Carl Jung Quotations 20

Active imagination is to be understood as a way or method, to heal, raise and transform the personality. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 174.

This means an eternal body, or the subtle body, which is designated in alchemy as the philosopher's stone, the lapis aethereus or invisibilis. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Pages 159.

The coniunctio in alchemy is a union of the masculine and feminine, of the spiritual and material principles, from which a perfect body arises, the glorified body after the Last Judgement, the resurrection body. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 159.

In the Middle Ages Christ was no historical figure but a perpetual presence, as he still is in the Roman Catholic Mass. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Pages 161-162

Alchemy began about the same time as Christianity, in fact we find alchemical ideas in China long before our era, so one can only be sure that the symbolism and language of the Fathers of the Church play an enormous role in alchemy. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Pages 161-162.

The idea that Christianity dropped from Heaven as a direct revelation is an historical forgery. Its essential content is rich in philosophical ideas which reach back beyond Plato and Pythagoras. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 137.

When the ego is identified with the Atman it goes up on to a height where it does not belong, and when the two are separated the ego rolls down the hill. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 137.

Yoga does not lead to the ego but to the knowledge that the ego is only a phenomenon, it is the face, skin or symptom of an incomprehensible being. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 136.

But we spend our free time listening to the wireless and rushing off to the cinema. Yet much of our western neurosis comes from the fact that we do not find enough time for ourselves; it would be wiser to meditate and seek the Void when we need rest, than to run after outer distraction. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 128.

Through fettering the klesas one brings the eating of the world to an end, and can discriminate between oneself and desire. We reach our own will and its content by practising this restraint. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 127.

It is necessary to talk to Yogins themselves in order to understand and those who come over here are usually acrobats and not philosophers. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 119.

These various formulations indicate the same being that we find in the Gnosis as the ethereal man, light and diaphanous, identical with gold, diamond, carbuncle, the Grail, and, in Indian philosophy, with the Purusha or personified as Christ or Buddha. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 118.

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.

The alchemists returned in matter to the mother, the first carrier of the feminine unconscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 117.

If we regard alchemy rationally it is complete nonsense but it is exceedingly meaningful psychologically, the whole riddle or secret of the human psyche is to be found in it. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 117.

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

If I have a beam in my own eye I shall see a mote in someone else’s eye and call it a beam. This exactly describes the way I necessarily first see my own feminine psyche. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 116.

Marriage is no help in this, one does not reach it in that way, for we have deceived ourselves when we find our own feminine in a real woman. Carl Jung, ETH, Page 115.

Yet we know that every embryo is formed of masculine and feminine genes, the sex is determined by the majority. Where then is the minority? Carl Jung, ETH, Page 115.

It is a primeval fact that the psyche consists of both sexes. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 114.

As we are considering man's psyche, the ego in the conscious and the shadow in the unconscious are both masculine but on the lower floor it is different. There man meets his other side which is feminine. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 114.

There are, it is true, cases of people who are living below their own value where the shadow is the superior instead of the inferior part of the personality. Such people are apparently very modest but there is a lot of cunning in their modesty. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 113.

The lotus has always had an important mystical meaning. Its roots are down in the slime and mud at the bottom of the lake and the flower unfolds on the surface of the water. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 113.

Stupidity is one of man's strange hobbyhorses. There is something divine about it, and yet something of the megalomania of the world. ~Liber Novus, Page 316, Footnote 277.

The lamentations of the dead filled the air at the time, and their misery became so loud that even the living were saddened, and became tired and sick of life and yearned to die to this world already in their living bodies. And thus you too lead the dead to their completion with your work of salvation. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 278, Footnote 188.

When Christ ascended after completing his work, he led those up with him who had died prematurely and incomplete under the law of hardship and alienation and raw violence. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 278, Footnote 188.

But if you know what the dead demand, temptation will become the wellspring of your best work, indeed of the work of salvation. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 278, Footnote 188.

His [Christ’s] own way led him to the cross for humanity's own way leads to the cross. My way also leads to the cross, but not to that of Christ, but to mine, which is the image of the sacrifice and of life. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 298, Footnote 164.

Not one title of Christian law is abrogated, but instead we are adding a new one: accepting the lament of the dead. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 298, Footnote 187.

The Buddha did not need quite so long to see that even rebirths are vain. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 298, Footnote 94.

Since what takes place in the secret hour of life's midday is the reversal of the parabola, the birth of death …Not wanting to live is identical with not wanting to die. Becoming and passing away is the same curve. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 75.

Life is an energetic process like any other. But every energetic process is in principle irreversible and therefore unequivocally directed toward a goal, and the goal is the state of rest ... ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 75.

To live what is right and to let what is false die, that is the art of life. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 75.

In this bloody battle death steps up to you, just like today where mass killing and dying: fill the world. The coldness of death penetrates you. When I froze to death in my solitude, I saw dearly and saw what was to come, as clearly as I could see the stars and the distant mountains on a frosty night. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 73.

Evil is one-half of the world, one of the two pans of the scale. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 72.

In this deification mystery you make yourself into the vessel, and are a vessel of creation in which the opposites reconcile. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 253. Footnote 211.

Salome's performance was deification. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 253. Footnote 211.

This is how madness begins, this is madness ... You cannot get conscious of these unconscious facts without giving yourself to them. If you can overcome your fear of the unconscious and can let yourself go down, then these facts take on a life of their own. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 253. Footnote 211.

Salome's approach and her worshiping of me is obviously that side of the inferior function which is surrounded by an aura of evil. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 253. Footnote 211.

You should always ask yourself what you desire, since all too many do not know what they want. ~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.

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.

Only then I learned psychological objectivity. Only then could I say to a patient, 'Be quiet, something is happening.' There are such things as mice in a house. You cannot say you are wrong when you have a thought. For the understanding of the unconscious we must see our thoughts as events, as phenomena. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 249, Footnote 188.

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.

I saw how we live toward death, how the swaying golden wheat sinks together under the scythe of the reaper, / like a smooth wave on the sea-beach. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 268.

Just as the old prophets [ancients] stood before the Mysterium of Christ, I also stand as yet before the [this] Mysterium of-Christ, [insofar as I reassume the past] although I live two thousand years after-him [later] and at one time believed I was a Christian. But I had never been a Christ. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 253, Footnote 228.

My pleasure is dead and turned to stone, because I did not love Salome. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 250, Draft, Footnote 198.

Religious experience is numinous, as Rudolf Otto calls it, and for me, as a psychologist, this experience differs from all others in the way it transcends the ordinary categories of time, space and causality. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking, Page 230.

“Called or uncalled, God is present!” It is a Delphic oracle. The translation is by Erasmus. You ask whether the oracle is my motto. In a way, you see, it contains the entire reality of the psyche. “Oh God!” is what we say, irrespective of whether we say it by way of a curse or by way of love. “On Creative Achievement” (1946), C. G. Jung Speaking, p. 164.