Carl Jung: Nobody can become king except the one who is supposed to be king, the one who contains the idea of the Self.

Mr. Baumann: Like Louis XIV.

Dr. Jung:

Yes, he was the divine Self of France.

You see, this kind of psychology is archetypal, which explains how a whole people can project the idea of the individual Self into one ideal which becomes personified.

In the Christian church the individual Self was projected into Christ.

And that is still going on in the psychology of the Oxford Movement, the idea of the guidance and the surrender is very much the same, Christ gives guidance and information.

We call it the unconscious in order not to give it a name, not to prejudice it, and surely the voice of the unconscious is the Self.

If you follow the voice of the unconscious-if you go carefully enough-,-you come in the end necessarily to what you are meant to be.

Of course, there is the great danger that someone might become a Messiah, but that is immediately checked by the consensus of other people.

Nobody can become king except the one who is supposed to be king, the one who contains the idea of the Self.

That is Christ according to the still generally prevailing Christian idea, and from such a standpoint any attempt at getting at individuation would be heretic, as it has always been; it has always been the party of the left hand and a crime.

Christ himself was accused of heresy, and quite justifiably. John the Baptist and his school called Jeshu ben Miriam-the son of Miriam the deceiver, the traitor, because he had betrayed the mysteries; he became an individual, the son of God, and received immediate revelation, and that was an awful sin and the real cause of his death.

It is an old Jewish tradition also that he betrayed the mysteries and so had to suffer the death of a traitor.

In the literature of the Manichaeans, the disciples of John, there is a text containing a discussion between Christ and John the Baptist upon that question.

They both presented very good arguments.

Christ's very practical argument was: "Do I not make the lame walk?

Do I not restore sight to the blind?"

But John would not hear of that, he said that Christ betrayed the mysteries, he gave them out to the world, and that they would be destroyed by the world.

And the world did destroy them.

The projection of the Self belonged to the psychology of ancient times, when the chief or the king represented the whole people and had to suffer and to die for the people.

Then another old rite played a certain role in the history of Christ; it is to a great extent legend, but legends are so true that they repeat themselves literally in reality, real events are like legends.

You remember the prisoner Barabbas was released instead of Christ when he was taken to be crucified, which was according to an old custom in Babylon that each year one criminal was released and given the freedom of the city; he could steal what he pleased but he must clear out before sunset, he must then be far away from the town; if caught within the city walls he would be put to death.

And this was a remnant of the old myth of the god king from the time when they had a new king every year; if the year was good, he was confirmed as a godking, and if the year was bad he was put to death.

He was supposed to emanate the mana quality of fertility, which improved the crops, helped the procreation of the cattle, and so on.

The idea of the king as the superior man was taken very literally also, he was represented on the ancient monuments as several times bigger and taller than his subjects.

And as his burial mound must express his significance, they chose a pyramid, which is a perfect mathematical form.

But why would a pyramid be a particularly significant symbol for the superior man? ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1332-1332