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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.

-Carl Jung

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The Psyche Is A

Carl Jung

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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.

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

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

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

Solitude Is For Me A Fount Of Healing Which Makes My Life Worth Living. Talking Is Often A Torment For Me, And I Need Many Days Of Silence To Recover From The Futility Of Words.

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

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

No Matter What The World Thinks About Religious Experience, The One Who Has It Possesses A Great Treasure, A Thing That Has Become For Him A Source Of Life, Meaning, And Beauty, And That Has Given A New Splendor To The World And To Mankind.

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.

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.

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

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.’

Plants Were Bound For Good Or Ill To Their Places. They Expressed Not Only Beauty But Also The Thoughts Of God's World, With An Intent Of Their Own And Without Deviation. Trees In Particular Were Mysterious And Seemed To Me Direct Embodiments Of The Incomprehensible Meaning Of Life. For That Reason, The Woods Were The Places Where I Felt Closest To Its Deepest Meaning And To Its Awe-inspiring Workings.

Meaning Of Life

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

I Know Every Numbskull Will Babble On About "black Man," "maneater," "chance," And "retrospective Interpretation," In Order To Banish Something Terribly Inconvenient That Might Sully The Familiar Picture Of Childhood Innocence. Ah, These Good, Efficient, Healthy-minded People, They Always Remind Me Of Those Optimistic Tadpoles Who Bask In A Puddle In The Sun, In The Shallowest Of Waters, Crowding Together And Amiably Wriggling Their Tails, Totally Unaware That The Next Morning The Puddle Will Have Dried Up And Left Them Stranded.

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

Individuation Is To Divest The Self Of False Wrappings.

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

There Is No Birth Of Consciousness Without Pain.

Collective Unconscious

My Evenings Are Taken Up Very Largely With Astrology. I Make Horoscopic Calculations In Order To Find A Clue To The Core Of Psychological Truth.

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 Gods Have Become Our Diseases.

Memories Dreams Reflections

The Symbols Of The Self Arise In The Depths Of The Body, And They Express Its Materiality Every Bit As Much As The Perceiving Consciousness. The Symbol Is Thus A Living Body

The Greatest And Most Important Problems Of Life Are All In A Certain Sense Insoluble. They Can Never Be Solved, But Only Outgrown. This 'outgrowing', As I Formerly Called It, On Further Experience Was Seen To Consist In A New Level Of Consciousness. Some Higher Or Wider Interest Arose On The Person's Horizon, And Through This Widening Of View, The Insoluble Problem Lost Its Urgency. It Was Not Solved Logically In Its Own Terms, But Faded Out When Confronted With A New And Stronger Life-tendency.

And What Shall We Know Of This Life On Earth After Death? The Dissolution Of Our Timebound Form In Eternity Brings No Loss Of Meaning. Rather, Does The Little Finger Know Itself A Member Of The Hand.

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

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

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 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.

Without This Playing With Fantasy No Creative Work Has Ever Yet Come To Birth. The Debt We Owe To The Play Of The Imagination Is Incalculable.

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

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

But What Will He Do When He Sees Only Too Clearly Why His Patient Is Ill; When He Sees That It Arises From His Having No Love, But Only Sexuality; No Faith, Because He Is Afraid To Grope In The Dark; No Hope, Because He Is Disillusioned By The World And By Life; And No Understanding, Because He Has Failed To Read The Meaning Of His Own Existence?

The First Half Of Life Is Devoted To Forming A Healthy Ego, The Second Half Is Going Inward And Letting Go Of It.

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

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.

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

Only The Wounded Physician Heals.

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.

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

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.

Until You Make The Unconscious Conscious, It Will Direct Your Life And You Will Call It Fate.

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.

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.

Every Psychic Advance Of Man Arises From The Suffering Of The Soul.

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

Creative Powers Can Just As Easily Turn Out To Be Destructive. It Rests Solely With The Moral Personality Whether They Apply Themselves To Good Things Or To Bad. And If This Is Lacking, No Teacher Can Supply It Or Take Its Place.

Every Father Is Given The Opportunity To Corrupt His Daughter's Nature, And The Educator, Husband, Or Psychiatrist Then Has To Face The Music. For What Has Been Spoiled By The Father Can Only Be Made Good By A Father, Just As What Has Been Spoiled By The Mother Can Only Be Repaired By A Mother. The Disastrous Repetition Of The Family Pattern Could Be Described As The Psychological Original Sin, Or As The Curse Of The Atrides Running Through The Generations.

But What If I Should Discover That The Least Amongst Them All, The Poorest Of All Beggars, The Most Impudent Of All Offenders, Yea The Very Fiend Himself— That These Are Within Me, And That I Myself Stand In Need Of The Alms Of My Own Kindness, That I Myself Am The Enemy Who Must Be Loved— What Then?

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

Hitler Is A Medicine Man Type Of Leader.

Synchronicity: A Meaningful Coincidence Of Two Or More Events Where Something Other Than The Probability Of Chance Is Involved.

Therein Lies The Social Significance Of Art: It Is Constantly At Work Educating The Spirit Of The Age, Conjuring Up The Forms In Which The Age Is More Lacking. 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. The Artist Seizes On This Image And, In Raising It From Deepest Unconsciousness, He Brings It Into Relation With Conscious Values, Thereby Transforming It Until It Can Be Accepted By The Minds Of His Contemporaries According To Their Powers.

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.

One Of The Most Difficult Tasks Men Can Perform, However Much Others May Despise It, Is The Invention Of Good Games.

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

All Fanaticism Is Repressed Doubt.

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

The Dynamic Principle Of Fantasy Is Play, A Characteristic Also Of The Child, And As Such It Appears Inconsistent With The Principle Of Serious Work. But Without This Playing With Fantasy No Creative Work Has Ever Yet Come To Birth. The Debt We Owe To The Play Of Imagination Is Incalculable. It Is Therefore Short-sighted To Treat Fantasy, On Account Of Its Risky Or Unacceptable Nature, As A Thing Of Little Worth.

There Is A Thinking In Primordial Images, In Symbols Which Are Older Than The Historical Man, Which Are Inborn In Him From The Earliest Times, Eternally Living, Outlasting All Generations, Still Make Up The Groundwork Of The Human Psyche. It Is Only Possible To Live The Fullest Life When We Are In Harmony With These Symbols; Wisdom Is A Return To Them.

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

Without Freedom There Can Be No Morality.

Memories Dreams Reflections

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

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.

I Could Well Imagine That I Might Have Lived In Former Centuries And There Encountered Questions I Was Not Yet Able To Answer; That I Had Been Born Again Because I Had Not Fulfilled The Task Given To Me.

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.

Many Who Know Something But Not Enough About Dreams And Their Meaning...are Liable To Succumb To The Prejudice That The Dream Actually Has A Moral Purpose, That It Warns, Rebukes, Comforts, Foretells The Future, Etc. If One Believes That The Unconscious Always Knows Best, One Can Easily Be Betrayed Into Leaving The Dreams To Take The Necessary Decisions, And Is Then Disappointed When The Dreams Become More And More Trivial And Meaningless...the Unconscious Functions Satisfactorily Only When The Conscious Mind Fufills Its Task To The Very Limit.

The Unconscious Psyche Believes In Life After Death

To Be Normal Is The Ultimate Aim Of The Unsuccessful.

Like The Sea Itself, The Unconscious Yields An Endless And Self-replenishing Abundance Of Creatures, A Wealth Beyond Our Fathoming.

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

My Own Understanding Is The Sole Treasure I Possess, And The Greatest. Though Infinitely Small And Fragile In Comparison With The Powers Of Darkness, It Is Still A Light, My Only Light.

Neurosis Is The Natural By-product Of Pain Avoidance.

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

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

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

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.

Nothing Is More Repulsive Than A Furtively Prurient Spirituality; It Is Just As Unsavoury As Gross Sensuality.

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

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

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

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

Nature Does Not Deceive Or Conceal, But Reveals.

My Whole Being Was Seeking For Something Still Unknown Which Might Confer Meaning Upon The Banality Of Life.

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.

Because The European Does Not Know His Own Unconscious, He Does Not Understand The East And Projects It Into Everything He Fears And Despises In Himself.

Learn Your Theories As Well As You Can, But Put Them Aside When You Touch The Miracle Of The Living Soul

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.

Whenever We Give Up, Leave Behind, And Forget Too Much, There Is Always The Danger That The Things We Have Neglected Will Return With Added Force

Naturally, Every Age Thinks That All Ages Before It Were Prejudiced, And Today We Think This More Than Ever And Are Just As Wrong As All Previous Ages That Thought So. How Often Have We Not Seen The Truth Condemned! It Is Sad But Unfortunately True That Man Learns Nothing From History.

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

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

The 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.

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

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

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

Observance Of Customs And Laws Can Very Easily Be A Cloak For A Lie So Subtle That Our Fellow Human Beings Are Unable To Detect It. It May Help Us To Escape All Criticism, We May Even Be Able To Deceive Ourselves In The Belief Of Our Obvious Righteousness. But Deep Down, Below The Surface Of The Average Man's Conscience, He Hears A Voice Whispering, 'there Is Something Not Right,' No Matter How Much His Rightness Is Supported By Public Opinion Or By The Moral Code.

When One Is Not Understood One Should As A Rule Lower One's Voice, Because When One Really Speaks Loudly Enough And Is Not Heard, It Is Because People Do Not Want To Hear. One Had Better Begin To Mutter To Oneself, Then They Get Curious.

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

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

Conflict Exists Strictly As An Opportunity To Raise Our Consciousness.

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

Memories Dreams Reflections

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

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.

All Ages Before Ours Believed In Gods In Some Form Or Other. Only An Unparalleled Impoverishment In Symbolism Could Enable Us To Rediscover The Gods As Psychic Factors, Which Is To Say, As Archetypes Of The Unconscious. No Doubt This Discovery Is Hardly Credible As Yet.

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.

It Is A Bewildering Thing In Human Life That The Things That Cause The Greatest Fear Is The Source Of The Greatest Wisdom.

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

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

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.

We Do Not Know Whether Hitler Is Going To Found A New Islam. He Is Already On The Way; He Is Like Mohammad. The Emotion In Germany Is Islamic; Warlike And Islamic. They Are All Drunk With Wild God. That Can Be The Historic Future.

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

The Most Terrifying Thing Is To Accept Oneself Completely.

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

...the Soul Does Not Require The Organs Of Sense In Order To See, Hear, Smell, Taste And Feel, In A Much More Perfect State; But With This Great Difference, That In Such A State, It Stands In Much Nearer Connection With The Spirtual Than The Material World.

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.

Psychiatrists Classify A Person As Neurotic If He Suffers From His Problems In Living, And A Psychotic If He Makes Others Suffer.

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

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

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

Aging People Should Know That Their Lives Are Not Mounting And Unfolding But That An Inexorable Inner Process Forces The Contraction Of Life. For A Young Person It Is Almost A Sin And Certainly A Danger To Be Too Much Occupied With Himself; But For The Aging Person It Is A Duty And A Necessity To Give Serious Attention To Himself.

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."

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

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.

You Always Become The Thing You Fight The Most.

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

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.

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

For Better To Come, Good Must Stand Aside.

The Gigantic Catastrophes That Threaten Us Today Are Not Elemental Happenings Of A Physical Or Biological Order, But Psychic Events. To A Quite Terrifying Degree We Are Threatened By Wars And Revolutions Which Are Nothing Other Than Psychic Epidemics. At Any Moment Several Million Human Beings May Be Smitten With A New Madness, And Then We Shall Have Another World War Or Devastating Revolution. Instead Of Being At The Mercy Of Wild Beasts, Earthquakes, Landslides, And Inundations, Modern Man Is Battered By The Elemental Forces Of His Own Psyche.

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

Nothing Is Possible Without Love ... For Love Puts One In A Mood To Risk Everything.

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

The Doctor Is Effective Only When He Himself Is Affected. Only The Wounded Physician Heals.

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

Synchronistic Events Provide An Immediate Religious Experience As A Direct Encounter With The Compensatory Patterning Of Events In Nature As A Whole, Both Inwardly And Outwardly.

The World Begins To Exist When The Individual Discovers It.

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

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

I Believe That We Have No Real Access To Who We Really Are Except In God. Only When We Rest In God Can We Find The Safety, The Spaciousness, And The Scary Freedom To Be Who We Are, All That We Are, More Than We Are, And Less Than We Are.

The 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.

You Must Live Life In Such A Spirit That You Make In Every Moment The Best Of Possibilities.

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 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 Shadow Is A Moral Problem That Challenges The Whole Ego-personality, For No One Can Become Conscious Of The Shadow Without Considerable Moral Effort.

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

The Greatest Sin Is To Be Unconscious.

Intuition (is) Perception Via The Unconscious

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.

Everyone Knows Nowadays That People 'have Complexes'. What Is Not So Well Known, Though Far More Important Theoretically, Is That Complexes Can Have Us.

Nothing Worse Could Happen To One Than To Be Completely Understood.

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.

Dreams Are The Guiding Words Of The Soul.

From The Living Fountain Of Instinct Flows Everything That Is Creative; Hence The Unconscious Is Not Merely Conditioned By History, But Is The Very Source Of The Creative Impulse. It Is Like Nature Herself - Prodigiously Conservative, And Yet Transcending Her Own Historical Conditions In Her Acts Of Creation.

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.

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

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

Twelve Experts Gathered In One Room Equal One Big Idiot.

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

Astrology Is Assured Of Recognition From Psychology, Without Further Restrictions, Because Astrology Represents The Summation Of All The Psychological Knowledge Of Antiquity.

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.

...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

If You Should See People In A Room, You Would Not Think That You Had Made Those People, Or That You Were Responsible For Them.

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 Psychic Depths Are Nature, And Nature Is Creative Life.

Our Mania For Rational Explanations Obviously Has Its Roots In Our Fear Of Metaphysics, For The Two Were Always Hostile Brothers. Hence, Anything Unexpected That Approaches Us From The Dark Realm Is Regarded Either As Coming From Outside And, Therefore, As Real, Or Else As A Hallucination And, Therefore, Not True. The Idea That Anything Could Be Real Or True Which Does Not Come From Outside Has Hardly Begun To Dawn On Contemporary Man.

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

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

Hurry Is Not Of The Devil; Hurry Is The Devil.

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

Creative Power Is Mightier Than Its Possessor.

Sometimes, Indeed, There Is Such A Discrepancy Between The Genius And His Human Qualities That One Has To Ask Oneself Whether A Little Less Talent Might Not Have Been Better.

Discrepancies Between

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

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

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.

Nature Is Not Matter Only. She Is Also A Spirit

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.

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.

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

Becoming Conscious Is Of Course A Sacrilege Against Nature; It Is As Though You Had Robbed The Unconscious Of Something.

Finding Yourself

The Symbol In The Dream Has More The Value Of A Parable: It Does Not Conceal, It Teaches.

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

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

Called Or Not, God Is Always There.

I've Realized That Somebody Who's Tired And Needs A Rest, And Goes On Working All The Same Is A Fool.

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

To Confront A Person With Their Own Shadow Is To Show Them Their Own Light.

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

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

It Is On The Whole Probably That We Continually Dream, But That Consciousness Makes Such A Noise That We Do Not Hear It.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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