Carl Jung Quotations 15

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of course it is quite useful to us to have the idea that our thoughts are free expressions of our intentional thinking, otherwise we would never be free from the magic circle of nature. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 82

After all, we really can think, even if not with an absolute independence from nature; but it is the duty of the psychologist to make the double statement, and while admitting man’s power of thought, to insist also on the fact that he is trapped in his own skin, and therefore always has his thinking influenced by nature in a way he cannot wholly control. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 83

The legend says of the I Ching that a horse came up out of the Yellow River bearing on his back the trigrams out of which the symbols are built up. The sages copied it and it was known as the River Map. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 83

We do not think thus, and so we no longer take our thoughts as nature; the very way thought processes work in us keeps us from the notion that nature has spoken to us when we have thought. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page83

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carl Jung Quotations 16

Analysis should release an experience that grips us or falls upon us as from above, an experience that has substance and body such as those things which occurred to the ancients. If I were going to symbolize it I would choose the Annunciation. ~Carl Jung, Seminar 1925, p. 111.

If we release the energy of the collective unconscious until we have no more, then we arrive at differentiation. The archetypes are sources of energy. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 99

If people who have no views of life catch hold of an archetypal idea, say a religious idea, they become efficient. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 99

Moral views do not touch the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 99

Within the realm of willpower we have choice, but beyond that no choice at all. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 99

As I am an introverted intellectual my anima contains feeling [that is] quite blind. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 100

In my case the anima contains not only Salome, but some of the serpent, which is sensation as well. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 100

With Freud, the unconscious is always pouring out unacceptable material into the conscious, and the conscious has difficulty in taking up this material and represses it, and there is no balance. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 100

In the history of Gnosis, this figure plays a great role, and every sect claims to have been founded by such a one. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 101

When you think of a snake, you are always in touch with racial instinct. Horses and monkeys have snake phobia, as man has. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 102

The serpent shows the way to hidden things and expresses the introverting libido, which leads man to go beyond the point of safety, and beyond the limits of consciousness, as expressed by the deep crater. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 102

The serpent leads the psychological movement apparently astray into the kingdom of shadows, dead and wrong images, but also into the earth, into concretization. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 102

Inasmuch as the serpent leads into the shadows, it has the function of the anima; it leads you into the depths, it connects the above and the below. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 102

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

For the understanding of the unconscious we must see our thoughts as events, as phenomena. We must have perfect objectivity. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 103

We went far up, and reached a cyclopean wall, boulders piled up in a great ring. I thought, “Ha, this is a Druidic sacred place.” We entered through an opening, and found ourselves in a large place, with a mound[ed] Druid altar. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 104

The animal face which I felt mine transformed into was the famous [Deus] Leontocephalus of the Mithraic mysteries, the figure which is represented with a snake coiled around the man, the snake’s head resting on the man’s head, and the face of the man that of a lion. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 104

It is the famous symbolism of the vessel, a symbolism that survives till 1925—see Parsifal. It is the Holy Grail, called the Vase of Sin (see King: The Gnostics and Their Remains). Also it is a symbol of the early Gnostics. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 107

You may remember that Cumont remarks that if something had happened to disrupt Christianity in the third century, the world would be Mithraic today. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 108

As soon as horizontal forms show in design it is the appearance of the rational functions, because they are on our earth. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 110

In itself this religion [Mithraic] is as antiquated as can be. It is only relatively important as being the brother of Christianity, which has assimilated some elements from it. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 112

The ringing of the bells in the celebration of the Mass probably comes from the Mithraic cult, where bells were rung at a certain point in the mysteries. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 112

Carl Jung Quotations 14

For him who looks backwards the whole world, even the starry sky, becomes the mother who bends over him and enfolds him on all sides, and from the renunciation of this image, and of the longing for it arises the picture of the world as we know it today. ~Carl Jung; The Sacrifice; CW 5; Par 643.

The psyche does not merely react; it gives its own specific answer to the influences at work upon it. ~Carl Jung; Some Crucial Points in Psychoanalysis; CW 4; par. 665.

Sensation must be strictly differentiated from feeling, since the latter is an entirely different process, although it may associate itself with sensation as "feeling-tone." Sensation is related not only to external stimuli but to inner ones, i.e., to changes in the internal organic processes. [Definitions," CW 6, par. 792.]

One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves. ~Jung and the Story of Our Time, Laurens van der Post (1977)

History is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood. ~Carl Jung; Woman in Europe.

If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 423.

While studying astrology I have applied it to concrete cases many times. ... The experiment is most suggestive to a versatile mind, unreliable in the hands of the unimaginative, and dangerous in the hands of a fool, as those intuitive methods always are. . . . It is an apt tool only when used intelligently. ~Carl Jung

No science will ever replace myth, and a myth cannot be made out of any science. For it is not that "God" is a myth, but that myth is the revelation of a divine life in man. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 340.

In every adult there lurks a child--an eternal child, something that is always becoming, is never completed, and calls for unceasing care, attention, and education. That is the part of the personality which wants to develop and become whole. -C. G. Jung CW 17: 286

Our blight is ideologies — they are the long-expected Antichrist!

Nothing so promotes the growth of consciousness as [the] inner confrontation of opposites." ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 345.

The kernel of all jealousy is lack of love. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 137.

Give no guarantee of objective knowledge. What we do not understand in ourselves we do not understand in the other person either. So there is plenty to ensure that his image will be for the most part subjective. As we know, even an intimate friendship is no guarantee of objective knowledge. – Carl Jung; General Aspects of Dreams Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.508

I regret many follies which sprang from my obstinacy; but without that trait I would not have reached my goal. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 358

If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely. But loneliness is not necessarily inimical to companionship, for no one is more sensitive to companionship than the lonely man, and companionship thrives only when each individual remembers his individuality and does not identify himself with others. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 356.

"All my writings may be considered tasks imposed from within, their source was a fateful compulsion. What I wrote were things that assailed me from within myself. I permitted the spirit that moved me to speak out." ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 222.

I have also realized that one must accept the thoughts that go on within oneself of their own accord as part of one's reality. The categories of true and false are, of course, always present; but because they are not binding they take second place. The presence of thoughts is more important than our subjective judgment of them. But neither must these judgments be suppressed, for they also are existent thoughts which are part of our wholeness. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 298.

Man always has some mental reservation, even in the face of divine decrees. Otherwise, where would be his freedom? And what would be the use of that freedom if it could not threaten Him who threatens it? ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 220

The majority of my patients consisted not of believers but of those who had lost their faith. The ones who came to me were the lost sheep. Even in this day and age the believer has the opportunity, in his church, to live the "symbolic life.” ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 140.

In science I missed the factor of meaning; and in religion, that of empiricism. Science met, to a very large extent, the needs of No. i personality, whereas the humane or historical studies provided beneficial instruction for No. 2. ~ Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams, Reflections; Page 72

It is in the nature of political bodies always to see the evil in the opposite group, just as the individual has an ineradicable tendency to get rid of everything he does not know and does not want to know about himself by foisting it off on somebody else. ~Carl Jung; The Undiscovered Self; Page 72

"The bigger the crowd, the more negligible the individual." ~Carl Jung; The Undiscovered Self; Page 10.

The unconscious is useless without the human mind. It always seeks its collective purposes and never your individual destiny. ~Carl Jung; C.G. Jung Letters; Vol. 1; Page 283.

To be "normal" is the ideal aim for the unsuccessful, for all those who are still below the general level of adaptation. But for people of more than average ability, people who never found it difficult to gain successes and to accomplish their share of the world's work-for them the moral compulsion to be nothing but normal signifies the bed of Procrustes-deadly and insupportable boredom, a hell of sterility and hopelessness. ~Carl Jung; CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy; P. 161.

Instinct is anything but a blind and indefinite impulse, since it proves to be attuned and adapted to a definite external situation. This latter circumstance gives it its specific and irreducible form. Just as instinct is original and hereditary, so too, its form is age-old, that is to say, archetypal. It is even older and more conservative than the body's form. ~Carl Jung; The Undiscovered Self; Page 49.

Just as the body bears the traces of its phylogenetic development, so also does the human mind. Hence there is nothing surprising about the possibility that the figurative language of dreams is a survival from an archaic mode of thought. ~Carl Jung; General Aspects of Dream Psychology; and CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche; Page 475.

When one reflects upon what consciousness really is, one is profoundly impressed by the extreme wonder of the fact that an event which takes place outside in the cosmos simultaneously produces an internal image, that it takes place, so to speak, inside as well, which is to say: becomes conscious. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 394 and Basel Seminar, privately printed, 1934, p. 1.

. . . there are millions . . . who have lost faith in any kind of religion. Such people do not understand their religion any longer. While life runs smoothly without religion . . . when suffering comes, it is another matter. That is when people seek a way out and to reflect about the meaning of life and its bewildering and painful experiences. ~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols; Page 75

Hence one could say —cum grano salis —that history could be constructed just as easily from one's own unconscious as from the actual texts. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 86.

The intellect may be the devil , but the devil is the "strange son of chaos" who can most readily be trusted to deal effectively with his mother. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 90.

Dionysus is the abyss of impassioned dissolution, where all human distinctions are merged in the animal divinity of the primordial psyche—a blissful and terrible experience. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 90.

But the principle of the unconscious is the autonomy of the psyche itself, reflecting in the play of its images not the world but itself, even though it utilizes the illustrative possibilities offered by the sensible world in order to make its images clear. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 146

And just as the material of the body that is ready for life has need of the psyche in order to be capable of life, so the psyche presupposes the living body in order that its images may live. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 325, Para 618.

This living being appears outwardly as the material body, but inwardly as a series of images of the vital activities taking place within it. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 325, Para 619.

Jesus-Mani-Buddha-Lao-tse are for me the four pillars of the temple of the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Letters, Volume 1, Page 65.

God needs man in to become conscious, just as he needs limitation in time and space. Let us therefore be for him limitation in time and space an earthly tabernacle. ~Carl Jung, Letters, Volume 1, Page 65.

An autobiography is so difficult to write because we possess no standards, no objective foundation, from which to judge ourselves. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 3.

Everything in the unconscious seeks outward manifestation, and the personality too desires to evolve out of its unconscious conditions and to experience itself as a whole. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 3.

Consciousness is essentially the psyche's organ of perception, it is the eye and ear of the psyche. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 98.

The religion of love was the exact psychological counterpart to the Roman devil-worship of power. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Pages 180-181, Paras 308-309.

We must read the Bible or we shall not understand psychology. Our psychology, whole lives, our language and imagery are built upon the Bible. ~Carl Jung, The Visions Seminar Vol. 1; Page 156.

Suffering is the swiftest steed that bears you to perfection. ~Meister Eckhart cited in Edinger's The New God Image, Page 162.

Individuals who believe they are masters of their fate are as a rule the slaves of destiny. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 520-523

God is not blessed in his Godhead, he must be born in man forever. ~ Meister Eckhart

I had to understand that I was unable to make the people see what I am after. I am practically alone. There are a few who understand this and that, but almost nobody sees the whole....I have failed in my foremost task: to open people’s eyes to the fact that man has a soul and there is a buried treasure in the field and that our religion and philosophy are in a lamentable state. Quoted by Gerhard Adler in “Aspects of Jung’s Personality,” in Psychological Perspectives 6/1 (Spring 1975), p. 14.

Individuation and individual existence are indispensable for the transformation of God the Creator. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 312-316.

It is as if we are more inclined to ask the unknown 'What shall I do?,' while the East prefers the question: 'To what total order does my conduct belong? ~Marie Louise Von Franz, Number and Time, p. 120.

We have become participants in the divine nature. We are the vessel…of the deity suffering in the body of the “slave”(Phil. 2:5). ~ ~Carl Jung, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, 336, 409, Letters II, 314ff.

The ego participates in God’s suffering. ~Carl Jung, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, 336, 409, Letters II, 314ff.

Yahweh and Allah are unreflected God-images, whereas in the Clementine Homilies there is a psychological and reflective spirit at work. ~Carl Jung, Aion, Page 54n.

Man’s suffering does not derive from his sins but from the maker of his imperfections, the paradoxical God. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Par. 1681

The only thing that really matters now is whether man can climb up to a higher moral level, to a higher plane of consciousness, in order to be equal to the superhuman powers which the fallen angels have played into his hands. ~Carl Jung, Answer to Job, Para 746.

The inner instability of Yahweh is the prime cause not only of the creation of the world, but also of the pleromatic drama for which mankind serves as a tragic chorus. . . . the two main climaxes are formed first by the Job tragedy and secondly by Ezekiel’s revelation. ~Carl Jung, Answer to Job, Para 686.

It does not seem to fit God’s purpose to exempt man from conflict and hence from evil. ~Carl Jung, Answer to Job, Para 659.

It was the tragedy of my youth to see my father cracking up before my eyes on the problem of his faith and dying and early death. ~Carl Jung to Pastor Walter Bernet, Letters Volume 2, Page 275

We cannot receive the Holy Spirit unless we have accepted our own individual life as Christ accepted his. Thus we become the "sons of god" fated to experience the conflict of the divine opposites, represented by the crucifixion. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, par. 1551.

[There is a] . . . continued and progressive divine incarnation. Thus man is received and integrated into the divine drama. He seems destined to play a decisive part in it; that is why he must receive the Holy Spirit. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, par. 1551.

If Jung were to obtain the professorship without the administrative duties, it would of course be a huge gain for us, but I think that he himself regards it as improbable. ~Sigmund Freud to Oskar Pfister, Feb 5, 1912.

If ego consciousness follows its own road exclusively, it is trying to become like a god or a superman. But exclusive recognition of its dependence only leads to a childish fatalism and to a world-negating and misanthropic spiritual arrogance. ~Carl Jung, The Mysteries: Papers from the Eranos, Page 324.

The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 325.

The divine process of change manifests itself to our human understanding . . . as punishment, torment, death, and transfiguration. ~Carl Jung, Alchemical Studies, CW 13, par. 139.

He said "My kingdom is not of this world." But "kingdom" it was, all the same. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking, p. 97.

It is even very important that the anima is projected into the earth, that she descends very low, for otherwise her ascent to the heavenly condition in the form of Sophia has no meaning…She is the one that is rooted in the earth as well as in the heaven, both root and branch of the tree. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 533.