Carl Jung: I myself am the enemy who must be loved—what then?

Perhaps this sounds very simple, but simple things are always the most difficult.

In actual life it requires the greatest art to be simple, and so acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the acid test of one's whole outlook on life.

That I feed the beggar, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ—all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ.

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?

Then, as a rule, the whole truth of Christianity is reversed: there is then no more talk of love and long-suffering; we say to the brother within us "Raca," and condemn and rage against ourselves.

We hide him from the world, we deny ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves, and had it been God himself who drew near to us in this despicable form, we should have denied him a thousand times before a single cock had crowed. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 520

Image: The Singing Beggars by Russian painter Ivan Yermenyov c. 1775

Carl Jung on the "Lion" - Anthology

After all the rebirths you still remain the lion crawling on the earth, the Chameleon], a caricature, one prone to changing colors, a crawling shimmering lizard, but precisely not a lion, whose nature is related to the sun, who draws his power from within himself, who does not crawl around in the protective colors of the environment, and who does not defend himself by going into hiding. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 277.

However, the friendly lion in the dream seems to indicate that the looseness of the soul is not exactly desirable, since the lion compensates your condition in a very obvious way: the Zurich lion represents your localized instinct, firmly rooted in your earth, just as the lion's soul-as with all animals -is securely fixed in its body. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 306-307

The primitives say the real scale of values begins with the elephant, lion, eagle, perhaps cobra, then man and monkey. They recognize the fact that man is one of the animals. To say that man is on top is megalomaniac. ~Carl Jung; Cornwall Seminar; Page 24.

The sun is not only beneficial, but also destructive; hence the zodiacal sign for August heat is the ravaging lion which Samson slew in order to rid the parched earth of its torment. Yet it is in the nature of the sun to scorch, and its scorching power seems natural to man. It shines equally on the just and the unjust, and allows useful creatures to flourish as well as the harmful. ~Carl Jung; CW 5, para 176.

When you dream of a savage bull, or a lion, or a wolf pursuing you, this means: it wants to come to you. You would like to split it off, you experience it as something alien, but it just becomes all the more dangerous. . .The best stance would be: ‘Please, come and devour me.” ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams, Page 19.

The animal face which I felt mine transformed into was the famous [Deus] Leontocephalus of the Mithraic mysteries, the figure which is represented with a snake coiled around the man, the snake’s head resting on the man’s head, and the face of the man that of a lion. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 104

Carl Jung on the "Desert" - Anthology

[Carl Jung on “Deserts” – Anthology]

But the spirit of the depths said: "No one can or should halt sacrifice. Sacrifice is not destruction; sacrifice is the foundation stone of what is to come. Have you not had monasteries? Have not countless thousands gone into the desert? You should carry the monastery in yourself. The desert is within you. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 230.

The solitary went into the desert to find himself. But he did not want to find himself but rather the manifold meaning of holy scripture. You can suck the immensity of the small and the great into yourself and you will become emptier and emptier, since immense fullness and immense emptiness are one and the same. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 273.

But the spirit of the depths had gained this power, because I had spoken to my soul during 25 nights in the desert and I had given her all my love and submission. But during the 25 days, I gave all my love and submission to things, to men, and to the thoughts of this time. I went into the desert only at night. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 238.

Everything to come was already in images: to find their soul, the ancients went into the desert. This is an image. The ancients lived their symbols, since the world had not yet become real for them. Thus they went into the solitude of the desert to teach us that the place of the soul is a lonely desert. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 236.

I think of Christianity in the desert. Physically, those ancients went into the desert. Did they also enter into the desert of their own self? Or was their self not as barren and desolate as mine? There they wrestled with the devil. I wrestle with waiting. It seems to me not less since it is truly a hot hell ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Footnote 74, Page 236.

Look back at the collapse of empires, of growth and death, of the desert and monasteries, they are the images of what is to come. Everything has been foretold. But who knows how to interpret it? ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 236.

My soul leads me into the desert, into the desert of my own self. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 235.

You should carry the monastery in yourself. The desert is within you. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 230.

But reaching soon the station No. 74 of my trek through the lands, deserts, and seas of this three-dimensional world, I feel the burden of my years and the work not yet done. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 503-505.

As nobody can become aware of his individuality unless he is closely and responsibly related to his fellow beings, he is not withdrawing to an egoistic desert when he tries to find himself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 592-597

Carl Jung and "Three Prophecies"

Wondrous things came nearer.

I called my soul and asked her to dive down into the floods, whose distant roaring I could hear.

This happened on 22 January of the year 1914, as recorded in my black book.

And thus she plunged into the darkness like a shot, and from the depths she called out: “Will you accept what I bring?”

I: ”’I will accept what you give. I do not have the right to judge or to reject.”

S: “So listen. There is old armor and the rusty gear of our fathers down here, murderous leather trappings hanging from them, worm-eaten lance shafts, twisted spear heads, broken arrows, rotten shields, skulls, the bones of man and horse, old cannons, catapults, crumbling firebrands, smashed assault gear, stone spearheads, stone clubs, sharp bones, chipped arrowhead teeth –everything the battles of yore have littered the earth with. Will you accept all this?”

1: “I accept it. You know better, my soul.”

S: “I find painted stones, carved bones with magical signs, talismanic sayings on hanks of leather and small plates of lead, dirty pouches filled with teeth, human hair and fingernails, timbers lashed together, black orbs, moldy animal skins-all the superstitions hatched by dark prehistory. Will you accept all this?”

1: “I accept it all, how should I dismiss anything?”

S: “But I find worse: fratricide, cowardly mortal blows, torture, child sacrifice, the annihilation of whole peoples, arson, betrayal, war, rebellion-will you also accept this?”

I: ”Also this, if it must be. How can I judge?”

S: “I find epidemics, natural catastrophes, sunken ships, razed cities, frightful feral savagery; famines, human meanness, and fear, whole mountains of fear.”

I: “So shall it be, since you give it.”

S: “I find the treasures of all past cultures, magnificent images of Gods, spacious temples, paintings, papyrus rolls, sheets of parchment with the characters of bygone languages, books full of lost wisdom, hymns and chants of ancient priests, stories told down the ages through thousands of generations.”

I: “That is an entire world -whose extent I cannot grasp. How can I accept it?”

S: “But you wanted to accept everything? You do not know your limits. Can you not limit yourself?”

l: “I must limit myself Who could ever grasp such wealth?”

S: “Be content and cultivate your garden with modesty.”

l: “I will. I see that it is not worth conquering a larger piece of the immeasurable, but a smaller one instead. A well-tended small garden is better than an ill-tended large garden. Both gardens are equally small when faced with the immeasurable, but unequally cared for.”

S: “Take shears and prune your trees.”

From the flooding darkness the son of the earth had brought, my soul gave me ancient things that pointed to the future.

She gave me three things: The misery of war, the darkness of magic, and the gift of religion.

If you are clever, you will understand that these three things belong together.

These three mean the unleashing of chaos and its power, just as they also mean the binding of chaos. War is obvious and everybody sees it.

Magic is dark and no one sees it.

Religion is still to come, but it will become evident.

Did you think that the horrors of such atrocious warfare would come over us?

Did you think that magic existed?

Did you think about a new religion? I sat up for long nights and looked ahead at what was to come and I shuddered.

Do you believe me? I am not too concerned. What should I believe? What should I disbelieve? I saw and I shuddered.

But my spirit could not grasp the monstrous, and could not conceive the extent of what was to come.

The force of my longing languished, and powerless sank the harvesting hands.

I felt the burden of the most terrible work of the times ahead.

I saw where and how, but no word can grasp it, no will can conquer it.

I could not do otherwise, I let it sink again into the depths.

I cannot give it to you, and I can speak only of the way of what is to come.

Little good will come to you from outside. What will come to you lies within yourself But what lies there!

I would like to avert my eyes, close my ears and deny all my senses; I would like to be someone among you, who knows nothing and who never saw anything. It is too much and too unexpected.

But I saw it and my memory will not leave me alone.

Yet I curtail my longing, which would like to stretch out into the future, and I return to my small garden that presently blooms, and whose extent I can measure. It shall be well-tended.

The future should be left to those of the future.

I return to the small and the real, for this is the great way, the way of what is to come.

I return to my simple reality, to my undeniable and most minuscule being.

And I take a knife and hold court over everything that has grown without measure and goal.

Forests have grown around me, winding plants have climbed up me, and I am completely covered by endless proliferation.

The depths are inexhaustible, they give everything.

Everything is as good as nothing. Keep a little and you have something.

To recognize and know your ambition and your greed, to gather your craving, to cultivate it, grasp it, make it serviceable, influence it, master it, order it, to give it interpretations and meanings, is extravagant.

It is lunacy, like everything that transcends its boundaries.

How can you hold that which you are not? Would you really like to force everything which you are not under the yoke of your wretched knowledge and understanding?

Remember that you can know yourself and with that you know enough.

But you cannot know others and everything else.

Beware of knowing what lies beyond yourself or else your presumed knowledge will suffocate the life of those who know themselves.

A knower may know himself that is his limit.

With a painful slice I cut off what I pretended to know about what lies beyond me.

I excise myself from the cunning interpretive loops that I gave to what lies beyond me.

And my knife cuts even deeper and separates me from the meanings that I conferred upon myself.

I cut down to the marrow, until everything meaningful falls from me, until I am no longer as I might seem to myself until I know only that I am without knowing what I am.

I want to be poor and bare, and I want to stand naked before the inexorable.

I want to be my body and its poverty. I want to be from the earth and live its law.

I want to be my human animal and accept all its frights and desires.

I want to go through the wailing and the blessedness of the one who stood alone with a poor unarmed body on the sunlit earth, a prey of his drives and of the lurking wild animals, who was terrified by ghosts and dreaming of distant Gods, who belonged to what was near and was enemy to the far-off, who struck fire from stones, and whose herds were stolen by unknowable powers that also destroyed the crops of his fields, and who neither knew nor recognized, but who lived by what lay at hand, and received by grace what lay far-off He was a child and unsure, yet full of certainty; weak and yet blessed with enormous strength.

When his God did not help, he took another.

And when this one did not help either, he castigated him. And behold: the Gods helped one more time.

Thus I discard everything that was laden with meaning, everything divine and devilish with which chaos burdened me.

Truly, it is not up to me to prove the Gods and the devils and the chaotic monsters, to feed them carefully, to warily drag them with me, to count and name them, and to protect them with belief against disbelief and doubt.

A free man knows only free Gods and devils that are self-contained and take effect on account of their own force.

If they fail to have an effect, that is their own business, and I can remove this burden from myself but if they are effective, they need neither my protection nor my care, nor my belief thus you may wait quietly to see whether they work.

But if they do, be clever, for the tiger is stronger than you. You should be able to cast everything from you, otherwise you are a slave, even if you are the slave of a God. Life is free and chooses its way. It is limited

enough, so do not pile up more limitation. Hence I cut away everything confining.

I stood here, and there lay the riddle-some multifariousness of the world.

And a horror crept over me. Am I not the tightly bound?

Is the world there not the unlimited?

And I became aware of my weakness. What would poverty; nakedness and unpreparedness be without consciousness of weakness and without horror at powerlessness?

Thus I stood and was terrified. And then my soul whispered to me: ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Pages 305-307.

Carl Jung: You thus fight the other and are completely blinded.

Image: Tacuinum Sanitatis casanatensis (14th century).

Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth it). the winefat?

I have trodden the wine-press alone and no one is with me.

I have trodden myself down in my anger, and trampled upon myself in my fury.

Hence my blood has spattered my clothes, and I have stained my robe.

For I have afforded myself a day of vengeance, and the year to redeem myself has come.

And I looked around, and there was none to help; and I wondered that there was no one who stood by me: therefore my own arm must save me, and my fury upheld me.

And I trod myself down in my rage, and made myself drunk in my fury, and spilt my blood on the earth.

For I took my misdeed upon myself so that the God would be healed. Just as Christ said that he did not come to make peace but brought the sword so he in whom Christ becomes complete will not give himself peace, but a sword.

He will rebel against himself and one will be turned against the other in him.

He will also hate that which he loves in himself.

He will be castigated in himself mocked, and given over to the torment of crucifixion, and no one will aid him or soothe his torment.

Just as Christ was crucified between the two thieves, our lowest lies on either side of our way.

And just as one thief went to Hell and the other rose up to Heaven, the lowest in us will be sundered in two halves on the day of our judgment.

The one is destined for damnation and death, and the other will rise up.

But it will take a long time until you see what is destined for death and what is destined for life, since the lowest in you is still unseparated and one, and in a deep sleep.

If I accept the lowest in me, I lower a seed into the ground of Hell.

The seed is invisibly small, but the tree of my life grows from it and conjoins the Below with the Above.

At both ends there is fire and blazing embers.

The Above is fiery and the Below is fiery. Between the unbearable fires grows your life.

You hang between these two poles. In an immeasurably frightening movement the stretched hanging welters up and down.

We thus fear our lowest, since that which one does not possess is forever united with the chaos and takes part in its mysterious ebb and flow.

Insofar as I accept the lowest in me-precisely that red glowing sun of the depths-and thus fall victim to the confusion of chaos, the upper shining sun also rises.

Therefore he who strives for the highest finds the deepest.

To deliver the men of his time from the stretched hanging, Christ effectively took this torment upon himself and taught them: “Be crafty like serpents and guileless like doves.”

For craftiness counsels against chaos, and guilelessness veils its terrible aspect.

Thus men could take the safe middle path, hedged both upward and downward.

But the dead of the Above and the Below mounted, and their demands grew ever louder.

And both the noble and the wicked rose up again and, unaware, broke the law of the mediator.

They flung open doors both above and below.

They drew many after them to higher and lower madness, thereby sowing confusion and preparing the way of what is to come.

But he who goes into the one and not also at the same time into the other by accepting what comes toward him, will simply teach and live the one and turn it into a reality. For he will be its victim.

When you go into the one and hence consider the other approaching you as your enemy, you will fight against the other.

You will do so because you fail to recognize that the other is also in you.

On the contrary, you think that the other comes somehow from without and you think that you also catch sight of it in the views and actions of your fellow men which clash with yours.

You thus fight the other and are completely blinded.

But he who accepts what approaches him because it is also in him, quarrels and wrangles no more, but looks into himself and keeps silent. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Pages 300-301.

Carl Jung on "The Life of the Solitary"

The life of the solitary would be cold were it not for the immense sun, which makes the air and rocks glow.

The sun and its eternal splendor replace for the solitary his own life warmth.

His heart longs for the sun.

II e wanders to the lands of the sun.

He dreams of the flickering splendor of the sun, of the hot red stones spread out at midday, of the golden hot rays of dry sand. / The solitary seeks the sun and no one else is so ready to open his heart as he is.

Therefore he loves the desert above all, since he loves its deep stillness.

He needs little food since the sun and its glow nourish him.

Consequently the solitary loves the desert above all since it is a mother to him, giving him food and invigorating warmth at regular hours.

I n the desert the solitary is relieved of care and therefore turns his whole life to the sprouting garden of his soul, which can flourish only under a hot sun.

In his garden the delicious red fruit grows that bears swelling sweetness under a tight skin.

You think that the solitary is poor.

You do not see that he strolls under laden fruit trees and that his hand touches grain a hundredfold. under dark leaves the over full reddish blossoms swell toward him from abundant buds, and the fruit almost bursts with thronging juices.

Fragrant resins drip from his trees and under his feet thrusting seed breaks open.

If the sun sinks onto the plane of the sea like an exhausted bird, the solitary envelops himself and holds his breath.

He does not move and is pure expectancy until the miracle of the renewal of light rises in the East.

Brimful delicious expectation is in the solitary.

The horror of the desert and of withered evaporation surround him, and you do not understand how the solitary can live. / But his eye rests on the garden, and his ears listen to the source, and his hand touches velvet leaves and fruit, and his breath draws in sweet perfumes from blossom~rich trees.

He cannot tell you, since the splendor of his garden is so abundant.

He stammers when he speaks of it, and he appears to you to be poor in spirit and in life.

But his hand does not know where it should reach, in all this
indescribable fullness.

He gives you a small insignificant fruit, which has just fallen at his feet.

I t appears worthless to you, but if you consider it, you will see that this fruit tastes like a sun which you could not have dreamt of It gives off a perfume which confuses your senses and makes you dream of rose gardens and sweet wine and whispering palm trees.

And you hold this one fruit in your hands dreaming, and you would like the tree in which it grows, the garden in which
this tree stands, and the sun which brought forth this garden.

And you yourself want to be that solitary who strolls with the sun in his garden, his gaze resting on pendant flowers and his hand brushing a hundred-fold of grain and his breath drinking the perfume from a thousand roses.

Dull from the sun and drunk from fermenting wines, you lie down in ancient graves, whose walls resound with many voices and many colors of a thousand solar years.

When you grow, then you see everything living again as it was.

And / when you sleep, you rest, like everything that was, and your dreams echo

softly again from distant temple chants.

You sleep down through the thousand solar years, and you wake up through the thousand solar years, and your dreams full of ancient lore adorn

the walls of your bedchamber.

You also see yourself in the totality. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Pages 269-270

Carl Jung: ...Freud had to give up the editorship of the Zentralblatt.

To Trigant Burrow

My dear Burrow, 26 December 1912

I am very glad to have your letter and the manuscript.

I suppose you heard of the great change in Vienna, where Freud and Stekel are in full disagreement.

Stekel behaved in a most impertinent and foolish way, so that Freud had to give up the editorship of the Zentralblatt.

Unfortunately the publisher remained on the side of Stekel, hence Stekel kept the Zentralblatt and Freud was, dismissed.

Freud founded a new journal of international character and we all have gone over to this new journal, leaving Stekel with his mutilated Zentralblatt.

I think you agree with me, sending your article to Freud with the request that your name is mentioned among the regular contributors of the journal.

This place will be more commendable than the Zentralblatt.

I am pretty sure to have left my fountain-pen in your house probably as a present symbolizing literary fertility; it is the pen I wrote my Libido-Arbeit with.

I very much regretted this loss, but if it is in your hands it may stay there.

Yours very truly,

JUNG ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 27

Carl Jung's Preface to The Red Book

“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.” ~Carl Jung, Preface, The Red Book

Carl Jung and a "Big Fish" Dream

In conclusion, I would like to give a concrete example of the way the symbol of the fish springs out of the unconscious autochthonously.

The case in question is that of a young woman who had uncommonly lively and plastic dreams. She was very much under the influence of her father, who had a materialistic outlook and was not happily married.

She shut herself off from these unfavourable surroundings by developing, at a very early age, an intense inner life of her own. As a small child, she replaced her parents by two trees in the garden. In her sixth or seventh year, she dreamt that God had promised her a golden fish. From this time forth she frequently dreamt of fishes.

Later, a little while before starting psychological treatment on account of her manifold problems, she dreamt that she was "standing on the bank of the Limmat and looking down into the water. A man threw a gold coin into the river, the water became transparent and I could see the bottom. There was a coral reef and a lot of fishes. One of them had a shining silver belly and a golden back.

During treatment she had the following dream: "/ came to the bank of a broad, flowing river. I couldn't see much at first, only water, earth, and rock. I threw the pages with my notes on them into the water, with the feeling that I was giving something back to the river. Immediately afterwards I had a fishing-rod in my hand.

I sat down on a rock and started fishing. Still I saw nothing but water, earth, and rock. Suddenly a big fish bit. He had a silver belly and a golden back. As I drew him to land, the whole landscape became alive: the rock emerged like the primeval foundation of the earth, grass and flowers sprang up, and the bushes expanded into a great forest. A gust of wind blew and set everything in motion.

Then, suddenly, I heard behind me the voice of Mr. X [an older man whom she knew only from photographs and from hearsay, but who seems to have been some kind of authority for her]. He said, quietly but distinctly: 'The patient ones in the innermost realm are given the fish, the food of the deep.' At this moment a circle ran round me, part of it touching the water. Then I heard the voice again: 'The brave ones in the second realm may be given victory, for there the battle is fought.

Immediately The transparency of the water means that attention (value, gold) is given to the unconscious. It is an offering to the genius of the fountain. Cf. the vision of the Amitabha Land in my "Psychology of Eastern Meditation."

another circle ran round me, this time touching the other bank. At the same time I saw into the distance and a colourful landscape was revealed. The sun rose over the horizon. I heard the voice, speaking as if out of the distance: 'The third and the fourth realms come, similarly enlarged, out of the other two. But the fourth realm'—and here the voice paused for a moment, as if deliberating—'the fourth realm joins on to the first. 10* It is the highest and the lowest at once, for the highest and the lowest come together. They are at bottom one.' " Here the dreamer awoke with a roaring in her ears. ~Carl Jung, Aion, Pages 151-152

Carl Jung: Philemon's Sixth Sermon to the Dead

But when Philemon saw that the dead remained silent and waited, he continued (and this is the sixth sermon to the dead):

“The daimon of sexuality approaches our soul as a serpent. She is half human soul and is called thoughtdesire.

“The daimon of spirituality descends into our soul as the white bird. He is half human soul and is called desire-thought.

The serpent is an earthly soul, half daimonic, a spirit, and akin to the spirits of the dead. Thus too, like these she swarms around in the things of earth, making us fear them or else having them arouse our craving.

The serpent has a female nature, forever seeking the company of those dead who are spellbound by the earth, and who did not find a way across to singleness. The serpent is a whore.

She courts the devil and evil spirits; she is a mischievous tyrant and tormentor, forever inveigling the most evil company: The white bird is a half-celestial soul of man. He abides with the mother, descending from time to time.

The bird is manlike, and is effective thought.

He is chaste and solitary, a messenger of the mother.

He flies high above the earth. He commands singleness.

He brings knowledge from the distant ones, who have departed before and attained perfection.

He bears our word up to the mother. She intercedes, she warns, but she is powerless against the Gods.

She is a vessel of the sun.

The serpent descends and cunningly lames the phallic daimon, or else goads him on. She bears up the too-crafty thoughts of the earthly, those thoughts that creep through every hole and cleave to all things with craving. Although the serpent does not want to, she must be of use to us.

She flees our grasp, thus showing us the way, which our human wits could not find.”

When Philemon had finished, the dead looked on with . contempt and said, “Cease this talk of Gods and daimons and souls.

We have known this for a long time.”

But Philemon smiled and replied, “You poor souls, poor in flesh and rich in spirit, the meat was fat and the spirit thin. But how do you reach the eternal light? You mock my stupidity, which you too possess: you mock yourselves. Knowledge frees one from danger. But mockery is the other side of your belief Is black less than white? You rejected faith and retained mockery: Are you thus saved from faith? No, you bound yourselves to mockery and hence again to faith. And therefore you are miserable.”

But the dead were outraged and cried, “We are not miserable, we are clever; our thinking and feeling is as pure as clear water. We praise our reason. We mock superstition. Do you believe that your old folly reaches us? A childish delusion has overcome you, old one, what good is it to us?”

Philemon replied: “What can do you any good? I free you from what still holds you to the shadow of life. Take this wisdom with you, add this folly to your cleverness, this unreason to your reason, and you will find yourselves. If you were men, you would then begin your life and your life’s way between reason and unreason and live onward to the eternal light, whose shadow you lived in advance. But since you are dead, this knowledge frees you from life and strips you of your greed for men and it also frees your self from the shrouds that the light and the shadow lay on you, compassion with men will overcome you and from the stream you will reach solid ground, you will step forth from the eternal whirl onto the unmoving stone of rest, the circle that breaks flowing duration, and the flame will die down. “I have fanned a’ glowing fire, I have given the murderer a knife, I have torn open healed-over wounds, I have quickened all movement, I have given the madman more intoxicating drink, I have made the cold colder, the heat hotter, falseness even falser, goodness even better, weakness even weaker. “This knowledge is the axe of the sacrificer.”

But the dead cried, “Your wisdom is foolishness and a curse. You want to turn the wheel back? It will tear you apart, blinded one!”

Philemon replied, “So this is what happened. The earth became green and fruitful again from the blood of the sacrifice, flowers sprouted, the waves crash into the sand, a silver cloud lies at the foot of the mountain, a bird of the soul came to men, the hoe sounds in the fields and the axe in the forests, a wind rushes through the trees and the sun shimmers in the dew of the risen morning, the planets behold the birth, out of the earth climbed the many-armed, the stones speak and the grass whispers. Man found himsel£ and the Gods wander through Heaven, the fullness gives birth to the golden drop, the golden seed, plumed and hovering.”

The dead now fell silent and stared at Philemon and slowly crept away: But Philemon bent down to the ground and said: “It is accomplished, but not fulfilled. Fruit of the earth, sprout, rise up-and Heaven, pour out the water of life.”

Then Philemon disappeared.

°1 was probably very confused when Philemon approached me the following night, since I called to him saying, “What did you do, Oh Philemon? What fires have you kindled? What have you broken asunder? Does the wheel of creations stand still?”

But he answered and said, “Everything is running its usual course. Nothing has happened, and yet a sweet and indescribable mystery has taken place: I stepped out of the whirling circle.”

“What’s that?” I exclaimed, “Your words move my lips, your voice sounds from my ears, my eyes see you from within me. Truly, you are a magician! You stepped out of the whirling circle? What confusion! Are you I, am I you? Did I not feel as if the wheel of creation was standing still? And yet you say that you have stepped out of the whirling circle? I am truly bound to the wheel-I feel the rushing swaying of it-and yet the wheel of creation also stands still for me. What did you do, father, teach me!”

Then Philemon said, “I stepped onto what is solid and took it with me and saved it from the wave surge, from the cycle of births, and from the revolving wheel of endless happening. It has been stilled. The dead have received the folly of the teaching, they have been blinded by truth and see by mistake. They have recognized, felt, and regretted it; they will come again and will humbly inquire. Since what they rejected will be most valuable to them.”

I wanted to question Philemon, since the riddle distressed me. But he had already touched the earth and disappeared. And the darkness of the night was silent and did not answer me. And my soul stood silently, shaking her head, and did not know what to say about the mystery that Philemon had indicated and not given away.

Carl Jung, The Red Book, Scrutinies, Pages 352-353

Carl Jung and the first appearance of Philemon

A critical figure in Jung’s fantasies during this period was that of Philemon.

In Memories, Jung recalled that Philemon first appeared to him in a dream.

In this, Jung saw a sea blue sky, covered by brown clods of earth which appeared to be breaking apart.

Out of the blue, he saw an old man with kingfisher wings and the horns of a bull flying across the sky, carrying a bunch of keys. After the dream, Jung painted the image, as he did not understand it.

While he was doing this, he was struck to find a dead kingfisher at the bottom of his garden by the lakeshore, as kingfishers are rare around Zürich. Thereafter, Philemon played an important role in Jung’s fantasies.

To Jung, he represented superior insight, and was like a guru to him. Jung would often converse with Philemon as he strolled in the garden of his home in Küsnacht.

To Aniela Jaffé, he recalled, “He was simply a superior knowledge, and he taught me psychological objectivity and the actuality of the soul . . .

He formulated and expressed everything which I had never thought.”

Jung’s fantasy figure was based on the figure of Philemon who had appeared in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and in Goethe’s Faust. Page 62

Carl Jung on “UFO’s” - Anthology.

I think it [UFO’s] is chiefly an obstinate rumour, but the question whether there is something real behind it is not answered. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 5-6.

This, too,[UFO’s] is an expression of something that has always claimed my deepest interest and my greatest attention: the manifestation of archetypes, or archetypal forms, in all the phenomena of life: in biology, physics, history, folklore, and art, in theology and mythology, in parapsychology, as well as in the symptoms of insane patients and neurotics, and finally in the dreams and life of every individual man and woman. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 397-398.

I do not believe and do not disbelieve in the existence of UFOS. I simply do not know what to think about their alleged physical existence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 403-404

As it is questionable in how far UFOS are physical facts, it is indubitable that they are psychological facts. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 403-404

Hoyle's book has arrived and I've finished it already. It is extraordinarily interesting to see how an astronomer collides with the unconscious and especially with the Ufo problem. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 408.

I myself recently dreamed that a UFO came speeding towards me which turned out to be the lens of a magic lantern whose projected image was myself; this suggested to me that I was the figure, himself deep in meditation, who is produced by a meditating yogi. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 476-477

These [UFO] symbolisms, which are cropping up everywhere nowadays, paint a picture of the end of time with its eschatological conceptions: destruction of the world, coming of the Kingdom of Heaven or of the world redeemer. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 476-477

Although I have been studying the UfO phenomenon for about 12 years now and have read practically all the relevant literature, I a m still unable to form a satisfactory picture of it or to assert that anything adequate is known about the nature of UfO’s. I cannot even say whether they exist or not. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 627-628

The science fiction about travelling to the moon or to Venus and Mars and the lore about Flying Saucers are effects of our dimly felt but none the less intense need to reach a new physical as well as spiritual basis beyond our actual conscious world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 592-597

Carl Jung: The Jahrbuch affair is a private matter to be settled between myself and Freud.

To Alphonse Maeder

Dear Colleague, 29 October 1913

The Jahrbuch affair is a private matter to be settled between myself and Freud.

If the Zurich people are also affected by it, then it is very painful for me.

As you can well imagine, I am not giving up the Jahrbuch for fun but because it is impossible to collaborate with Freud's attitude.

I still have no news from Vienna.

But I shall take care to create for the Zurich people a new organ in the style of the Jahrbuch, perhaps called "Psychologische Untersuchungen. Works of the Zurich School of Psychoanalysis."

In the event, Deuticke is ready to accept it.

If our Works are dropped from the Jahrbuch, maybe the Jahrbuch will pack up too.

I have by no means walked into Freud's trap, for I consider it of no advantage to Freud to have sickened me off. ·

A committee of inquiry is out of the question, because the Jahrbuch is not after all run by a club and I won't collaborate with Freud any longer.

It will make a very bad impression all round.

But inner successes count more with me than the howling of the mob.

I shall soon be able to give you news of Deuticke and Freud, if the latter does not deem it beneath his papal dignity to answer me.

Yours sincerely,

JUNG ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 28

Carl Jung on "Lion" - Anthology

After all the rebirths you still remain the lion crawling on the earth, the Chameleon], a caricature, one prone to changing colors, a crawling shimmering lizard, but precisely not a lion, whose nature is related to the sun, who draws his power from within himself, who does not crawl around in the protective colors of the environment, and who does not defend himself by going into hiding. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 277.

However, the friendly lion in the dream seems to indicate that the looseness of the soul is not exactly desirable, since the lion compensates your condition in a very obvious way: the Zurich lion represents your localized instinct, firmly rooted in your earth, just as the lion's soul-as with all animals -is securely fixed in its body. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 306-307

The primitives say the real scale of values begins with the elephant, lion, eagle, perhaps cobra, then man and monkey. They recognize the fact that man is one of the animals. To say that man is on top is megalomaniac. ~Carl Jung; Cornwall Seminar; Page 24.

The sun is not only beneficial, but also destructive; hence the zodiacal sign for August heat is the ravaging lion which Samson slew in order to rid the parched earth of its torment. Yet it is in the nature of the sun to scorch, and its scorching power seems natural to man. It shines equally on the just and the unjust, and allows useful creatures to flourish as well as the harmful. ~Carl Jung; CW 5, para 176.

When you dream of a savage bull, or a lion, or a wolf pursuing you, this means: it wants to come to you. You would like to split it off, you experience it as something alien, but it just becomes all the more dangerous. . .The best stance would be: ‘Please, come and devour me.” ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams, Page 19.

The animal face which I felt mine transformed into was the famous [Deus] Leontocephalus of the Mithraic mysteries, the figure which is represented with a snake coiled around the man, the snake’s head resting on the man’s head, and the face of the man that of a lion. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 104

Carl Jung and Hans Guisan-Schmid Correspondence - Anthology

It is more likely that in the unconscious of the introvert there is a love for the object that compensates his fear of it, while in the unconscious of the extravert there is a fear that compensates his love for the object. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

The introvert needs the object for his thinking, because it is precisely via the object that he adapts to outer reality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

The term “introversion” thus describes an inward turning of the psychic energy, which I called “libido,” because the introvert does not comprehend the object directly, but by means of abstraction, that is, by a thinking process that is inserted between himself and the object. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Guisan Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

The attitude he [the introvert] assumes toward the object is a certain rejection, therefore, which can even develop into a kind of fear of the object. His primary reaction toward the object is actually not love but rather fear. The ancients knew these two original powers well, the eros and phobos. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

In pathological cases, as you know, unconscious love also becomes a source of heightened fear of the object for the introvert, and, conversely, unconscious fear becomes a source of powerful attraction to the object for the extravert. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

The introvert does feel, too, and very intensely so, only in a different way than the extravert does. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

Whereas the extravert needs the object to bring his type to perfection and to cleanse his feeling, the introvert experiences this as a horrible violation and disrespect of his personality, because he absolutely refuses to be, so to speak, the chemical dry cleaner for the feelings of extraverts. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

The representation of the extravert refers completely to the object and is, therefore, in complete agreement with outer reality, while his thinking is in agreement with his own inner reality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

This is not the case in the introvert. His representation of things is inadequate, precisely because of the lack of feeling- into [the object]. His thinking is in accordance with outer reality, but not with his own inner reality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

This explains the often- observed fact that the introvert thinks and preaches all sorts of nice things but does not do them himself, in fact, does the contrary; whereas the extravert does all sorts of good and nice things but does not think them, in fact, often the contrary. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

The extravert knows, by feeling himself into others, by what human means people can be won over, whereas the introvert tries to create values in himself with which he tries to impress and force others toward him, or even bring them to his knees. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

Conversely, the introvert strains the pleasure- unpleasure mechanism in his unconscious by the conscious, idealistic desire to create the highest values proper to force others to come to him, thus degrading people to objects of his desire. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

The ideally oriented introverted person is faced with the fact that he scares away from himself precisely the human love and joy that he is really trying to find behind all his desire to impress and to be superior, and that he keeps and chains to himself only those inferior persons who know best how to cater to his desire. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

While the introvert’s conscious attitude is an impersonal and just attitude of power, his unconscious attitude aims at inferior lust and pleasure; and while the extravert’s conscious attitude is a personal love for human beings, his unconscious attitude aims at unjust, tyrannical power. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

Introversion: I have to realize that my object, apart from its reality, is also a symbol of my pleasure, which I unconsciously try to gratify with its help.
Extraversion: I have to realize that my object, apart from its reality, is also a symbol of my power, the approval of which I try to obtain from it. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

I would say: the introvert also tries, through the hypothesis of abstraction, to reach the object, actually reality, which seems to him chaotic only because of the projection of his unused and therefore undeveloped feeling. He tries to conquer the object by thinking. But he wants to reach the object quite as much as the extravert. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

Good and bad must always be united first if the symbol is to be created. The symbol can neither be thought up nor found; it becomes. Its becoming is like the becoming of human life in the womb. Pregnancy comes about through voluntary copulation. It goes on through willing attention. But if the depths have conceived, then the symbol grows out of itself and is born from the mind, as befits a God. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 311.

The outer opposition is an image of my inner opposition. Once I realize this, I remain silent and think of the chasm of antagonism in my soul. Outer oppositions are easy to overcome. They indeed exist, but nevertheless you can be united with yourself. They will indeed burn and freeze your soles, but only your soles. It hurts, but you continue and look toward distant goals. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 279.

The only goal for the ideally oriented introvert is the production of impersonal, imperative values, and for the equally ideally oriented extravert the only goal is the love for the object. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

The extravert feels prospectively, the introvert retrospectively, so that the latter remains longer under the impression of the difficulty. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 74-86

Certainly, but true love presupposes self-awareness. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 74-86

So in my view an “ideally oriented type” is not an analyzed type at all, but an unanalyzed one, someone, for example, who only has a very good sailing boat, but without a built- in motor, thus a vehicle that does not move for hours when there is no wind. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 74-86

In short, the introvert thinks with the object, the extravert feels with it. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 74-86

With the spirit of international modernity, which is rooted in precisely those vestiges of archaic collectivity, we shall experience the building of a second tower of Babel, which as we know ends in a confusion of tongues. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 74-86

We must not forget that even Goethe is not the absolute authority but a human being who, as far as his unconscious is concerned, is just as small and impotent as any other insignificant person. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 74-86

The striving for the creation of impersonal values deprives the introvert of a considerable sum of energy in the development of his personality, so that he, just as much as the extravert, in a certain sense falls behind himself (though in the opposite way than does the extravert). ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 74-86

Surely Sisyphus was an idealist, wasn’t he? your Jung ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid-Guisan Letters, Pages 100-114

The abstract thinking of the introvert is a parallel to this. It is so much in accordance with outer reality that unconsciously it is completely saturated with, and contingent upon, the lusting for power in the world. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid, Pages 74-86

When I violate the extravert with my abstract thinking, this is a fact, and this fact cannot be dismissed even if I insist that the other is merely thinking concretistically. ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Pages 100-114

For in order to achieve abstraction, we pour what is separate and manifold into a flask, heat it up, and melt it, and thus force the volatility of the matter into the template. In that way we create a spiritus, which is an abstraction. ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Pages 100-114

The dignity of man— an essential notion still to be learned by all missionaries! ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Pages 100-114

I have always defended this principle, namely, that one should not proselytize the other but should give him the opportunity to grow from what is his very own. ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Pages 100-114

An honest man, who also has a certain amount of courage, will never use self-knowledge as a surrogate for life. ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Pages 100-114

Knowledge without usefulness adorns philosophical chessboards and produces fat volumes for venerable libraries. ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Pages 100-114

Usefulness without meaning fills pockets and the churches of Christian Science. ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Pages 100-114

Thinking is life just as much as doing is. ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Pages 100-114

Thinking is not merely a “realization” of life; life can also be a “realization” of thinking. ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Pages 100-114

What the extravert calls human is just “all too human” for the introvert. What the introvert calls human is airy and gaseous for the other. ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Pages 100-114

You are again forgetting that life stands on two legs, doing and thinking. ~Carl Jung, Han Guisan Schmid, Pages 131-142

This union, which should not come about, is the union of the pairs of opposites in ourselves. This is what the devil wants to prevent at any cost. ~Carl Jung, Han Guisan Schmid, Pages 131-142

But how can I come to live a Christian life, if not through the doctrine? Even Christ taught, and did not simply live. If he had only lived, nobody would have noticed anything, or, if they noticed, they would not have understood. ~Carl Jung, Han Guisan Schmid, Pages 131-142

I have to remark, by the way, that there is at least one thing the introvert can do better than the extravert, and that is thinking. ~Carl Jung, Han Guisan Schmid, Pages 131-142

The extravert (the ideal type) must realize his feeling, the corresponding introvert his thinking. In this process, the extravert notices that his feeling is pregnant with thoughts; the introvert, that his thinking is full of feelings. ~Carl Jung, Han Guisan Schmid, Pages 131-142

An introvert who does not outgrow his constant thinking is just as untenable as an extravert who cannot get out of his constant feeling. ~Carl Jung, Han Guisan Schmid, Pages 131-142

Carl Jung: Therefore you must divide yourself and think of the Self.

Mr. Allemann: If one were detached entirely it would be nirvana, no more life.

Dr. Jung:

Yes, because there you simply come to an end.

Those people who strive after nirvana get into a sort of quietism where they simply vanish; so nothing comes of it.

The life of a Buddhist saint is exceedingly sterile.

Obviously that is not the point of life; the point of life is that you are the fool of life, that you play the role, that you make all sorts of attempts, that you suffer.

But you play that role in a most unsatisfactory way, you create a lot of nuisance or suffering or even catastrophes, if you identify with it.

Therefore you must divide yourself and think of the Self.

There is an Eastern saying: Play the role of the king, the beggar, and the thief, not forgetting the gods. Even if you acknowledge that you are a thief, remember that it is a role you are playing-we are called upon to do strange things in this existence.

Or even if you are a king, you must reserve a sphere of freedom, something beyond, where you are detached, where you disagree; you are as little the king as the actor at Oberammergau is Christ.

The gods of course are only appearances of the Self, but in Eastern philosophy Atman or Brahman is the Self, the very breath of all the gods. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 1300-1301

Carl Jung: "Death give me durability

The devil is the sum of the darkness of human nature. He who lives in the light strives toward being the image of God; he who lives in the dark strives toward being the image of the devil.

Because I wanted to live in the light, the sun went out for me when I touched the depths. It was dark and serpent-like. I united myself with it and did not overpower it. I took my part of the humiliation and subjugation upon myself, in that I took on the nature of the serpent.

If I had / not become like the serpent, the devil, the quintessence of everything serpent-like, would have held this bit of power over me.

This would have given the devil a grip and he would have forced me to make a pact with him just as he also cunningly deceived Faust. But I forestalled him by uniting myself with the serpent, just as a man unites with a woman.

So I took away from the devil the possibility of influence, which only ever passes through one’s own serpenthood, which one commonly assigns to the devil instead of oneself Mephistopheles is Satan, taken with my serpenthood.

Satan himself is the quintessence of evil, naked and therefore without seduction, not even clever, but pure negation without convincing force.

Thus I resisted his destructive influence and grasped him and fettered him firmly. His descendants served me and I sacrificed them with the sword.

Thus I built a firm structure. Through this I myself gained stability and duration and could withstand the fluctuations of the personal. Therefore the immortal in me is saved. Through drawing the darkness from my beyond over into the day, I emptied my beyond. Therefore the demands of the dead disappeared, as they
were satisfied.

I am no longer threatened by the dead, since I accepted their demands though accepting the serpent. But through this I have also taken over something of the dead into my day. Yet it was necessary, since death is the most enduring of all things, that which can never be canceled out.

Death gives me durability and solidity. So long as I wanted to satisfy only my own demands, I was personal and therefore living in the sense of the world.

But when I recognized the demands of the dead in me and satisfied them, I gave up my earlier personal striving and the world had to take me for a dead man.

For a great cold comes over whoever in the excess of his personal striving has recognized the demands of the dead and seeks to satisfy them.

While he feels as if a mysterious poison has paralyzed the living quality of his personal relations, the voices of the dead remain silent in his beyond; the threat, the fear, and the restlessness cease.

For everything that previously lurked hungrily in him no longer lives with him in his day. His life is beautiful and rich, since he is himself.

But whoever always wants only the fortune of others is ugly, since he 1 cripples himself A murderer is one who wants to force others to blessedness, since he kills his own growth.

A fool is one who exterminates his love for the sake of love. Such a one is personal to the other.

His beyond is gray and impersonal.

He forces himself upon others; therefore he is cursed into forcing himself upon himself in a cold nothingness.

He who has recognized the demands of the dead has banished his ugliness to the beyond.

He no longer greedily forces himself upon others, but lives alone in beauty and speaks with the dead.


If one then still perseveres in solitude, beauty fades into the beyond and the wasteland comes over onto this side. A black stage comes after the white, and Heaven and Hell are forever there. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 434

Carl Jung and "Delightful Tidings"

Then he said: “Dear Ammonius, I have delightful tidings for you: God has become flesh in his son and has brought us all salvation.” “”What are you saying,” I called, “you probably mean Osiris, who shall appear in the mortal body?

“No,” he replied, “this man lived in Judea and was born from a virgin.

“I laughed and answered: “I already know about this;a Jewish trader has brought tidings of our virgin queen to Judea, whose image appears on the walls of one of our temples, and reported it as a fairy tale.”

“No,” the old man insisted, “he was the Son of God.”

“Then you mean Horus the son of Osiris, don’t you?” I answered.

“No, he was not Horus, but a real man, and he was hung from a cross.”

“Oh, but this must be Seth, surely; whose punishments our old ones have often described.”

But the old man stood by his conviction and said: “He died and rose up on the third day.”

“Well, then he must be Osiris,” I replied impatiently.” No,” he cried, “he is called Jesus the anointed one.”

”Ah, you really mean this Jewish God, whom the poor honor at the harbor, and whose unclean mysteries they celebrate in cellars.” ”He was a man and yet the Son of God,” said the old man staring at me intently.”

That’s nonsense, dear old man,” I said, and showed him to the door. But like an echo from distant rock faces the words returned to me: a man and yet the Son of God. It seemed significant to me, and this phrase was what brought me to Christianity.

I: “But don’t you think that Christianity could ultimately be a transformation of your Egyptian teachings?”

A: “If you say that our old teachings were less adequate expressions of Christianity, then I’m more likely to agree with you.”

I: “Yes, but do you then assume that the history of religions is aimed at a final goal?”

A: “My father once bought a black slave at the market from the region of the source of the Nile.

He came from a country that had heard of neither Osiris nor the other Gods; he told me many things in a more simple language that said the same as we believed about Osiris and the other Gods.

I learned to understand that those uneducated Negroes unknowingly already possessed most of what the religions of the cultured peoples had developed into complete doctrines.

Those able to read that language correctly could thus recognize in it not only the pagan doctrines but also the doctrine of Jesus. And it’s with this that I now occupy myself.

I read the gospels and seek their meaning which is yet to come.

We know their meaning as it lies before us, but not their hidden meaning which points to the future. It’s erroneous to believe that religions differ in their innermost essence.

Strictly speaking, it’s always one and the same religion. Every subsequent form of religions the meaning of the antecedent.” ~Carl Jung; The Red Book; Liber Secundus; Page 272; Paragraphs 24-25

Image: First page of the Gospel of Mark in Armenian, by Sargis Pitsak, 14th century.

Carl Jung: First-rate spiritualistic phenomena occur in this case, though so far only once in my presence.

Dear Professor Freud 2 April 1909

Worry and patients and all the other chores of daily life have beset once again and quite got me down for the first 2 days.

Now I am slowly corning to the surface and beginning to bask in the memory of the days in Vienna.

I hope you received my offprints in good time for Wednesday evening.12 Apri1. 28

After a ro-day interruption i have at last succeeded in continuing TI1Y letter.

From this interlude it appears that the above complaint was premature, because, as usual, worse was to follow.

Today I have put the last bad day behind me.

All during the Easter holidays, when other people were out walking, I've been able to snatch only one day's breath of air.

On the 15th I'll wrench myself free without fail and start my bicycle tour.

Since Vienna all scientific work has been out of the question.

But in my practice 1have accomplished much.

At the moment a madly interesting case is stretching me on the rack.

Some of the symptoms come suspiciously close to the organic borderline (brain turnour/), yet they all hover over a dimly divined psychogenic depth, so that in analyzing them all one's misgivings are forgotten ..

First-rate spiritualistic phenomena occur in this case, though so far only once in my presence.

Altogether it makes a very peculiar impression.

The patient is a man-slaying Sara, Raguel's daughter.

The case I told you about-evil eye, paranoiac impression-was cleared up as follows.

She was abandoned by her last lover, who is altogether pathological (Dem. praec.?); abandoned also by an earlier lover-this one even spent a year in an asylum.

Now the infantile pattern: hardly knew her father and mother, loving instead her brother, 8 years older than she and at 22 a catatonic.

Thus the psychological stereotype holds good.

You said the patient was merely imitating Dem. praec.; now the model has been found.

When I left Vienna I was afflicted with some sentiments d'incompletude because of the last evening I spent with you.

It seemed to me that my spookery struck you as altogether too stupid and perhaps unpleasant because of the Fliess analogy." (Insanity)

Just recently, however, the impression I had of the last-named patient smote me with renewed force.

What I told my wife about it also made the deepest impression on her.

I had the feeling that under it all there must be some quite special complex, a universal one having to do with the prospective tendencies in Ulan.

If there is a "psychanalysis" there must also be a "psychosynthesis" which creates future events according to the same laws.

(I see I am writing rather as if I had a flight of ideas.)

The leap towards psychosynthesis proceeds via the person of my patient, whose unconscious is right now preparing, apparently with nothing to stop it, a new stereotype into which everything from outside, as it were, fits in conformity with the complex.

(Hence the idea of the objective effect of the prospective tendency!)

That last evening with you has, most happily, freed me inwardly from the oppressive sense of your paternal authority.

My unconscious celebrated this impression with a great dream which has preoccupied me for some days and which I have just finished analyzing.

I hope I am now rid of all unnecessary encumbrances.

Your cause must and will prosper, so silly pregnancy fantasies tell me, which luckily you caught in the end.

As soon as I get back from Italy I shall begin some positive work, first of all for the Jahrbuch.

I hope you had a good Easter holiday and feel the better for it.

N. Ossipow, head physician of the psychiatric University Clinic in Moscow, has published a fine report on our affairs.

They seem to be working along our lines.

I have heard that Abraham with SOUle others has issued a "psych. analytical questionnaire."?

Let's hope it's a canard!

With kindest regards,

Yours gratefully, JUNG ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1., Pages 215-217

Carl Jung: Or should Ferenczi take up the polemic?"

Dear Professor Freud, 13 November 1911

I am writing a few words in haste.

Enclosed is a paper by Bleuler, inflammatory abstinence stuff which he wants to put in the Jahrbuch in reply 'to Ferenczi."

It also contains some completely false statements quite apart from the usual fanatic bellowings.

Do you feel like adding a few words?

Or should Ferenczi take up the polemic?"

It is not to my taste to have such things in the Jahrbuch, Perhaps you might be able to persuade Bleuler to withdraw certain statements his criticism really does go too far.

Most sincerely yours,

JUNG ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol.1, Pages 460

Image: Top: Clark University, September 1909 A.A. Brill, Ernest Jones, Sandor Ferenczi, Sigmund Freud, Stanley •Hall, C. G. Jung Bottom: Eugen Bleuler

Carl Jung on “Mary” – Anthology

Is there any more beautiful love story than the love story of Mary? Wonderfully secret, divine, it is the only love affair of God that we know about. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 492

[About the Assumption of the Virgin Mary] Jung said that she has already entered into the nuptial chamber and that thus, naturally, after a time there will be a child. ~Carl Jung, Conversations with Jung, Page 15

Behind Gretchen stands the Gnostic sequence: Helen-Mary-Sophia. They represent a real Platonic world of ideas (thinking and sensation on the mystic level). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 264-266.

Mary is represented as a sea flower in one hymn and Christ as the sea bird that rests in her. This is exactly the eastern motif of the lotus. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 118.

Divinitas sancti spiritus has a peculiar relation to Mary, for the Sapientia Dei or Sophia was identified by the early Church with Mary. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 98.

It was, indeed, a great problem to the Middle Ages, this problem of the Trinity and the exclusion, or the very qualified recognition, of the feminine element, of the earth, the body, and matter in general, which were yet, in the form of Mary's womb, the sacred abode of the Deity and the indispensable instrument for the divine work of redemption. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 72.

Blue is the color of Mary’s celestial cloak; she is the earth covered by the blue tent of the sky… ~Carl Jung, CW 8, p. 87.

But we find the chief parallel to the lotus in the hymnology of Mary, where she is called the flower of Heaven, the noble rose of Heaven, the rose without thorn; she is also greeted as the sweet rose, etc. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3rd March 1939

Mary is the bud which contains the becoming being that is undergoing transformation. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3rd March 1939.

Our loveliest mountain, which dominates Switzerland far and wide, is called the Jungfrau—the "Virgin." The Virgin Mary is the female patron saint of the Swiss.



Of her [Mary] Tertullian says: ". . . that virgin earth, not yet watered by the rains," and Augustine: "Truth has arisen from the earth, because Christ is born of a virgin."

These are living reminders that the virgin mother is the earth. From olden times the astrological sign for Switzerland was either Virgo or Taurus; both are earth-signs, a sure indication that the earthy character of the Swiss had not escaped the old astrologers. From the earth-boundness of the Swiss come all their bad as well as their good qualities: their down-to earthness, their limited outlook, their non-spirituality, their parsimony, stolidity, stubbornness, dislike of foreigners, mistrustfulness, as well as that awful Schwizerdutsch and their refusal to be bothered, or to put it in political terms, their neutrality. Switzerland consists of numerous valleys, depressions in the earth's crust, in which the settlements of man are embedded. Nowhere are there measureless plains, where it is a matter of indifference where a man lives; nowhere is there a coast against which the ocean beats with its lore of distant lands. Buried deep in the backbone of the continent, sunk in the earth, the Alpine dweller lives like a troglodyte, surrounded by more powerful nations that are linked with the wide world, that expand into colonies or can grow rich on the treasures of their soil. The Swiss cling to what they have, for the others, the more powerful ones, have grabbed everything else. Under no circumstances will the Swiss be robbed of their own. Their country is small, their possessions limited. If they lose what they have, what is going to replace it? ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 914

Since [in the Middle Ages] the psychic relation to woman was expressed in the collective worship of Mary, the image of woman lost a value to which human beings had a natural right. This value could find its natural expression only through individual choice, and it sank into the unconscious when the individual form of expression was replaced by a collective one. In the unconscious the image of woman received an energy charge that activated the archaic and infantile dominants. And since all unconscious contents, when activated by dissociated libido, are projected upon the external object, the devaluation of the real woman was compensated by daemonic features. She no longer appeared as an object of love, but as a persecutor or witch. The consequence of increasing Mariolatry was the witch hunt, that indelible blot on the later Middle Ages. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 399

Carl Jung: Orientals regard a thought as being composed of thin matter, it is true, yet as a completely tangible thing.

Psychology did not exist in earlier days, people thought naively, and when they sank into themselves they saw the inside of their own body.

Dr. Kerner reports that the Seherin of Prevorst saw her own optic nerve, we have no reason to doubt this as Dr. Kerner was an exceedingly reliable witness.

Doctors in the East even hold that you can heal diseases by this method and meet with extraordinary success but we rationalists find it very difficult to understand how this is possible.

The Chinese picture represents the circulation of the blood and its course as it flows through the nerve centres .

This is the path which we call the path of phantasy.

It is necessary to overcome our western prejudices before we can understand this.

Thoughts seem to us as thin as air, but for the East they are material beings.

Orientals regard a thought as being composed of thin matter, it is true, yet as a completely tangible thing.

In the East a thought is something that happens and can be felt, so they write lovingly of what these thought beings are doing.

But we talk of manipulating them for we are convinced we make them.

This is nonsense, but sometimes it is useful nonsense for the Westerner would be demoralized by the idea of being the toy of fate which tosses us about.

The East, on the contrary, does not mind this idea at all.

Our conception of anatomy holds at best a pale resemblance to this eastern diagram.

We never perceive any such thing, but the East would say: "But you only look for it with your sun eye, if you look with your moon eye it will become perfectly clear to you".

We will not attempt, however, to solve the conflict between East and West; but we could imagine a void stretching right through the middle of the earth.

It is not possible to see across this space but by sinking deeply into ourselves and following the serpent path we can form a bridge which will enable us to see the light on the other side of the void. ~Carl Jung, ETH, 14 June 1935

Carl Jung on "Thinking" - Anthology

[Carl Jung on “Thinking” – Anthology]

Thinking is based on reality only indirectly, but nonetheless it can carry just as much conviction. Nothing is more real than an idea to a person who thinks. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 132

Thinking, then, derives from the reality of the image, but has the image reality? To answer that question, let us turn to the field of natural science, where we can find abundant evidence of the potency of an image. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 132

The great philosophers have spoken of them always as being eternal. It is these static images that underlie thinking. We could call them, if we chose, Logos. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 133

If you go to thinking, take your heart with you. If you go to love, take your head with you. Love is empty without thinking, thinking hollow without love. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 253.

If forethinking and pleasure unite in me, a third arises from them, the divine son, who is the supreme meaning, the symbol, the passing over into a new creation. I do not myself become the supreme meaning or the symbol, but the symbol becomes in me such that it has its substance, and I mine. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 249.

A thinker should fear Salome, since she wants his head, especially if he is a holy man. A thinker cannot be a holy person, otherwise he loses his head. It does not help to hide oneself in thought. There the solidification overtakes you. You must turn back to motherly forethought to obtain renewal. But forethought leads to Salome. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 248.

The serpent is the earthly essence of man of which he is not conscious. Its character changes according to peoples and lands, since it is the mystery that flows to him from the nourishing earth-mother. The earthly (numen loci) separates forethinking and pleasure in man, but not in itself. The serpent has the weight of the earth in itself but also its changeability and germination from which everything that becomes emerges. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 247.

When you say that the place of the soul is not, then it is not. But if you say that it is, then it is. Notice what the ancients said in images the word is a creative act. The ancients said: in the beginning was the Word. Consider this and think upon it. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 236.

Some have their reason in thinking, others in feeling. Both are servants of Logos, and in secret become worshipers of the serpent. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 280.

My soul: "Who gives you thoughts and words? Do you make them? Are you not my serf a recipient who lies at my door and picks up my alms? And you dare think that what you devise and speak could be nonsense? Don't you know yet that it comes from me and belongs to me?" ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 241.

What a thinker does not think he believes does not exist, and what one who feels does not feel he believes does not exist. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 248.

He [Jung] showed a diagram of a cross with Rational/Thinking (Elijah) at the top, Feeling (Salome) at the bottom, Irrational / Intuition (Superior) at the left, and Sensation / Inferior (Serpent) at the right. ~The Red Book, Page 247, Footnote 173.

Notice what the ancients said in images: the word is a creative act. The ancients said: in the beginning was the Word. Consider this and think upon it. The words that oscillate between nonsense and supreme meaning are the oldest and truest. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 236.

The images of the "Mystery play," on the other hand, personify principles accessible to thinking and intellectual understanding, and their allegorical manner accordingly also invites such an attempt at explanation. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 365.

Desire without forethinking gains much but keeps nothing; therefore his desire is the source of constant disappointment. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 249, Footnote 190.

If pleasure is united with forethinking, the serpent lies before them. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 249, Footnote 190.

What do you think of the essence of Hell? Hell is when the depths come to you with all that you no longer are or are not yet capable of. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 244.

When you step into your own Hell, never think that you come like one suffering in beauty; or as a proud pariah, but you come like a stupid and curious fool and gaze in wonder at the scraps that have fallen from your table. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 262.

I think of Christianity in the desert. Physically, those ancients went into the desert. Did they also enter into the desert of their own self? Or was their self not as barren and desolate as mine? There they wrestled with the devil. I wrestle with waiting. It seems to me not less since it is truly a hot hell ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Footnote 74, Page 236.

It is strange that Salome's garden lies so close to the dignified and mysterious hall of ideas. Does a thinker therefore experience awe or perhaps even fear of the idea, because of its proximity to paradise? ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 249, Draft, Footnote 178.

I: "But don't you think that Christianity could ultimately be a transformation of your Egyptian teachings?"

Anchorite: "If you say that our old teachings were less adequate expressions of Christianity, then I'm more likely to agree with you." ~Carl Jung and the Anchorite, Liber Novus, Page 272.

Judge not! Think of the blond savage of the German forests, who had to betray the hammer-brandishing thunder to the pale Near-Eastern God who was nailed to the wood like a chicken marten. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 242.

Thoughts grow in me like a forest, populated by many different animals. But man is domineering in his thinking, and therefore he kills the pleasure of the forest and that of the wild animals. Man is violent in his desire, and he himself becomes a forest and a forest animal. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 250.

He who breaks the wall of words overthrows Gods and defiles temples. The solitary is a murderer. He murders the people, because he thus thinks and thereby breaks down ancient sacred walls. He calls up the daimons of the boundless. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 270.

Some have their reason in thinking, others in feeling. Both are servants of Logos, and in secret become worshipers of the serpent. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 280.

There is no escape. So it is that you come to know what a real God is. Now you’ll think up clever truisms, preventive measures, secret escape routes, excuses, potions capable of inducing forgetfulness, but it’s all useless. The fire burns right through you. That which guides forces you onto the way. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 291.

The place where Elijah and Salome live together is a dark space and a bright one. The dark space is the space of forethinking. It is dark so he who lives there requires vision. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 247.

A thinker who descends in to his fore thinking finds his next step leading into the garden of Salome. Therefore the thinker fears his forethought, although he lives on the foundation of fore thinking. The visible surface is safer than the underground. Thinking protects against the way of error, and therefore it leads to petrification. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 248.

A thinker should fear Salome, since she wants his head, especially if he is a holy man. A thinker cannot be a holy person, otherwise he loses his head. It does not help to hide oneself in thought. There the solidification overtakes you. You must turn back to motherly forethought to obtain renewal. But forethought leads to Salome. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 248.

Because I was a thinker and caught sight of the hostile principle of pleasure from forethinking, it appeared to me as Salome. If I had been one who felt, and had groped my way toward forethinking, then it would have appeared to me as a serpent-encoiled daimon, if I had actually seen it. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 248.

In the garden it had to become apparent to me that I loved Salome. This recognition struck me, since I had not thought it. What a thinker does not think he believes does not exist, and what one who feels does not feel he believes does not exist. You begin to have a presentiment of the whole when you embrace your opposite principle, since the whole belongs to both principles, which grow from one root. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 248.

Think diligently about the images that the ancients have left behind. They show the way of what is to come. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 236.

The outer opposition is an image of my inner opposition. Once I realize this, I remain silent and think of the chasm of antagonism in my soul. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 279.

Did you ever think of the evil in you? ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274.

Whoever is in love is a full and overflowing vessel, and awaits the giving. Whoever is in fore thinking is deep and hollow and awaits fulfillment. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 253.

The spirit of this time would like to hear of use and value. I also thought this way, and my humanity still thinks this way. But that other spirit forces me nevertheless to speak, beyond justification, use, and meaning. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 229

I most certainly was characterized by thinking … and I had a great deal of Intuition, too. And I had a definite difficulty with Feeling. And my relation to reality was not particularly brilliant. … I was often at variance with the reality of things. Now that gives you all the necessary data for diagnosis. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung, Speaking, Pages 435-6.

It is normal to think about immortality, and abnormal not to do so or not to bother about it. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Page 310.

The animus is the masculine thinking in a woman. ~ Carl Jung, CW 13, Page 267.

For life comes to a man through the anima, in spite of the fact that he thinks it comes to him through the mind. He masters life through the mind but life lives in him through the anima. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1105.

And this is also the reason why the psyche is forgotten so often and so long, and why the intellect makes such frequent use of magical, apotropaic words like "occult" and "mystic," in the hope that even intelligent people will think these mutterings really mean something. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para119

Do we delude ourselves in thinking that we possess and control our own psyches, and is what science calls the "psyche" not just a question-mark arbitrarily confined within the skull, but rather a door that opens upon the human world from a world beyond, allowing unknown and mysterious powers to act upon man and carry him on the wings of the night to a more than personal destiny. ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Para 148

When I enter the sphere of physical or mathematical thinking sensu strictiori, I lose all understanding of what the term synchronicity means; I feel as though I am groping my way through dense fog. ~Carl Jung, Atom and Archetype, Page 68.

What made the deepest impression upon me was the central role played in your [Jung’s] thinking by the concept of "incarnation" as a scientific working hypothesis. ~Wolfgang Pauli, Atom and Archetype, Pages 81-83

A million zeroes joined together do not, unfortunately, add up to one. Ultimately everything depends on the quality of the individual, but the fatally shortsighted habit of our age is to think only in terms of large numbers and mass organizations, though one would think that the world had seen more than enough of what a well-disciplined mob can do in the hands of a single madman. ~Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self, Page 39.

Our unconscious is surely located in the body, and you mustn't think this a contradiction to the statement I usually make, that the collective unconscious is everywhere; for if you could put yourself into your sympathetic system, you would know what sympathy is-you would understand why the nervous system is called sympathetic. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 749-751.

The Animals. We appreciate them much more. We think of the psychology of animals. In the 19th century they made laws for their protection, and began to treat them more decently, but it is only in recent years that we begin to think of a few animals as our brothers. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 21.

Abstraction is an activity pertaining to the psychological functions in general. There is an abstract thinking, just as there is abstract feeling, sensation, and intuition. Abstract thinking singles out the rational, logical qualities of a given content from its intellectually irrelevant components. Abstract feeling does the same with a content characterized by its feeling-values . . . . Abstract sensation would be aesthetic as opposed to sensuous sensation, and abstract intuition would be symbolic as opposed to fantastic intuition. ~Carl Jung; CW 6, par. 678.

Others restrict spirit to certain psychic capacities or functions or qualities, such as the capacity to think and reason in contradistinction to the more “soulful” sentiments. Here spirit means the sum-total of all the phenomena of rational thought, or of the intellect, including the will, memory, imagination, creative power, and aspirations motivated by ideals. ~ Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 386.

Psychological truths are not metaphysical insights; they are habitual modes of thinking, feeling, and behaving that experience has proved appropriate and useful. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, para 50.

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. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 33.

It should be someone already has a much clouded vision or view of a very hazy distance, the human society, if he thinks that by uniform regulation of life an equal distribution of happiness could be achieved. ~Carl Jung; CW 6.

The danger that faces us today is that the whole of reality will be replaced by words. This accounts for that terrible lack of instinct in modern man, particularly the city-dweller. He lacks all contact with life and the breath of nature. He knows a rabbit or a cow only from the illustrated paper, the dictionary, or the movies, and thinks he knows what it is really like-and is then amazed that cowsheds "smell," because the dictionary didn't say so. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Page 882.

Of course, thinks every time, all previous times had been biased, and now we think it more than ever, and has therefore just as wrong as all the previous times, thought so. How often have you experienced it, that the truth has been condemned? It's sad but unfortunately true, that man learns nothing from history. This fact will cause us the most trouble, because when we are about in such dark somehow enlightened one thing to collect empirical data, we will find it quite sure where all the authorities have assured us that nothing could be found. ~Carl Jung; Synchronicity acausality and occultism, dtv Verlag, Munich, 1990.

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. ~Carl Jung;, CW 13, Page 307.

We have, therefore, two kinds of thinking: directed thinking, and dreaming or fantasy-thinking. The former operates with speech elements for the purpose of communication, and is difficult and exhausting; the latter is effortless, working as it were spontaneously, with the contents ready to hand, and guided by unconscious motives. The one produces innovations and adaptation, copies reality, and tries to act upon it; the other turns away from reality, sets free subjective tendencies, and, as regards adaptation, is unproductive ~Carl Jung, CW 5, para. 20.

It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are themselves. Thinking is an act of the soul whereby it becomes conscious of itself and of other things outside itself. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Footnote 2.

Many people mistakenly overestimate the role of will power and think that nothing can happen to their minds that they do not decide and intend. ~Carl Jung; Man and His symbols, Page 22

Nothing is so apt to challenge our self-awareness and alertness as being at war with oneself. One can hardly think of any other or more effective means of waking humanity out of the irresponsible and innocent half-sleep of the primitive mentality and bringing it to a state of conscious responsibility. ~Carl Jung; CW 6; Page 964.

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. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 4.

Nowhere are we closer to the sublime secret of all origination than in the recognition of our own selves, whom we always think we know already. Yet we know the immensities of space better than we know our own depths, where -even though we do not understand it-we can listen directly to the throb of creation itself. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 737

After the disgraceful defection of Adler, a gifted thinker but a malicious paranoiac, I am now in trouble with our friend, Jung, who apparently has not outgrown his own neurosis.” ~Sigmund Freud to James Jackson Putnam, 20Aug1912.

If Jung were to obtain the professorship without the administrative duties, it would of course be a huge gain for us, but I think that he himself regards it as improbable. ~Sigmund Freud to Oskar Pfister, Feb 5, 1912.

What happens when man introjects God? A superman psychosis, because every blockhead thinks that when he withdraws a projection its contents cease to exist. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 407.

The mistake, it seems to me, is that these critics actually believe only in words, without knowing it, and then think they have posited God. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 486-489.

I think that if you immerse yourself in my thought-processes without regarding them as a new gospel, a light will gradually go up for you about the nature of psychotherapy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 455-456.

People like you must look at everything and think about it and communicate with the heaven that dwells deep within them and listen inwardly for a word to come. At the same time organize your outward life properly so that your voice carries weight. ~Carl Jung to Walter Corti, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 69-70.

This is because dependence on the behaviour of others is a last vestige of childhood which we think we can't do without. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 78.

I don't know T. S. Eliot. If you think that his book is worthwhile, then I don't mind even poetry. I am only prejudiced against all forms of modern art. It is mostly morbid and evil on top [of that]. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 468-469.

Philosophical criticism must, to my way of thinking, start with a maximum of factual knowledge if it is not to remain hanging in midair and thus be condemned to sterility. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 330-332.

Behind Gretchen stands the Gnostic sequence: Helen-Mary-Sophia. They represent a real Platonic world of ideas (thinking and sensation on the mystic level). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 264-266.

You see, in spite of being a man in advanced age, you still have a young soul, a lovely anima, and she is confronted with the dangerous lizard. In other words, your soul is threatened by' chthonic poison. Now this is exactly the situation of our Western mind. We think we can deal with such problems in an almost rationalistic way, by conscious attempts and efforts, imitating Yoga methods and such dangerous stuff, but we forget entirely that first of all we should establish a connection between the higher and the lower regions of our psyche ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 95-97.

Wisdom is never violent: where wisdom reigns there is no conflict between thinking and feeling. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 334.

We think we can deal with such problems in an almost rationalistic way, by conscious attempts and efforts, imitating Yoga methods and such dangerous stuff, but we forget entirely that first of all we should establish a connection between the higher and the lower regions of our psyche. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 95-97.

You know, Eastern Yoga is based upon man as he really is, but we have a conscious imagination about ourselves and think this is our Self, which is an appalling mistake. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 95-97.

Old age is only half as funny as one is inclined to think. It is at all events the gradual breaking down of the bodily machine, with which foolishness identifies as ourselves. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 2, Page 580.

But besides that 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, and, 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. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Pages 399-403.

The combination of priest and medicine man is not so impossible as you seem to think. They are based upon a common archetype, which will assert its right provided your inner development will continue as hitherto. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 516-517.

I think we must give it time to infiltrate into people from many centers, to revivify among intellectuals a feeling for symbol and myth, ever so gently to transform Christ back into the soothsaying god of the vine, which he was, and in this way absorb those ecstatic instinctual forces of Christianity for the one purpose of making the cult and the sacred myth what they once were a drunken feast of joy where man regained the ethos and holiness of an animal. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 17-19.

We think: "How peculiar that person is", but no one is peculiar really. People seem odd to us when they possess qualities which we do not see in ourselves. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 198.

We think of a chaos as complete confusion, but to the alchemists it was a confusion of definite qualities and of special factors. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Pages 201-202.

In this respect our time is caught in a fatal error: we believe we can criticize religious facts intellectually; we think, for instance, like Laplace, that God is a hypothesis which can be subjected to intellectual treatment, to affirmation or denial. ~Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 110.

Adler's letter is stupid chatter and can safely be ignored. We aren't children here. If Adler ever says anything sensible or worth listening to I shall take note of it, even though I don't think much of him as a person. ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Page 532.

We think of maya as illusion, deception, but it is also building material, illusion which becomes real. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 116.

We do not stop to think that nothing would exist, there would be no culture in the world, if it were not for active imagination; it is always the forerunner, everything springs from it. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 175.

We like to think that we are not unconscious but we are to an amazing extent: think of the many things we do without knowing it. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Page 111.

The alchemists think of the Redeemer as lying hidden or sleeping in the materia, he does not only descend from heaven but comes also from the depths of matter. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 189.

We think we have conjured away this danger when we call it God, for Christianity has forgotten the dark side of God. The old Church knew that God was dangerous. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 215.

That is, as man himself is created for a purpose, he may use all created things for that purpose, and in order to do so freely he must be indifferent and unconcerned about them. One might almost think that this attitude was similar to that of Buddhism. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IX, Page 220.

We meet with the possibility of a very dangerous misunderstanding here, because if we call becoming conscious becoming spirit, we think that consciousness is spirit and thus mix up the intellect and the spirit. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IX, Page 221.

Indians think of thought as something thinly substantial, thought is not vaporous to them, as it is to us. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 11Nov1938, Page 25.

But the East thinks in circles, and then 5 is not just the next figure but the centre, it is the quinta essentia, the essence of all. We used to think like this in the Middle Ages also, but scientific thinking put a stop to it. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 54.

The eastern gods all have two aspects, Kwannon, the well-known goddess of kindness, is also the goddess of hell. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 57.
Rupa-skandha = Thinking.
Vedana-skandha = Sensation.
Samjna-skandha = Feeling.
Sangskara-skandha = Intuition.
Vijniina-skandha = Buddha Vajra-sattva . Knowledge. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 52.

I do not know why India was not able to keep Buddhism, but I think probably its present polytheistic religion is a better expression of the Indian soul today than the one perfect Buddha. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27Jan1939, Pages 69.

We can understand thinking, feeling and sensation but intuition is another thing. We do not know how we arrive at an intuition, it is perception by way of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 99.

We are not used to thinking that light comes from within as well as from without, it is as if the eye had an inward light of its own, if we receive a blow on the head for instance, we see stars. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture III, 17May 1935, Pages 210.

The twenty gods have no special importance in the East, Eastern man has no liking for being born a god, for the gods have to become men and this they think would only make the process last longer. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture III, 17May 1935, Pages 210.

So we cannot judge dreams from the conscious point of view, but can only think of them as complementary to consciousness. Dreams answer the questions of our conscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V 23Nov1934 Page 157.

We are not far from the truth, in fact we are very near to primeval truth, when we think of our dreams as answers to questions, which we have asked and which we have not asked. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V 23Nov1934 Page 157.

Then there are philosophical dreams which think for us and in which we get the thoughts that we should have had during the day. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI 5July1934, Page 135.

It is fairly easy to imagine being able to think consciously, to have one's thoughts under control, but when it comes to feeling it is much more difficult to do so, especially for a man. ~Carl Jung, Lecture IV, 18May1934, Page 102.

As a matter of fact it is by no means everyone who can sit down and think out something voluntarily, and it is quite equally possible for someone to sit down and feel something out. It just depends which is your domesticated function. ~Carl Jung, Lecture IV, 18May1934, Page 102.

Schopenhauer was primarily a thinker and secondarily an intuitive, whereas the quantities were reversed in Nietzsche. ~Carl Jung, Lecture IV, 18May1934, Page 105.

We make the great mistake of thinking that children are born a tabula rasa, but this is not the case. They are born with a vast inherited memory which contains a subjective content to meet everything which they contact externally. ~Carl Jung, Lecture V 25May1934, Page 108.

There is unchanging opposition, war in fact, between thinking and feeling. If thinking appears cold to feeling, feeling certainly appears stupid to thinking. ~Carl Jung, Lecture III, 4May1934, Page 100.

You can quite well say “I think”, “I feel” but the other view works also, “I am thought”, “I am felt“. ~Carl Jung, Lecture III, 4May1934, Page 101.

If the light were suddenly to go out and you could no longer see me, you would not be likely to think that I had ceased to exist, yet it would be no more foolish than to assume that the contents of the psychic background only exist when we can see them. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IX,15Dec1933, Page 41.

Apotropaic: Descriptive of "magical thinking," based on the desire to depotentiate the influence of an object or person. Apotropaic actions are characteristic of introversion as a mode of psychological orientation. I have seen an introverted child who made his first attempts to walk only after he had learned the names of all the objects in the room he might touch. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, par. 897.

Everyone whose attitude is introverted thinks, feels, and acts in a way that clearly demonstrates that the subject is the prime motivating factor and that the object is of secondary importance. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Par 769.

Even among professing Christians there are very few who think seriously about the Trinity as a matter of dogma and would consider it a possible subject for reflection—not to mention the educated public. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 112.

It was Einstein who first started me off thinking about a possible relativity of time as well as space, and their psychic conditionality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages108-109.

The latest developments of scientific thinking, especially in physics, but recently also in psychology, make it clear that "freedom" is a necessary correlate to the purely statistical nature of the concept of causality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 182-183.

Presumably you are thinking of my psychology which, though born of the Christian spirit, seeks to give adequate answers to the spirit of this age: the voice of a doctor struggling to heal the psychic confusion of his time and thus compelled to use a language very different from yours. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 225-226.

I find that all my thoughts circle round God like the planets round the sun, and are as irresistibly attracted by him. I would feel it the most heinous sin were I to offer any resistance to this compelling force. I feel it is God's will that I should exercise the gift of thinking that has been vouchsafed me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 235-238.

It seems to me one more proof of the overweening gnostic tendency in philosophical thinking to ascribe to God qualities which are the product of our own anthropomorphic formulations. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 254-256.

Tantra Yoga gives the classic localizations of thought: anahata, thinking (or localization of consciousness) in the chest region (phrenes); visuddha (localized in the larynx), verbal thinking; and ajna, vision, symbolized by an eye in the forehead, which is attained only when verbal image and object are no longer identical, i.e., when their participation mystique is abolished. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 257-264.

His "psychological" style is definitely schizophrenic, with the difference, however, that the ordinary patient cannot help talking and thinking in such a way, while [James] Joyce willed it and moreover developed it with all his creative forces. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 266.

In these terrible days when evil is once again inundating the world in every conceivable form, I want you to know that I am thinking of you and of your family in Hungary, and hope with you that the avenging angel will pass by their door. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 336.

Since my language is a reflection of my thinking and feeling, I cannot, when faced with a wider public, express myself otherwise than as I am, and I am anything but uncomplicated. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 357-358.

What you think of as a few days of spiritual communion would be unendurable for me with anyone, even my closest friends. The rest is silence! This realization becomes clearer every day as the need to communicate dwindles. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 363.

The animus is obstinate, harping on principles, laying down the law, dogmatic, world-reforming, theoretic, word-mongering, argumentative, and domineering. Both alike have bad taste: the anima surrounds herself with inferior people, and the animus lets himself be taken in by second-rate thinking. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 222f.

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. ~C.G. Jung Speaking, Pages 438-439.

It is to be conjectured that just as the chicken comes out of the egg in the same way all the world over, so there are psychic modes of functioning, certain ways of thinking, feeling, and imagining, which can be found everywhere and at all times, quite independent of tradition. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 206.

Behind Gretchen stands the Gnostic sequence: Helen-Mary-Sophia. They represent a real Platonic world of ideas (thinking and sensation on the mystic level ). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 265.

If pleasure is united with forethinking, the serpent lies before them. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 249, Footnote 190.

Some have their reason in thinking, others in feeling. Both are servants of Logos, and in secret become worshipers of the serpent. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 280.

Because I was a thinker and caught sight of the hostile principle of pleasure from forethinking, it appeared to me as Salome. If I had been one who felt, and had groped my way toward forethinking, then it would have appeared to me as a serpent-encoiled daimon, if I had actually seen it. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 248.

Too much secrecy causes neurosis and a split from reality, but having no mystery permits only collective thinking and Action. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 14.

On the other hand one might ask the question whether we can as hitherto go on thinking in terms of space and time, while modern physics begins to relinquish these terms in favour of a time-space continuum, in which space is no more space and time no more time. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 43-47.

But if we think that God were responsible for the original sin, there would be no more mystery about sin. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 48.

I should like to study the theory of numbers. What is a number, an entity, a sequence, an archetype? We think we can perceive and grasp a number logically and suddenly it behaves quite differently from the way we expected. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 55.

Oh my, yes! Mind you, every patient you have gets interested in psychology. Nearly everyone thinks he is meant to be an analyst, inevitably. ~Carl Jung, Conversations Evans, Page 11.

I think, you see, that when Freud says that one of the first interests, and the foremost interest is to feed, he doesn't need such a peculiar kind of terminology like "oral zone." Of course, they put it into the mouth— ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 13.

We think that we are born today tabula rasa without a history, but man has always lived in the myth. To think that man is born without a history within himself— that is a disease. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 36.

One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, para 221.

If one views modern art prospectively, as I think one can, it plainly announces the uprush of the dissolvent forces of disorder. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 82.

I'm no artist. I only try to get things into stone of which I think it is important that they appear in hard matter and stay on for a reasonably long time. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 83.

I am not engaged in philosophy, but merely in thinking within the framework of the special task that is laid upon me: to be a proper psychiatrist, a healer of the soul. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 69-71

The main difficulty with synchronicity (and also with ESP) is that one thinks of it as being produced by the subject, while I think it is rather in the nature of objective events. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 181.

Well, you see, the [psychological] type is nothing static. It changes in the course of life... Carl Jung, C.G. Jung, Speaking, Page 435.

But I wonder how it comes that so many people think I am a gnostic while equally many others accuse me of being an agnostic. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 53-55.

You overlook the facts and then think that the name is the fact, and thus you reach the nonsensical conclusion that I hypostatize ideas and am therefore a "Gnostic." ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 245.

I do not think that so-called personal messages from the dead can be dismissed in globo as self-deceptions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 333-334.

I don't think that all reports of so-called miraculous phenomena (such as precognition, telepathy, supranormal knowledge, etc.) are doubtful. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 333-334.

I naturally agree with what you say about freedom of thought. The Communist doesn't come into this category, since he doesn't think; but his actions are a danger to the public. If he thought, he would have found out his deceit long ago. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 179-180

L. Frobenius: an imaginative and somewhat credulous original. Great collector of material. Less good as a thinker. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 4-5.
God: an inner experience, not discussable as such but impressive. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 4-5.

I think it [UFO’s] is chiefly an obstinate rumour, but the question whether there is something real behind it is not answered. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 5-6.

On the other hand one might ask the question whether we can as hitherto go on thinking in terms of space and time, while modern physics begins to relinquish these terms in favour of a time-space continuum, in which space is no more space and time no more time. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 43-47.

I am not engaged in philosophy, but merely in thinking within the framework of the special task that is laid upon me: to be a proper psychiatrist, a healer of the soul. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 69-71

X. is certainly all wet when he thinks that the Jewish Gnosis contains nothing of the Christian mystery. It contains practically the whole of it, but in its unrevealed pleromatic state. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 91-93.

Concerning Mr. Buber, I can tell you that to my knowledge there has never been the slightest personal friction between us and I do not think that Buber has ever been impolite to me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 101-102.

It was above all the simplicity and directness of his[Einstein] genius as a thinker that impressed me mightily and exerted a lasting influence on my own intellectual work. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages108-109.

It was Einstein who first started me off thinking about a possible relativity of time as well as space, and their psychic conditionality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages108-109.

With Einstein's departure from Zurich my relation with him ceased, and I hardly think he has any recollection of me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages108-109.

…I had to think of the question recently raised by a mathematician, as to whether it was possible to produce absolute chance groupings. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 122-123.

I think the attempt to link up ESP with any personalistic psychology is absolutely hopeless. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 126-127.

Anybody going ahead is alone or thinks he is lonely at times, no matter whether he is in the church or in the world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 133-138

I scarcely think that the Jews have to accept the Christ symbol. They need only understand its meaning. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 154-155.

The latest developments of scientific thinking, especially in physics, but recently also in psychology, make it clear that "freedom" is a necessary correlate to the purely statistical nature of the concept of causality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 182-183.

Concerning the omniscience it is important to know that Adam already was equipped with supernatural knowledge according to Jewish and Christian tradition, all the more so Christ. I think that the great split in those days was by no means a mistake but a very important collective fact of synchronistic correspondence with the then new aeon of Pisces. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 163-174

The introverted thinker is very much in need of a developed feeling, i .e., of a less autoerotic, sentimental, melodramatic and emotional relatedness to people and things. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 163-174

We think it is enough to discover new things, but we don't realize that knowing more demands a corresponding development of morality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 163-174

Even if the ego should be (as I think) the supreme point of the self, a mountain infinitely higher than Mt. Everest, It would be nothing but a little grain of rock or ice, never the whole mountain. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 194-196

Back in the 1930s, Carl Jung, the eminent thinker and psychologist, put it this way: Criticism has 'the power to do good when there is something that must be destroyed, dissolved or reduced, but [it is] capable only of harm when there is something to be built. ― Donald O. Clifton, Now, Discover Your Strengths

Presumably you are thinking of my psychology which, though born of the Christian spirit, seeks to give adequate answers to the spirit of this age: the voice of a doctor struggling to heal the psychic confusion of his time and thus compelled to use a language very different from yours. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 225-226.

I find that all my thoughts circle round God like the planets round the sun, and are as irresistibly attracted by him. I would feel it the most heinous sin were I to offer any resistance to this compelling force. I feel it is God's will that I should exercise the gift of thinking that has been vouchsafed me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 235-238.

As long as you [Victor White] do not identify yourself with the avenging angel, I can feel your humanity and I can tell you that I am really sorry for my misdeeds and sore about God's ways with the poor anthropoids that were meant to have a brain enabling them to think critically. ~Carl Jung, Letters, Vol. II, Pages 238-243.

You overlook the facts and then think that the name is the fact, and thus you reach the nonsensical conclusion that I hypostatize ideas and am therefore a "Gnostic." ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 244-245.

It seems to me one more proof of the overweening gnostic tendency in philosophical thinking to ascribe to God qualities which are the product of our own anthropomorphic formulations. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 254-256.

All statements about and beyond the "ultimate" are anthropomorphisms and, if anyone should think that when he says "God" he has also predicated God, he is endowing his words with magical power. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 257-264.

I am not a word-magician or word-fetishist who thinks he can posit or call up a metaphysical reality with his incantations. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 257-264.

If theologians think that whenever they say "God" then God is, they are deifying anthropomorphisms, psychic structures and myths. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 257-264.

Tantra Yoga gives the classic localizations of thought: anahata, thinking (or localization of consciousness) in the chest region (phrenes); visuddha (localized in the larynx), verbal thinking; and ajna, vision, symbolized by an eye in the forehead, which is attained only when verbal image and object are no longer identical, i.e., when their participation mystique is abolished. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 257-264.

His "psychological" style is definitely schizophrenic, with the difference, however, that the ordinary patient cannot help talking and thinking in such a way, while [James] Joyce willed it and moreover developed it with all his creative forces. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 266.

People who think that they know the reasons for everything are unaware of the obvious fact that the existence of the universe itself is one big unfathomable secret, and so is our human existence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 252-253.

It should be noted that music is a primitive means of putting people into a state of frenzy; one has only to think of the drumming at the dances of shamans and medicine-men, or of the flute-playing at the Dionysian orgies. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 330-332.

In these terrible days when evil is once again inundating the world in every conceivable form, I want you to know that I am thinking of you and of your family in Hungary, and hope with you that the avenging angel will pass by their door. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 336.

Since my language is a reflection of my thinking and feeling, I cannot, when faced with a wider public, express myself otherwise than as I am, and I am anything but uncomplicated. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 357-358.

Nothing is thereby asserted, nothing denied, and this is just what Buber doesn't understand; for he is a theologian who naively thinks that what he believes must necessarily be so. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 367-368

We may think of the Irish monk as a man who still has one foot in the animistic world of nature-demons with its intense passions, and the other in the new Christian order symbolized by the Cross, which condenses the primordial chaos into the unity of the personality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 387-388

I think you are correct in assuming that synchronicity, though in practice a relatively rare phenomenon, is an all-pervading factor or principle in the universe, i.e., in the Unus Mundus, where there is no incommensurability between so-called matter and so-called psyche. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 398-400

I do not believe and do not disbelieve in the existence of UFOS. I simply do not know what to think about their alleged physical existence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 403-404

I think I understand ecclesiastical Christianity but the theologians do not understand me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 423-424

It is unthinkable that a world could have existed before time and space, for whatever world we can imagine is always bound to time and space and hence to causality. The most we can imagine is that there are statistical exceptions to such a world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 445-449

The childish prejudice against inherited archetypes is mostly due to the fact that one thinks archetypes are representations; but in reality they are preferences or "penchants," likes and dislikes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 450-451

Not your thinking, but your essence, is differentiation. Therefore you must not strive for what you conceive as distinctiveness, but for your own essence. At bottom, therefore, there is only one striving, namely the striving for one's own essence. ~Carl Jung; The Red Book; Scrutinies; Page 348.

Yet I think of myself as a Christian, since I am entirely based upon Christian concepts. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 580-581

After thinking all this over I have come to the conclusion that being "made in the likeness" applies not only to man but also to the Creator: he resembles man or is his likeness, which is to say that he is just as unconscious as man or even more unconscious, since according to the myth of the incarnatio he actually felt obliged to become man and offer himself to man as a sacrifice. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 493-496

He still thinks in terms of mass-hygiene and has nightmares about mass killing. Why should he learn about the unconscious, the mother of the future?! Man still hopes, in a primitive way, that not knowing, not naming, not seeing a danger would remove it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 496-497

The difference between the two kinds of thinking struck me a long time ago, and for my domestic use I have described the first kind as two-dimensional and the second kind as three-dimensional. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 481-482

But if the believer without religion now thinks that he has got rid of mythology he is deceiving himself: he cannot get by without "myth." ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488

The introvert needs the object for his thinking, because it is precisely via the object that he adapts to outer reality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

The term “introversion” thus describes an inward turning of the psychic energy, which I called “libido,” because the introvert does not comprehend the object directly, but by means of abstraction, that is, by a thinking process that is inserted between himself and the object. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Guisan Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

I think it is even better to make ready for the great catastrophe than to hope that it will not take place and that we are allowed to continue the dream-state of our immaturity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 512-513

You can easily find out from my books what I think about religion (e.g., "Psychology and Religion''). I profess no "belief." I know that there are experiences one must pay "religious" attention to. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 517-518

It may be a prejudice to think that the world of human ideas is conditioned by archetypes, but it is also a means of grasping something of the psychology of another organism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 504-506

Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment! ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Page 344, Para 652.

Your aggressive critique has got me in the rear. That's all. Don't worry! I think of you [Victor White] in everlasting friendship. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 544-546

Moreover there are not a few introverts who are so painfully aware of the shortcomings of their attitude that they have learned to imitate
the extraverts and behave accordingly, and vice versa there are extraverts who like to give themselves the air of the introvert because
they think they are then more interesting. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 564-565

The representation of the extravert refers completely to the object and is, therefore, in complete agreement with outer reality, while his thinking is in agreement with his own inner reality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

This is not the case in the introvert. His representation of things is inadequate, precisely because of the lack of feeling- into [the object]. His thinking is in accordance with outer reality, but not with his own inner reality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

This explains the often- observed fact that the introvert thinks and preaches all sorts of nice things but does not do them himself, in fact, does the contrary; whereas the extravert does all sorts of good and nice things but does not think them, in fact, often the contrary. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

I would say: the introvert also tries, through the hypothesis of abstraction, to reach the object, actually reality, which seems to him chaotic only because of the projection of his unused and therefore undeveloped feeling. He tries to conquer the object by thinking. But he wants to reach the object quite as much as the extravert. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

The outer opposition is an image of my inner opposition. Once I realize this, I remain silent and think of the chasm of antagonism in my soul. Outer oppositions are easy to overcome. They indeed exist, but nevertheless you can be united with yourself. They will indeed burn and freeze your soles, but only your soles. It hurts, but you continue and look toward distant goals. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 279.

. . . my father did not dare to think, because he was consumed by inward doubts. He was taking refuge from himself and therefore insisted on blind faith. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 73.

Analysis would have been unthinkable in the Middle Ages, because those men were freely expressing those values from which we have cut ourselves off today. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 60

Take an intellectual man and confront him with a woman who is a highly differentiated feeling type and there is a mutual disappointment, each finding the other empty and dry. Impersonal feeling and thinking are very relativistic. ~Carl Jung, 125 Seminar, Page 66

We cannot get anywhere in analysis with thinking until it reaches its antinomy—that is, something is and is not true at one and the same time. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 66

As a natural scientist, thinking and sensation were uppermost in me and intuition and feeling were in the unconscious and contaminated by the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 75

Of course it is quite useful to us to have the idea that our thoughts are free expressions of our intentional thinking, otherwise we would never be free from the magic circle of nature. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 82

After all, we really can think, even if not with an absolute independence from nature; but it is the duty of the psychologist to make the double statement, and while admitting man’s power of thought, to insist also on the fact that he is trapped in his own skin, and therefore always has his thinking influenced by nature in a way he cannot wholly control. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 83

We do not think thus, and so we no longer take our thoughts as nature; the very way thought processes work in us keeps us from the notion that nature has spoken to us when we have thought. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 83

When you think of a snake, you are always in touch with racial instinct. Horses and monkeys have snake phobia, as man has. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 102

For example, you can run across people who think themselves born without a religious sense, and this is just as absurd as if they said they were born without eyes. It simply means they have left all that side of themselves in the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 114

Take the goodness expressed in Christianity, for instance. That is apparent to us, but get outside of your own skin and into that of a Polynesian native, and Christianity looks very black indeed. Or ask the Spanish heretics who have been burned for the glory of God what they think of Christianity. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 119

I have been tremendously impressed with the animal character of the unconscious of woman, and I have reason to think that her relation to the Dionysian element is a very strong one. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 124

When it comes to the rather delicate task of locating the collective unconscious, you must not think of it as being compassed by the brain alone but as including the sympathetic nervous system as well. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 140

He thinks the sensation type spends his life with corpses, but once he has taken up this inferior function in himself, he begins to enjoy the object as it really is and for its own sake instead of seeing it through an atmosphere of his projections. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 90

In the process of directed thinking, thoughts are handled as tools, they are made to serve the purposes of the thinker; while in passive thinking thoughts are like individuals going about on their own as it were. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 28

Fantastical thinking knows no hierarchy; the thoughts may even be antagonistic to the ego. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 28

I was in my consciousness an active thinker accustomed to subjecting my thoughts to the most rigorous sort of direction, and therefore fantasizing was a mental process that was directly repellent to me. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 28

Or, to put it even more strongly, passive thinking seemed to me such a weak and perverted thing that I could only handle it through a diseased woman. As a matter of fact, Miss Miller did afterwards become entirely deranged. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 28

The author shows an amazingly sympathetic knowledge of the introvert of the thinking type, and hardly less for the other types. . . . Jung has revealed the inner kingdom of the soul marvelously well and has made the signal discovery of the value of phantasy. His book has a manifold reach and grasp, and many reviews with quite different subject matter could be written about it.” ~Sonu Shamdasani, Introduction 1925 Seminar, Page xi

Abstract thinking can lead us no further than to intellectual sophistries, which are invariably used as shields and subterfuges and are calculated to prevent the realization of the whole. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 617-620

The theologian, the only person besides the psychotherapist to declare himself responsible for the cura animarum, is afraid of having to think psychologically about the objects of his belief. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 628-630

Again one has only to think of the craze for Negro dances, for the Charleston and jazz—they are all symptoms of the great longing of the mass psyche for this more complete—development of the powers immanent within us which primitives possess to a higher degree than we do. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, Pages 38-46

In short, the introvert thinks with the object, the extravert feels with it. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 74-86

The abstract thinking of the introvert is a parallel to this. It is so much in accordance with outer reality that unconsciously it is completely saturated with, and contingent upon, the lusting for power in the world. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid, Pages 74-86

When I violate the extravert with my abstract thinking, this is a fact, and this fact cannot be dismissed even if I insist that the other is merely thinking concretistically. ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Pages 100-114

Thinking is life just as much as doing is. ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Pages 100-114

Thinking is not merely a “realization” of life; life can also be a “realization” of thinking. ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Pages 100-114

You are again forgetting that life stands on two legs, doing and thinking. ~Carl Jung, Han Guisan Schmid, Pages 131-142

Go to bed. Think of your problem. See what you dream. Perhaps the Great Man, the 2,000,000-year-old man, will speak. In a cul-de-sac, then only do you hear his voice. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, Pages 359-364

Think of nearly two thousand years of Christian Idealism followed, not by the return of the Messiah and the heavenly millennium, but by the World War among Christian nations with its barbed wire and poison gas. What a catastrophe in heaven and on earth! ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Pages 76-77

I have to remark, by the way, that there is at least one thing the introvert can do better than the extravert, and that is thinking. ~Carl Jung, Han Guisan Schmid, Pages 131-142

The extravert (the ideal type) must realize his feeling, the corresponding introvert his thinking. In this process, the extravert notices that his feeling is pregnant with thoughts; the introvert, that his thinking is full of feelings. ~Carl Jung, Han Guisan Schmid, Pages 131-142

An introvert who does not outgrow his constant thinking is just as untenable as an extravert who cannot get out of his constant feeling. ~Carl Jung, Han Guisan Schmid, Pages 131-142

Thinking is an act of the soul whereby it becomes conscious of itself and of other things outside itself. ~Carl Jung; Symbols of Transformation; Page 11, Footnote 2.

The self would be the preceding stage, a being that is more than man and that definitely manifests; that is the thinker of our thoughts, the doer of our deeds, the maker of our lives, yet it is still within the reach of human experience. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 977-978

You could think of it [Self] as an intermediary, or a hierarchy of ever-widening-out figures of the self-till one arrives at the conception of a deity. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 977-978.

It is just an illusion when you think the right thought in your head means a reality; it is a reality as far as a thought reality reaches; the thought itself is real, but it has not become a reality in space. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 202

The self would be the preceding stage, a being that is more than man and that definitely manifests; that is the thinker of our thoughts, the doer of our deeds, the maker of our lives, yet it is still within the reach of human experience. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1348

The great lure of the archetypal situation is that you yourself suddenly cease to be. You cease to think and are acted upon as though carried by a great river with no end. You are suddenly eternal. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 240.

Do you think that somewhere we are not in nature, that we are different from nature? No, we are in nature and we think exactly like nature. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1277

For alchemy is the mother of the essential substance as well as the concreteness of modern scientific thinking, and not scholasticism, which was responsible in the main only for the discipline and training of the intellect. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 266.

Our civilization has long since forgotten how to think symbolically. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 683.

Even the man whom we think we know best and who assures us himself that we understand him through and through is at bottom a stranger to us. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 363.

But besides that [Intellect] 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, and, eternally living, outlasting all generations, still make up the groundwork of the human psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 794

Life behaves as if it were going on, and so I think it is better for an old person to live on, to look forward to the next day, as if he had to spend centuries, and then he lives properly. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking, Page 438

I have never asserted, nor do I think I know, what the unconscious is in itself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 196.

When you step out of this world, you withdraw and think you are alone with yourself, but the East says: “You forget the old man that is dwelling in your heart and sees everything.” ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis, Page 75.

James Hillman was asked by interviewer Cliff Bostock what he thought of Noll’s books on Jung. I hate them, Hillman replied. I think he’s a shit. ~James Hillman: Therapy and the Image, Creative Loafing

I am essentially an empiricist and have discovered to my cost that when people do not understand me they think I have seen visions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 121-122

I have not the faintest idea what "psyche" is in itself, yet, when I come to think and speak of it, I must speak of my abstractions, concepts, views, figures, knowing that they are our specific illusions. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 56-57

I think, therefore, that if you keep as closely as possible to concrete reality and try to create yourself there and illuminate the darkness, you will be on a more normal road than when you engross yourself in squaring the circle as a substitute. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 306-307

I often mention your [J.B. Rhine] work to people over here and I think it is of the greatest importance for the understanding of certain peculiar phenomena of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 321-322

We meet with the possibility of a very dangerous misunderstanding here, because if we call becoming conscious becoming spirit, we think that consciousness is spirit and thus mix up the intellect and the spirit. Spirit is in no way intellect, it is something totally different. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 26 Jan 1940

Consciousness is becoming aware of, making an image or concept of something, and intellect is the ability to think. Neither of these things is spirit. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 26 Jan 1940.

There is no doubt and no hesitation; the unanimous conviction in Switzerland is that Germany has lost her national honour to an unspeakable degree, and the Germans inasmuch as they still think know it too. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 276

He [Jung] said he had for a long time thought that the brain stem was important in our thinking life and how interested he was that the corpora quadrigemina, the four bodies, was the area, for it confirmed his idea of the importance of the square and the circle as symbols. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 157

Hegel seems to me a romantic thinker in contrast to Kant and hence a typical child of his time; and as a romantic he is already on the way to psychology. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 194-195

If things are going on like this, I shall in a few years' time be giving a seminar in a nursery which I think would be still more profitable because this kind of teaching forces me to the utmost simplicity of expression. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 187

There again, those people who think of the unconscious as being a psychological tissue contained in one's head are completely bewildered, for they can hardly form an idea of a tissue standing in one's head. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 204-205

In order to give our judgment.. on the character of wholeness, we must supplement our time-conditioned thinking by the principle of correspondence [between outer and inner events], or as I have called it, synchronicity." C.G. Jung, Aion, para 409

My exterior is in strange contrast to my spirit. When I am dead, nobody will think that this is the corpse of one with spiritual aspirations. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 59

The vast majority of people are quite incapable of putting themselves individually into the mind of another. This is indeed a singularly rare art, and, truth to tell, it does not take us very far. Even the man whom we think we know best and who assures us himself that we understand him through and through is at bottom a stranger to us. He is different. The most we can do, and the best, is to have at least some inkling of his otherness, to respect it, and to guard against the outrageous stupidity of wishing to interpret it. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 363

We shall probably get nearest to the truth if we think of the conscious and personal psyche as resting upon the broad basis of an inherited and universal psychic disposition which is as such unconscious, and that our personal psyche bears the same relation to the collective psyche as the individual to society. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 234