Sunday, October 15, 2017

Carl Jung: "Visions Seminar" - Quotations




Most connections in the world are not relationships, they are participation mystique. One is then apparently connected, but of course it is never a real connection, it is never a relationship; but it gives the feeling of being one sheep in the flock at least. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, page 625.

Don’t try to better than you are, otherwise the devil gets angry. Don’t try to be worse because God gets angry. Try to be what you are, that is acrobatics enough. ~C.G. Jung, Visions Seminars, Vol.1, page 235

The religious attitude, it is quite different, and above all it is not conscious. You can profess whatever you like consciously while your unconscious attitude is totally different. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 41.

You may have, say, a religious attitude, which means an attitude of great totality, so that you receive the next leaf that falls from the tree as a message from God, and it works. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 919.

The Kingdom of Heaven is within ourselves. It is our innermost nature and something between ourselves. The Kingdom of Heaven is between people like cement. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 444.

People with a narrow conscious life exteriorize their unconscious, they are continually in participation mystique with other people… if more unconscious things have become conscious to you, then you live less in participation mystique. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, para 1184.

Only those people who can really touch bottom can be human. Therefore Meister Eckhart says that one should not repent too much of one’s sins because it might keep one away from grace. One is only confronted with the spiritual experience when one is absolutely human. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 394

In the least the greatest will appear— such is your expectation. And that is the numen, the hint of the god. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 919.

In the unconscious it is not so terribly important whether a man is alive or dead, that seems to make very little impression upon the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 903.

But your attitude to it matters, how you will take it, whether you believe in immortality or not, how you react to such and such an event, that matters to the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 903.

No matter what your conscious attitude may be, the unconscious has an absolutely free hand and can do what it pleases. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 27

The unconscious can make a fool of you in no time. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 747

It is surely not the divine will in man that he should be something which he is not, for when one looks into nature, one sees that it is most definitely the divine will that everything should be what it is. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 569.

The unconscious on one side is nothing but nature, and on the other hand it is the overcoming of nature; it is yea and nay in itself, two things in one. So we shall never understand what the unconscious is, as we shall never understand what the world is, because it is and it is not. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 89.

So we shall never understand what the unconscious is, as we shall never understand what the world is, because it is and it is not. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 89.

So the Self is part of the collective unconscious, but it is not the collective unconscious; it is that unit which apparently comes from the union of the ego and the shadow. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 754

Just as the Self is a unit in the collective unconscious, so we are units in the Self. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 754

If there were no consciousness, there would be no world; the whole world, as far as it enters into our consideration, depends upon that little flame of consciousness, that is surely the decisive factor. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 898

In the unconscious one cannot judge because of the great darkness there, but in the conscious there is light, and so there are differences; there is a criterion in consciousness which gives one a measure by which to judge. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 898

The fact is that if one tries beyond one’s capacity to be perfect, the shadow descends into hell and becomes the devil. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 569.

To be fully aware of the shadow would be an almost superhuman task, but we can reach a certain optimum of consciousness; we should be aware to a much higher degree than we are now. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 237.

We have to discover our shadow. Otherwise we are driven into a world war in order to see what beasts we are. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 235

We substitute our ignorance with gas; modern people are all gas bags inasmuch as they are ignorant of what they really are. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 235

The animus is not created by the conscious, it is a creation of the unconscious, and therefore it is a personification of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 208

The animus is a sort of film between reality and a woman’s mind, she always talks about things as they should be, so when she says a thing is really so, it is really not so at all. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1228.

The animus when on his way, on his quest, is really a psychopompos, leading the soul back to the stars whence it came. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1229

On the way back out of the existence in the flesh, the psychopompos [Animus] develops such a cosmic aspect, he wanders among the constellations, he leads the soul over the rainbow bridge into the blossoming fields of the stars. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1229

I could even go as far as to say that without the anima and animus there would be no object, no other human being, because you perceive differences only through that which is a likeness to the differences in yourself. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1357

That tiny thing, that unique individual, the Self, is small as the point of a needle, yet because it is so small it is also greater than great. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 358

For not knowing about the unconscious means that one has deviated, one is not in harmony with it, and therefore it works against one. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 405

The animus is meant to be cosmic. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1228.

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

They [Children’s Dreams] must come from the psychology of the collective unconscious; one could say they were remnants of things they had seen before they were born, and that is really vision. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 424.

Individuals can be stunted all through their lives by a vision in childhood. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 424.

Therefore the appearance of an archetype in our psychology is always a moment of the greatest danger as well as the greatest hope. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 67

But many people are never quite born; they live in the flesh but a part of them is still in what Lamaistic philosophy would call the Bardo, in the life between death and birth, and that prenatal state is filled with extraordinary visions. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 424.

One often has dreams which seem destructive and evil, the thing one cannot accept, but it is merely due to the fact that one’s conscious attitude is wrong. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 405-406.

People have a transference to their analyst because they suppose that he is in possession of the treasure. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 319

The principal pair of opposites is the conscious world and the unconscious world, and when the two come together, it is as if man and woman were coming together, the union of the male and the female, of the light and the darkness. Then a birth will take place. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 574

In the center is the individual where the opposites are united, the one peaceful spot in man, the space where nothing moves embedded in a world of chaos. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 263

For we may assume that the collective unconscious is in absolute peace until the individual appears. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 263

Therefore individuation is a sin; it is an assertion of one particle against the gods, and when that happens even the world of the gods is upset, then there is turmoil. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 263

The day comes when you are outgrown and then you are approaching the void, which seems to me to be the most desirable thing, the thing which contains the most meaning. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1026.

The Eastern philosophy is a sort of yoga, it is alive, it is an art, the art of making something of oneself. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1024

The great asset of the East is that they are based on instinct. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1066.
It is also the Eastern idea that through understanding one finds the roots of suffering. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 524.

You may have, say, a religious attitude, which means an attitude of great totality, so that you receive the next leaf that falls from the tree as a message from God, and it works. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 919.

This symbolic process within us, or that need to express unknown, unknowable, inexpressible facts, culminates in religion. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 742-743

By removing yourself from the dogma you get into the world which is increasingly chaotic and primitive, in which you must find or create a new orientation. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 905

It is tremendously important that people should be able to accept themselves; otherwise the will of God cannot be lived. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 391.

You cannot keep on the white side only, you have to admit that the spirit of life will at times take on the aspect of evil. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 140

Even the Holy Ghost has to turn into a bird of prey in order to snatch the germ of life. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 140

The experience of Tao can happen at any time. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 761

The religious and moral and philosophical confusion, even the confusion in our art, is due to the World War. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 77

When pairs of opposites appear together it is like fire and water; it either means an immediate crash, a tremendous catastrophe, or that they merely counteract one another. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 647

For it is really true that if one creates a better relation to the unconscious, it proves to be a helpful power, it then has an activity of its own, it produces helpful dreams, and at times it really produces little miracles. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 604

Now to bring forth what the original will intended is really the task of a whole lifetime, a very serious undertaking. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 391.

The body is the past, our earth, the world of heretofore, but out of it rises a new light which is not identical with the body. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 374

Creation begins today, it has no history and no cause, creation is always creation from nothing. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1035

In the redemption of the individual, the whole past will be redeemed, and that includes all the inferior things as well, the animals, and all the ancestral souls, everything that has not been completed; all creation will be redeemed in the apokatastasis [at the time of the Last Judgement], there will be a complete restoration of things as they have been. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1280

If one has done one’s duty, fulfilled one’s task, one can then die, one can say goodbye and disappear. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 402

If one is allowed to speak of complete individuation at all, I should say that it would be conscious experience of the totality of nature. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 760-761

We are like onions with many skins, and we have to peel ourselves again and again in order to get at the real core. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 821

One cannot individuate as long as one is playing a role to oneself; the convictions one has about oneself are the most subtle form of persona and the most subtle obstacle against any true individuation. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 821

Only if you first return to the body, to your earth, can individuation take place, only then does the thing become true. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1314

Individuation is not an intensification of consciousness, it is very much more. For you must have the consciousness of something before it can be intensified, and that means experience, life lived. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 757-758

People who live sterile lives are like that fig tree, they do not fulfill the will of the Lord. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 232

The way of nature will bring you quite naturally wherever you have to go. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 402-403

Therefore we say that if you give the little finger to the devil, he takes the whole arm, and finally the whole body. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 93-94

If you are completely destroyed by the world, then the world which destroyed you must be completely transformed, because you looked upon it with the eye that transforms, the eye that contains the germ of what is new. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 361

You see, all that a man does, whatever he attempts, means his individuation, it is an accomplishment, a fulfillment of his possibilities; and one of his foremost possibilities is the attainment of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 759

But such a thing [Individuation] is only possible if the individual in every moment of existence fulfills his complete being, lives the primitive pattern, fulfills all the expectations that he was originally born with. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 760-761

We must give nature a chance to fulfill itself. Then only can we detach, and then it comes about quite naturally. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 402

A truth is only a truth when it lives, otherwise it is perfectly nonsensical; it must be able to change into its own opposite, to even become an untruth at times. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1311

Only when you behave exactly as you are meant to behave are you the friend and the brother of all living things; then you are right in your place, and then you suddenly understand that everything else is in its place. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 760-761

Yes, he cannot see our world, which means we are the eyes of that man who lives forever, because our consciousness is an eye that sees ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1016.

In this vision we find the same principle as in Buddhism, the consciousness of what is happening as a redeeming principle. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 322.

The anima behaves exactly like a definite person, yet she is also a function, her true function being the connection between the conscious and the unconscious; there the anima is in her right place. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 204-205

That is, she [Anima] is not in between myself and my audience, but in between myself and my unconscious audience, a mirror reflex of this world, the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 204-205

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

I do not believe in magic made by man, magic as made in Germany or in Great Britain or in America; it does not work. But I firmly believe in the natural magic of facts. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1205

Whatever you experience outside of the body, in a dream for instance, is not experienced unless you take it into the body, because the body means the here and now. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1316.

Psychological energy does not exist, it is a concept, but in the physical or phenomenal equivalent of energy in these conditions we find the same peculiarity, namely, that this creative power is after a while exhausted, and then everything sinks back into the condition it was in before. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 118-119

If you just have a dream and let it pass by you, nothing has happened at all, even if it is the most amazing dream; but if you look at it with the purpose of trying to understand it, and succeed in understanding it, then you have taken it into the here and now, the body being a visible expression of the here and now. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1316.

The earth is a microcosm in the great cosmos of the stars and we are ourselves microcosms upon the earth. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 1158-1159

Each of us, every living being, is a small earth, one could say, because we are in intimate connection with the earth, we are partially earth, we are conscious of our earthly body, for instance. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 1158-1159

The star symbol means the center of a mandala, and the meditation on the Self or the meditation on the mandala is prayer; in many different religions that concentration upon a point outside of oneself, not identical with oneself, is called prayer. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 1158-1159

One could not say that the ego was the microcosm because the ego is only the center or the focus of the individual consciousness, and consciousness reaches only as far as the conscious material reaches. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 1158-1159

There is nothing without spirit, for spirit seems to be the inside of things … inside is spirit, which is the soul of objects. Whether this is our psyche or the psyche of the universe we don't know, but if one touches the earth one cannot avoid the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminars; Pages 164-165.

We must read the Bible or we shall not understand psychology. Our psychology, whole lives, our language and imagery are built upon the Bible. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 156.

It is a general truth that the earth is depreciated and misunderstood…For quite long enough we have been taught that this life is not the real thing…and that we live only for heaven. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 193.

Yet in nature the animal is a well-behaved citizen. It is pious, it follows the path with great regularity, it does nothing extravagant. Only man is extravagant. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 168.

Machines are running away with us, they are demons; they are like those huge old saurians that existed when man was a sort of lizard-monkey and deadly afraid of their hooting and tooting. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 502

A big city is like a holocaust of humanity, as Zola expressed it. Man has built his own funeral pyre and it is destroying him, and so our whole world is being destroyed. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 502

Art is just a particular way of decorating the nest in which you lay your eggs. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 913-914

The center of that totality does not necessarily coincide with the ego system, just as the center of our galaxy of stars does not coincide with our sun, and the center of our solar system does not coincide with the earth; we cannot assume that our earth is the center of the universe. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 1158-1159

It was discovered long ago that the earth is in the periphery of something bigger, it is an appendix of the sun, and even the sun is an appendix of a larger system, a galaxy of unknown extent. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 1158-1159

We cannot think of our earth as a sun, nothing is revolving round us except perhaps the moon; the ego is a little system like the earth with the moon, but it is by no means the center of the universe. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 1158-1159

The Self is the center of the totality of the psyche in as far as we can measure it or have an intuition about it, or in as far as we have dreams about it, and surely beyond, for we cannot assume that we are informed through our dreams of everything that is happening in our psyche. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 1158-1159

For about twenty five years I have analysed about two thousand dreams or more every year,… ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Lecture II, Page 19.

If you have a foreign body in you, nature sends a host of special cells to assimilate it; if they don't succeed in absorbing it, then there is suppuration to bring about expulsion. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 19.

Probably in absolute reality there is no such thing as body and mind, but body and mind or soul are the same, the same life, subject to the same laws, and what the body does is happening in the mind. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 22.

These patients become much better Catholics after analysis; I have often taught Catholic patients how to confess. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Lecture II, Page 22.

We cannot even be certain that it is our own psyche; it might be, but there are many things in our unconscious, and we are by no means sure whether they really belong to us or to somebody else. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 1158-1159

I say that the unconscious says what it means. Nature is never diplomatic. If nature produces a tree, it is a tree and not a mistake for a dog. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 30.

Only men were admitted to the Mithraic ritual, the women all went to the Earth Mother. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 35

Only domesticated animals misbehave; a wild animal never misbehaves, it follows its own natural law; there is no such thing as a good tiger that eats only apples and carrots! ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 37

We must fulfil our destiny according to nature's laws or we cannot become true servants of God. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 37

Don't forget that Christ completely absorbed Mithras; that old Mithraic idea has been continued in Christianity through the middle ages up to recent times; bulls and even little lambs have been killed, everything that was animal has been killed throughout the ages. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 37

The occult stuff transcended his digestive powers, he suffered from mental indigestion. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 41

This is a peculiar projection of our minds, this wanting to be free, not held down by any background: it is a sort of illusion of our consciousness in order to have the feeling of complete freedom, as if the historical past was fettering and would not allow free movement-a prejudice which again has psychological reasons. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 69

Our actual mind is the result of the work of thousands or perhaps a million years. There is a long history in every sentence, every word we speak has a tremendous history, every metaphor is full of historical symbolism; they would not carry at all if that were not true. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 69

This is a peculiar projection of our minds, this wanting to be free, not held down by any background: it is a sort of illusion of our consciousness in order to have the feeling of complete freedom, as if the historical past was fettering and would not allow free movement-a prejudice which again has psychological reasons. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 69

Animals understand utterances of fear of entirely different species because they have the same underlying fibre. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 70

I analysed dreams of Somali Negroes as if they were people of Zurich, with the exception of certain differences of languages and images. Where the primitives dream of crocodiles, pythons, buffaloes, and rhinoceroses, we dream of being run over by trains and automobiles. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 70

Scientists like to think that symbols have migrated. This is not true; they are quite autochthonous. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 71

If one studies the occult with the wrong attitude one can get infected, for this whole field is full of metaphysical traps through which one can fall, disappear as into an oubliette, and became the astrologer, the theosophist, or the black magician. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 72

No one approaches the Kingdom of Heaven without having passed through the flame and been burnt through and through. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 74

The new man of St. Paul's early Christian teaching is exactly the same thing as the subtle body. It is an archetypal idea, exceedingly profound, which belongs to the sphere of the immortal archetypes. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 116

A real knowledge of Yoga practices is very rare in the West. I felt quite small when I became acquainted with these things. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 118

Three-fourths of analyses are made by women, and I learn from them. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 122

Extraverts, and all people who are identified with their persona, hate to be alone because they begin to see themselves. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 75

Our spring point is at about 29° of Pisces and is no longer in Aries, although horoscopes are made on that basis. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 118

To the early Christians it was nothing to call a man a "Son of God," it was a commonplace, it was their daily bread. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 117

When you come to that loneliness with yourself-when you are eternally alone-you are forced in upon yourself and are bound to become aware of your background. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 75

What is the use of a sin if you can throw it away? If you are thoroughly aware of your sin, you must carry it, live with it, it is yourself. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 76

Even when you think you are alone and can do what you please, if you deny your shadow there will be a reaction from the mind that always is, from the man a million years old within you. You are never alone because the eyes of the centuries watch you; you feel at once that you are in the presence of the Old Man, and you feel your historical responsibility to the centuries. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 77

We never see the curative things that come from within; Christian Science recognizes them, but clinical medicine even in our day is living and working by the outer facts. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 130

Those old doctors like Galen asked their patients for their dreams. Dreams played a large part in medical cures. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 130

One of my students made some experiments on the viscosity of the blood, following the viscosity through different stages of analysis. Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 131

As our conscious personality is a part of the visible world, so our shadow side is a body in the collective unconscious, it is the unknown in things. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 78

We never see the curative things that come from within; Christian Science recognizes them, but clinical medicine even in our day is living and working by the outer facts. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 130

I said to her, "Who told you that you had an obligation to analysis? Your obligation is to life!" That girl is a victim of analysis. Her doctor is also stuck. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 86

It is death to the soul to become unconscious. People die before there is death of the body, because there is death in the soul. They are mask-like leeches, walking about like spectres ~~dead but sucking. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 90

There is no development under the law of conventional morality. It leads to compartment psychology, and how can a man develop when he forgets what his compartments contain? ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 214

Yes, a man is never represented by himself alone. A man is only something in relation to other individuals. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 219

The unconscious is like a compass, it doesn't tell you what to do. Unless you can read the compass it cannot help you. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 208

An introvert often keeps the events of his life in different compartments, he has a sort of wall between so they cannot blend. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 211

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