Background Image

...

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.’

-Carl Jung

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

There Is, However, A

Carl Jung

...

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.’

Views: 6

Topic

More From Carl Jung

We Can Hardly Escape The Feeling That The Unconscious Process Moves Spiral-wise Round A Centre, Gradually Getting Closer, While The Characteristics Of The Centre Grow More And More Distinct.

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.

Man Is The Microcosm Of The Macrocosm ; The God On Earth Is Built On The Pattern Of The God In Nature. But The Universal Consciousness Of The Real Ego Transcends A Million Fold The Self-consciousness Of The Personal For False Ego.

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.

Astrology Is One Of The Intuitive Methods Like The I Ching, Geomantics, And Other Divinatory Procedures. It Is Based Upon The Synchronicity Principle, Meaningful Coincidence. ... Astrology Is A Naively Projected Psychology In Which The Different Attitudes And Temperaments Of Man Are Represented As Gods And Identified With Planets And Zodiacal Constellations.

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

The Artist Is Not A Person Endowed With Free Will Who Seeks His Own Ends, But One Who Allows It To Realize Its Supreme Purpose Through Him.

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

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

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

Modern Man Is Sick Because He Is Not Whole.

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.

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

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.

Man's Unconscious... Contains All The Patterns Of Life And Behaviour Inherited From His Ancestors, So That Every Human Child, Prior To Consciousness, Is Possessed Of A Potential System Of Adapted Psychic Functioning.

Filling The Conscious Mind With Ideal Conceptions Is A Characteristic Of Western Theosophy, But Not The Confrontation With The Shadow And The World Of Darkness. One Does Not Become Enlightened By Imagining Figures Of Light, But By Making The Darkness Conscious. The Latter Procedure, However, Is Disagreeable And Therefore Not Popular.

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.

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.

By A Symbol I Do Not Mean An Allegory Or A Sign, But An Image That Describes In The Best Possible Way The Dimly Discerned Nature Of The Spirit. A Symbol Does Not Define Or Explain; It Points Beyond Itself To A Meaning That Is Darkly Divined Yet Still Beyond Our Grasp, And Cannot Be Adequately Expressed In The Familiar Words Of Our Language.

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

Eternal Truth Needs A Human Language That Alters With The Spirit Of The Times.

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.

Nights Through Dreams Tell The Myths Forgotten By The Day.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Process Of Change

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

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

Sentimentality Is A Superstructure Covering Brutality.

I Believe That History Is Capable Of Anything. There Exists No Folly That Men Have Not Tried Out.

Archetypes, In Spite Of Their Conservative Nature, Are Not Static But In A Continuous Dramatic Flux. Thus The Self As A Monad Or Continuous Unit Would Be Dead. But It Lives Inasmuch As It Splits And Unites Again. There Is No Energy Without Opposites!

The World Of Gods And Spirits Is Truly 'nothing But' The Collective Unconscious Inside Me.

Collective Unconscious

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

The Starry Vault Of Heaven Is In Truth The Open Book Of Cosmic Projection, In Which Are Reflected The Mythologems, I.e., The Archetypes. In This Vision Astrology And Alchemy, The Two Classical Functionaries Of The Psychology Of The Collective Unconscious, Join Hands.

Collective Unconscious

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

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.

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.

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

Intuition (is) Perception Via 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.

Here And There It Happened In My Practice That A Patient Grew Beyond Himself Because Of Unknown Potentialities, And This Became An Experience Of Prime Importance To Me. I Had Learned In The Meanwhile That The Greatest And Most Important Problems Of Life Are All In A Certain Sense Insoluble. They Must Be So Because They Express The Necessary Polarity Inherent In Every Self-regulating System. They Can Never Be Solved, But Only Outgrown.

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

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.

If I Accept The Fact That A God Is Absolute And Beyond All Human Experiences, He Leaves Me Cold. I Do Not Affect Him, Nor Does He Affect Me. But If I Know That A God Is A Powerful Impulse In My Soul, At Once I Must Concern Myself With Him, For Then He Can Become Important

The 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.

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.

If Our Religion Is Based On Salvation, Our Chief Emotions Will Be Fear And Trembling. If Our Religion Is Based On Wonder, Our Chief Emotion Will Be Gratitude.

The Unconscious Wants To Flow Into Consciousness In Order To Reach The Light, But At The Same Time It Continually Thwarts Itself, Because It Would Rather Remain Unconscious. That Is To Say, God Wants To Become Man, But Not Quite.

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

Lunatic Asylums

The 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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Instead Of Being At The Mercy Of Wild Beasts, Earthquakes, Landslides, And Inundations, Modern Man Is Battered By The Elemental Forces Of His Own Psyche. This Is The World Power That Vastly Exceeds All Other Powers On Earth. The Age Of Enlightenment, Which Stripped Nature And Human Institutions Of Gods, Overlooked The God Of Terror Who Dwells In The Human Soul.

Even If The Whole World Were To Fall To Pieces, The Unity Of The Psyche Would Never Be Shattered.

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

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

The Sure Path Can Only Lead To Death.

Memories Dreams Reflections

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.

Midlife Is The Time To Let Go Of An Overdominant Ego And To Contemplate The Deeper Significance Of Human Existence.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

When We Assume God To Be A Guiding Principle Well, Sure Enough, A God Is Usually Characteristic Of A Certain System Of Thought Or Morality. For Instance, Take The Christian God, The Summum Bonum: God Is Love, Love Being The Highest Moral Principle; And God Is Spirit, The Spirit Being The Supreme Idea Of Meaning. All Our Christian Moral Concepts Derive From Such Assumptions, And The Supreme Essence Of All Of Them Is What We Call God.

Guiding Principles

It Is Really The Mistake Of Our Age. We Think It Is Enough To Discover New Things, But We Don't Realize That Knowing More Demands A Corresponding Development Of Morality.

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

We Should Not Pretend To Understand The World Only By The Intellect; We Apprehend It Just As Much By Feeling. Therefore, The Judgment Of The Intellect Is, At Best, Only The Half Of Truth, And Must, If It Be Honest, Also Come To An Understanding Of Its Inadequacy.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

One Is Forced To Speak Not Of What Is Held In Common Between The Cultures, But What Is Held In Common Between The Myths, And That In Its Simplest Archetypal Forms.

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

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.

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.

The Decisive Question For Man Is: Is He Related To Something Infinite Or Not? That Is The Telling Question Of His Life.

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.

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

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

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

Nature Is Not Matter Only. She Is Also A Spirit

The Totality Of The Psyche Can Never Be Grasped By The Intellect Alone.

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

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.

Our Heart Glows, And Secret Unrest Gnaws At The Root Of Our Being. Dealing With The Unconscious Has Become A Question Of Life For Us.

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.

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

What Usually Has The Strongest Psychic Effect On The Child Is The Life Which The Parents Have Not Lived

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

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

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

The Creative Mind Plays With The Object It Loves.

We Often Dream About People From Whom We Receive A Letter By The Next Post. I Have Ascertained On Several Occasions That At The Moment When The Dream Occurred The Letter Was Already Lying In The Post-office Of The Addressee.

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

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.

A True Symbol Appears Only When There Is A Need To Express What Thought Cannot Think Or What Is Only Divined Or Felt.

Neurosis Is The Natural By-product Of Pain Avoidance.

Our Unconscious Is The Key To Our Life's Pursuits.

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

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.

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

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

Follow Your Heart

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

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

Dream The Dream Onward.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

That Which We Do Not Confront In Ourselves We Will Meet As Fate.

Psychological Type Is Nothing Static - It Changes In The Course Of Life.

The Unconscious Psyche Believes In Life After Death

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

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.’

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

So Far As The Personality Is Still Potential, It Can Be Called Transcendent, And So Far As It Is Unconscious, It Is Indistinguishable From All Those Things That Carry Its Projections...that Is, Symbols Of The Outside World And The Cosmic Symbols. These Form The Psychological Basis For The Conception Of Man As A Macrocosm Through The Astrological Components Of His Character.

I Must Also Have A Dark Side If I Am To Be Whole.

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

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

I Deliberately And Consciously Give Preference To A Dramatic, Mythological Way Of Thinking And Speaking, Because This Is Not Only More Expressive But Also More Exact Than An Abstract Scientific Terminology, Which Is Wont To Toy With The Notion That Its Theoretic Formulations May One Fine Day Be Resolved Into Algebraic Equations.

Life Really Does Begin At Forty. Up Until Then, You Are Just Doing Research.

We Meet Ourselves Time And Again In A Thousand Disguises On The Path Of Life.

Law Of Attraction

It Is Only Our Deeds That Reveal Who We Are.

Famous Inspirational

I Know That Previously I Would Not Have Dared To Express Myself So Explicitly About So Uncertain A Matter. I Can Take This Risk Because I Am Now In My Eighth Decade, And The Changing Opinions Of Men Scarcely Impress Me Any More; The Thoughts Of The Old Masters Are Of Greater Value To Me Than The Philosophical Prejudices Of The Western Mind.

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.

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

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

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.

The Afternoon Of A Human Life Must Have A Significance Of Its Own, And Cannot Be Merely A Pitiful Appendage To Life's Morning.

The Creative Process, So Far As We Are Able To Follow It At All, Consists In The Unconscious Activation Of An Archetypal Image And Elaborating And Shaping The Image Into The Finished Work. By Giving It Shape, The Artist Translates It Into The Language Of The Present And So Makes It Possible For Us To Find Our Way Back To The Deepest Springs Of Life.

Intuition Does Not Denote Something Contrary To Reason, But Something Outside Of The Province Of Reason.

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

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

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

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

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

It Is My Mind, With Its Store Of Images, That Gives The World Color And Sound; And That Supremely Real And Rational Certainty Which I Can "experience" Is, In Its Most Simple Form, An Exceedingly Complicated Structure Of Mental Images. Thus There Is, In A Certain Sense, Nothing That Is Directly Experienced Except The Mind Itself. Everything Is Mediated Through The Mind, Translated, Filtered, Allegorized, Twisted, Even Falsified By It. We Are . . . Enveloped In A Cloud Of Changing And Endlessly Shifting Images.

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. . . .

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

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

The Years... When I Pursued The Inner Images Were The Most Important Time Of My Life. Everything Else Is To Be Derived From This. It Began At That Time, And The Later Details Hardly Matter Anymore. My Entire Life Consisted In Elaborating What Had Burst Forth From The Unconscious And Flooded Me Like An Enigmatic Stream And Threatened To Break Me. That Was The Stuff And Material For More Than Only One Life. Everything Later Was Merely The Outer Classification, The Scientific Elaboration, And The Integration Into Life. But The Numinous Beginning, Which Contained Everything Was Then.

The Individual Disposition Is Already A Factor In Childhood; It Is Innate, And Not Acquired In The Course Of A Life.

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.

Healing Proceeds From The Depths To The Heights.

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

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.

The Bigger The Crowd, The More Negligible The Individual.

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

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.

It Is Sad But Unfortunately True That Man Learns Nothing From History.

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

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

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

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.

One Cannot Free Oneself By Bowing To The Yoke, But By Breaking It.

In Sleep, Fantasy Takes The Form Of Dreams. But In Waking Life, Too, We Continue To Dream Beneath The Threshold Of Consciousness, Especially When Under The Influence Of Repressed Or Other Unconscious Complexes.

What You Resist Persist.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Real Work Is Completed In Silence And Strikes A Chord In The Minds Of Only A Very Few.

Water Is The Commonest Symbol For The Unconscious.

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.

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.

If There Is Anything That We Wish To Change In The Child, We Should First Examine It And See Whether It Is Not Something That Could Better Be Changed In Ourselves.

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

Nature Does Not Deceive Or Conceal, But Reveals.

I Had To Make A Confession Of Faith In Stone. That Was The Beginning Of The Tower, The House I Built For Myself At Bollingen.

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.

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.

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 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.

Special Knowledge Is A Terrible Disadvantage.

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.

Thinking Is Difficult, That’s Why Most People Judge.

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.

I Think There Will Be A Reaction - A Reaction Will Set In Against This Communal Dissociation. You Know, Man Doesn't Stand Forever, His Nullification. Once, There Will Be A Reaction, And I See It Setting In, You Know, When I Think Of My Patients, They All Seek Their Own Existence And To Assure Their Existence Against That Complete Atomization Into Nothingness Or Into Meaninglessness. Man Cannot Stand A Meaningless Life.

Vocatus Atque Non Vocatus Deus Aderit.

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

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 Problem Of Synchronicity Has Puzzled Me For A Long Time, Ever Since The Middle Twenties, When I Was Investigating The Phenomena Of The Collective Unconscious And Kept On Coming Across Connections Which I Simply Could Not Explain As Chance Groupings Or "runs." What I Found Were "coincidences" Which Were Connected So Meaningfully That Their "chance" Concurrence Would Represent A Degree Of Improbability That Would Have To Be Expressed By An Astronomical Figure.

Collective Unconscious

Trending Author

James MacGregor Burns

Category