Carl Jung Quotations 15

You cannot get directly to the inferior function from the superior, it must always be via the auxiliary function. Intellect will not hold together sensation and intuition, rather it will separate them. Such a destructive attempt will be checked by feeling, which backs up intuition. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 75

I like to reserve the concept of will for that small amount of energy that is disposable by us in consciousness. Now if you put this small amount toward activating the instinctive process, the latter then goes on with a force much bigger than yours. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Pages 76-77

The libido of man contains the two opposite urges or instincts: the instinct to live and the instinct to die. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 77

You cannot get out of your skin until you become an eternal ghost. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 79

The idea of the pairs of opposites is as old as the world, and if we treated it properly, we should have to go back to the earliest sources of Chinese philosophy, that is to the I Ching oracle. Curiously enough, the pairs of opposites do not appear as such in Egyptian thought, but they are a basic part of both Chinese and Indian philosophy. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 80

So in the Upanishads, in contrast to the Chinese viewpoint, the emphasis is not on the opposites as such, but on the peculiar creative process between them. One could say therefore that the general point of view of the Upanishads is monistic. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 81

Atman is the central thing between the opposites; they themselves are almost taken for granted. Lao-tse on the other hand, as we have seen, stresses the opposites, although he knows the way between the two, Tao, and accepts it as the essence of life. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 81

The Upanishads appeal to people who are beyond the pairs of opposites. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 82

Today we have lost to a great extent this sense of the immanence of thought, as one might put it, and have instead the illusion of making our thoughts ourselves. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 82

We are not convinced that our thoughts are original beings that walk about in our brains, and we invent the idea that they are powerless without our gracious creative act; we invent this in order not to be too much influenced by our thoughts. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 82

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

The legend says of the I Ching that a horse came up out of the Yellow River bearing on his back the trigrams out of which the symbols are built up. The sages copied it and it was known as the River Map. 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, Page83

Obviously there is no law to prove that this is so, but we cannot assume that the products of our brains do not derive from nature; therefore I see no reason why we would not find astonishingly true things in the thought of the ancient sages, such as the I Ching represents. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 84

He [Heraclitus] is singularly Chinese in his philosophy and is the only Western man who has ever really compassed the East. If the Western world had followed his lead, we would all be Chinese in our viewpoint instead of Christian. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 84

Extreme fanaticism I found to rest on a concealed doubt. Torquemado, as the father of the Inquisition, was as he was because of the insecurity of his faith; that is, he was unconsciously as full of doubt as he was consciously full of faith. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 85

I started with the primitive idea of the flowing out and the flowing in of energy, and from this I constructed the theory of the introverted and extraverted types. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 86

The libido is not split in itself; it is a case of a balancing movement between opposites, and you could say that libido is one or that libido is two according as you concentrate now on the flow, now on the opposing poles between which the flow takes place. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 86

The opposition is a necessary condition of libido flow, and so you may say that by virtue of that fact one is committed to a dualistic conception of the world; but you can also say that the “flow”—that is, the energy—is one, and that is monism. If there is no high and low, no water flows; if there is high and low and no water, nothing happens; thus there is at the same time duality and oneness in the world, and it is a matter of temperament which viewpoint you choose to assume. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 86

If you are a dualist like Lao-tse, and concerned chiefly with the opposites, all you will find to say about what is between might go into his words, “Tao is so still.” But if, on the other hand, you are monistic like the Brahmans, you can write whole volumes about Atman, the thing between the opposites. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 86

We have to learn with effort the negations of our positions, and to grasp the fact that life is a process that takes place between two poles, being only complete when surrounded by death. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 86

But when we become aware of the opposites we are driven to seek the way that will resolve them for us, for we cannot live in a world that is and is not, we must go forward to a creation that enables us to attain a third point superior to the pairs of opposites. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Pages 86 - 87

We could adopt Tao and Atman as our solutions, possibly, but only on the assumption that these terms have meant to their originators what our philosophical ideas mean to us. But that is not so; Tao and Atman grew, Atman out of the lotus, while Tao is the still water. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 87

That is to say, they were revelations, while to us they are concepts and leave us cold. We cannot assimilate them as did the men in those days. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 87