With her cunning play of illusions the soul lures into life the inertness of matter that does not want to live. She makes us believe incredible things, that life may be lived. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Pages 26-27
Were it not for the leaping and twinkling of the soul, man would rot away in his greatest passion, idleness. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Pages 26-27
But to have soul is the whole venture of life, for soul is a life-giving daemon who plays his elfin game above and below human existence, for which reason-in the realm of dogma he is threatened and propitiated with superhuman punishments and blessings that go far beyond the possible deserts of human beings. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Pages 26-27
To know where the other person makes a mistake is of little value. It only becomes interesting when you know where you make the mistake, for then you can do something about it. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 424
The individual may strive after perfection . . . but must suffer from the opposite of his intentions for the sake of his completeness. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 123.
Indeed, it took the intervention of God himself to deliver humanity from the curse of evil, for without his intervention man would have been lost. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 114
Psychology is an empirical science and deals with realities. ~Carl Jung, Aion, Para . 98
Projections change the world into the replica of one’s unknown face. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii. Para 17
Man knows only a small part of his psyche, just as he has only a very limited knowledge of the physiology of his body. ~Carl Jung, Aion, Para 253
Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 429
Yahweh and Allah are unreflected God-images, whereas in the Clementine Homilies there is a psychological and reflective spirit at work. ~Carl Jung, Aion, Page 54n.
We need to find our way back to the original, living spirit which, because of its ambivalence, is also a mediator and uniter of opposites, an idea that preoccupied the alchemists for many centuries. ~Carl Jung, Aion, Para 141
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.
The anima and animus have tremendous influence because we leave the shadow to them. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis, Page 53.
The splitting of the Original Man into husband and wife expresses an act of nascent consciousness; it gives birth to the pair of opposites, thereby making consciousness possible. ~Carl Jung, Aion, Para 320
No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Page 43.
We can act differently, if we want to. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 114.
Affects occur usually where adaptation is weakest, and at the same time they reveal the reason for its weakness, namely a certain degree of inferiority and the existence of a lower level of personality. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, par. 15.
The anima also has affinities with animals, which symbolize her characteristics. Thus she can appear as a snake or a tiger or a bird. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 358.
Animals generally signify the instinctive forces of the unconscious, which are brought into unity within the mandala. This integration of the instincts is a prerequisite for individuation. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 660.
If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 423.
If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Par 423.
The sin to be repented, of course, is unconsciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Pages 191-192.
Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not. ~Carl Jung; CW 9ii; Para 429.
All I have written is correct. . . . I only realize its full reality now ~Carl Jung; Jung His Life and Work; Page 279.
This primary substance [the chaos] is round (massa globosa, rotundum), like the world and the world-soul; it is in fact the world-soul and the world-substance in one. ~Carl Jung, CW 9 II: §376
[Uniting symbols] arise from the collision between the conscious and the unconscious and from the confusion which this causes (known in alchemy as ‘chaos’ or ‘nigredo’). Empirically, this confusion takes the form of restlessness and disorientation. ~Carl Jung, CW 9 II, §304.
Affects occur usually where adaptation is weakest, and at the same time they reveal the reason for its weakness, namely a certain degree of inferiority and the existence of a lower level of personality. On this lower level with its uncontrolled or scarcely controlled emotions one . . . [is] singularly incapable of moral judgment. ~Carl Jung; CW 9ii, par. 15.
This meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one’s own shadow. The shadow is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well. But one must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Page 21
Emotion is not an activity of the individual but something that happens to him. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 15
The ego is the subject of all successful attempts at adaptation so far as these are achieved by the will. ~Carl Jung; CW 9ii; para 11
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 14
"Redemption" does not mean that a burden is taken from one's shoulders which one was never meant to bear. Only the "complete" person knows how unbearable man is to himself. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 125
Projections change the world into the replica of one's own unknown face. ~Carl Jung, CW 9 ii, Para 17
If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 423.
The final factors at work in us are nothing other than those talents which "a certain nobleman" entrusted to his "servants," that they might trade with them (Luke 19:12 ff.). It does not require much imagination to see what this involvement in the ways of the world means in the moral sense. Only an infantile person can pretend that evil is not at work everywhere, and the more unconscious s/he is, the more the devil drives her/him. . . . Only ruthless self-knowledge o the widest scale, which sees good and evil in correct perspective and can weigh up the motives of human action, offers some guarantee that the end result will not turn out too badly ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 255.
It is of the greatest importance that the ego should be anchored in the world of consciousness and that consciousness should be reinforced by a very precise adaptation. For this, certain virtues like attention, consciousness, patience, etc., are of the greatest value on the moral side, just as accurate observation of the symptomatology of the unconscious and objective self-criticism are valuable on the intellectual side. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 46.
Heaven and hell are the fates meted out to the soul and not to civilized man, who in his nakedness and timidity would have no idea of what to do with himself in a heavenly Jerusalem. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Pages 26-27
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.
We can certainly hand it to Augustine that all natures are good, yet just not good enough to prevent their badness from being equally obvious. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 95
Fishing is an intuitive attempt to “catch” unconscious contents (fishes). ~Carl Jung, Aion, Para 137.
The causal factors determining his psychic existence reside largely in unconscious processes outside consciousness, and in the same way there are final factors at work in him which likewise originate in the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Aion, Para 253
Only unconsciousness makes no difference between good and evil. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 97
Sooner or later nuclear physics and the psychology of the unconscious will draw closer together as both of them, independently of one another and from opposite directions, push forward into transcendental territory, the one with the concept of the atom, the other with that of the archetype. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 412
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
No amount of insight into the relativity and fallibility of our moral judgment can deliver us from these defects, and those who deem themselves beyond good and evil are usually the worst tormentors of mankind, because they are twisted with the pain and fear of their own sickness. ~Carl Jung, Aion, Para 97
This subjective knowledge of the self [is what is meant by]: "No one can know himself unless he knows what, and not who, he is, on what he depends, or whose he is (or to whom or what he belongs) and for what end he was made." This distinction . . . is crucial. . . . Not the subjective ego-consciousness of the psyche is meant, but the psyche itself as the unknown, unprejudiced object that still has to be investigated. . . . "What" refers to the neutral self, the objective fact of totality, since the ego is on the one hand causally "dependent on" or "belongs to" it, and on the other hand is directed toward it as to a goal ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, para 252.
Only with Christ did the devil enter the world as the real counterpart of God, and in early Jewish-Christian circles Satan was regarded as Christ's elder brother. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 113
The shadow, the syzygy, and the Self are psychic factors of which an adequate picture can be formed only on the basis of a fairly thorough experience of them. Just as these concepts arose out of an experience of reality, so they can be elucidated only by further experience ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, para 63.
We know only a small part of our psyches. The causal factors determining [one's] psychic existence reside largely in the unconscious processes outside consciousness , and in the same way there are final factors at work in [one] that likewise originate in the unconscious. . . . Causes and ends thus transcend consciousness to a degree that ought not to be underestimated, and this implies that their nature and action are unalterable and irreversible [to the degree that] they have not become objects of consciousness. They can only be corrected through conscious insight and moral determination, which is why self-knowledge, being so necessary, is feared so much ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 253.
Although its bases are in themselves relatively unknown and unconscious, the ego is a conscious factor par excellence. It is even acquired, empirically speaking, during the individual's lifetime. ~Carl Jung, Aion, Page 5.
It [The Ego] seems to arise in the first place from the collision between the somatic factor and the environment, and, once established as a subject, it goes on developing from further collisions with the outer world and the inner. ~Carl Jung, Aion, Page 5.
Through the Christ crucified between the two thieves, man gradually attained knowledge of his shadow and its duality. This duality had already been anticipated by the double meaning of the serpent. Just as the serpent stands for the power that heals as well as corrupts, so one of the thieves is destined upwards, the other downwards, and so likewise the shadow is on one side regrettable and reprehensible weakness, on the other side healthy instinctively and the prerequisite for higher consciousness. ~Carl Jung; Aion; Page 255; Para 402.
Today humanity, as never before, is split into two apparently irreconcilable halves. The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 126
Who are we to imagine that "it couldn't happen here"? We have only to multiply the population of Switzerland by twenty to become a nation of eighty millions, and our public intelligence and morality would then be automatically divided by twenty in consequence of the devastating moral and psychic effects of living together in huge masses. Such a state of things provides the basis for collective crime, and it is then really a miracle if the crime is not committed .... It has filled us with horror to realize all that man is capable of, and of which, therefore, we too are capable. Since then a terrible doubt about humanity, and about ourselves, gnaws at our hearts. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 412
Why is psychology the youngest of the empirical sciences? Why have we not long since discovered the unconscious and raised up its treasure-house of eternal images? Simply because we had a religious formula for everything psychic — and one that is far more beautiful and comprehensive than immediate experience. Though the Christian view of the world has paled for many people, the symbolic treasure-rooms of the East are still full of marvels that can nourish for a long time to come the passion for show and new clothes. What is more, these images — are they Christian or Buddhist or what you will — are lovely, mysterious, and richly intuitive. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Pages 7-8.
The fact that individual consciousness means separation and opposition is something that man has experienced countless times. Loss of roots and lack of tradition neuroticize the masses and prepare them for collective hysteria. Collective hysteria calls for collective therapy, which consists in abolition of liberty and terrorization. Where rationalistic materialism holds sway, states tend to develop less into prisons than into lunatic asylums. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 282
As the animus is partial to argument, he can best be seen at work in disputes where both parties know they are right. Men can argue in a very womanish way, too, when they are anima-possessed and have thus been transformed into the animus of their own anima. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 29
Indeed, it seems a very natural state of affairs for men to have irrational moods and women irrational opinions. Presumably this situation is grounded on instinct and must remain as it is to ensure that the Empedoclean game of the hate and love of the elements shall continue for all eternity. Nature is conservative and does not easily allow her courses to be altered; she defends in the most stubborn way the inviolability of the preserves where anima and animus roam. . . . And on top of this there arises a profound doubt as to whether one is not meddling too much with nature's business by prodding into consciousness things which it would have been better to leave asleep. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 35
When animus and anima meet, the animus draws his sword of power and the anima ejects her poison of illusion and seduction. The outcome need not always be negative, since the two are equally likely to fall in love (a special instance of love at first sight). ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 90
Every mother and every beloved is forced to become the carrier and embodiment of this omnipresent and ageless image, which corresponds to the deepest reality in a man. It belongs to him, this perilous image of Woman; she stands for the loyalty which in the interests of life he must sometimes forgo; she is the much needed compensation for the risks, struggles, sacrifices that all end in disappointment; she is the solace for all the bitterness of life. And, at the same time, she is the great illusionist, the seductress, who draws him into life with her Maya—and not only into life's reasonable and useful aspects, but into its frightful paradoxes and ambivalences where good and evil, success and ruin, hope and despair, counterbalance one another. Because she is his greatest danger she demands from a man his greatest, and if he has it in him she will receive it. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 24
The bridge from dogma to the inner experience of the individual has broken down. Instead, dogma is "believed"; it is hypostatized, as the Protestants hypostatize the Bible, illegitimately making it the supreme authority, regardless of its contradictions and controversial interpretations. (As we know, anything can be authorized out of the Bible.) Dogma no longer formulates anything, no longer expresses anything; it has become a tenet to be accepted in and for itself, with no basis in any experience that would demonstrate its truth. Indeed, faith has itself become that experience. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 276
Myths are miracle tales and treat of all those things which, very often, are also objects of belief. In the everyday world of consciousness such things hardly exist; that is to say, until 1933 only lunatics would have been found in possession of living fragments of mythology. After this date the world of heroes and monsters spread like a devastating fire over whole nations, proving that the strange world of myth had suffered no loss of vitality during the centuries of reason and enlightenment. If metaphysical ideas no longer have such a fascinating effect as before, this is certainly not due to any lack of primitivity in the European psyche, but simply and solely to the fact that the erstwhile symbols no longer express what is now welling up from the unconscious as the end-result of the development of Christian consciousness through the centuries. This end result is a true antimimon pneuma, a false spirit of arrogance, hysteria, woolly-mindedness, criminal amorality, and doctrinaire fanaticism, a purveyor of shoddy spiritual goods, spurious art, philosophical stutterings, and Utopian humbug, fit only to be fed wholesale to the mass man of today. That is what the post-Christian spirit looks like. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 66
