Carl Jung: Since we do not know everything....

Since we do not know everything, practically every experience, fact, or object contains something unknown.

Hence, if we speak of the totality of an experience, the word "totality" can refer only to the conscious part of it.

As we cannot assume that our experience covers the totality of the object, it is clear that its absolute totality must necessarily contain the part that has not been experienced.

The same holds true, as I have mentioned, of every experience and also of the psyche, whose absolute totality covers a greater area than consciousness.

In other words, the psyche is no exception to the general rule that the universe can be established only so far as our psychic organism permits. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 68

Carl Jung: We can only rise above nature if somebody else carries the weight of the earth for us.

We can only rise above nature if somebody else carries the weight of the earth for us.

What sort of philosophy would Plato have produced had he been his own house-slave?

What would the Rabbi Jesus have taught if he had had to support a wife and children? if he had had to till the soil in which the bread he broke had grown, and weed the vineyard in which the wine he dispensed had ripened?

The dark weight of the earth must enter into the picture of the whole. In “this world” there is no good without its bad, no day without its night, no summer without its winter.

But civilized man can live without the winter, for he can protect himself against the cold; without dirt, for he can wash; without sin, for he can prudently cut himself off from his fellows and thereby avoid many an occasion for evil.

He can deem himself good and pure, because hard necessity does not teach him anything better.

The natural man, on the other hand, has a wholeness that astonishes one, though there is nothing particularly admirable about it. It is the same old unconsciousness, apathy, and filth.

If, however, God is born as a man and wants to unite mankind in the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, he must suffer the terrible torture of having to endure the world in all its reality.

This is the cross he has to bear, and he himself is a cross.

whole world is God’s suffering, and every individual man who wants to get anywhere near his own wholeness knows that this is the way of the cross. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion, Pages 178-179.

Carl Jung: Simple things are always the most difficult.

Simple things are always the most difficult.

In actual life it requires the greatest art to be simple, and so acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the acid test of one's whole outlook on life.

That I feed the beggar, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ—all these are undoubtedly great virtues.

What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ.

But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yea the very fiend himself—that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved—what then?

Then, as a rule, the whole truth of Christianity is reversed there is then no more talk of love and long-suffering; we say to the brother within us "Raca," and condemn and rage against ourselves.

We hide him from the world, we deny ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves, and had it been God himself who drew near to us in this despicable form, we should have denied him a thousand times before a single cock had crowed. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 520

Carl Jung: The mental education necessary for Zen is lacking in the West.

When, therefore, after many years of the hardest practice and the most strenuous demolition of rational understanding, the Zen devotee receives an answer—the only true answer—from Nature herself, everything that is said of satori can be understood.

As one can see for oneself, it is the naturalness of the answer that strikes one most about the Zen anecdotes.

Yes, one can accept with a sort of old-roguish satisfaction the story of the enlightened pupil who gave his Master a slap in the face as a reward.

And how much wisdom there is in the Master's "Wu," the answer to the question about the Buddha-nature of the dog!

One must always bear in mind, however, that there are a great many people who cannot distinguish between a
metaphysical joke and nonsense, and just as many who are so convinced of their own cleverness that they have never in their lives met any but fools.

Great as is the value of Zen Buddhism for understanding the religious transformation process, its use among Western people is very problematical.

The mental education necessary for Zen is lacking in the West.

Who among us would place such implicit trust in a superior Master and his incomprehensible ways?

This respect for the greater human personality is found only in the East.

Could any of us boast that he believes in the possibility of a boundlessly paradoxical transformation experience,
to the extent, moreover, of sacrificing many years of his life to the wearisome pursuit of such a goal?

And finally, who would dare to take upon himself the responsibility for such an unorthodox transformation experience—except a man who was little to be trusted, one who, maybe for pathological reasons, has too much to say for himself?

Just such a person would have no cause to complain of any lack of following among us.

But let a "Master" set us a hard task, which requires more than mere parrot-talk, and the European begins to have doubts, for the steep path of self-development is to him as mournful and gloomy as the path to hell. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Paras 901-902

Carl Jung: Since we do not know everything....

Since we do not know everything, practically every experience, fact, or object contains something unknown.

Hence, if we speak of the totality of an experience, the word "totality" can refer only to the conscious part of it.

As we cannot assume that our experience covers the totality of the object, it is clear that its absolute totality must necessarily contain the part that has not been experienced.

The same holds true, as I have mentioned, of every experience and also of the psyche, whose absolute totality covers a greater area than consciousness.

In other words, the psyche is no exception to the general rule that the universe can be established only so far as our psychic organism permits. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 68

Carl Jung: „,we move in a world of images that point to something ineffable.

The fact that religious statements frequently conflict with the observed physical phenomena proves that in contrast to physical perception the spirit is autonomous, and that psychic experience is to a certain extent independent of physical data.

The psyche is an autonomous factor, and religious statements are psychic confessions which in the last resort are based on unconscious, i.e., on transcendental, processes.

These processes are not accessible to physical perception but demonstrate their existence through the confessions of the psyche.

The resultant statements are filtered through the medium of human consciousness: that is to say, they are given visible forms which in their turn are subject to manifold influences from within and without.

That is why whenever we speak of religious contents we move in a world of images that point to something ineffable.

We do not know how clear or unclear these images, metaphors, and concepts are in respect of their transcendental object.

If, for instance, we say "God," we give expression to an image or verbal concept which has undergone many changes in the course
of time.

We are, however, unable to say with any degree of certainty—unless it be by faith—whether these changes affect only
the images and concepts, or the Unspeakable itself.

After all, we can imagine God as an eternally flowing current of vital energy that endlessly changes shape just as easily as we can imagine him as an eternally unmoved, unchangeable essence.

Our reason is sure only of one thing: that it manipulates images and ideas which are dependent on human imagination and its temporal
and local conditions, and which have therefore changed innumerable times in the course of their long history.

There is no doubt that there is something behind these images that transcends consciousness and operates in such a way that the statements do not vary limitlessly and chaotically, but clearly all .relate to a few basic principles or archetypes. These, like the psyche itself, or like matter, are unknowable as such.

All we can do is to construct models of them which we know to be inadequate, a fact which is confirmed again and again by religious statements. Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 555