Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Carl Jung: “Called or uncalled, God is present!”




“Called or uncalled, God is present!”

It is a Delphic oracle.

The translation is by Erasmus.

You ask whether the oracle is my motto.

In a way, you see, it contains the entire reality of the psyche.

“Oh God!” is what we say, irrespective of whether we say it by way of a curse or by way of love. ~Carl Jung,
C.G. Jung Speaking, Page 64.

All that I have learned has led me step by step to an unshakeable conviction of the existence of
God.

I only believe in what I know.

And that eliminates believing.

Therefore I do not take His existence on belief—I know that He exists. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking, Page 251.

John Freeman: “Do you now believe in God?”

Jung: “Now? [Pause] Difficult to answer.

I know.

I don’t need to believe.

I know.” ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking, Page 383.

I did not say in the broadcast, “There is a God.” I said, “I do not need to believe in a God; I know.”

Which does not mean: I do know a certain God (Zeus, Jahweh, Allah, the Trinitarian God, etc.) but rather I do know that I am obviously confronted with a factor unknown in itself, which I call “God” in consensium omnium [by common consensus] (“quod semper, quod ubique, quod omnibus
creditor” [what is always believed everywhere and by everyone]).

I remember Him, I evoke Him, whenever I use His name overcome by anger, or by fear, whenever I involuntarily say: “Oh God.”

That happens when I meet somebody or something stronger than myself.

It is an apt name given to all overpowering emotions in my own psychical system subduing my conscious
will and usurping control over myself.

This 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 for worse.

In accordance with tradition I call the power of fate in this a positive as well as negative aspect, and inasmuch as its origin
is out of my control, “God,” a “personal god,” since my fate means very much myself, particularly when it approaches
me in the form of conscience as vox dei [the voice of God], with which I can even converse and argue.

(We do and, at the same time, we know that we do. One is subject as well as object.) ~Carl Jung, The Listener, 21 Jan. 1960

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