Background Image

...

The Idea Of Suicide, Understandable As It Is, Does Not Seem Commendable To Me. We Live In Order To Gain The Greatest Possible Amount Of Spiritual Development And Self-awareness. As Long As Life Is Possible, Even If Only In A Minimal Degree, You Should Hang Onto It, In Order To Scoop It Up For The Purpose Of Conscious Development. To Interrupt Life Before Its Time Is To Bring To A Standstill An Experiment Which We Have Not Set Up. We Have Found Ourselves In The Midst Of It And Must Carry It Through To The End.

-Carl Jung

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Idea Of Suicide,

Carl Jung

...

The Idea Of Suicide, Understandable As It Is, Does Not Seem Commendable To Me. We Live In Order To Gain The Greatest Possible Amount Of Spiritual Development And Self-awareness. As Long As Life Is Possible, Even If Only In A Minimal Degree, You Should Hang Onto It, In Order To Scoop It Up For The Purpose Of Conscious Development. To Interrupt Life Before Its Time Is To Bring To A Standstill An Experiment Which We Have Not Set Up. We Have Found Ourselves In The Midst Of It And Must Carry It Through To The End.

Views: 4

Topic

More From Carl Jung

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.

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

When 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.

The Collective Unconscious Appears To Consist Of Mythological Motifs Or Primordial Images, For Which Reason The Myths Of All Nations Are Its Real Exponents. In Fact The Whole Of Mythology Could Be Taken As A Sort Of Projection Of The Collective Unconscious. We Can See This Most Clearly If We Look At The Heavenly Constellations, Whose Originally Chaotic Forms Are Organized Through The Projection Of Images. This Explains The Influence Of The Stars As Asserted By Astrologers. These Influences Are Nothing But Unconscious Instrospective Perceptions Of The Collective Unconscious.

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.

The Psychotherapist Learns Little Or Nothing From His Successes. They Mainly Confirm Him In His Mistakes, While His Failures, On The Other Hand, Are Priceless Experiences In That They Not Only Open Up The Way To A Deeper Truth, But Force Him To Change His Views And Methods.

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

I Do Not Believe...i Know.

Whatever Is Rejected From The Self, Appears In The World As An Event.

The Most Terrifying Thing Is To Accept Oneself Completely.

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

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.

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.

We Carry Our Past With Us, To Wit, The Primitive And Inferior Man With His Desires And Emotions, And It Is Only With An Enormous Effort That We Can Detach Ourselves From This Burden. If It Comes To A Neurosis, We Invariably Have To Deal With A Considerably Intensified Shadow.

Unfortunately, There Can Be No Doubt That Man Is, On The Whole, Less Good Than He Imagines Himself Or Wants To Be. Everyone Carries A Shadow, And The Less It Is Embodied In The Individual's Conscious Life, The Blacker And Darker It Is. If An Inferiority Is Conscious, One Always Has A Chance To Correct It

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

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.

I Saw That Everything, All Paths I Had Been Following, All Steps I Had Taken, Were Leading Back To A Single Point - Namely, To The Mid-point. It Became Increasingly Plain To Me That The Mandala Is The Center. It Is The Exponent Of All Paths. It Is The Path To The Center, To Individuation. I Knew That In Finding The Mandala As An Expression Of The Self I Had Attained What Was For Me The Ultimate.

We All Must Do What Christ Did. We Must Make Our Experiment. We Must Make Mistakes. We Must Live Out Our Own Version Of Life. And There Will Be Error. If You Avoid Error You Do Not Live.

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.

Your Vision Will Be Clearer Only When You Manage To See Within Your Heart.

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

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.

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 Psychic Depths Are Nature, And Nature Is Creative Life.

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

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

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

So Often Among So-called "primitives" One Comes Across Spiritual Personalities Who Immediately Inspire Respect, As Though They Were The Fully Matured Products Of An Undisturbed Fate.

Individuation Is To Divest The Self Of False Wrappings.

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

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

Religion Is A Defense Against The Experience Of God.

So The Lion Is The Law-breaker. Just As To The Primitive Man The Lion Is The Lawbreaker, The Great Nuisance, Dangerous To Human Beings And To Animals, That Breaks Into The Kraal At Night And Fetches The Bull Out Of The Herd: He Is The Destructive Instinct.

The Meeting Of Two Personalities Is Like The Contact Of Two Chemical Substances: If There Is Any Reaction, Both Are Transformed.

Intuition (is) Perception Via The Unconscious

Only In Our Creative Acts Do We Step Forth Into The Light And See Ourselves Whole And Complete.

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

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

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

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

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

Medicines Cure Diseases, But Only Doctors Can Cure Patients.

An Understanding Heart Is Everything In A Teacher, And Cannot Be Esteemed Highly Enough.

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

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.

When Religion Stops Talking About Animals It Will Be All Downhill.

Memories Dreams Reflections

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.

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

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)

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

No Concept Is A Carrier Of Life.

The True Leader Is Always Led.

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!

Astrology Is Of Particular Interest To The Psychologist, Since It Contains A Sort Of Psychological Experience Which We Call Projected - This Means That We Find The Psychological Facts As It Were In The Constellations. This Originally Gave Rise To The Idea That These Factors Derive From The Stars, Whereas They Are Merely In A Relation Of Synchronicity With Them. I Admit That This Is A Very Curious Fact Which Throws A Peculiar Light On The Structure Of The Human Mind.

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.

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

One Does Not Become Enlightened By Imagining Figures Of Light, But By Making The Darkness Conscious.

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.

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

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."

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.

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

Had I Left Those Images Hidden In The Emotions, I Might Have Been Torn To Pieces By Them.

Nights Through Dreams Tell The Myths Forgotten By The Day.

One Must Be Able To Let Things Happen.

Even A Happy Life Cannot Be Without A Measure Of Darkness, And The Word Happy Would Lose Its Meaning If It Were Not Balanced By Sadness. It Is Far Better Take Things As They Come Along With Patience And Equanimity.

Everything That Irritates Us About Others Can Lead Us To An Understanding Of Ourselves.

To Ask The Right Question Is Already Half The Solution Of A Problem.

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

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.

Contemporary Man Is Blind To The Fact That, With All His Rationality And Efficiency, He Is Possessed By "powers" That Are Beyond His Control. His Gods And Demons Have Not Disappeared At All; They Have Merely Got New Names. They Keep Him On The Run With Restlessness, Vague Apprehensions, Psychological Complications, An Insatiable Need For Pills, Alcohol, Tobacco, Food - And, Above All, A Large Array Of Neuroses

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

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

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

The Bigger The Crowd, The More Negligible The Individual.

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

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.

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

Self Confidence

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

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.

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

Memories Dreams Reflections

I Live In My Deepest Hell And From There I Cannot Fall Any Further.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

If You Want To Understand The Jungle, You Can't Be Content Just To Sail Back And Forth Near The Shore. You've Got To Get Into It, No Matter How Strange And Frightening It Might Seem.

It Seems As If It Is Only Through An Experience Of Symbolic Reality That Man, Vainly Seeking His Own “existence” And Making A Philosophy Out Of It, Can Find His Way Back To A World In Which He Is No Longer A Stranger.

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.

We Know That The Wildest And Most Moving Dramas Are Played Not In The Theatre But In The Hearts Of Ordinary Men And Women.

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

Securities, Certitudes And Peace Do Not Lead To Discoveries.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

Even A Happy Life Cannot Be Without A Measure Of Darkness.

Nothing Is Possible Without Love.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

What Happens After Death Is So Unspeakably Glorious That Our Imagination And Our Feelings Do Not Suffice To Form Even An Approximate Conception Of It. The Dissolution Of Our Time-bound Form In Eternity Brings No Loss Of Meaning.

It Will Seem As If You Were Making The Visions Banal — But Then You Need To Do That — Then You Are Freed From The Power Of Them Then When These Things Are In Some Precious Book You Can Go To The Book And Turn Over The Pages And For You It Will Be Your Church — Your Cathedral — The Silent Places Of Your Spirit Where You Will Find Renewal. If Anyone Tells You That It Is Morbid Or Neurotic And You Listen To Them — Then You Will Lose Your Soul — For In That Book Is Your Soul.

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

The Curve Of Life Is Like The Parabola Of A Projectile Which, Disturbed From Its Initial State Of Rest, Rises And Then Returns To A State Of Repose... Like A Projectile Flying To Its Goal, Life Ends In Death. Even Its Ascent And Its Zenith Are Only Steps And Means To This Goal... For, Enlightenment Or No Enlightenment, Consciousness Or No Consciousness, Nature Prepares Itself For Death.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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?.

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

No Nation Keeps Its Word. A Nation Is A Big, Blind Worm, Following What? Fate Perhaps. A Nation Has No Honor, It Has No Word To Keep.

In The Products Of The Unconscious We Discover Mandala Symbols, That Is, Circular And Quaternity Figures Which Express Wholeness, And Whenever We Wish To Express Wholeness, We Employ Just Such Figures.

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

Faith, Hope, Love, And Insight Are The Highest Achievements Of Human Effort. They Are Found-given-by Experience.

Faith Hope Love

We Need More Understanding Of Human Nature, Because The Only Real Danger That Exists Is Man Himself.

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.

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

It Is Only Our Deeds That Reveal Who We Are.

Famous Inspirational

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

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

One Might Expect, Perhaps, That A Man Full Of Genius Could Pasture In The Greatness Of His Own Thoughts, And Renounce The Cheap Approbation Of The Crowd Which He Despises; Yet He Succumbs To The More Powerful Impulse Of The Herd Instinct. His Searching And His Finding, His Call, Belong To The Herd.

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.

The Greatest Sin Is To Be Unconscious.

If Only Simplicity Were Not The Most Difficult Of All Things. It Consists Of Watching Objectively The Development Of Any Fragment Of Fantasy.

Everything Good Is Costly, And The Development Of Personality Is One Of The Most Costly Of All Things. It Is A Matter Of Saying Yes To Oneself, Of Taking Oneself As The Most Serious Of Tasks, Of Being Conscious Of Everything One Does, And Keeping It Constantly Before One's Eyes In All Its Dubious Aspects.

Hitler Is A Medicine Man Type Of Leader.

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.

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

We Are Born At A Given Moment, In A Given Place And, Like Vintage Years Of Wine, We Have The Qualities Of The Year And Of The Season Of Which We Are Born. Astrology Does Not Lay Claim To Anything More.

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

The Descent Into The Depths Always Seems To Precede The Ascent.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Creative Power Is Mightier Than Its Possessor.

My Mandalas Were Cryptograms Concerning The State Of The Self Which Was Presented To Me Anew Each Day...i Guarded Them Like Precious Pearls....it Became Increasingly Plain To Me That The Mandala Is The Center. It Is The Exponent Of All Paths. It Is The Path To The Center, To Individuation.

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 Less We Understand Of What Our Fathers And Forefathers Sought, The Less We Understand Ourselves, And Thus We Help With All Our Might To Rob The Individual Of His Roots And His Guiding Instincts, So That He Becomes A Particle In The Mass, Ruled Only By What Nietzsche Called The Spirit Of Gravity.

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

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 Should Know What Our Convictions Are, And Stand For Them. Upon One's Own Philosophy, Conscious Or Unconscious, Depends One's Ultimate Interpretation Of Facts. Therefore It Is Wise To Be As Clear As Possible About One's Subjective Principles. As The Man Is, So Will Be His Ultimate Truth.

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.

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.

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

There Is A Deep Need In The World Just Now For Guidance - Almost Any Sort Of Spiritual Guidance.

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 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.

All Fanaticism Is Repressed Doubt.

The Self Is Our Life's Goal, For It Is The Completest Expression Of That Fateful Combination We Call Individuality.

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 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.

Only By Discovering Alchemy Have I Clearly Understood That The Unconscious Is A Process And That Ego's Rapport With The Unconscious And Its Contents Initiate An Evolution, More Precisely, A Real Metamorphosis Of The Psyche.

Our Intellect Has Created A New World That Dominates Nature, And Has Populated It With Monstrous Machines.

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

Process Of Change

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

The Biographies Of Great Artists Make It Abundantly Clear That The Creative Urge Is Often So Imperious That It Battens On Their Humanity And Yokes Everything To The Service Of The Work, Even At The Cost Of Health And Ordinary Human Happiness. The Unborn Work In The Psyche Of The Artist Is A Force Of Nature That Achieves Its End Either With Tyrannical Might Or With The Subtle Cunning Of Nature Herself, Quite Regardless Of The Personal Fate Of The Man Who Is Its Vehicle.

Real Liberation Comes Not From Glossing Over Or Repressing Painful States Of Feeling, But Only From Experiencing Them To The Full.

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.

Masses Are Always Breeding Grounds Of Psychic Epidemics.

Dream The Dream Onward.

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.

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

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

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

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

The Gods Have Become Our Diseases.

Memories Dreams Reflections

Never Diagnose A (client) Until After Their Therapy Is Over.

The Brighter The Light, The Darker The Shadow.

Meaning Makes A Great Many Things Endurable---per Haps Everything.

Conscious And Unconscious

Words Are Animals, Alive With A Will Of Their Own

The Term "self" Seems A Suitable One For The Unconscious Substrate Whose Actual Exponent In Consciousness Is The Ego. The Ego Stands To The Self As The Moved To The Mover, Or As Object To Subject, Because The Determining Factors That Radiate Outward From The Self Surround The Ego On All Sides And Are Therefore Supraordinate To It. The Self, Like The Unconscious, As An A Priori Existent Out Of Which The Ego Evolves. It Is, So To Speak, An Unconscious Prefiguration Of The Ego. It Is Not I Who Create Myself; Rather, I Happen To Myself.

Science Has Destroyed Even The Refuge Of The Inner Life. What Was Once A Sheltering Haven Has Become A Place Of Terror

From The Viewpoint Of Analytic Psychology, The Theatre, Aside From Any Aesthetic Value, May Be Considered As An Institution For The Treatment Of The Mass Complex.

Thank God I'm Not A Jungian.

There Are All Too Many Who, On Account Of Their Notorious Ineptitude, Thrive Better In A Rationalist System Than In Freedom. Freedom Is One Of Those Difficult Things.

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?

You Can Exert No Influence If You Are Not Susceptible To Influence.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

All Neurotics Seek The Religious

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.

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

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.

Trending Author

Zora Neale Hurston

Category