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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.

-Carl Jung

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Thoroughly Unprepared, We Take

Carl Jung

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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.

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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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Nothing Is Possible Without Love.

The Psychiatrist Knows Only Too Well How Each Of Us Becomes The Helpless But Not Pitiable Victim Of His Own Sentiments. Sentimentality Is The Superstructure Erected Upon Brutality.

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.

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

It Is Only Through The Psyche That We Can Establish That God Acts Upon Us, But We Are Unable To Distinguish Whether These Actions Emanate From God Or From The Unconscious. We Cannot Tell Whether God And The Unconscious Are Two Different Entities. Both Are Border-line Concepts For Transcendental Contents. But Empirically It Can Be Established, With A Sufficient Degree Of Probability, That There Is In The Unconscious An Archetype Of Wholeness.

It Is Not For Us . . . To Send Out Missionaries To Foreign Peoples; It Is Our Task To Build Up Our Own Western Culture.

Western Culture

The 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.

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.

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

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

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

Shame Is A Soul Eating Emotion.

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

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

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

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

To Find Out What Is Truly Individual In Ourselves, Profound Reflection Is Needed; And Suddenly We Realize How Uncommonly Difficult The Discovery Of Individuality Is.

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.

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

I Am No Longer Alone With Myself, And I Can Only Artificially Recall The Scary And Beautiful Feeling Of Solitude. This Is The Shadow Side Of The Fortune Of Love.

Dreams Are The Guiding Words Of The Soul.

I Would Rather Be Whole Than Good.

I Know Only That I Was Born And Exist, And It Seems To Me That I Have Been Carried Along. I Exist On The Foundation Of Something I Do Not Know. In Spite Of All Uncertainties, I Feel A Solidity Underlying All Existence And A Continuity In My Mode Of Being.

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.

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.

To Make What Fate Intends For Me My Own Intention

I Could Not Say I Believe. I Know! I Have Had The Experience Of Being Gripped By Something That Is Stronger Than Myself, Something That People Call God.

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

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

Hitler's Movement Is Near To Mohammedanism.

Thanks To The Acuteness Of His Mind, He Saw Through The Poverty Of Philosophical And Gnostic Knowledge, And Contemptuously Rejected It.

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

Nature Is Not Matter Only. She Is Also A Spirit

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.

Thunder Is No Longer The Voice Of An Angry God... No River Contains A Spirit... No Snake The Embodiment Of Wisdom, No Mountain Cave The Home Of A Great Demon. No Voices Now Speak To Man From Stones, Plants And Animals, Nor Does He Speak To Them Thinking They Can Hear. His Contact With Nature Has Gone, And With It Has Gone The Profound Emotional Energy That This Symbolic Connection Supplied.

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

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

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

In The End, The Only Events Of My Life Worth Telling Are Those When The Imperishable World Erupted Into This Transitory One All Other Memories Of Travels, People And My Surroundings Have Paled Beside These Interior Happenings But My Encounters With The 'other' Reality, My Bouts With The Unconscious, Are Indelibly Engraved On My Memory. In That Realm There Has Always Been Wealth In Abundance, And Everything Else Has Lost Importance By Comparison.

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

Memories Dreams Reflections

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

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.

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

Collective Unconscious

The Great Problems Of Life — Sexuality, Of Course, Among Others — Are Always Related To The Primordial Images Of The Collective Unconscious. These Images Are Really Balancing Or Compensating Factors Which Correspond With The Problems Life Presents In Actuality. This Is Not To Be Marveled At, Since These Images Are Deposits Representing The Accumulated Experience Of Thousands Of Years Of Struggle For Adaptation And Existence.

Collective Unconscious

One Cannot Live Without Inconsistency.

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

The Self As The Essence Of Individuality Is Unitemporal And Unique; As An Archetypal Symbol It Is A God-image And Therefore Universal And Eternal.

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

Everyone Is In Love With His Own Ideas

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

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For Better To Come, Good Must Stand Aside.

Far From Being A Material World, This Is A Psychic World, Which Allows Us To Make Only Indirect And Hypothetical Inferences About The Real Nature Of Matter. The Psychic, Alone Has Immediate Reality, And This Includes All Forms Of The Psychic, Even

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

Nature Does Not Deceive Or Conceal, But Reveals.

The Images Of The Unconscious Place A Great Responsibility Upon A Man. Failure To Understand Them, Or A Shirking Of Ethical Responsibility, Deprives Him Of His Wholeness And Imposes A Painful Fragmentariness On His Life.

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

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

Solitude Is For Me A Fount Of Healing Which Makes My Life Worth Living.

Magic Is The Science Of The Jungle.

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.

I Cannot Prove To You That God Exists, But My Work Has Proved Empirically That The Pattern Of God Exists In Every Man And That This Pattern In The Individual Has At Its Disposal The Greatest Transforming Energies Of Which Life Is Capable. Find This Pattern In Your Own Individual Self And Life Is Transformed.

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

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.

Man Needs Difficulties; They Are Necessary For Health.

Life Is Something That Has To Be Lived And Not Talked About.

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

Finding Yourself

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

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

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

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

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.

There Is No Birth Of Consciousness Without Pain.

Collective Unconscious

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

Myth Is More Individual And Expresses Life More Precisely Than Does Science.

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.

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

Memories Dreams Reflections

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

Enlightenment Consists Not Merely In The Seeing Of Luminous Shapes And Visions, But In Making The Darkness Visible. The Latter Procedure Is More Difficult And Therefore, Unpopular.

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.

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.

Hitler Is A Medicine Man Type Of Leader.

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.

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.

I Have Gradually Learned To Be Cautious Even In Disbelief

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

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.

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

Where Love Rules, There Is No Will To Power; And Where Power Predominates, There Love Is Lacking. The One Is The Shadow Of The Other.

Life Is A Luminous Pause Between Two Mysteries That Are Yet One.

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.

One Looks Back With Appreciation To The Brilliant Teachers, But With Gratitude To Those Who Touched Our Human Feelings. The Curriculum Is So Much Necessary Raw Material, But Warmth Is The Vital Element For The Growing Plant And For The Soul Of The Child.

Creative Power Is Mightier Than Its Possessor.

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.

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.

Our Souls As Well As Our Bodies Are Composed Of Individual Elements Which Were All Already Present In The Ranks Of Our Ancestors. The "newness" In The Individual Psyche Is An Endlessly Varied Recombination Of Age-old Components.

The Self Is Not Only The Centre But Also The Whole Circumference Which Embraces Both Conscious And Unconscious; It Is The Centre Of This Totality, Just As The Ego Is The Centre Of Consciousness.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

People Cannot Stand Too Much Reality.

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

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.

...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.

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

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.

The Primary Cause Of Unhappiness In The World Today Is... Lack Of Faith.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Individuation Is To Divest The Self Of False Wrappings.

You Are A Slave Of What You Need In Your Soul.

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

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

Explore Daily The Will 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.

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

Law Of Attraction

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."

Every Mother Contains Her Daughter In Herself And Every Daughter Her Mother And Every Mother Extends Backwards Into Her Mother And Forwards Into Her Daughter.

The Healthy Man Does Not Torture Others.

Our Mind Has Its History, Just As Our Body Has Its History. You Might Be Just As Astonished That Man Has An Appendix, For Instance. Does He Know He Ought To Have An Appendix? He Is Just Born With It....our Unconscious Mind, Like Our Body, Is A Storehouse Of Relics And Memories Of The Past. A Study Of The Structure Of The Unconscious Collective Mind Would Reveal The Same Discoveries As You Make In Comparative Anatomy. We Do Not Need To Think That There Is Anything Mystical About It.

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

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

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

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.

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

If God Wishes To Be Born As Man And To Unite Mankind In The Fellowship Of The Holy Ghost, He Suffers The Terrible Torment Of Having To Bear The World In Its Reality. It Is A Crux; Indeed, He Himself Is His Own Cross. The World Is God's Suffering, And Every Individual Human Being Who Wishes Even To Approach His Own Wholeness Knows Very Well That This Means Bearing His Own Cross. But The Eternal Promise For Him Who Bears His Own Cross Is The Paraclete.

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

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

The Self Is Defined Psychologically As The Psychic Totality Of The Individual. Anything That A [person] Postulates As Being A Greater Totality Than [oneself] Can Become A Symbol Of The Self. For This Reason The Symbol Of The Self Is Not Always As Total As The Definition Would Require.

The Unconscious Mind Of Man Sees Correctly Even When Conscious Reason Is Blind And Impotent.

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.

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

In The History Of The Collective As In The History Of The Individual, Everything Depends On The Development Of Consciousness.

The Need For Mythic Statements Is Satisfied When We Frame A View Of The World Which Adequately Explains The Meaning Of Human Existence In The Cosmos, A View Which Springs From Our Psychic Wholeness, From The Co-operation Between Conscious And Unconscious. Meaninglessness Inhibits Fullness Of Life And Is Therefore Equivalent To Illness. Meaning Makes A Great Many Things Endurable - Perhaps Everything.

Fullness Of Life

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.

Warmth Is The Vital Element For The Growing Plant And For The Soul Of The Child.

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

Conflicts Create The Fire Of Affects And Emotions; And Like Every Fire It Has Two Aspects: That Of Burning And That Of Giving Light.

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?

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

It All Depends On How We Look At Things, And Not How They Are In Themselves.

The Spirit Is The Life Of The Body Seen From Within, And The Body The Outward Manifestation Of The Life Of The Spirit-the Two Being Really One.

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.

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

Hitler's Unconscious Seems To Be Female.

Ultimate Truth, If There Be Such A Thing, Demands The Concert Of Many Voices.

Life Has Always Seemed To Me Like A Plant That Lives On Its Rhizome. Its True Life Is Invisible, Hidden In The Rhizome. The Part That Appears Above Ground Lasts Only A Single Summer. Then It Withers Away—an Ephemeral Apparition. When We Think Of The Unending Growth And Decay Of Life And Civilizations, We Cannot Escape The Impression Of Absolute Nullity. Yet I Have Never Lost A Sense Of Something That Lives And Endures Underneath The Eternal Flux. What We See Is The Blossom, Which Passes. The Rhizome Remains.

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.

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

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.

At The Moment I Am Looking Into Astrology, Which Seems Indispensable For A Proper Understanding Of Mythology. There Are Strange And Wondrous Things In These Lands Of Darkness. Please, Don't Worry About My Wanderings In These Infinitudes. I Shall Return Laden With Rich Booty For Our Knowledge Of The Human Psyche.

A Criminal Becomes A Popular Figure Because He Unburdens In No Small Degree The Consciences Of His Fellow Man, For Now They Know Once More Where Evil Is To Be Found.

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

The Time Is A Critical One, For It Marks The Beginning Of The Second Half Of Life, When A Metanoia, A Mental Transformation, Not Infrequently Occurs. (on Being 36 Yrs Old)

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

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

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

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

The Greater The Tension, The Greater Is The Potential.

Yoga In Mayfair Or Fifth Avenue, Or In Any Other Place Which Is On The Telephone, Is A Spiritual Fake.

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

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.

Liverpool Is The Pool Of Life, It Makes To Live.

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

Whereas I Formerly Believed It To Be My Bounden Duty To Call Other Persons To Order, I Now Admit That I Need Calling To Order Myself.

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

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.

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.

The Serious Problems In Life...are Never Fully Solved. If Ever They Should Appear To Be So It Is A Sure Sign That Something Has Been Lost. The Meaning And Purpose Of A Problem Seem To Lie Not In Its Solution But In Our Working At It Incessantly.

All Fanaticism Is Repressed Doubt.

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

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.

That Which You Do Not Bring To Consciousness Comes To You As Your Fate, That Which You Do Bring To Consciousness, Whether It Was What You Thought You Wanted Or Not, Is Your Destiny.

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

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

Anyone Who Wants To Know The Human Psyche Will Learn Next To Nothing From Experimental Psychology. He Would Be Better Advised To Abandon Exact Science, Put Away His Scholar's Gown, Bid Farewell To His Study, And Wander With Human Heart Through The World.

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

The Angels Are A Strange Genus: They Are Precisely What They Are And Cannot Be Anything Else. They Are In Themselves Soulless Beings Who Represent Nothing But The Thoughts And Intuitions Of Their Lord.

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

Memories Dreams Reflections

Wo Die Liebe Herrscht, Da Gibt Es Keinen Machtwillen, Und Wo Die Macht Den Vorrang Hat, Da Fehlt Die Liebe. Das Eine Ist Der Schatten Des Andern. Translation: Where Love Rules, There Is No Will To Power; And Where Power Predominates, There Love Is Lacking. The One Is The Shadow Of The Other.

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

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

Faith Hope Love

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

...consciousness Can Keep Only A Few Images In Full Clarity At One Time, And Even This Clarity Fluctuates.

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George Saunders

Alfred Whitney Griswold

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