Carl Jung: The Gods love perfection because it is the total way of life.

I must say that the God could not come into being before the hero had been slain.

The hero as we understand him has become an enemy of the God, since the hero is perfection.

The Gods envy the perfection of man, because perfection has no need of the Gods.

But since no one is perfect, we need the Gods.

The Gods love perfection because it is the total way of life.

But the Gods are not with him who wishes to be perfect, because he is an imitation of perfection. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Pages 244-245

Carl Jung on “Meaning” in The Red Book - Anthology

If you marry the ordered to the chaos, you produce the divine child, the supreme meaning beyond meaning and meaninglessness. Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 235

One needs death to be able to harvest the fruit. Without death, life would be meaningless, since the long-lasting rises again and denies its own meaning. To be, and to enjoy your being, you need death, and limitation enables you to fulfill your being. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 275.

The meanings that follow one another do not lie in things, but lie in you, who are subject to many changes, insofar as you take part in life. Things also change, but you do not notice this if you do not change. But if you change, the countenance of the world alters. The manifold sense of things is your manifold sense. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 273.

The symbol becomes my lord and unfailing commander. It will fortify its reign and change itself into a starry and riddling image, whose meaning turns completely inward, and whose pleasure radiates outward like blazing fire, a Buddha in the flames. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 249.

If forethinking and pleasure unite in me, a third arises from them, the divine son, who is the supreme meaning, the symbol, the passing over into a new creation. I do not myself become the supreme meaning or the symbol, but the symbol becomes in me such that it has its substance, and I mine. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 249.

Day does not exist through itself, night does not exist through itself. The reality that exists through itself is day and night. So the reality is meaning and absurdity. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 242.

My soul is my supreme meaning, my image of God, neither God himself nor the supreme meaning. God becomes apparent in the supreme meaning of the human community. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Footnote 92, Page 240.

lent John the word so that John would have at his disposal the word 'Logos' alongside the word 'light' to describe the son of man. John gave to living men the meaning of the Logos, but Philo gave Logos as the dead concept that usurped life, even the divine life. Through this the dead does not gain life, and the living is killed. And this was also my atrocious error." ~Ammonius to Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 269.

The other Gods died of their temporality, yet the supreme meaning never dies, it turns into meaning and then into absurdity, and out of the fire and blood of their collision the supreme meaning rises up rejuvenated anew. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 230.

The image of God has a shadow. The supreme meaning is real and casts a shadow. For what can be actual and corporeal and have no shadow? ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 230.

This meaning of events is the supreme meaning, that is not in events, and not in the soul, but is the God standing between events and the soul, the mediator of life, the way, the bridge and the going across. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 239.

My thoughts are not my self but exactly like the things of the world, alive and dead. Just as I am not damaged through living in a partly chaotic world, so too I am not damaged if I live in my partly chaotic thought world. Thoughts are natural events that you do not possess, and whose meaning you only imperfectly recognize. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 250.

I must free my self from the God, since the God I experienced is more than love; he is also hate, he is more than beauty, he is also the abomination, he is more than wisdom, he is also meaninglessness, he is more than power, he is also powerlessness, he is more than omnipresence, he is also my creature. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 339.

The spirit of this time would like to hear of use and value. I also thought this way, and my humanity still thinks this way. But that other spirit forces me nevertheless to speak, beyond justification, use, and meaning. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 229

The solitary went into the desert to find himself. But he did not want to find himself but rather the manifold meaning of holy scripture. You can suck the immensity of the small and the great into yourself and you will become emptier and emptier, since immense fullness and immense emptiness are one and the same. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 273.

The spirit of the depths took my understanding and all my knowledge and placed them at the service of the inexplicable and the paradoxical. He robbed me of speech and writing for everything that was not in his service, namely the melting together of sense and nonsense, which produces the supreme meaning. ~Carl Jung; The Red Book, Page 229

There are not too many truths, there are only a few. Their meaning is too deep to grasp other than in symbols. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, p. 291.

Events signify nothing, they signify only in us. We create the meaning of events. The meaning is and always was artificial. We make it. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 239.

Notice what the ancients said in images: the word is a creative act. The ancients said: in the beginning was the Word. Consider this and think upon it. The words that oscillate between nonsense and supreme meaning are the oldest and truest. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 236.

The meaning of events is the way of salvation that you create. The meaning of events comes from the possibility of life in this world that you create. It is the mastery of this world and the assertion of your soul in this world. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 239.

Disorder and meaninglessness are the mother of order and meaning. Order and meaning are things that have become and are no longer becoming. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 235.

But the supreme meaning is the path the way and the bridge to what is to come. That is the God yet to come. It is not the coming God himself but his image which appears in the supreme meaning. God is an image, and those who worship him must worship him in the images of the supreme meaning. The supreme meaning is not a meaning and not an absurdity, it is image and force in one, magnificence and force together. The supreme meaning is the beginning and the end. It is the bridge of going across and fulfillment. Carl Jung, The Red Book, Pages 229-230.

There is no reason why whole numbers possess certain meanings or qualities, and no reason why elephants or men should exist. These arrangements are simply there as given facts, like the crystalline systems or the discontinuities of physics, even as the whole of creation is a "just-so story." ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 355.

Carl Jung: You believe in your idols of words.

You excuse yourself with your disbelief in the immortality of the soul.

Do you think that the dead do not exist because you have’ devised the impossibility of immortality?

You believe in your idols of words.

The dead produce effects, that is sufficient.

In the inner world there is no explaining away, as little as you can explain away the sea in the outer world.

You must finally understand your purpose in explaining away, namely to seek protection. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 298.

Carl Jung: Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life.

My soul spoke to me in a whisper, urgently and alarmingly: “Words, words, do not make too many words.

Be silent and listen: have you recognized your madness and do you admit it?

Have you noticed that all your foundations are completely mired in madness?

Do you not want to recognize your madness and welcome it in a friendly manner?

You wanted to accept everything.

So accept madness too.

Let the light of your madness shine, and it will suddenly dawn on you.

Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life.” ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 298.

Carl Jung: Through haste and increased willing and action we want to escape from emptiness and also from evil.

Through haste and increased willing and action we want to escape from emptiness and also from evil.

But the right way is that we accept emptiness, destroy the image of the form within us, negate the God, and descend into the abyss and awfulness of matter.

The God as our work stands outside us and no longer needs our help.

He is created and remains left to his own devices. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 288

Carl Jung: The tension of the future is unbearable in us.

The tension of the future is unbearable in us.

It must break through narrow cracks, it must force new ways. You want to cast off the burden, you want to escape the inescapable.

Running away is deception and detour.

Shut your eyes so that you do not see the manifold, the outwardly plural, the tearing away and the tempting.

There is only one way and that is your way; there is only one salvation and that is your salvation.

Why are you looking around for help? Do you believe that help will come from outside?

What is to come is created in you and from you. Hence look into yourself

Do not compare, do not measure. No other way is really yours. All other ways deceive and tempt you.

You must fulfill the way that is in you ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 308.

Carl Jung: You are afraid of burning in your own fire.

You can offer no more precious a sacrificial meal to your God than yourself.

May your greed consume you, for this wearies and calms it, and you will sleep well and consider the sun of each day as a gift.

If you devour other things and other people, your greed remains eternally dissatisfied, for it craves more, the most costly-it craves you.

And thus you compel your desire to take your own way.

You may ask others provided that you need help and advice.

But you should make demands on no one, neither desiring nor expecting anything from anyone except from yourself For your craving satisfies itself only within you.

You are afraid of burning in your own fire.

May nothing prevent you from doing so, neither anyone else’s sympathy nor your more dangerous sympathy with yourself Since you should live and die with yourself. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 311.

Carl Jung: Phanes is the God who rises agleam from the waters

“Phanes is the God who rises agleam from the waters. / Phanes is the smile of dawn. / Phanes is the resplendent day. / He is the immortal present. / He is the gushing streams. / He is the soughing wind. / He is hunger and satiation. / He is love and lust. / He is mourning and consolation. / He is promise and fulfillment. / He is the light that illuminates every darkness. / He is the eternal day. / He is the silver light of the moon. / He is the flickering stars. / He is the shooting star that flashes and falls and lapses: / He is the stream of shooting stars that returns every year. / He is the returning sun and moon. / He is the trailing star that brings wars and noble wine. / He is the good and fullness of the year. / He fulfills the hours with life-filled enchantment. / He is love’s embrace and whisper. / He is the warmth of friendship. / He is the hope that enlivens the void. / He is the magnificence of all renewed suns. / He is the joy at every birth. / He is the blooming flowers. / He is the velvety butterfly’s wing. / He is the scent of blooming gardens that fills the nights. / He is the song of joy. / He is the tree of light. / He is perfection, everything done better. / He is everything euphonious. / He is the well-measured. / He is the sacred number. / He is the promise of life. / He is the contract and the sacred pledge. / He is the diversity of sounds and colors. / He is the sanctification of morning, noon, and evening. / He is the benevolent and the gentle. / He is salvation … / In truth, Phanes is the happy day … / In truth, Phanes is work and its accomplishment and its remuneration. / He is the troublesome task and the evening calm. / He is the step on the middle way; its beginning, its middle, and its end. / He is foresight. / He is the end of fear. / He is the sprouting seed, the opening bud. / He is the gate of reception, of acceptance and deposition. / He is the spring and the desert. / He is the safe haven and the stormy night. / He is the certainty in desperation. / He is the solid in dissolution. / He is the liberation from imprisonment. / He is counsel and strength in advancement. / He is the friend of man, the light emanating from man, the bright glow that man beholds on his path. / He is the greatness of man, his worth, and his force” (Black Book 7, pp. 16-9).

On July 31,1918, Phanes himself says:

“The mystery of the summer morning, the happy day; the completion of the moment, the fullness of the possible, born from suffering and joy; the treasure of eternal beauty; the goal of the four paths, the spring and the ocean of the four streams, the fulfillment of the four sufferings and of the four joys, father and mother of the Gods of the four winds, crucifixion, burial, resurrection, and man’s divine enhancement, highest effect and nonbeing, world and grain, eternity and instance, poverty and abundance, evolution, death and the rebirth of God, borne by eternally creative power, resplendent in eternal effect, loved by the two mothers and sisterly wives, ineffable pain-ridden bliss, unknowable, unrecognizable, a hair’s breadth between life and death, a river of worlds, canopying the heavens- I give you philanthropy; the opal jug of water; he pours water and wine and milk and blood, food for men and Gods. / I give you the joy of suffering and suffering of joy. / I give you what has been found: the constancy in change and the change in constancy. / The jug made of stone, the vessel of completion. Water flowed in, wine flowed in, milk flowed in, blood flowed in. / The fours winds precipitated into the precious vessel. / The Gods of the four heavenly realms hold its curvature, the two mothers and the two fathers guard it, the fire of the North burns above its mouth, the serpent of’the South encircles its bottom, the spirit of the East holds one of its sides and the spirit of the West the other. / Forever denied it exists forever. Recurring in all forms, forever the same, this one precious vessel, surrounded by the circle of animals, denying itself and arising in new splendor through its self-denial. / The heart of God and of man. / It is the One and the Many A path leading across mountains and valleys, a guiding star on the oceans, in you and always ahead of you. /Perfected, indeed truly perfected is he who knows this. /Perfection is poverty But poverty means gratitude. Gratitude is love (2 August). / In truth, perfection is sacrifice. / Perfection is joy and anticipation of the shadow. / Perfection is the end. The end means the beginning, and hence perfection is both smallness and the smallest possible beginning. / Everything is imperfect, and perfection is hence solitude. But solitude seeks community Hence perfection means community / I am perfection, but perfected is only he who has attained his limits. / I am the eternal light, but perfect is he who stands between day and night. I am eternal love, but perfect is he who has placed the sacrificial knife beside his love. / I am beauty, but perfect is he who sits against the temple wall and mends shoes for money / He who is perfect is simple, solitary, and unanimous. Hence he seeks diversity, community, ambiguity Through diversity, community, and ambiguity he advances toward simplicity, solitude, and unanimousness. / He who is perfect knows suffering and joy; but I am the bliss beyond joy and suffering. / He who is perfect knows light and dark, but I am the light beyond day and darkness. / He who is perfect knows up and down, but I am the height beyond high and low. / He who is perfect knows the creating and the created, but I am the parturient image beyond creation and creature. / He who is perfect knows love and being loved, but I am the love beyond embrace and mourning. / He who is perfect knows male and female, but I am the One, his father and son beyond masculine and feminine, beyond child and the aged. / He who is perfect knows rise and fall, but I am the center beyond dawn and dusk. / He who is perfect knows me and hence he is different from me” ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Footnote 211, Pages 301-302.

Carl Jung: Have you considered how much unsuspected animality human company makes possible?

No one should be astonished that men are so far removed from one another that they cannot understand one another, that they wage war and kill one another.

One should be much more surprised that men believe they are close, understand one another and love one another.

Two things are yet to be discovered.

The first is the infinite gulf that separates us from one another.

The second is the bridge that could connect us.

Have you considered how much unsuspected animality human company makes possible? ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 289

Carl Jung: May no faith mislead you, accept your utmost unbelief it guides you on your way.

“Why should our spirit not take upon itself torment and restlessness for the sake of sanctification?

But all this will come over you, for I already hear the steps of those who bear the keys to open the gates of the depths.

The valleys and mountains that resound with the noise of battles, the lamentation arising from innumerable inhabited sites is the omen of what is to come.

My visions are truth for I have beheld what is to come.

But you are not supposed to believe me, because otherwise you will stray from your path, the right one, that leads you safely to your suffering that I have seen ahead.

May no faith mislead you, accept your utmost unbelief it guides you on your way.

Accept your betrayal and infidelity, your arrogance and your better knowledge, and you will reach the safe and secure route that leads you to your lowest; and what you do to your lowest, you will do to the anointed.

Do not forget this: Nothing of the law of love is abrogated, but much has been added to it.

Cursed unto himself is he who kills the one capable of love in himself for the horde of the dead who died for the sake of love is immeasurable, and the mightiest among these dead is Christ the Lord.

Holding these dead in reverence is wisdom.

Purgatory awaits those who murder the one in themselves who is capable of love.

You will lament and rave against the impossibility of uniting the lowest in you with the law of those who love.

I say to you: Just as Christ subjugated the nature of the physical to the spirit under the law of the word of the father, the nature of the spirit shall be subjugated to the physical under the law of Christ’s completed work of salvation through love.

You are afraid of the danger; but know that where God is nearest, the danger is greatest.

How can you recognize the anointed one without any danger?

Will one ever acquire a precious stone with a copper coin?

The lowest in you is what endangers you. Fear and doubt guard the gates of your way.

The lowest in you is the unforeseeable for you cannot see it.

Thus shape and behold it. You will thus open the floodgates of chaos.

The sun arises from the darkest, dampest, and coldest.

The unknowing people of this time only see the one; they never see the other approaching them.

But if the one exists, so does the other” ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Footnote 205, Page 300.

Carl Jung: These visions are full of torment, and the meaning of these images is dark to me, Elijah; please shed some light.

On the following night I was led to a second image: I am standing in the rocky depth that seems to me like a crater. Before me I see the house with columns. I see Salome walking along the length of the wall toward the left, touching the wall like a blind person. The serpent follows her. The old man stands at the door and waves to me. Hesitantly I draw closer.

He calls Salome back. She is like someone suffering. I cannot detect any sacrilege in her nature. Her hands are white and her face has a gentle expression. The serpent lies before them. I stand before them clumsily like a stupid boy; overwhelmed by uncertainty and ambiguity. The old man eyes me searchingly and says: “What do you want here?”

I: “Forgive me, it is not obtrusiveness or arrogance that leads me here. I am here perchance, not knowing what I want. A longing that stayed behind in your house yesterday has brought me here. You see, prophet, I am tired, my head is as heavy as lead. I am lost in my ignorance. I have toyed with myself enough. I played hypocritical games with myself and they all would have disgusted me, were it not clever to perform what others expect from us in the world of men. It seems to me as if I were more real here. And yet I do not like being here.”

Wordlessly Elijah and Salome step inside the house. I follow them reluctantly. A feeling of guilt torments me. Is it bad conscience? I would like to turn back, but I cannot. I stand before the play of fire in the shining crystal. I see in splendor the mother of God with the child. Peter stands in front of her in admiration-then Peter alone with the key-the Pope with a triple crown-a Buddha sitting rigidly in a circle of fire-a many-armed bloody Goddess-it is Salome desperately wringing her hands. it takes hold of me, she is my own soul, and now I see Elijah in the image of the stone. Elijah and Salome stand smiling before me.

I: “These visions are full of torment, and the meaning of these images is dark to me, Elijah; please shed some light.”

Elijah turns away silently; and leads the way toward the left. Salome enters a colonnade to the right. Elijah leads me into an even darker room. A burning red lamp hangs from the ceiling. I sit down exhausted. Elijah stands before me leaning on a marble lion in the middle of the room.

E: ”Are you anxious? Your ignorance is to blame for your bad conscience. Not-knowing is guilt, but you believe that it is the urge toward forbidden knowledge that causes your feeling of guilt. Why do you think you are here?”

I: “I don’t know. I sank into this place when unknowingly I tried resisting the not-known. So here I am, astonished and confused, an ignorant fool. I experience strange things in your house, things that frighten me and whose meaning is dark to me.”

E: “If it were not your law to be here, how would you be here?”

I: “I’m afflicted by fatal weakness, my father.”

E: “You are evasive. You cannot extricate yourself from your law.

I: “How can I extricate myself from what is unknown to me, which I cannot reach with either feeling or presentiment?”

E: “You are lying. Do you not know that you yourself recognized what it means if Salome loves you?”

I: “You are right. A doubtful and uncertain thought arose in me. But I have forgotten it again.”

E: “You have not forgotten it. It burned deep inside you. Are you cowardly? Or can you not differentiate this thought from your own self enough so that you wished to claim it for yourself?”

I: “The thought went too far for me, and I shun far-fetched ideas. They are dangerous, since I am a man, and you know how much men are accustomed to seeing thoughts as their very own, so that they eventually confuse them with themselves.”

E: “Will you therefore confuse yourself with a tree or animal, because you look at them and because you exist with them in one and the same world? Must you be your thoughts, because you are in the world of your thoughts? But your thoughts are just as much outside your self as trees and animals are outside your body.”

I: “I understand. My thought world was for me more word than world. I thought of my thought world: it is I.”

E: “Do you say to your human world and every being outside of you: you are I?”

I: “I stepped into your house, my father, with the fear of a schoolboy. But you taught me salutary wisdom: I can also consider my thoughts as being outside my self. That helps me to return to that terrible conclusion that my tongue is reluctant to express. I thought that Salome loves me because I resemble John or you. This thought seemed unbelievable to me. That’s why I rejected it and thought that she loves me because I am really quite opposite to you, that she loves her badness in my badness. This thought was devastating.”

Elijah is silent. Heaviness lies on me. Then Salome steps in, comes over to me and lays her arm around my shoulder. She takes me for her father in whose chair I sat. I dare neither move nor speak.
S: “I know that you are not my father. You are his son, and I am your sister.”
I: “You, Salome, my sister? Was this the terrible attraction that emanated from you, that unnamable horror of you, of your touch?
Who was our mother?”
S: “Mary.”

I: “Is it a hellish dream? Mary; our mother? What madness lurks in your words? The mother of our Savior, our mother? When I crossed your threshold today; I foresaw calamity. Alas! It has come. Are you out of your senses, Salome? Elijah, protector of the divine law, speak: is this a devilish spell cast by the rejected? How can she say such a thing? Or are both of you out of your senses? You are symbols and Mary is a .symbol. I am simply too confused to see through you now.”

E: “You may call us symbols for the same reason that you can also call your fellow men symbols, if you wish to. But we are just as real as your fellow men. You invalidate nothing and solve nothing by calling us symbols.”

I: “You plunge me into a terrible confusion. Do you wish to be real?”

E: “We are certainly what you call real. Here we are, and you have to accept us. The choice is yours.”

I am silent. Salome has removed herself Uncertainly I look around. Behind me a high golden red flame burns on a round altar. The serpent has encircled the flame. Its eyes glitter with golden reflections. Swaying I turn to the exit. As I step out into the hall, I see a powerful lion going before me. Outside, it is a wide cold starry night.

[2] 190 1t is no small matter to acknowledge one’s yearning. For this many need to make a particular effort at honesty. All too many do not want to know where their yearning is, because it would seem to them impossible or too distressing. And yet yearning is the way of life. If you do not acknowledge your yearning, then you do not follow yourself but go on foreign ways that others have indicated to you. So you do not live your life but an alien one.

But who should live your life if you do not live it? It is not only stupid to exchange your own life for an alien one, but also a hypocritical game, because you can never really live the life of others, you can only pretend to do it, deceiving the other and yourself since you can only live your own life.

If you give up your self you live it in others; thereby you become selfish to others, and thus you deceive others. Everyone thus believes that such a life is possible. It is, however, only apish imitation. Through giving in to your apish appetite, you infect others, because the ape stimulates the apish. So you turn yourself and others into apes.

Through reciprocal imitation you live according to the average expectation. The image of the hero was set up for all in every age through the appetite for imitation. Therefore the hero was murdered, since we have all been aping him. Do you know why you cannot abandon apishness? For fear of loneliness and defeat.

To live oneself means: to be one’s own task. Never say that it is a pleasure to live oneself It will be no joy but a long suffering, since you must become your own creator. If you want to create yourself then you do not begin with the best and the highest, but with the worst and the deepest. Therefore say that you are reluctant to live yourself The flowing together of the stream of life is not joy but pain, since it is power against power, guilt, and shatters the sanctified.

The image of the mother of God with the child that I foresee, indicates to me the mystery of the transformation. If forethinking and pleasure unite in me, a third arises from them, the divine son, who is the supreme meaning, the symbol, the passing over into a new creation. I do not myself become the supreme meaning or the symbol, but the symbol becomes in me such that it has its substance, and I mine. Thus I stand like Peter in worship before the miracle of the transformation and the becoming real of the God in me.

Although I am not the son of the God mysel£ I represent him nevertheless as one who was a mother to the God, and one therefore to whom in the name of the God the freedom of the binding and loosing has been given. The binding and loosing take place in me. But insofar as it takes place in me, and I am a part of the world, it also takes place through me in the world, and no one can hinder it.

It doesn’t take place according to the way of my will but in the way of unavoidable effect. I am not master over you, but the being of the God in me. I lock the past with one key; with the other I open the future. This takes place through my transformation. The miracle of transformation commands. I am its servant, just as the Pope is. You see how incredible it was to believe such of oneself

It applies not to me, but to the symbol. The symbol becomes my lord and unfailing commander. It will fortify its reign and change itself into a starry and riddling image, whose meaning turns completely inward, and whose pleasure radiates outward like blazing fire, a Buddha in the flames.

Because I sink into my symbol to such an extent, the symbol changes me from my one into my other, and that cruel Goddess of my interior, my womanly pleasure, my own other, the tormented tormentor, that which is to be tormented. I have interpreted these images, as best I can, with poor words.

In the moment of your bewilderment, follow your forethinking and not your blind desire, since forethinking leads you to the difficulties that should always come first. They come nevertheless. If you look for a light, you fall first into an even deeper darkness. In this darkness you find a light with a weal<. reddish flame that gives only a low brightness, but it is enough for you to see your neighbor. It is exhausting to reach this goal that seems to be no goal. And so it is good: I am paralyzed and therefore ready to accept. My forethinking rests on the lion, my power.

I held to the sanctified form, and didn’t want to allow the chaos to break. through its dams. I believed in the order of the world and hated everything disorganized and unformed. Therefore above all I had to realize that my own law had brought me to this place. As the God developed in me, I thought he was a part of my self I thought that my “I” included him and therefore I took him for my thought. But I also considered that my thoughts were parts of my “I.”

Thus I entered into my thoughts, and into the thinking about the God, in that I took him for a part of my self On account of my thoughts, I had left myself; therefore my self became hungry and made God into a selfish thought. If I leave myself my hunger will drive me to find my self in my object, that is, in my thought. Therefore you love reasonable and orderly thoughts, since you could not endure it if your self was in disordered, that is, unsuitable thoughts.

Through your selfish wish, you pushed out of your thoughts everything that you do not consider ordered, that is, unfitting. You create order according to what you know, you do not know the thoughts of chaos, and yet they exist. My thoughts are not my self and my I does not embrace the thought. Your thought has this meaning and that, not just one, but many meanings. No one knows how many.

My thoughts are not my sel£ but exactly like the things of the world, alive and dead. Just as I am not damaged through living in a partly chaotic world, so too I am not damaged if I live in my partly chaotic thought world. Thoughts are natural events that you do not possess, and whose meaning you only imperfectly recognize.

Thoughts grow in me like a forest, populated by many different animals. But man is domineering in his thinking, and therefore he kills the pleasure of the forest and that of the wild animals. Man is violent in his desire, and he himself becomes a forest and a forest animal. Just as I have freedom in the world, I also have freedom in my thoughts.Freedom is conditional.

To certain things of the world I must say: you should not be thus, but you should be different. Yet first I look carefully at their nature, otherwise I cannot change it. I proceed in the same way with certain thoughts. You change those things of the world that, not being useful in themselves, endanger your welfare.

Proceed likewise with your thoughts. Nothing is complete, and much is in dispute. The way of life is transformation, not exclusion. Well-being is a better judge than the law. But as I became aware of the freedom in my thought world, Salome embraced me and I thus became a prophet, since I had found pleasure in the primordial beginning, in the forest, and in the wild animals.

It stands too close to reason for me to set myself on a par with my visions, and for me to take pleasure in seeing. I am in danger of believing that I myself am significant since I see the significant. This will always drive us crazy; and we transform the vision in to foolishness and monkey business, since we cannot desist from imitation.

Just as my thinking is the son of fore thinking, so is my pleasure the daughter of love, of the innocent and conceiving mother of God. Aside from Christ Mary gave birth to Salome. Therefore Christ in the gospel of the Egyptians says to Salome:

“Eat every herb, but do not eat the bitter.” And when Salome wanted to know, Christ spoke to her: “If you crush the covering of shame, and when the two become one, and the male with the female, neither male nor female.”

Forethinking is the procreative, love is the receptive. Both are beyond this world. Here are understanding and pleasure, we only suspect the other. It would be madness to claim that they are in this world. So much that is riddling and cunning coils around this light. I won the power back again from the depths, and it went before me like a lion. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Pages 248-251

Carl Jung on "Earlier Temples"

Yet another new adventure occurred: wide meadows spread out before me-a carpet of flowers-soft hills-a fresh green wood in the distance.

I come across two strange journeymen probably two completely accidental companions: an old monk and a tall gangly thin man with a childish gait and discolored red clothes.

As they draw near, I recognize the tall one as the red rider. How he has changed! He has grown old, his red hair has become gray, his fiery red clothes are worn out, shabby, poor.

And the other? He has a paunch and appears not to have fallen on bad times. But his face seems familiar: by all the Gods, it’s Ammonius!

What changes! And where are these utterly different people coming from? I approach them and bid them good day. Both look at me frightened and make the sign of the cross.

Their horror prompts me to look down at myself I am fully covered in green leaves, which spring from my body. I greet them a second time, laughing.
Ammonius exclaims horrified: ”Apage, Satanas!”

The Red One: “Damned pagan riffraff!”

I: “But my dear friends, what’s wrong with you? I’m the Hyperborean stranger, who visited you, Oh Ammonius, in the desert. And I’m the watchman whom you, Red One, once visited.”

Ammonius: “I recognize you, you supreme devil. My downfall began with you.”

The Red One looks at him reproachfully and gives him a poke in the ribs. The monk sheepishly stops. The Red One turns haughtily toward me.

R: ”Already at that time I couldn’t help thinking that you lacked a noble disposition, notwithstanding your hypocritical seriousness. Your damned Christian play-act-“
At this moment Ammonius pokes him in the ribs and the Red One falls into an embarrassed silence. And thus both stand before me, sheepish and ridiculous, and yet pitiable.

I: “Wherefrom, man of God? What outrageous fate has led you here, let alone in the company of the Red One?”

A: “I would prefer not to tell you. But it does not appear to be a dispensation of God that one can escape. So know then that you, evil spirit, have done me a terrible deed. You seduced me with 1your accursed curiosity, desirously stretching my hand after the divine mysteries, since you made me conscious at that time that I really knew nothing about them.

Your remark that I probably needed the closeness of men to arrive at the higher mysteries stunned me like infernal poison. Soon thereafter I called the brothers of the valley together and announced to them that a messenger of God had appeared to me-so terribly had you blinded me-and commanded me to form a monastery with the brothers.

“When Brother Philetus raised an objection, I refuted him with reference to the passage in the holy scriptures where it is said that it is not good for man to be alone. So we founded the monastery, near the Nile, from where we could see the passing ships.

“We cultivated fat fields, and there was so much to do that the holy scriptures fell into oblivion. We became voluptuous, and one day I was filled with such terrible longing to see Alexandria again.

I talked myself into believing that I wanted to visit the bishop there. But first I was intoxicated so much by life on the ship, and then by the milling crowds on the streets of Alexandria, that I became completely lost.

“As in a dream I climbed onto a large ship bound for Italy. I felt an insatiable greed to see the world. I drank wine and saw that women were beautiful. I wallowed in pleasure and wholly turned into an animal. When I climbed ashore in Naples, the Red One stood there, and I knew that I had fallen into the hands of evil.”

R: “Be silent, old fool, if I had not been present, you would have become an outright pig. When you saw me, you finally pulled yourself together, cursed the drinking and the women, and returned to the monastery.

“Now hear my story; damned hobgoblin: I too fell into your snare, and your pagan arts also enticed me. After the conversation at that time, where you caught me in the fox trap with your remark about dancing, I became serious, so serious that I went into the monastery; prayed, fasted, and converted myself.

“In my blindness I wanted to reform the Church liturgy; and with the bishop’s approval I introduced dancing.

“I became Abbot and, as such, alone had the sole right to dance before the altar, like David before the ark of the covenant. But little by little, the brothers also began to dance; indeed, even the congregation of the faithful and finally the whole city danced.

“It was terrible. I fled into solitude and danced all day until I dropped, but in the morning the hellish dance began again.

“I sought to escape from myself, and strayed and wandered around at night. In the daytime I kept myself secluded, and danced alone in the forests and deserted mountains. And thus gradually I came to Italy. Down there in the south, I no longer felt as I had felt in the north; I could mingle with the crowds. Only in Naples did I somewhat find my way again, and there I also found this ragged man of God. His appearance gave me strength. Through him I could regain my health. You’ve heard how he took heart from me, too, and found his way again.”

A: “I must confess I did not fare so badly with the Red One; he’s a toned-down type of devil.”

R: “I must add that the monk is hardly the fanatical type, although I’ve developed a deep aversion against the whole Christian religion since my experience in the monastery.”

1: “Dear friends, it does my heart good to see you enjoying yourselves together.”

Both: “We are not pleased, mocker and adversary, clear off, you robber, pagan!”

I: “But why are you traveling together, if you’re not enjoying each other’s company and friendship”

A: “What can be done Even the devil is necessary; since otherwise one has nothing that commands a sense of respect with people.”

R: “Well, I need to come to an arrangement with the clergy; or else I will lose my clientele.”

I: “Therefore the necessities of life have brought you together! So let’s make peace and be friends.”

Both: “But we can never be friends.”

I: “Oh, I see, the system is at fault. You probably want to die out first( Now let me pass, you old ghosts!”

When I had seen death and all the terrible solemnity that is gathered around it, and had become ice and night myself, an angry life and impulse rose up in me. My thirst for the rushing water of the deepest knowledge began to clink with wine glasses; from afar I heard drunken laughter, laughing women and street noise. Dance music, stamping and cheering poured forth from allover; and instead of the rose scented south wind, the reek of the human animal streamed over me.

Luscious-lewd whores giggled and rustled along the walls, wine fumes and kitchen steam and the foolish cackling of the human crowd drew near in a cloud. Hot sticky tender hands reached out for me, and I was swaddled in the covers of a sickbed. I was born into life from below, and I grew up as heroes do, in hours rather than years. And after I had grown up, I found myself in the middle land, and saw that it was spring.

But I was no longer the man I had been, for a strange being grew through me.

This was a laughing being of the forest, a leaf green daimon, a forest goblin and prankster, who lived alone in the forest and was itself a greening tree being, who loved nothing but greening and growing, who was neither disposed nor indisposed toward men, full of mood and chance, obeying an invisible law and greening and wilting with the trees, neither beautiful nor ugly, neither good nor bad, merely living, primordially old and yet completely young, naked and yet naturally clothed, not man but nature, frightened, laughable, powerful, childish, weak, deceiving and deceived, utterly inconstant and superficial, and yet reaching deep down, down to the kernel of the world.

I had absorbed the life of both of my friends; a green tree grew from the ruins of the temple.

They had not withstood life, but, seduced by life, had become their own monkey business. They had got caught in the muck, and so they called the living a devil and traitor. Because both of them believed in themselves and in their own goodness, each in his own way, they ultimately became mired in the natural and conclusive burial ground of all outlived ideals.

The most beautiful and the best, like the ugliest and the worst, end up someday in the most laughable place in the world, surrounded by fancy dress and led by fools, and go horror-struck to the pit of filth.

After the cursing comes laughter, so that the soul is saved from the dead.Ideals are, according to their essence, desired and pondered; they exist to this extent, but only to this extent.

Yet their effective being cannot be denied. He who believes he is really living his ideals, or believes he can live them, suffers from delusions of grandeur and behaves like a lunatic in that he stages himself as an ideal; but the hero has fallen. Ideals are mortal, so one should prepare oneself for their end: at the same time it probably costs you your neck.

For do you not see that it was you who gave meaning, value, and effective force to your ideal If you have become a sacrifice to the ideal, then the ideal cracks open, plays carnival with you, and goes to Hell on Ash Wednesday. The ideal is also a tool that one can put aside anytime, a torch on dark paths. But whoever runs around with a torch by day is a fool. How much my ideals have come down, and how freshly my tree greens!

When I turned green, they stood there, the sad remains of earlier temples and rose gardens, and I recognized with a shudder their inner affinity. It seemed to me that they had established an indecent alliance. But I understood that this alliance had already existed for a long time. At a time when I still claimed that my sanctuaries were of crystal purity, and when I compared my friends to the perfume of the roses of Persia, both of them formed an alliance of mutual silence.

They seemed to scatter, but secretly they worked together. The solitary silence of the temple lured me far away from men to the supernatural mysteries in which I lost myself to the point of surfeit. And while I struggled with God, the devil prepared himself for my reception, and tore me just as far to his side. There, too, I found no boundaries other than surfeit and disgust. I did not live, but was driven; I was a slave to my ideals.

And thus they stood there, the ruins, quarreling with one another and unable to reconcile themselves to their common misery Within myself I had become one as a natural being, but I was a hobgoblin91 who frightened the solitary wanderer, and who avoided the places of men.

But I greened and bloomed from within myself I had still not become a man again who carried within himself the conflict between a longing for the world and a longing for the spirit. I did not live either of these longings, but I lived myself and was a merrily greening tree in a remote spring forest. And thus I learned to live without the world and spirit; and I was amazed how well I could live like this.

But what about men, what about mankind? There they stood, the two deserted bridges that should lead across to mankind: one leads from above to below, and men glide down on it, which pleases them. / The other leads from below to above and mankind groans upward on it. This causes them trouble. We drive our fellow men to trouble and joy If I myself do not live, but merely climb, it gives others undeserved pleasure.

If I simply enjoy myself it causes others undeserved trouble. If I merely live, I am far removed from men. They no longer see me, and when they see me, they are astonished and shocked. I myself however, quite simply living, greening, blooming, fading, stand like a tree always in the same spot and let the suffering and the joy of men pass over me with equanimity And yet I am a man who cannot excuse himself from the discord of the human heart.

But my ideals can also be my dogs, whose yapping and squabbling do not disturb me. But at least then I am a good and a bad dog to men. But I have not yet achieved what should be, namely that I live and yet am a man.

It seems to be nearly impossible to live as a man. As long as you are not conscious of yourself you can live; but if you become conscious of your self you fall from one grave into another. All your rebirths could ultimately make you sick. The Buddha therefore finally gave up on rebirth, for he had had enough of crawling through all human and animal forms.

After all the rebirths you still remain the lion crawling on the earth, the Chameleon, a caricature, one prone to changing colors, a crawling shimmering lizard, but precisely not a lion, whose nature is related to the sun, who draws his power from within himself who does not crawl around in the protective colors of the environment, and who does not defend himself by going into hiding.

I recognized the chameleon and no longer want to crawl on the earth and change colors and be reborn; instead I want to exist from my own force, like the
sun which gives light and does not suck light. That belongs to the earth. I recall my solar nature and would like to rush to my rising. But ruins stand in my way They say: “With regard to men you should be this or that.” My chameleonesque skin shudders.

They obtrude upon me and want to color me. But that should no longer be. Neither good nor evil shall be my masters. I push them aside, the laughable survivors, and go on my way again, which leads me to the East. The quarreling powers that for so long stood between me and myself lie behind me.

Henceforth I’m completely alone. I can no longer say to you: “Listen!” or “you should,” or “you could,” but now I talk only with myself Now no one else can do anything more for me, nothing whatsoever. I no longer have a duty toward you, and you no longer have duties toward me, since I vanish and you vanish from me.

I no longer hear requests and no longer make requests of you. I no longer fight and reconcile myself with you, but place silence between you and me.
Your call dies away in the distance, and you cannot find my footprints. Together with the west wind, which comes from the plains of the ocean, I journey across the green countryside, I roam through the forests, and bend the young grass.

I talk with trees and the forest wildlife, and the stones show me the way When I thirst and the source does not come to me, I go to the source. When I starve and the bread does not come to me, I seek my bread and take it where I find it. I provide no help and need no help. If at any time necessity confronts me, I do not look around to see whether there is a helper nearby, but I accept the necessity and bend and writhe and struggle. I laugh, I weep, I swear, but I do not look around me.

On this way, no one walks behind me, and I cross no one’s path. I am alone, but I fill my solitariness with my life. I am man enough, I am noise, conversation, comfort, and help enough unto myself. And so I wander to the far East. Not that I know anything about what my distant goal might be. I see blue horizons before me: they suffice as a goal. I hurry toward the East and my rising-I will my rising. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Pages 275-27

Carl Jung: The myth commences, the one that need only be lived,

The myth commences, the one that need only be lived, not sung, the one that sings itself I subject myself to the son, the one engendered by sorcery, the unnaturally born, the son of the frogs, who stands at the waterside and speaks with his fathers and listens to their nocturnal singing. Truly he is full of mysteries and superior in strength to all men. No man has produced him, and no woman has given birth to him.

The absurd has entered the age-old mother, and the son has grown in the deepest ground. He sprang up and was put to death. He rose again, was produced anew in the way of sorcery; and grew more swiftly than before. I gave him the crown that unites the separated. And so he unites the separated for me. I gave him the power and thus he commands, since he is superior in strength and cleverness to all others.

I did not give way to him willingly, but out of insight. No man binds Above and Below together. But he who did not grow like a man, and yet has the form of a man, is capable of binding them. My power is paralyzed, but I survive in my son. I set aside my concern that he may master the people. I am solitary; the people rejoice at him. I was powerful, now I am powerless. I was strong, now I am weak. Since then he has taken all the strength into himself.

Everything has turned itself upside down for me. I loved the beauty of the beautiful, the spirit of those rich in spirit, the strength of the strong; I laughed at the stupidity of the stupid, I despised the weakness of the weak, the meanness of the mean, and hated the badness of the bad.

But now I must love the beauty of the ugly, the spirit of the foolish, and the strength of the weak. I must admire the stupidity of the clever, must respect the weakness of the strong and the meanness of the generous, and honor the goodness of the bad. Where does that leave mockery; contempt, and hatred?

They went over to the son as a token of power. His mockery is bloody, and how contemptuously his eyes flash! His hatred is a singing fire! Enviable one, you son of the Gods, how can one fail to obey you? He broke me in two, he cut me up. He yokes the separated. Without him I would fall apart, but my life went on with him. My love remained with me. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 329

Image: Prometheus (1868) by Gustave Moreau. The myth of Prometheus, first attested by Hesiodus, later became the basis of a trilogy of tragedy plays, possibly by Aeschylus, consisting of Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Unbound and Prometheus Pyrphoros

Carl Jung: And life stands above love. But love is the inescapable mother of life.

One can speak in beautiful words about love, but about life?

And life stands above love. But love is the inescapable mother of life.

Life should never be forced into love, but love into life. May love be subject to torment, but not life.

As long as love goes pregnant with life, it should be respected; but if it has given birth to life from itself it has turned into an empty sheath and expires into transience.

I speak against the mother who bore me,

I speak no more for the sake of love, but for the sake of life.

The word has become heavy for me, and it barely wrestles itself free of the soul.

Bronze doors have shut. Fires have burned out and sunk into ashes. Wells have been drained and where there were seas there is dry land.

My tower stands in the desert.

Happy is he who can be a hermit in his own desert. He survives. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 327.

Archetypal lovers Romeo and Juliet portrayed by Frank Dicksee

Carl Jung on "Christianity" in The Red Book - Anthology

To the extent that the Christianity of this time lacks madness, it lacks divine life. Take note of what the ancients taught us in images madness is divine. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 238.

May it suffice in terms of transgression that you do not imitate Christ, since thereby you take a step back from Christianity and a step beyond it. Christ brought salvation through adeptness, and ineptitude will save you. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Pages 297.

What seeks to distance you from Christianity and its holy rule of love are the dead, who could find no peace in the Lord since their uncompleted work has followed them. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Pages 297.

I think of Christianity in the desert. Physically, those ancients went into the desert. Did they also enter into the desert of their own self? Or was their self not as barren and desolate as mine? There they wrestled with the devil. I wrestle with waiting. It seems to me not less since it is truly a hot hell ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Footnote 74, Page 236.

You still have to learn this, to succumb to no temptation, but to do every~ thing of your own will; then you will be free and beyond Christianity. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 235.

It is better to be thrown into visible chains than into invisible ones. You can certainly leave Christianity but it does not leave you. Your liberation from it is delusion. Christ is the way. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 293.

I: "But don't you think that Christianity could ultimately be a transformation of your Egyptian teachings?"

Anchorite: "If you say that our old teachings were less adequate expressions of Christianity, then I'm more likely to agree with you." ~Carl Jung and the Anchorite, Liber Novus, Page 272.

The Draft continues: "My friends, as you can see, mercy is granted to the developed, not the childish. I thank my God for this message. Do not let the teachings of Christianity deceive you! Its teachings are good for the most mature minds of bygone time. Today, it serves immature minds. Christianity no longer promises us grace, and yet we still need mercy. That which I tell you is the way of what is to come, my way to mercy" (p. 27). ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 234, Footnote 60

Black Book 2 continues: "I think of Christianity in the desert. Physically, those ancients went into the desert. Did they also enter into the desert of their own self? Or was their self not as barren and desolate as mine? There they wrestled with the devil. I wrestle with waiting. It seems to me not less since it is truly a hot hell" (p. 35). ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 236, Footnote 74

Carl Jung on “Elijah” The Red Book – Anthology

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.

Now that white shape of a girl with black hair-my own soul-and now that white shape of a man, which also appeared to me at the time it resembles Michelangelo's sitting Moses-it is Elijah. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Pages 248-9, Footnote 187.

Salome is represented as the daughter of Elijah, thus expressing the order of succession. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 365.

Now that white shape of a girl with black hair-my own soul-and now that white shape of a man, which also appeared to me at the time it resembles Michelangelo's sitting Moses-it is Elijah. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Pages 248-9, Footnote 187.

S: "You do me wrong. Elijah is my father, and he knows the deepest mysteries. The walls of his house are made of precious stones. His wells hold healing water and his eyes see the things of the future. And what wouldn't you give for a single look into the infinite unfolding of what is to come? Are these not worth a sin for you?" ~Salome to Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 246.

E: "She loved the prophet who announced the new God to the world. She loved him, do you understand that? For she is my daughter." ~Elijah to Carl Jung on Salome, Liber Novus, Page 246

I: "What my eyes see is exactly what I cannot grasp. You, Elijah, who are a prophet, the mouth of God, and she, a bloodthirsty horror. You are the symbol of the most extreme contradiction."

E: "We are real and not symbols." ~Elijah to Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 246.

Apart from Elijah and Salome I found the serpent as a third principle. It is a stranger to both principles although it is associated with both. The serpent taught me the unconditional difference in essence between the two principles in me. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 247.

The place where Elijah and Salome live together is a dark space and a bright one. The dark space is the space of forethinking. It is dark so he who lives there requires vision. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 247.

A thinker who descends in to his fore thinking finds his next step leading into the garden of Salome. Therefore the thinker fears his forethought, although he lives on the foundation of fore thinking. The visible surface is safer than the underground. Thinking protects against the way of error, and therefore it leads to petrification. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 248.

A thinker should fear Salome, since she wants his head, especially if he is a holy man. A thinker cannot be a holy person, otherwise he loses his head. It does not help to hide oneself in thought. There the solidification overtakes you. You must turn back to motherly forethought to obtain renewal. But forethought leads to Salome. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 248.

Because I was a thinker and caught sight of the hostile principle of pleasure from forethinking, it appeared to me as Salome. If I had been one who felt, and had groped my way toward forethinking, then it would have appeared to me as a serpent-encoiled daimon, if I had actually seen it. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 248.

In the garden it had to become apparent to me that I loved Salome. This recognition struck me, since I had not thought it. What a thinker does not think he believes does not exist, and what one who feels does not feel he believes does not exist. You begin to have a presentiment of the whole when you embrace your opposite principle, since the whole belongs to both principles, which grow from one root. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 248.

He [Elijah] said I treated thoughts as if I generated them myself, but, according to his views, thoughts were like animals in a forest, or people in a room, or birds in the air. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 103

“Philemon” in The Red Book – Anthology

Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 183.

While I stood before the bed of the Old Man, I thought and felt: “I am not worthy Lord.” I know Him very well: He was my "guru" more than 30 years ago a real ghostly guru-but that is a long and-I am afraid-exceedingly strange story. It has been since confirmed to me by an old Hindu. You see, something has taken me out of Europe and the Occident and has opened for me the gates of the East as well, so that I should understand something of the human mind. ~Carl Jung on his vision of Philemon, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 490-493.

True joy is simple it comes and exists from itself and is not to be sought here and there. At the risk of encountering black night, you must devote yourself to me and seek no joy. Joy can never ever be prepared, but exists of its own accord or exists not at all. All you must do is fulfill your task nothing else. Joy comes from fulfillment, but not from longing. ~Philemon to Carl Jung; The Red Book; Page 341

Joy comes from fulfillment, but not from longing. ~Philemon to Carl Jung; The Red Book, Page 341.

Who exhausts the mystery of love? …
There are those who love men, and those who love the souls of men, and those who love their own soul. Such a one is Philemon, the host of the Gods. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 315.

Your awe-inspiring life shows how everyone would have to take their own life into their own hands, faithful to their own essence and their own love. ~Philemon to the “Shade” [Christ], The Red Book, Page 356.

You may call me death-death that rose with the sun. I come with quiet pain and long peace. I lay the cover of protection on you. In the midst of life begins death. I lay cover upon cover upon you so that your warmth will never cease. ~A Dark Form to Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 355.

"One is the beginning, the Sun God.
"Two is Eros, for he binds two together and spreads himself out in brightness.
"Three is the Tree of Life, for it fills space with bodies.
"Four is the devil, for he opens all that is closed. He dissolves everything formed and physical; he is the destroyer in whom everything becomes nothing. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, 351.

Good and evil unite in the growth of the tree. In their divinity life and love stand opposed. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 351.

The growing one is the TREE OF LIFE. It greens by heaping up growing living matter. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 351.

The sexuality of man is more earthly, that of woman is more spiritual. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 352.

You are no Christian and no pagan, but a hospitable inhospitable one, a host of the Gods, a survivor, an eternal one, the father of all eternal wisdom. ~Carl Jung to Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 315.

Christ has made men desirous, for ever since they expect gifts from their saviors without any service in return. Giving is as childish as power. He who gives presumes himself powerful. The virtue of giving is the sky-blue mantle of the tyrant. You are wise, Oh Philemon, you do not give. You want your garden to bloom, and for everything to grow from within itself. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 316.

You are blessed, virgin soul, praised be your name. You are the chosen one among women. You are the God-bearer. Praise be to you! Honor and fame be yours in eternity. ~Philemon to Carl Jung’s Soul, Liber Novus, Page 344.

God is not dead. He is as alive as ever. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 348.

God is creation, for he is something definite, and therefore differentiated from the Pleroma. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 348.

God is a quality of the Pleroma, and everything I have said about creation also applies to him. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 348.

Moreover, God is the Pleroma itself, just as each smallest point in the created and uncreated is the Pleroma itself. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 348.

Everything that differentiation takes out of the Pleroma is a pair of opposites, therefore the devil always belongs to God. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 348.

Fullness and emptiness, generation and destruction, are what distinguish God and the devil. Effectiveness is common to both. Effectiveness joins them. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 349.

Effectiveness, therefore, stands above both, and is a God above God, since it unites fullness and emptiness through its effectuality. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 349.

Thus I saw that the lover survives, and that he is the one who unwittingly grants hospitality to the Gods. ~Carl Jung to Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 315

Carl Jung on the “Dark” in The Red Book – Anthology

Through comprehending the dark, the nocturnal, the abyssal in you, you become utterly simple. And you prepare to sleep through the millennia like everyone else, and you sleep down into the womb of the millennia, and your walls resound with ancient temple chants. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 267.

Oh master of the garden! I see your dark tree from afar in the shimmering sun. My street leads to the valleys where men live. I am a wandering beggar. And I remain silent. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 316.

When I comprehended my darkness, a truly magnificent night came over me and my dream plunged me into the depths of the millennia, and rom my phoenix ascended. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 274.

Into what mist and darkness does your path lead? … I limp after you on crutches of understanding. I am a man and you stride like a God. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 234.

You may call me death-death that rose with the sun. I come with quiet pain and long peace. I lay the cover of protection on you. In the midst of life begins death. I lay cover upon cover upon you so that your warmth will never cease. ~A Dark Form to Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 355.

Nothing makes this effect clearer than the serpent. It signifies everything dangerous and everything bad, everything nocturnal and uncanny, which adheres to Logos as well as to Eros, so long as they can work as the dark and unrecognized principles of the unconscious spirit. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 365.

On the night when I considered the essence of the God, I became aware of an image: I lay in a dark depth. An old man stood before me. He looked like one of the old prophets. A black serpent lay at his feet. Some distance away I saw a house with columns. A beautiful maiden steps out of the door. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 245.

In the renewed world you can have no outer possessions, unless you create them out of yourselves. You can enter only into your own mysteries. The spirit of the depths has other things to teach you than me. I only have to bring you tidings of the new God and of the ceremonies and mysteries of his service. But this is the way. It is the gate to darkness. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, "Draft" Footnote 163, Page 246.

The black beetle is the death that is necessary for renewal; and so thereafter, a new sun glowed, the sun of the depths, full of riddles, a sun of the night. And as the rising sun of spring quickens the dead earth, so the sun of the depths quickened the dead, and thus began the terrible struggle between light and darkness. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 238.

The three days descent into Hell during death describes the sinking of the vanished value into the unconscious, where, by conquering the power of darkness, it establishes a new order, and then rises up to heaven again, that is, attains supreme clarity of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Footnote 135, Page 243.

That is the ambiguity of the God: he is born from a dark ambiguity and rises to a bright ambiguity. Unequivocalness is simplicity and leads to death. But ambiguity is the way of life. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 244.

Take your God with you. Bear him down to your dark land where people live who rub their eyes each morning and yet always see only the same thing and never anything else. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 283.

My God, I love you as a mother loves the unborn whom she carries in her heart. Grow in the egg of the East, nourish yourself from my love, drink the juice of my life so that you will become a radiant God. We need your light, oh child. Since we go in darkness, light up our paths. May your light shine before us, may your fire warm the coldness of our life. We do not need your power but life. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 286.

The God suffers when man does not accept his darkness. Consequently men must have a suffering God, so long as they suffer from evil. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 287

The word created the world and came before the world. It lit up like a light in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 271.

The devil is the sum of the darkness of human nature. He who lives in the light strives toward being the image of God; he who lives in the dark strives toward being the image of the devil. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 322.

The place where Elijah and Salome live together is a dark space and a bright one. The dark space is the space of forethinking. It is dark so he who lives there requires vision. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 247.

We must regenerate ourselves. But as the creation of a God is a creative act of highest love, the restoration of our human life signifies an act of the Below. This is a great and dark mystery. Man cannot accomplish this act solely by himself but is assisted by evil, which does it instead of man. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 291.

But your darkness should grasp the light. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 270

And thus the word should become what the darkness can comprehend, since what use is the light if the darkness does not comprehend it? ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 270

Philemon: Sustain yourself from me, so that life and speech will be yours.

And when she spoke these words, she raised her voice and evoked the dead in my name:

“You dead, I call you.

“You shades of the departed, who have cast off the torment of living, come here.

“My blood, the juice of my life, will be your meal and your drink.

“Sustain yourself from me, so that life and speech will be yours.

“Come, you dark and restless ones, I will refresh you with my blood, the blood of a living one so that you will gain speech and life, in me and through me.

“The God forces me to address this prayer to you so that you come to life. Too long have we left you alone.

“Let us build the bond of community so that the living and the dead image will become one and the past will live on in the present.

“Our desire pulls us to the living world and we are lost in our desire.

“Come drink the living blood, drink your fill so that we will be saved from the inextinguishable and unrelenting power of vivid longing for visible, graspable, and present being.

“Drink from our blood the desire that begets evil, as quarrel, discord, ugliness, violent deed, and famishment.

“Take, eat, this is my body, that lives for you. Take, eat, drink, this is my blood, whose desire flows for you.
“Come, celebrate a Last Supper with me for your redemption and mine.

“I need community with you so that I fall prey neither to the community of the living nor to my desire and yours, whose envy is insatiable and therefore begets evil.

“Help me, so that I do not forget that my desire is a sacrificial
fire for you.

“You are my community. I live what I can live for the living. But the excess of my longing belongs to you, you shades. We need to live with you.

“Be auspicious to us and open our closed spirit so that we become blessed with the redeeming light. May it happen thus!”

When the dead one had ended this prayer, she turned to me again and said:

“Great is the need of the dead. But the God needs no sacrificial prayer. He has neither goodwill nor ill will. He is kind and fearful, though not actually so, but only seems to you thus. But the dead hear your prayers since they are still of human nature and not free of goodwill and ill will. Do you not understand? The history of humanity is older and wiser than you. Was there a time when there were no dead? Vain deception! Only recently have men begun to forget the dead and to think that they have now begun the real life, sending them into a frenzy.”
.
{5} When the dead one had uttered all these words, she disappeared. I sank into gloominess and dull confusion. When I looked up again, I saw my soul in the upper realms, hovering irradiated by the distant brilliance that streamed from the Godhead. And I called out:

“You know what has taken place. You see that it surpasses the power and understanding of a man. But I accept it for your sake and mine. To be crucified on the tree of life, Oh bitterness! Oh painful silence! If it weren’t you, my soul, who touched the fiery Heaven and the eternal fullness, how could I?

“I cast myself before human animals-Oh most unmanly torment! I must let my virtues, my best ability be torn apart, because they are still thorns in the side of the human animal. Not death for the sake of the best, but befouling and rending of the most beautiful for the sake of life.

”Alas, is there nowhere a salutary deception to protect me from having the Last Supper with my carcass? The dead want to live from me.

“Why did you see me as the one to drink the cess of humanity that poured out of Christendom? Haven’t you had enough of beholding the fiery fullness, my soul? Do you still want to fly entire into the glaring white light of the Godhead? Into what shades of horror are you plunging me? Is the devil’s pool so deep that its mud sullies even your glowing robe?

“Where do you get the right to do me such a foul deed? Let the beaker of disgusting filth pass from me.62 But if this be not your will, then climb past fiery Heaven and lodge your charges and topple the throne of God, the dreadful, proclaim the right of men also before the Gods and take revenge on them for the infamous deed of humanity; since only Gods are able to spur on the human worm63 to acts of colossal atrocity. Let my fate suffice and let men manage human destiny

“Oh my mother humanity; thrust the terrible worm of God, the strangler of men, from you. Do not venerate him for the sake of his terrible poison-a drop suffices-and what is a drop to him-who at the same time is all emptiness and all fullness?”

As I proclaimed these words, I noticed that DIAHMON stood behind me and had given them to me. He came alongside me invisibly, and I felt the presence of the good and the beautiful. And he spoke to me with a soft deep voice:

“Remove, Oh man, the divine, too, from your soul, as far as you can manage. What a devilish farce she carries on with you, as long as she still arrogates divine power over you! She’s an unruly child and a bloodthirsty daimon at the same time, a tormentor of humans without equal, precisely because she has divinity. Why?

Where from? Because you venerate her. The dead too want the same thing. Why don’t they stay quiet? Because they have not crossed over to the other side. Why do they want sacrifice? So they can live. But why do they still want to live with men? Because they want to rule. They have not come to an end with their craving for power, since they died still lusting for power. A child, an old man, an evil woman, a spirit of the dead, and a devil are beings who need to be humored. Fear the soul, despise her, love her, just like the Gods. May they be far from us!

But above all never lose them! Because when lost they are as malicious as the serpent, as bloodthirsty as the tiger that pounces on the unsuspecting from behind. A man who goes astray becomes an animal, a lost soul becomes a devil. Cling to the soul with love, fear, contempt, and hate, and don’t let her out of your sight. She is a hellish-divine treasure to be kept behind walls of iron and in the deepest vault. She always wants to get out and scatter glittering beauty.

Beware, because you have already been betrayed! You’ll never find a more disloyal, more cunning and heinous woman than your soul. How should I praise the miracle of her beauty and perfection? Does she not stand in the brilliance of immortal youth? Is her love not intoxicating wine and her wisdom the
primordial cleverness of serpents?

“Shield men from her, and her from men. Listen to what she wails and sings in prison but don’t let her escape, as she will immediately turn whore. As her husband you are blessed through her, and therefore cursed. She belongs to the daimonic race of the Tom Thumbs and giants, and is only distantly related to humankind.

If you seek to grasp her in human terms you will be beside yourself The excess of your rage, your doubt, and your love belong to her, but only the excess. If you give her this excess, humanity will be saved from the nightmare. For if you do not see your soul, you see her in fellow men and this will drive you mad, since this devilish mystery and hellish spook can hardly be seen through.

“Look at man, the weal( one in his wretchedness and torment, whom the Gods have singled out as their quarry-tear to pieces the bloody veil that the lost soul has woven around man, the cruel nets woven by the death-bringing, and take hold of the divine whore who still cannot recover from her fall from grace and craves filth and power in raving blindness. Lock her up like a lecherous bitch who would like to mingle her blood with every dirty cur. Capture her, may enough at last be enough. Let her for once taste your torment so that she will get to feel man and his hammer, which he has wrested from the Gods.

“May man rule in the human world. May his laws be valid. But treat the souls, daimons, and Gods in their way; offering what is demanded. But burden no man, demand and expect nothing from him, with what your devil-souls and God-souls lead you to believe, but endure and remain silent and do piously what befits
your kind. You should act not on the other but on yoursel£ unless the other asks for your help or opinion. Do you understand what the other does? Never-how should you? Does the other understand what you do?

Whence do you take the right to think about the other and act on him? You have neglected yourself your garden is full of weeds, and you want to teach your neighbor about order and provide evidence for his shortcomings.

“Why should you keep silent about the others? Because there would be plenty to discuss concerning your own daimons. But if you act on and think about the other without him soliciting your opinion or advice, you do so because you cannot distinguish yourself from your soul. Therefore you fall victim to her presumption and help her into whoring. Or do you believe that you must lend your human power to the soul or the Gods, or even that it will be useful and pious work if you want to bring the Gods to bear on others?

Blinded one, that is Christian presumptuousness. The Gods don’t need your help, you laughable idolater, who seem to yourself like a God and want to form, improve, rebuke, educate, and create men. Are you perfect yourself?-therefore remain silent, mind your business, and behold your inadequacy every day.

You are most in need of your own help; you should keep your opinions and good advice ready for yourself and not run to others like a whore with understanding and the desire to help. You don’t need to play God. What are daimons, who don’t act out of themselves? So let them go to work, but not through you, or else you yourself will become a daimon to others; leave them to themselves and don’t pre-empt them with awkward love, concern, care, advice, and other presumptions. Otherwise you would be doing the work of the daimons; you yourself would become a daimon and therefore go into a frenzy. But the daimons are pleased at the raving of helpless men advising and striving to help others.

So stay quiet, fulfill the cursed work of redemption on yourself for then the daimons must torment themselves and in the same way all your fellow men, who do not distinguish themselves from their souls and let themselves be mocked by daimons. Is it cruel to leave your blinded fellow human beings to their own devices?

It would be cruel if you could open their eyes. But you could open their eyes only if they solicited your opinion and help. Yet if they do not, they do not need your help. If you force your help on them nonetheless, you become their daimon and increase their blindness, since you set a bad example. Draw the coat of patience and silence over your head, sit down, and leave the daimon to accomplish his work. If he brings something about, he will work wonders. Thus will you sit under fruit-bearing trees.

“Know that the daimons would like to inflame you to embrace their work, which is not yours. And, you fool, you believe that it is you and that it is your work. Why? Because you can’t distinguish yourself from your soul. But you are distinct from her, and you should not pursue whoring with other souls as if you yourself were a soul, but instead you are a powerless man who needs all his force for his own completion.

Why do you look to the other? What you see in him lies neglected in yourself You should be the guard before the prison of your soul. You are your soul’s eunuch, who protects her from Gods and men, or protects the Gods and men from her. Power is given to the weak man, a poison that paralyzes even the Gods, like a poison sting bestowed upon the little bee whose force is far inferior to yours.

Your soul could seize this poison and thereby endanger even the Gods. So put the soul under wraps, distinguish yourself from her, since not only your fellow men but also the Gods must live.” ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Pages 342-343

Philemon: I want to emboss you like a coin

From there on the voices of the depths remained silent for a whole year.

Again in summer, when I was out on the water alone, I saw an osprey plunge down not far from me; he seized a large fish and rose up into the skies again clutching it.

I heard the voice of my soul, and she spoke: “That is a sign that what is below is borne upward.”

Soon after this on an autumn night I heard the voice of an old man (and this time I knew that it was Philemon.

He said: I want to turn you around.

I want to master you.

I want to emboss you like a coin.

I want to do business with you. One should buy and sell you.

You should pass from hand to hand. Self-willing is not for you.

You are the will of the whole. Gold is no master out of its own will and yet it rules the whole, despised and greedily demanded, an inexorable ruler: it lies and waits.

He who sees it longs for it.

It does not follow one around, but lies silently, with a brightly gleaming countenance, self-sufficient, a king that needs no proof of its power.

Everyone seeks after it, few find it, but even the smallest piece is highly esteemed.

It neither gives nor squanders itself Everyone takes it where he finds it, and anxiously ensures that he doesn’t lose the smallest part of it.

Everyone denies that he depends on it, and yet he secretly stretches out his hand longingly toward it. Must gold prove its necessity?

It is proven through the longing of men.

Ask it: who takes me? He who takes it, has it. Gold does not stir.

It sleeps and shines. Its brilliance confuses the senses.

Without a word, it promises everything that men deem desirable.

It ruins those to be ruined and helps those on the rise to ascend.

A blazing hoard is piled up, it awaits the taker.

What tribulations do men not take upon themselves for the sake of gold?

It waits and does not shorten their tribulations-the greater the tribulations, the greater the trouble, the more esteemed it is.

It grows from underground, from the molten lava.

It slowly exudes, hidden in veins and rocks. Man exerts all cunning to dig it out, to raise it.”

But I called out dismayed: “What ambiguous speech, Oh Philmon!”

But DIAHMON continued: “Not only to teach, but also to disavow, or why then did I teach?

If I do not teach, I do not have to disavow.

But if I have taught, I must disavow thereafter.

For if I teach, I must give others what they should have taken.

What he acquires is good, but the gift that was not acquired is bad.

To waste oneself means: to want to suppress many.

Deceitfulness surrounds the giver because his own enterprise is deceitful.

He is forced to revoke his gift and to deny his virtue.

The burden of silence is not greater than the burden of my self that I would like to load onto you.

Therefore I speak and I teach.

May the listener defend himself against my ruse, by means of which I burden him.

The best truth is also such a skillful deception that I also entangle myself in it as long as I do not realize the worth of a successful ruse.”

And I was startled again and cried: “Oh Philemon, men have deceived themselves about you, therefore you deceive them.

But he who fathoms you, fathoms himself”

But DIAHMON fell silent and retired into the shimmering cloud of uncertainty.

He left me to my thoughts.

And it occurred to me that high barriers would still need to be erected between men, less to protect them against mutual burdens than against mutual virtues.

It seemed to me as if the so-called Christian morality of our time made for mutual enchantment.

How can anyone bear the burden of the other, if it is still the highest that one can expect from a man, that he at least bears his own burden. But sin probably resides in enchantment.

If I accept self forgetting virtue, I make myself the selfish tyrant of the other, and I am thus also forced to surrender myself again in order to make another my master, which always leaves me with a bad impression and is not to the other’s advantage.

Admittedly, this interplay underpins society, but the soul of the individual becomes damaged since man thus learns always to live from the other instead of from himself It appears to me that, if one is capable, one should not surrender oneself as that induces, indeed even forces, the other to do likewise.

But what happens if everyone surrenders themselves?

That would be folly Not that it would be a beautiful or a pleasant thing to live with one’s self but it serves the redemption of the self Incidentally, can one give oneself up?

With this one becomes one’s own slave.

That is the opposite of accepting oneself If one becomes one’s own slave-and this happens to everyone who surrenders himself-one is lived by the self One does not live one’s self; it lives itself.

The self-forgetting virtue is an unnatural alienation from one’s own essence, which is thus deprived of development.

It is a sin to deliberately alienate the other from his self by means of one’s own virtuousness, for example, through saddling oneself with his burden.

This sin rebounds on us.

It is submission enough, amply enough, if we subjugate ourselves to our self The work of redemption is always first to be done on ourselves, if one dare utter such a great word. This work cannot be done without love for ourselves.

Must it be done at all? Certainly not, if one can endure their given condition and does not feel in need of redemption.

The tiresome feeling of needing redemption can finally become too much for one.

Then one seeks to rid oneself of it and thus enters into the work of redemption.

It appears to me that we benefit in particular from removing every sense of beauty from the thought of redemption, and even need to do so, or else we will deceive ourselves again because we like the word and because a beautiful shimmer spreads out over the thing through the great word.

But one can at least doubt whether the work of redemption is in itself a beautiful thing.

The Romans did not find the hanged Jew exactly tasteful, and the gloomy excessive enthusiasm for catacombs around which cheap, barbaric symbols gathered probably lacked a pleasant shimmer in their eyes, given that their perverse curiosity for everything barbaric and subterranean had already been aroused.

I think it would be most correct and most decent to say that one blunders into the work of redemption unintentionally; so to speak, if one wants to avoid what appears to be the unbearable evil of an insurmountable feeling of needing redemption.

This step into the work of redemption is neither beautiful nor pleasant nor does it divulge an inviting appearance.

And the thing itself is so difficult and full of torment that one should count oneself as one of the sick and not as one of the over healthy who seek to impart their abundance to others.

Consequently we should also not use the other for our own supposed redemption.

The other is no stepping stone for our feet.

It is far better that we remain with ourselves.

The need for redemption rather expresses itself through an increased need for love with which we think we can make the other happy.

But meanwhile we are brimming with longing and desire to alter our own condition.

And we love others to this end.

If we had already achieved our purpose, the other would leave us cold.

But it is true that we also need the other for our own redemption.

Perhaps he will lend us his help voluntarily; since we are in a state of sickness and helplessness. Our love for him is, and should not be, selfless. That would be a lie.

For its goal is our own redemption.

Selfless love is true only as long as the demand of the self can be pushed to one side.

But someday comes the turn of the self Who would want to lend himself to such a self for love?

Certainly only one who does not yet know what excess of bitterness, injustice, and poison the self of a man harbors who has forgotten his self and made a virtue of it. In terms of the self selfless love is a veritable sin.

We must presumably often go to ourselves to re-establish the connection with the self since it is torn apart all too often, not only by our vices but also by our virtues.

For vices as well as virtues always want to live outside. But through constant outer life we forget the self and through this we also become secretly selfish in our best endeavors.What we neglect in ourselves blends itself secretly into our actions toward others.

Through uniting with the self we reach the God.

I must say this, not with reference to the opinions of the ancients or this or that authority; but because I have experienced it.

It has happened thus in me.

And it certainly happened in a way that I neither expected nor wished for.

The experience of the God in this form was unexpected and unwanted.

I wish I could say it was a deception and only too willingly would I disown this experience.

But I cannot deny that it has seized me beyond all measure and steadily goes on working in me.

So if it is a deception, then deception is my God.

Moreover, the God is in the deception. And if this were already the greatest bitterness that could happen to me, I would have to confess to this experience and recognize the God in it.

No insight or objection is so strong that it could surpass the strength of this experience.

And even if the God had revealed himself in a meaningless abomination, I could only avow that I have experienced the God in it.

I even know that it is not too difficult to cite a theory that would sufficiently explain my experience and join it to the already known.

I could furnish this theory myself and be satisfied in intellectual terms, and yet this theory would be unable to remove even the smallest part of the knowledge that I have experienced the God.

I recognize the God by the unshakeableness of the experience.

I cannot help but recognize him by the experience.

I do not want to believe it, I do not need to believe it, nor could I believe it.

How can one believe such? My mind would need to be totally confused to believe such things. Given their nature, they are most improbable.

Not only improbable but also impossible for our understanding.

Only a sick brain could produce such deceptions.

I am like those sick persons who have been overcome by delusion and sensory deception.

But I must say that the God makes us sick.

I experience the God in sickness.

A living God afflicts our reason like a sickness. He fills the soul with intoxication.

He :fills us with reeling chaos.

How many will the God break?

The God appears to us in a certain state of the soul.

Therefore we reach the God through the self Not the self is God, although we reach the God through the self.

The God is behind the self above the self the self itsel£ when he appears.

But he appears as our sickness, from which we must heal ourselves.

We must heal ourselves from the God, since he is also our heaviest wound.

For in the first instance the God’s power resides entirely in the self since the self is completely in the God, because we were not with the self We must draw the self to our side. Therefore we must wrestle with the God for the self Since the God is an unfathomable powerful movement that sweeps away the self into the boundless, into issolution. Hence when the God appears to us we are at first powerless, captivated, divided, sick, poisoned with the strongest poison, but drunk with the highest health.

Yet we cannot remain in this state, since all the powers of our body are consumed like fat in the flames.

Hence we must strive to free the self from the God, so that we can live.

It is certainly possible and even quite easy for our reason to deny the God and to speak only of sickness.

Thus we accept the sick.part and can also heal it.

But it will be a healing with loss. We lose a part of life. We go on living, but as ones lamed by the God. Where the fire blazed dead ashes lie.

I believe that we have the choice: I preferred the living wonders of the God.

I daily weigh up my whole life and I continue to regard the fiery brilliance of the God as a higher and fuller life than the ashes of rationality.

The ashes are suicide to me.

I could perhaps put out the fire but I cannot deny to myself the experience of the God.

Nor can I cut myself off from this experience.

I also do not want to, since I want to live. My life wants itself whole.

Therefore I must serve my self I must win it in this way. But I must win it so that my life will become whole.

For it seems to me to be sinful to deform life where there is yet the possibility to live it fully.

The service of the self is therefore divine service and the service of mankind.

If I carry myself I relieve mankind of myself and heal my self from the God.

I must free my self from the God, since the God I experienced is more than love; he is also hate, he is more than beauty, he is also the abomination, he is more than wisdom, he is also meaninglessness, he is more than power, he is also powerlessness, he is more than omnipresence, he is also my creature. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Pages 337-339