Totality Of The Self.

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.

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

Whatever Is Not Conscious Will Be Experienced As Fate.

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

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.

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

No Man Can Change Himself Into Anything From Sheer Reason; He Can Only Change Into What He Potentially Is.

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

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

The Longing For Light Is The Longing For Consciousness.

A Patient Doesn't Select His Physical Ailments. They Happen To Him. You Could Just As Well Ask When You Are Eaten By A Crocodile, 'how Did You Select That Crocodile?'. Nonsense. He Has Selected You. The Patient Doesn't Even Select The Symptoms Unconsciously. That Is An Extraordinary Exaggeration Of The Subject To Say He Was Choosing Such Things. They Get Him.

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.

The Greatest And Most Important Problems Of Life Are All Fundamentally Insoluble. They Can Never Be Solved But Only Outgrown.

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.

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

Memories Dreams Reflections

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.

Yahweh [god] Must Become Man Precisely Because He Has Done Man A Wrong. He, The Guardian Of Justice, Knows That Every Wrong Must Be Expiated, And Wisdom Knows That Moral Law Is Above Even Him. Because His Creature Has Surpassed Him He Must Regenerate Himself

Life Calls Not For Perfection, But For Completeness.

You Are What You Do, Not What You Say You'll Do.

There Is, However, A Strong Empirical Reason Why We Should Cultivate Thoughts That Can Never Be Proved. It Is That They Are Known To Be Useful. Man Positively Needs General Ideas & Convictions That Will Give A Meaning To His Life & Enable Him To Find A Place For Himself In The Universe. He Can Stand The Most Incredible Hardships When He Is Convinced That They Make Sense; He Is Crushed When On Top Of All His Misfortunes, He Has To Admit That He Is Taking Part In A ‘tale Told By An Idiot.’

All Fanaticism Is Repressed Doubt.

Invited Or Not, God Is Present.

The Prerequisite For A Good Marriage ... Is The License To Be Unfaithful.

Archetypes Resemble The Beds Of Rivers: Dried Up Because The Water Has Deserted Them, Though It May Return At Any Time. An Archetype Is Something Like An Old Watercourse Along Which The Water Of Life Flowed For A Time, Digging A Deep Channel For Itself. The Longer It Flowed The Deeper The Channel, And The More Likely It Is That Sooner Or Later The Water Will Return.

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 Sure Path Can Only Lead To Death.

Memories Dreams Reflections

The Facts Of Nature Cannot In The Long Run Be Violated. Penetrating And Seeping Through Everything Like Water, They Will Undermine Any System That Fails To Take Account Of Them, And Sooner Or Later They Will Bring About Its Downfall. But An Authority Wise Enough In Its Statesmanship To Give Sufficient Free Play To Nature - Of Which Spirit Is A Part - Need Fear No Premature Decline.

Man And Woman Become A Devil To Each Other When They Do Not Separate Their Spiritual Paths, For The Nature Of Created Beings Is Always The Nature Of Differentiation.

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.

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.

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

Shrinking Away From Death Is Something Unhealthy And Abnormal Which Robs The Second Half Of Life Of Its Purpose.

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.

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

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

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

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!

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

Everyone Can Afford To Give Away A Smile.

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

Imagination Is A Concentrated Extract Of All The Forces Of Life.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

As Far As We Can Discern, The Sole Purpose Of Human Existence Is To Kindle A Light Of Meaning In The Darkness Of Mere Being. Your Vision Will Become Clear Only When You Look Into Your Heart ... Who Looks Outside, Dreams. Who Looks Inside, Awakens. The Dream Is The Small Hidden Door In The Deepest And Most Intimate Sanctum Of The Soul, Which Opens To That Primeval Cosmic Night That Was Soul Long Before There Was Conscious Ego And Will Be Soul Far Beyond What A Conscious Ego Could Ever Reach.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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 Shoe That Fits One Person Pinches Another; There Is No Recipe For Living That Suits All Cases.

But We Must Not Forget That Only A Very Few People Are Artists In Life; That The Art Of Life Is The Most Distinguished And Rarest Of All The Arts.

To This Day God Is The Name By Which I Designate All Things Which Cross My Willful Path Violently And Recklessly, All Things Which Upset My Subjective Views, Plans And Intentions And Change The Course Of My Life For Better Or Worse.

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.

While Personal Problems Are Not Overlooked, The Analyst Keeps An Eye On Their Symbolic Aspects, For Healing Comes Only From What Leads The Patient Beyond Himself And Beyond His Entanglement In The Ego.

Moreover, My Ancestors' Souls Are Sustained By The Atmosphere Of The House, Since I Answer For Them The Questions That Their Lives Once Left Behind. I Carve Out Rough Answers As Best I Can. I Have Even Drawn Them On The Walls. It Is As If A Silent, Greater Family, Stretching Down The Centuries, Were Peopling The House.

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

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.

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

Neurosis Is Always A Substitute For Legitimate Suffering.

You Always Become The Thing You Fight The Most.

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

Memories Dreams Reflections

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.

All Neurotics Seek The Religious

The Greater The Tension, The Greater Is The Potential.

It Is Astounding That Man, The Instigator, Inventor And Vehicle Of All These Developments, The Originator Of All Judgements And Decisions And The Planner Of The Future, Must Make Himself Such A Quantité Negligeable.

...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.

Religion Is A Defense Against The Experience Of God.

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

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

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.

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.

What We Lack Is Intensity Of Life.

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

A Sign Is Always Less Than The Thing It Points To, And A Symbol Is Always More Than We Can Understand At First Sight. Therefore We Stop At The Sign But Go On To The Goal It Indicates; But We Remain With The Symbol Because It Promises More Than It Reveals.

Enchantment Is The Oldest Form Of Medicine.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

New Ideas Are Not Only The Enemies Of Old Ones; They Also Appear Often In An Extremely Unacceptable Form.

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

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

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.

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.

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 Moral Code.

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

Man Can Try To Name Love, Showering Upon It All The Names At His Command, And Still He Will Involve Himself In Endless Self Deceptions. If He Possesses A Grain Of Wisdom He Will Lay Down His Arms And Name The Unknown By The More Unknown - Ignotum Per Ignotius - That Is By The Name Of God.

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

I Have Never Since Entirely Freed Myself Of The Impression That This Life Is A Segment Of Existence Which Is Enacted In A Three-dimensional Boxlike Universe Especially Set Up For It.

We Cannot Change Anything Unless We Accept It.

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

A Sense Of A Wider Meaning To One's Existence Is What Raises A Man Beyond Mere Getting And Spending. If He Lacks This Sense, He Is Lost And Miserable.

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

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.

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.

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

The Only Thing We Have To Fear On This Planet Is Man.

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

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.

We Deem Those Happy Who From The Experience Of Life Have Learnt To Bear Its Ills Without Being Overcome By Them.

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

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

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Mstislav Rostropovich

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