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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.

-Carl Jung

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There Is Rarely A

Carl Jung

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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.

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So They Speak Soothingly About Progress And The Greatest Possible Happiness, Forgetting That Happiness Is Itself Poisoned If The Measure Of Suffering Has Not Been Fulfilled.

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

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

Magic Is The Science Of The Jungle.

Hitler Is A Medicine Man Type Of Leader.

A Complex Is A Cluster Of Energy In The Unconscious, Charged By Historic Events, Reinforced Through Repitition, Embodying A Fragment Of Our Personality, And Generating A Programmed Response And An Implicit Set Of Expectations.

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.

The Woman Who Fights Against Her Father Still Has The Possibility Of Leading An Instinctive, Feminine Existence, Because She Rejects Only What Is Alien To Her. But When She Fights Against The Mother She May, At The Risk Of Injury To Her Instincts, Attain To Greater Consciousness, Because In Repudiating The Mother She Repudiates All That Is Obscure, Instinctive, Ambiguous, And Unconscious In Her Own Nature.

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

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.

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

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.

It Is The Function Of The Church To Oppose All Original Experience, Because This Can Only Be Unorthodox.

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.

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

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

I Do Not Believe...i Know.

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

Loneliness Does Not Come From Having No People About One, But From Being Unable To Communicate The Things That Seem Important To Oneself, Or From Holding Certain Views Which Others Find Inadmissible.

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

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

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

I Studiously Avoided All So-called "holy Men." I Did So Because I Had To Make Do With My Own Truth, Not Accept From Others What I Could Not Attain On My Own. I Would Have Felt It As A Theft Had I Attempted To Learn From The Holy Men And To Accept Their Truth For Myself. Neither In Europe Can I Make Any Borrowings From The East, But Must Shape My Life Out Of Myself-out Of What My Inner Being Tells Me, Or What Nature Brings To Me.

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.

Too Much Of The Animal Disfigures The Civilized Human Being, Too Much Culture Makes A Sick Animal.

Projection [of Our Own Shadow] Makes The Whole World A Replica Of Our Own Unknown Face.

The Symbols Of The Self Arise From The Depths Of The Body.

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

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.

All The Most Powerful Ideas In History Go Back To Archetypes.

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.

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

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

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

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

Religion Is A Defense Against The Experience Of God.

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 Dream Arises From A Part Of The Mind Unknown To Us, But None The Less Important, And Is Concerned With The Desires For The Approaching Day.

I Have Gradually Learned To Be Cautious Even In Disbelief

Sentimentality Is A Superstructure Covering Brutality.

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

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.

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

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

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.

The Longing For Light Is The Longing For Consciousness.

It Isn't Possible To Kill Part Of Your “self” Unless You Kill Yourself First. If You Ruin Your Conscious Personality, The So-called Ego-personality, You Deprive The Self Of Its Real Goal, Namely To Become Real Itself. The Goal Of Life Is The Realization Of The Self. If You Kill Yourself You Abolish That Will Of The Self To Become Real, But It May Arrest Your Personal Development Inasmuch It Is Not Explained. You Ought To Realise That Suicide Is Murder, Since After Suicide There Remains A Corpse Exactly As With Any Ordinary Murder. Only It Is Yourself That Has Been Killed.

Who Has Fully Realized That History Is Not Contained In Thick Books But Lives In Our Very Blood?

The Puzzling Thing Is That There Is Really A Curious Coincidence Between Astrological And Psychological Facts, So That One Can Isolate Time From The Characteristics Of An Individual, And Also, One Can Deduce Characteristics From A Certain Time.

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

Art Is A Kind Of Innate Drive That Seizes A Human Being And Makes Him Its Instrument. The Artist Is Not A Person Endowed With Free Will Who Seeks His Own Ends, But One Who Allows Art To Realize Its Purpose Through Him. As A Human Being He May Have Moods And A Will And Personal Aims, But As An Artist He Is "man" In A Higher Sense— He Is "collective Man"— One Who Carries And Shapes The Unconscious, Psychic Forms Of Mankind.

Collective Unconscious

The Sure Path Can Only Lead To Death.

Memories Dreams Reflections

Medicines Cure Diseases, But Only Doctors Can Cure Patients.

However Far-fetched It May Sound, Experience Shows That Many Neuroses Are Caused By The Fact That People Blind Themselves To Their Own Religious Promptings Because Of A Childish Passion For Rational Enlightenment.

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.

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?

Nature Is Not Matter Only. She Is Also A Spirit

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

The Bigger The Crowd, The More Negligible The Individual.

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

Just As Man As A Social Being, Cannot In The Long Run Exist Without A Tie To The Community, So The Individual Will Never Find The Real Justification For His Existence, And His Own Spiritual And Moral Autonomy, Anywhere Except In An Extramundane Principle Capable Of Relativizing The Overpowering Influence Of External Factors.

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

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.

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

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

Memories Dreams Reflections

The World Hangs On A Thin Thread, And That Is The Psyche Of Man.

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

Dawn Is Born At Midnight.

A Dream That Is Not Understood Remains A Mere Occurrence; Understood It Becomes A Living Experience.

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 Capacity For Inner Dialogue Is A Touchstone For Outer Objectivity.

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.

Dream The Dream Onward.

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

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.

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.

Thoroughly Unprepared, We Take The Step Into The Afternoon Of Life. Worse Still, We Take This Step With The False Presupposition That Our Truths And Our Ideals Will Serve Us As Hitherto. But We Cannot Live The Afternoon Of Life According To The Program Of Life’s Morning, For What Was Great In The Morning Will Be Little At Evening And What In The Morning Was True, At Evening Will Have Become A Lie.

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.

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 Mind Has Grown To Its Present State Of Consciousness As An Acorn Grows Into An Oak, Or As Saurians Developed Into Mammals.

Fortunately, In Her Kindness And Patience, Nature Has Never Put The Fatal Question As To The Meaning Of Their Lives Into The Mouths Of Most People. And Where No One Asks, No One Needs To Answer.

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

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.

In All Earnestness I Asked Myself What Kind Of World I Had Stumbled Into.

The Mandala Is An Archetypal Image Whose Occurrence Is Attested Throughout The Ages. It Signifies The Wholeness Of The Self. This Circular Image Represents The Wholeness Of The Psychic Ground Or, To Put It In Mythic Terms, The Divinity Incarnate In Man.

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.

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.

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

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

People Are Never Helped In Their Suffering By What They Think For Themselves, But Only By Revelation Of A Wisdom Greater Than Their Own. It Is This Which Lifts Them Out Of Their Distress.

Dreaming Is A Philogenetically Older Mode Of Thought.

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.

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.

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

The Reason For Such An “unreasonable” Attitude With Me Is That I Am Not At All Sure What Will Happen To Me After Death. I Have Good Reasons To Assume That Things Are Not Finished With Death. Life Seems To Be An Interlude In A Long Story.

To Be Normal Is The Ultimate Aim Of The Unsuccessful.

The Word 'happiness' Would Lose Its Meaning If It Were Not Balanced And Contrasted And Compared To Sadness. In Comparing How An Experience Could Have Been Worse We Develop Gratitude And Happiness, While If We Compare It How It Could Have Been Better We Develop Bitterness And Sadness.

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.

It Is A Moral Achievement On The Part Of The Doctor Who Ought Not To Let Himself Be Repelled By Sickness And Corruption.

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

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.

I Am Looking Forward Enormously To Getting Back To The Sea Again, Where The Overstimulated Psyche Can Recover In The Presence Of That Infinite Peace And Spaciousness.

Looking Forward

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

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

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.

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

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

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

The Greatest Tragedy Of The Family Is The Unlived Lives Of The Parents.

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

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

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

It Seems To Be Very Hard For People To Live With Riddles Or To Let Them Live, Although One Would Think That Life Is So Full Of Riddles As It Is That A Few More Things We Cannot Answer Would Make No Difference. But Perhaps It Is Just This That Is So Unendurable, That There Are Irrational Things In Our Own Psyche Which Upset The Conscious Mind In Its Illusory Certainties By Confronting It With The Riddle Of Its Existence.

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

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.

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 A Pueblo Indian Does Not Feel In The Right Mood, He Stays Away From The Men's Council. When An Ancient Roman Stumbled On The Threshold As He Left The House, He Gave Up His Plans For The Day. This Seems To Us Senseless, But Under Primitive Conditions Of Life Such An Omen Inclines One At Least To Be Cautious. When I Am Not In Full Control Of Myself, My Bodily Movements May Be Under A Certain Constraint; My Attention Is Easily Distracted; I Am Somewhat Absent-minded. As A Result I Knock Against Something, Stumble, Let Something Fall, Or Forget Something.

The Greatest Sin Is To Be Unconscious.

We Don't Really Heal Anything; We Simply Let It Go.

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.

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.

Thank God I'm Not A Jungian.

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

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

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

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

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

Astrologers Are Influenced By Theosophy, So They Say, "that Is Very Simple, It Is Just Vibration!" ... But What Is Vibration? They Say It Is Light Energy, Perhaps Electricity, They Are Not Quite Informed. At All Events The Vibrations That Could Influence Us Have Never Been Seen, So It Remains Just A Word.

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.

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.

Only The Wounded Physician Heals.

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

Primitive Superstition Lies Just Below The Surface Of Even The Most Tough-minded Individuals, And It Is Precisely Those Who Most Fight Against It Who Are The First To Succumb To Its Suggestive Effects.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I Can Only Gaze With Wonder And Awe At The Depths Of And Heights Of Our Psychic Nature. Its Non-spatial Universe Conceals An Untold Abundance Of Images Which Have Accumulated Over Millions Of Years Of Living Development And Become Fixed In The Organism....beside This Picture I Would Like To Place The Spectacle Of The Starry Heavens At Night, For The Only Equivalent Of The Universe Within Is The Universe Without; And Just As I Reach This World Through The Medium Of The Body, So I Reach That World Through The Medium Of The Psyche.

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.

Synchronicity Reveals The Meaningful Connections Between The Subjective And Objective World.

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

Even A Lie Is A Psychic Fact.

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.

Summoned Or Not, The God Will Come.

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

Life Is Crazy And Meaningful At Once.

In Each Of Us There Is Another Whom We Do Not Know. He Speaks To Us In Dreams And Tells Us How Differently He Sees Us From The Way We See Ourselves. When, Therefore, We Find Ourselves In A Difficult Situation To Which There Is No Solution, He Can Sometimes Kindle A Light That Radically Alters Our Attitude - The Very Attitude That Led Us Into The Difficult Situation.

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.

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.

...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

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

The Woman Is Increasingly Aware That Love Alone Can Give Her Full Stature, Just As The Man Begins To Discern That Spirit Alone Can Endow His Life With Its Highest Meaning. Fundamentally, Therefore, Both Seek A Psychic Relation To The Other, Because Love Needs The Spirit, And The Spirit Love, For Their Fulfillment.

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.

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.

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.

Intuition Is Perception Via The Unconscious That Brings Forth Ideas, Images, New Possibilities And Ways Out Of Blocked Situations.

The Creative Mind Plays With The Object It Loves.

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?.

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

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

Modern Man Is Sick Because He Is Not Whole.

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.

Even The Enlightened Person Remains What He Is, And Is Never More Than His Own Limited Ego Before The One Who Dwells Within Him, Whose Form Has No Knowable Boundaries, Who Encompasses Him On All Sides, Fathomless As The Abysms Of The Earth And Vast As The Sky

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

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.

There Can Be No Transforming Of Darkness Into Light And Of Apathy Into Movement Without Emotion.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Our Western Mind Lacking All Culture In This Respect, Has Never Yet Devised A Concept, Not Even A Name For "the Union Of Opposites Through The Middle Path", That Most Fundamental Item Of Inward Experience Which Could Respectably Be Set Against The Chinese Concept Of Tao.

The Attainment Of Wholeness Requires One To Stake One's Whole Being. Nothing Less Will Do; There Can Be No Easier Conditions, No Substitutes, No Compromises.

When You Are Up Against A Wall, Put Down Roots Like A Tree, Until Clarity Comes From Deeper Sources To See Over That Wall And Grow.

Positive Thinking

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

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.

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.

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.

One Cannot Live Without Inconsistency.

I Came To Freud For Facts. I Read 'the Interpretation Of Dreams' And I Thought- 'oh, Here Is A Man Who Is Not Just Theorizing Away, Here Is A Man Who Has Got Facts.

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

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

People Learn From Who We Are, Rather Than What We Say, And To Believe Otherwise Is A Disease Of The Mind.

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.

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

The Meaning And Design Of A Problem Seem Not To Lie In Its Solution, But In Our Working At It Incessantly.

Everyone You Meet Knows Something You Don't Know But Need To Know. Learn From Them.

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.

To Make What Fate Intends For Me My Own Intention

The Unexpected And The Incredible Belong In This World. Only Then Is Life Whole.

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.

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.

It Is In Applied Psychology, If Anywhere, That Today We Should Be Modest And Grant Validity To A Number Of Apparently Contradictory Opinions; For We Are Still Far From Having Anything Like A Thorough Knowledge Of The Human Psyche, That Most Challenging Field Of Scientific Enquiry. For The Present We Have Merely More Or Less Plausible Opinions That Defy Reconciliation.

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

I Find That All My Thoughts Circle Around God Like The Planets Around The Sun, And Are As Irresistibly Attracted By Him. I Would Feel It To Be The Grossest Sin If I Were To Oppose Any Resistance To This Force.

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William Golding

Katherine Anne Porter

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