Showing posts with label Jung-Ostrowski. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jung-Ostrowski. Show all posts

Sunday, March 18, 2018

Carl Jung on Religion




The inner man has access to the sense organs of God.

God has a longing for man and it seems there is provision for God to be created in man's consciousness.

Consciousness is the cradle of the birth of God in man.

A religious life presupposes a conscious connection of the inner and outer worlds and it requires a constant, meticulous attention to all circumstances to the best of our knowledge and our conscience.

We must watch what the gods ordain for us in the outer world, but as well as waiting for developments in the outer world we must listen to the inner world; both worlds are expressions of God.

There is no general prescription for salvation. "If thou knowest what thou doest, thou art blessed."

I must know what the Church teaches but I must then ask myself what my own law is.

When someone says, in the words of the "Our Father, " "Thy will be done," we must find out, if he is capable of taking both the inside and the outside, the ego and the world, into account.

By "Thy Will" one person may mean only what his unconscious dictates, while another may disregard all his thoughts and aspirations and fatalistically accept all that happens in his outer life.

To some people we must say, "You must choose your own way; you must act."

Others have to learn to refrain from acting.

Few take both into account, which is why Deus et homo is so important.

Imagine a person who only sees two possibilities, two dimensions.

Rest your fingertips on the table.

The person who can only see two dimensions is aware only of the fingertips.

He does not see the curve of the hand above the fingertips combining them into a whole -- just as the invisible wholeness of man hovers over and combines all his possibilities.

So it is, that only the individual acts of the person are seen, rather than the whole person with both male and female aspects.

The whole man is standing in eternity and is manifested in time as a manifold: Shiva and Shakti, that is.

The Kingdom of Heaven is a primordial condition like Paradise, but it is later in time and cannot be reached by regressing, only be going forward.

We do not know whether our present order is final.

At another level a new creative solution may be required.

Instead of saying, "God is beyond good and evil," we can say, "Life is both good and evil."

God is understood here as all that is beyond our capacity to grasp, beyond all our imagining.

We see things only in contrast: fullness and emptiness, light and shadow.

So in China God was represented by a jade disc with a hole in the centre; the disc rests in a container like the Host in the monstrance.

The hole in the disc is a way of representing God as the unnameable and the unknown.

The Lord's words, "Blessed are they who know what they do," seem in direct contradiction to the other words of Christ, "Forgive them for they know not what they do."

But life feeds on opposites.

When a little old woman carries wood to the pyre to burn a saint who is thought to be a heretic we might say, "Forgive her, O sancta simpicitas."

We might also say that only he is blessed who knows what-he is doing.

A priori contradictions will always appear in life.

The words of the Bible and the sayings of Christ are paradox.

We too must be paradox, for only then do we live our lives, only then do we reach completeness and integration of our personalities.

To be whole is to be full of contradictions.

The unity never becomes apparent because the opposites within us operate and mingle in various ways and it is their interaction that makes the whole man.

The complete human being, the hermaphrodite, is never visible.

He is indescribable, always a mystical experience.

That which shows itself is always paradoxical so there is no uniform image of the personality.

Biographies seem so unreal because they attempt to give a consistent picture of someone' s personality.

The visible image of man is that he is both Christ and the Devil at the same time; the image is truthful only when it is ambiguous and paradoxical.

That is why we can also say that doubt is a higher state than certainty.

He who doubts can see both possibilities.

It is pleasant for us when certainty is attained, but is must not last too long for certainty is not life.

It looks as if God was unconscious.

Anyone who knew the goal would not have taken such a roundabout way with creation.

It took a very long time for the brain to appear on the earth.

The dinosaurs give the impression of having completely empty heads; then bumps appeared, then much later horns grew from the head, and much later still the brain was formed.

It seems as if there was an urge to create something.

The least differentiated animals developed the most: only that which is incomplete can perfect itself.

Only an unconscious creative power could have worked so hesitantly which is why I think the creative God was unconscious.

This assumption also accounts for the many prehistoric catastrophes.

It does not imply that creation was accidental but that it seems as if its intention was limited in scope.

The bumps and the horns were the first experiment on the head, then the brain formed inside, then warm blood, fur and feathers appeared, and only at this stage did consciousness become a possibility.

If we assume that God was unconscious how can we explain our belief that everything existed as an idea from the beginning of time?

The unconscious has its consciousness, it reveals itself. through dreams, for otherwise we could not know anything about it.

God holds all of creation in the unconscious: Paul preached in Athens and said, "God scorned the time when men lived in unbelief, 'in agnosia'."

There are several passages in the New Testament that are not correctly translated for us. Metanoen was translated as "do penance" when it should actually have read "change your ways."

"Change your ways" had moral significance for the needs of that time.

If the Creator knew everything in advance history would seem like a badly running machine, misfiring now and then.

God would be responsible for each catastrophe because it must have arisen from his mistakes.

The assumption of divine prescience or of a personal God makes nonsense of the world.

To understand the God-Creator as absolute potential is to recognize a power which is endowed with meaning in space and time and in causality.

Meaning is, indeed, only a quarter of the whole, but when all four come into coincidence, consciousness comes into being.

If God were almighty how could it have taken 400 million years to reach this point from a time when only fish existed, if creation was not an unconscious search and a groping in the dark?

How could we account for these enormous quantities of fish before new beings could come into existence?

This is my myth about God and his creation.

The four aspects, the quaternity of the Creator- God are space, time, causality and meaning.

Human consciousness is the second creator of the world.

Only through extreme differentiation and distance can consciousness come about.

A God who is a God of a people or a God of everything cannot individuate himself and so cannot really become conscious.

God seems to be unconscious: He does not seem to know men. He tries to see them as He is Himself.

Man is also distinct from the angels because he can receive revelations, be disobedient, grow and change.

God changes too and is therefore especially interested in man.

Christian dogma brought immense advances in religious comprehensions.

God the Father became the Son and His own soul, the Word that became flesh.

Each son of God must awaken this new reality in himself.

But then the conflict appears: I am high, I am also so low , and on my right and left hand hang criminals.

If I can bear this I am crucified and must carry this cross and the world as well. Christ is not the Son of the Imperator; he is an illegitimate child of Nazareth "from where no good ever came."

I am a son of God when I do the simplest things; but how difficult it is to do what is absolutely unimportant when I feel I am so significant.

It is a beautiful message that one is a child of God but it can have a devilish effect.

Christ's tragedy could be much more impressively portrayed in our day than as the figure of a preacher wandering through Palestine two thousand years ago, not even needing to support himself.

But how can we in our day have the idea of Christ in ourselves yet have to make a living as a bookkeeper, to meet Miss Meyer and marry her, have children and be obliged to live with them ?

Imagine an evening at "The Corner Tavern" as Mr.

So and so, a glass of beer in front of him, and in his heart the outrageous claim, "I am the son of God."

How is the darkness to know the light if it does not partake of it?

God deigned to take on the image of man.

We are his eyes and ears, imago Dei in homine.

We must pray, "deliver us from evil," and not only man but God as well must be redeemed.

In the film "Green Pastures" God the Father says, "I must become a man myself" (to redeem them and myself).

We can avoid the penalty of hybris by making a sacrifice.

Each of us must find in what area his sacrifice must be made.

If we can think of the worst possible sacrifice for us we are close to knowing which we must make.

A sacrifice is doing what we would force others to do.

If we hold back through fear of hybris then we fail in our task and become a homunculus.

The acceptance of the shadow is a sacrifice.

For the man who feels himself to be the God- Creator the acceptance of his compensatory feminine side is also a sacrifice.

The image of the Divine Child characterizes our relation with the Self.

In philosophy God is abstract, an idea, imageless.

But the Divine Child is the incarnation of an idea; it permits us personal access to an idea which we could not easily realize without it.

The most serious question to ask, it seems to me, is what will Christianity have to say in the future?

What is the meaning of an attachment to the cross, what are the four functions?

What does it mean to say "He gave up the ghost" or, "My God , why hast thou forsaken me?"

What does this mean for humanity?

What does it mean to say that man dies yet only the risen still live?

All these questions may become actual during the next two thousand years, in the era of Aquarius.

The more one understands wholeness and through inner experience approaches it, the more one quasi resembles God.

"The Spirit examines everything, even the depths of Divinity."

This sentence was an editorial error (in the process of veiling the Logia) which should not have been embodied in the Bible.

We must not forget that we are only ants ... but that even an ant is an imago Dei.

I do not know whether Karma creates the ego or the ego creates Karma. ~Carl Jung, Ostroski-Sachs, Pages 38-43.

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Monday, October 9, 2017

Carl Jung: "Jung-Ostrowski" Quotations




Primeval history is the story of the beginning of consciousness by differentiation from the archetypes. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 32.

Individual existence is the crime against the gods, disobedience to God, the peccatum originale. Out of this projection of spiritual fire is born the anima. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 32.

The anima comes out of an emotional act, taking place in darkness, the compensation for the crime against the fire; the anima is the compensating element that must be extracted from matter. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 32.

When the Primeval Mother is overcome the anima can become a world consciousness; she must be chiseled from the earth. The seed of the anima is only productive when man can subordinate his libido to the female principle. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 32.

Primeval history is the story of the beginning of consciousness by differentiation from the archetypes. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 32.

Individual existence is the crime against the gods, disobedience to God, the peccatum originale. Out of this projection of spiritual fire is born the anima. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 32.

The anima comes out of an emotional act, taking place in darkness, the compensation for the crime against the fire; the anima is the compensating element that must be extracted from matter. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 32.

When the Primeval Mother is overcome the anima can become a world consciousness; she must be chiseled from the earth. The seed of the anima is only productive when man can subordinate his libido to the female principle. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 32.



The act of becoming conscious happens to man in darkness. If he can grasp and handle consciousness then the fire brought from Heaven becomes a sacrificial flame, not the wrath of the gods. The acquisition of consciousness by force creates a sense of guilt. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 9.

Consciousness is only possible if a spark of the essence becomes detached from the unconscious, religiously one could say from God. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 9.

Consciousness is obviously the supreme quality: the destiny of the world is to achieve entry into human consciousness. Man is the being God has sought not only to show him the world, but because the Creator needs man to illuminate his creation. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 9.

We have to realize the inborn divine will, which is the process of individuation. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 9.
If I am all things I cannot discover anything. I am a point that requires space and time to expand into consciousness. If I am all things I cannot distinguish myself from the rest or recognise what is different from me. Man is the dividing line of the acts of consciousness; he illuminates the night of the unconscious around him. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 9.

With the contents of my consciousness I must live as naturally as a plant. If I act inadequately it is the ape in me that does it. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 10.

The unconscious has first to be activated; then we must extricate ourselves, doubting all the things we have hitherto believed; then we can turn back and resume our place in the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 10.

The light of consciousness needs to be clearly distinguished from the cunning of the unfathomable depths of the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 10.

Attainment of consciousness is culture in the broadest sense and self-knowledge is therefore the heart essence of the process. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 11.

If we say "God" we give expression to an image or a verbal concept, which has undergone many changes in the course of time. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 11.

Life exists only where there is meaning; it does not matter what a person does provided it makes sense to him. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 13.

Individuation cannot be achieved without a mystery. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 13.

Christ himself associated with tax collectors and whores and accepted the thief crucified beside him. “I am the least of my brethren and my own shadow.” ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 13.

Even when we recognise that an erotic problem lies behind a neurosis we must not express it crudely lest we frighten the patient away. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 14.

All of us reach our destinations travelling under false hypotheses. Columbus wanted to sail to India and found he had discovered America. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 14.

Depressions always have to be understood teleologically. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 14.

The psyche is also the scene of conflicts between instinct and free will, for instincts are without order and collide with the organised consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 10.

To own a mystery gives stature, conveys uniqueness, and assures that one will not be submerged in the mass. Because a secret may cause suffering it is best to keep it to oneself. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 14.

~ Too much secrecy causes neurosis and a split from reality, but having no mystery permits only collective thinking and Action. Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 14.

If the unconscious does not cooperate, if, that is, there are no dreams or fantasies, then it is very difficult to deal with a neurosis. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 15.

Even in rearing a child it is often good for parents to react emotionally and not with cool superiority to the child's bad behaviour. Children often irritate their parents just to make them show emotion. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 14.

If it is avoidable, the same analyst should not treat both, husband and wife. Both patients desire to have their analyst on their side. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Pages 15-16.

Often people come for analysis who wish to be prepared to meet death. They can make astonishingly good progress in a short time and then die peacefully. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page16.

Inner development can advance enormously if there is knowledge of the nearness of the end. It seems as if a further step in consciousness has to be reached before the end of life. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page16.

After a stroke general debilitation or senile depression can occur. If the brain is damaged, consciousness can slip back many levels. The real personality has then departed; what remains carries on the fight against death. Conflicts do not reach the whole person anymore and are therefore not real conflicts any longer. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 16.

If the question of an abortion arises the whole situation with all its implications must be taken into account. If the parents are married and healthy the child must be accepted, and the sacrifice of living a more modest life should be met if it is financially necessary. If the parents are not married the question must be weighed very carefully: would it be favourable or not, damaging or useful? ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 16.

There are patients who can accept neither the world nor themselves. It is the task of the analyst to bear with them until they can bear themselves. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 16.

Everyone in the world is crying out to be accepted. The analyst must pay the price for the damage done to his patients by others before him. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 16.

If the poles of the psyche are torn apart the analyst should take great care that the patient does not identify himself with one side of his conflict. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 16.

When geometric symbols appear in dreams or drawings they are the original images of the primeval condition. Geometric designs may also appear if a schizophrenic destruction is threatening. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 17.

Painting and drawing one's inner pictures is a form of self-enchantment for the purpose of inner change which creates what had previously been depicted. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 17.

If someone has a mastery of total critical evaluation, it is possible for him to reach the processes of the unconscious through automatic writing instead of through "active imagination." ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 18.

The technique of active imagination can prove very important in difficult situations -- where there is a visitation, say. It only makes sense when one has the feeling of being up against a blank wall. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 18.

Active imagination is only legitimate if one is confronted with an insurmountable obstacle in a situation where no one can give advice. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 18.

Active imagination and automatic writing, painting and carving pictures from the unconscious, are all indirect methods of finding out what the unconscious means. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 18.

The unconscious behaves as if the laws of our world did not exist. It flies to the roof contemptuous of the laws of gravity. We must bring its demands down to earth and somehow try to realize them. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 19.

It is a very real help to find an expression that combines and satisfies the demands of the inner and outer worlds, the unconscious and the conscious. That is the achievement of the so called transcendent function. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 19.

The archetype signifies that particular spiritual reality which cannot be attained unless life is lived in consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 21.

Archetypes are images in the soul that represent the course of one's life. One part of the archetypal content is of material and the other of spiritual origin. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 21.

When all the archetypal images are properly placed in a hierarchy, when that which must be below is below, and that which must be above is above, our final condition can recapture our original blissful state. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 21.

Archetypes are not matters of faith; we can know that they are there. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 21.

The Bible says, "Whosoever shall say "Racha" to his brother is guilty of hellfire." If we substitute "shadow" for "brother" and implicate the dark brother within, we open out this biblical word into new perspectives. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.

"What ye have done to the least of your brethren ye have done unto me." The least of me is my inferior function which represents my shadow- side. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.

But what, if the inferior and neglected function expresses the will of God? ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.
When sacrifice is demanded it frequently implies the acceptance of our shadow- side. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.

All "good people" suffer from irritability. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.

An alchemical text says: "The mind should learn compassionate love for the body." ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.

The unconscious shows us the face that we turn towards it. It smiles if we are friendly to it; but if we neglect it, it makes faces at us. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.

There are always people who want to bring light into the world because they are afraid to reach down into their own dirt. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.

But who can be humble who has not sinned? This is why sin is so important; this is why it is said that God loves the sinner more than ninety-nine righteous men. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.

We should not want to try to escape upward or downward from the world. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.

The self has inconceivable powers and possibilities but it needs a world in which these powers and possibilities can become conscious. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 35.

The self is not wholly personal. One has one's own personal view of it, but at the same time it is also, in a sense, more general. It is also the self of others, being greater than the individual. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 35.

Objects and a world to contain them are necessary for consciousness, a place where differentiation occurs and can be experienced. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 35.

The self is always present but does not know it ... yet everything must be brought into consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 35.

A man is both, ego and self. The ego recedes more and more to make room for the self, changing the individual until the ego has disappeared. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 35.

It is said sometimes that Christ relinquished his divinity and became man. But that cannot be, for what can have become of the divinity? ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 35.

I do not know in what relation the ego stands to the self, but the self as a transcendent possibility is always present. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 36.

As an ego I am less than my totality because I am only conscious of being an ego. The self is infinitely more extensive. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 36.

The ego is a province, merely an administrative centre of a great empire. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 36.

Man is an indescribable phenomenon because his self cannot be completely grasped. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 36.

The self is simultaneously something abstract and something personal (supremely personal, indeed}. It is like the mana that is spread throughout nature which we can only make contact with through our experience of life or through ritual. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 36.

Consciousness is the cradle of the birth of God in man. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 39.

A religious life presupposes a conscious connection of the inner and outer worlds and it requires a constant, meticulous attention to all circumstances to the best of our knowledge and our conscience. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 39.

We must watch what the gods ordain for us in the outer world, but as well as waiting for developments in the outer world we must listen to the inner world; both worlds are expressions of God. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 39.

I must know what the Church teaches but I must then ask myself what my own law is. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 39.

When someone says, in the words of the "Our Father, " "Thy will be done," we must find out, if he is capable of taking both the inside and the outside, the ego and the world, into account. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 39.
We do not know whether our present order is final. At another level a new creative solution may be required. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 40.

The words of the Bible and the sayings of Christ are paradox. We too must be paradox, for only then do we live our lives, only then do we reach completeness and integration of our personalities. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 40.

Biographies seem so unreal because they attempt to give a consistent picture of someone's personality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 40.

The unconscious has its consciousness, it reveals it f. i. through dreams, for otherwise we could not know anything about it. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 41.

To understand the God-Creator as absolute potential is to recognize a power which is endowed with meaning in space and time and in causality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 41.

The four aspects, the quaternity of the Creator- God are space, time, causality and meaning. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 42.

Human consciousness is the second creator of the world. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 42.

God seems to be unconscious: He does not seem to know men. He tries to see them as He is Himself. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 42.

Man is also distinct from the angels because he can receive revelations, be disobedient, grow and change. God changes too and is therefore especially interested in man. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 42.

Christian dogma brought immense advances in religious comprehensions. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 42.

God the Father became the Son and His own soul, the Word that became flesh. Each son of God must awaken this new reality in himself. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 42.

I am a son of God when I do the simplest things; but how difficult it is to do what is absolutely unimportant when I feel I am so significant. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 42.

We must not forget that we are only ants ... but that even an ant is an imago Dei. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 43.

The existence of the Church has its own validity. Anyone who drops out of the Church loses its maternal protection and is a prey to national confessionalisms. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 45.

It takes an enormous inner strength to live through severance from the Catholic Church. It is a tremendous responsibility to endeavour to entice someone else away from the Church. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 45.

When Christ is most luminous the Church receives the least light. The light of the Church is therefore greatest when the moon is in opposition to the sun. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 45.

Many patients must grasp that there is much that lives in their psyche that is not consonant with the Church: it is the Spirit that continues to beget and bloweth where it listeth. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 45.

One need not always be in opposition to the Church. The Church is valid up to the point where life goes on. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 45.

There are often elements in the psyche that are absolutely heathen. They have to be domesticated in some way in Christianity, but there are still certain heathen elements that even the Church has not been able to absorb. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 45.

The categories of good and evil cannot be suspended; they are continually alive and cannot be attached to material things. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 47.

Evil is that which obstructs meaningful vitality. ~Carl Jung, Jun
g-Ostrowski, Page 47.

That which is above by reason of its charity, suppresses that, which is below; then the lower craves what is above. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 47.

In the Middle Ages the flight to the spiritual world was still necessary. It was meaningful then to want to live spiritually and give little attention to the material, for meaning was directed towards the spirit. But it is meaningful today to want to descend with dignity to the chthonic world. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 47.

The problem that is central and closest to our hearts already contains the lurking danger of evil. We must therefore beware of impetuous decisions and enthusiastic radical attitudes. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 47.

The Holy Spirit has to come into contact with the material world and beget; He is the new Yahweh standing on the third step. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 48.

Satan unlike Christ, was created, not begotten. When I create I am free and not dependent. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 48.

I often have to say to an anxious mother, "It is your damned love and anxiety that are preventing your children from ever growing up." ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 48.

Those who are always on the look out to do charitable works serve virtue out of their moral cowardice and fall into the worst depravity. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 48.

It is a psychological fact that someone who is disloyal or a liar can be capable of uttering the truth to an extent that we cannot fore see. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 48.

To evade action is really to bury one's talents. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 48.

He who is most guilty is most innocent; the most holy man is the one most conscious of his sin. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 48.

But if we think that God were responsible for the original sin, there would be no more mystery about sin. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 48.

Adam and Eve would indeed have been inadequate people if they had not noticed which tree the right apples grew on. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 48.

If we study the horoscopes of a murderer and his victim we find that the victim has murdered himself. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 49.

A man often makes a decidedly infantile resistance to a woman and therefore at the same time to his own unconscious side. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 51.

A man also has a secret fear of a woman's opinions. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 51.

Yahweh had this fear of Sophia and yet she helped him to create the world; he took on too much, without moderation. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 51.

A woman is more likely to acknowledge her own duality. A man is continually blinded by his intellect and does not learn through insight. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 51.

A woman is necessary to force a man to live in the concrete world. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 51.

There are women who believe that man will deflect them from their goals and men who often believe that women want to keep them from their work; yet the real causes are either fear of the other sex or of one's own unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 51.

In a marriage neither partner sits on a throne. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 52.

When an archetypal event approaches the sphere of consciousness, it also manifests itself in the outer life. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 55.

When an archetype is constellated it can appear in the inner and the outer world at the same time. Each distinct case is an example of creation. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 55.

I do not use the I Ching very often myself but it has always given me something. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 56.

There is a story that says that when Mohammed ascended into Heaven the stone in the Temple of Jerusalem wanted to go too. The archetype manifests itself in the outer world as sympathia. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 56.

Science can collect experiences and find averages but the central and essential phenomena are passed over. Science only reaches the crudest basic conclusions. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 55.

Whole areas of life are considered by science to be non-existent so that it can concern itself with the laws of space and time. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 55.

But in the world it is not what is usual or general that is essential, but the exceptional and the individual; there is no such thing as a normal person, even in biology. The result of science is to reduce everything abstractly to an average; in spite of all its ingenuity it cannot create identity. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 55.

Physics does admit that there are exceptions that can be expressed as statistical truths, but it has no room for the a-causal ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 55.

The scientist is prejudiced by reason which acts to hide the world from him. Reality does not lie in statistical averages but in exceptions. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 55.

I should like to study the theory of numbers. What is a number, an entity, a sequence, an archetype? We think we can perceive and grasp a number logically and suddenly it behaves quite differently from the way we expected. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 55.

It is a fundamental phenomenon of mathematics that numbers are not just mathematical entities but individualities. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 55.

We believe we are playing with equations and suddenly it transpires that certain equations express the laws of electric currents. God played and formulated currents. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 55.

It is characteristic of the transcendent that it can be pictured and described by numbers; the passage of time, quantity, and identity, are spiritual substances. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 60.

The character of the image is not determined by numbers. Pure spiritual substance is eternal. An image as such needs neither time nor space. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 60.

Where numbers indicate a measure we move into the material. A concrete image is a manifestation requiring space in which the spirit clothes itself in the material in order to draw to man. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 60.

Images and numbers are doors through which the spiritual can reach man. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 60.
Newton experienced a breakthrough into the unconscious through his spiritual isolation. When we leave society and the community of human intelligences the spirits rise from the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 60.

As intelligent beings, however, we are dependent on human society; the unconscious is no substitute for reality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 60.

Newton was isolated by his discoveries and such spiritually isolated persons are more in danger of splitting -- as Beethoven was, for example, when his music was not accepted. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 60.

The announcement of an important truth, even with the best of intentions, can lead to an extraordinary mess. That was the fate of Prometheus. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 60.

Friday, September 22, 2017

Excerpts from the Jung-Ostrowski Conversations




The act of becoming conscious happens to man in darkness. If he can grasp and handle consciousness then the fire brought from Heaven becomes a sacrificial flame, not the wrath of the gods. The acquisition of consciousness by force creates a sense of guilt. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 9.

Consciousness is only possible if a spark of the essence becomes detached from the unconscious, religiously one could say from God. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 9.

Consciousness is obviously the supreme quality: the destiny of the world is to achieve entry into human consciousness. Man is the being God has sought not only to show him the world, but because the Creator needs man to illuminate his creation. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 9.

We have to realize the inborn divine will, which is the process of individuation. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 9.
If I am all things I cannot discover anything. I am a point that requires space and time to expand into consciousness. If I am all things I cannot distinguish myself from the rest or recognise what is different from me. Man is the dividing line of the acts of consciousness; he illuminates the night of the unconscious around him. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 9.

With the contents of my consciousness I must live as naturally as a plant. If I act inadequately it is the ape in me that does it. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 10.

The unconscious has first to be activated; then we must extricate ourselves, doubting all the things we have hitherto believed; then we can turn back and resume our place in the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 10.

The light of consciousness needs to be clearly distinguished from the cunning of the unfathomable depths of the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 10.

Attainment of consciousness is culture in the broadest sense and self-knowledge is therefore the heart essence of the process. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 11.

If we say "God" we give expression to an image or a verbal concept, which has undergone many changes in the course of time. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 11.

Life exists only where there is meaning; it does not matter what a person does provided it makes sense to him. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 13.

Individuation cannot be achieved without a mystery. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 13.

Christ himself associated with tax collectors and whores and accepted the thief crucified beside him. “I am the least of my brethren and my own shadow.” ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 13.

Even when we recognise that an erotic problem lies behind a neurosis we must not express it crudely lest we frighten the patient away. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 14.

All of us reach our destinations travelling under false hypotheses. Columbus wanted to sail to India and found he had discovered America. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 14.

Depressions always have to be understood teleologically. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 14.

The psyche is also the scene of conflicts between instinct and free will, for instincts are without order and collide with the organised consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 10.

To own a mystery gives stature, conveys uniqueness, and assures that one will not be submerged in the mass. Because a secret may cause suffering it is best to keep it to oneself. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 14.

~ Too much secrecy causes neurosis and a split from reality, but having no mystery permits only collective thinking and Action. Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 14.

If the unconscious does not cooperate, if, that is, there are no dreams or fantasies, then it is very difficult to deal with a neurosis. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 15.

Even in rearing a child it is often good for parents to react emotionally and not with cool superiority to the child's bad behaviour. Children often irritate their parents just to make them show emotion. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 14.

If it is avoidable, the same analyst should not treat both, husband and wife. Both patients desire to have their analyst on their side. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Pages 15-16.

Often people come for analysis who wish to be prepared to meet death. They can make astonishingly good progress in a short time and then die peacefully. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page16.

Inner development can advance enormously if there is knowledge of the nearness of the end. It seems as if a further step in consciousness has to be reached before the end of life. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page16.

After a stroke general debilitation or senile depression can occur. If the brain is damaged, consciousness can slip back many levels. The real personality has then departed; what remains carries on the fight against death. Conflicts do not reach the whole person anymore and are therefore not real conflicts any longer. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 16.

If the question of an abortion arises the whole situation with all its implications must be taken into account. If the parents are married and healthy the child must be accepted, and the sacrifice of living a more modest life should be met if it is financially necessary. If the parents are not married the question must be weighed very carefully: would it be favourable or not, damaging or useful? ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 16.

There are patients who can accept neither the world nor themselves. It is the task of the analyst to bear with them until they can bear themselves. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 16.

Everyone in the world is crying out to be accepted. The analyst must pay the price for the damage done to his patients by others before him. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 16.

If the poles of the psyche are torn apart the analyst should take great care that the patient does not identify himself with one side of his conflict. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 16.

When geometric symbols appear in dreams or drawings they are the original images of the primeval condition. Geometric designs may also appear if a schizophrenic destruction is threatening. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 17.

Painting and drawing one's inner pictures is a form of self-enchantment for the purpose of inner change which creates what had previously been depicted. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 17.

If someone has a mastery of total critical evaluation, it is possible for him to reach the processes of the unconscious through automatic writing instead of through "active imagination." ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 18.

The technique of active imagination can prove very important in difficult situations -- where there is a visitation, say. It only makes sense when one has the feeling of being up against a blank wall. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 18.

Active imagination is only legitimate if one is confronted with an insurmountable obstacle in a situation where no one can give advice. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 18.

Active imagination and automatic writing, painting and carving pictures from the unconscious, are all indirect methods of finding out what the unconscious means. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 18.

The unconscious behaves as if the laws of our world did not exist. It flies to the roof contemptuous of the laws of gravity. We must bring its demands down to earth and somehow try to realize them. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 19.

It is a very real help to find an expression that combines and satisfies the demands of the inner and outer worlds, the unconscious and the conscious. That is the achievement of the so called transcendent function. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 19.

The archetype signifies that particular spiritual reality which cannot be attained unless life is lived in consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 21.

Archetypes are images in the soul that represent the course of one's life. One part of the archetypal content is of material and the other of spiritual origin. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 21.

When all the archetypal images are properly placed in a hierarchy, when that which must be below is below, and that which must be above is above, our final condition can recapture our original blissful state. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 21.

Archetypes are not matters of faith; we can know that they are there. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 21.
You are quite right, the main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neurosis but rather with the approach to the numinous. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 377.

The Bible says, "Whosoever shall say "Racha" to his brother is guilty of hellfire." If we substitute "shadow" for "brother" and implicate the dark brother within, we open out this biblical word into new perspectives. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.

"What ye have done to the least of your brethren ye have done unto me." The least of me is my inferior function which represents my shadow- side. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.

But what, if the inferior and neglected function expresses the will of God? ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.
When sacrifice is demanded it frequently implies the acceptance of our shadow- side. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.

All "good people" suffer from irritability. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.

An alchemical text says: "The mind should learn compassionate love for the body." ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.

The unconscious shows us the face that we turn towards it. It smiles if we are friendly to it; but if we neglect it, it makes faces at us. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.

There are always people who want to bring light into the world because they are afraid to reach down into their own dirt. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.

But who can be humble who has not sinned? This is why sin is so important; this is why it is said that God loves the sinner more than ninety-nine righteous men. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.

We should not want to try to escape upward or downward from the world. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.

The self has inconceivable powers and possibilities but it needs a world in which these powers and possibilities can become conscious. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 35.

The self is not wholly personal. One has one's own personal view of it, but at the same time it is also, in a sense, more general. It is also the self of others, being greater than the individual. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 35.

Objects and a world to contain them are necessary for consciousness, a place where differentiation occurs and can be experienced. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 35.

The self is always present but does not know it ... yet everything must be brought into consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 35.

A man is both, ego and self. The ego recedes more and more to make room for the self, changing the individual until the ego has disappeared. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 35.

It is said sometimes that Christ relinquished his divinity and became man. But that cannot be, for what can have become of the divinity? ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 35.

I do not know in what relation the ego stands to the self, but the self as a transcendent possibility is always present. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 36.

As an ego I am less than my totality because I am only conscious of being an ego. The self is infinitely more extensive. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 36.

The ego is a province, merely an administrative centre of a great empire. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 36.

Man is an indescribable phenomenon because his self cannot be completely grasped. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 36.

The self is simultaneously something abstract and something personal (supremely personal, indeed}. It is like the mana that is spread throughout nature which we can only make contact with through our experience of life or through ritual. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 36.



Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Carl Jung: "It seems to me that we are at the end of an era. "




It seems to me that we are at the end of an era.

The splitting of the atom and the nuclear bomb bring us a new view of matter.

As physical man cannot develop any further, it would seem that this particular evolution ends with man.

Like the caterpillar dissolves and turns into a butterfly, it is conceivable that the physical body of man could change into a more subtle body.

It might not be necessary for him to die to be clothed afresh and be transformed. Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 63.

Carl Jung on Questions to be asked during the Era of Aquarius.




The most serious ques􀢢on to ask, it seems to me, is what will Christianity have to say in the future?

What is the meaning of an attachment to the cross, what are the four functions?

What does it mean to say "He gave up the ghost" or, "My God , why hast thou forsaken me?"

What does this mean for humanity?

What does it mean to say that man dies yet only the risen still live?

All these questions may become actual during the next two thousand years, in the era of Aquarius. Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 43.

Carl Jung on the “Archetype of the Shadow.”




The Archetype of the Shadow:

The Bible says, "Whosoever shall say "Racha" to his brother is guilty of hellfire."

If we substitute "shadow" for "brother" and implicate the dark brother within, we open out this biblical word into new perspectives.

It also says, "Reconcile yourself with him as long as he is on the road."

"What ye have done to the least of your brethren ye have done unto me."

The least of me is my inferior function which represents my shadow- side.

But what, if the inferior and neglected function expresses the will of God?

When sacrifice is demanded it frequently implies the acceptance of our shadow- side.

The the poles of the psyche are torn apart and there is no living centre in a person, he feels forsaken and dominated by demons.

His self is empty and he cannot draw the opposites together.

The best protec􀢢on against abandonment to demons is a conscious relationship to a close, living human being.

In the case of a woman the relationship should be to a man.

We should not try to escape upward or downward from the world.

To want to be the best or the worst of men is megalomania.

It is devilish arrogance to want to destroy ourselves whenever we feel profoundly miserable.

That state of consciousness which will not let us admit to having a shadow pushes his surroundings into a position of inferiority.

All "good people" suffer from irritability.

We must be charitable to our weaknesses.

An alchemical text says: "The mind should learn compassionate love for the body."

The unconscious shows us the face that we turn towards it.

It smiles if we are friendly to it; but if we neglect it, it makes faces at us.

We can only become real by accep􀢢ng our sexuality and not denying it through saintliness.

We must descend into our own depths to have the visio Dei.

There are always people who want to bring light into the world because they are afraid to reach down into
their own dirt.

But who can be humble who has not sinned?

This is why sin is so important; this is why it is said that God loves the sinner more than ninety-nine righteous

men.

The meaning of sin is that it teaches humility; the Church says, felix culpa. Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Pages
25-26.

Monday, March 20, 2017

Carl Jung on "Archetypes,"




Archetypes:

When all the archetypal images are properly placed in a hierarchy, when that which must be below is below, and.
that which must be above is above, our final condition can recapture our original blissful state.

Archetypes are images in the soul that represent the course of one’s life.

One part of the archetypal content is of material and the other of spiritual origin.

The more an archetype is amplified the more understandable it becomes.

It is hard to explain because the spiritual cannot be expressed in a few words.

The archetype signifies that particular spiritual reality which cannot be attained unless life is lived in consciousness.

Archetypes are not ma􀂂ers of faith; we can know that they are there.

An archetype is composed of an instinctual factor and a spiritual image.

The approaches to it from the instinctual or the spiritual side are very different.

The libido cannot be freed, however, unless the archetypal images can be made conscious.

When fantasy pictures are brought into consciousness their intrinsic energy is liberated.

In this way the instincts become integrated and ordered.

When only the instinctual element of the archetypal content is active there is chaos (massa confusa).

Archetypes can change whilst the individual remains quite unconscious of their movements.

Conceivable they change spontaneously.

The archetypal content of dreams disappears and is replaced by a new one, even when the earlier form has not come into consciousness.

From the nature of a particular archetype it is possible to predict which will follow it.

It can be assumed that the flow of archetypes at a particular time characterize that historical period in a particular way.

The typical events of an era are determined by the succession and the quality of the corresponding archetypal images.

The succession of the archetypal motives is a collective development and has nothing to do with the individual.

We may imagine that the archetypes, being only the residual deposits of human experiences, would have represented animalistic life in an earlier period.

The archetypal primordial forms were already present, however, at the dawn of human consciousness; at its centre, everything was already there as an apriori possibility.

Even the first experiences of man were already fixed; we can only translate these patterns, these archetypes, into form we can understand.

Men have to realize the archetypes which are present at an unconscious level in creation.

All potentialities lie in the unconscious like ideas that have not yet been embodied nor experienced yet as reality.

The archetypes are present in the unconscious as potential abilities which, at a given moment, are realized and applied when brought into consciousness by a creative act.

As an analogy we can suppose that every inspiration produced out of the unconscious has a history.

A new situation occurs as a constellation produced by the archetype, a new inspiration emerges, and something else is discovered and becomes a part of reality.

A host of possibilities is still embedded in the archetypes, in the realm of the Mothers.

The abundance of possibilities eludes our comprehension.

The origin of the archetypes is a crucial ques􀢢on.

Where space and time are relative it is not possible to speak of developments in 􀢢me.

Everything is present, altogether and all at once, in the constant presence of the pleroma.

I remember standing on a mountain top in inner Africa, seeing around me an endless expanse of brush and herds of animals grazing, all in a deep silence as it had been for thousands of years without anyone being aware of it.

"They" were present but not consciously seen; they were as nameless as in Paradise before Adam named them.

Name-giving is an act of creation.

Where space and time do not exist there is only oneness (monotes).

There is no differentiation; there is only pleroma.

Pleroma is always with us, under our feet and above our heads.

Man is the point that has become visible, stepping out from the pleroma, knowing what he is doing, and able to name the things about him.

Although the earth existed before there were any human beings, it could not be seen or known by anyone.

In China they say that the ancestor of the family, the one who stood at the beginning, is the Cosmos.

Out of him was everything created: in the time before time.

There is nothing to explain or distinguish in the oneness because sequence and causality do not exist.

The archetypes are the material of the God- Creator.

The cons􀢢tute a primeval ocean charged with potentiality. Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Pages 21-22.

Carl Jung on “Abortion.”




If the question of an abortion arises the whole situation with all its implications must be taken into account.

If the parents are married and healthy the child must be accepted, and the sacrifice of living a more modest life should be met if it is financially necessary.

If the parents are not married the question must be weighed very carefully: would it be favourable or not, damaging or useful? Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 16.

Carl Jung: This allowed her to emerge from her schizophrenia.




American woman underwent a Freudian analysis without success.

She had used foul language to her analyst but he had failed to react and he disregarded her behaviour.

When she repeated some examples to me I told her in no uncertain terms that if she were ever to speak to me again like that, I would reply to her in the same fashion.

The patient pointed out that I had become emotional and that was not permissible for an analyst.

My answer was, "But it is human and I have the right to be human too."

This allowed her to emerge from her schizophrenia.

She had become disoriented through the unnatural behaviour of her first analyst; she was brought back to reality by the honesty of my reaction and was cured. Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 15.

Friday, March 17, 2017

Carl Jung on Religion




The inner man has access to the sense organs of God.

God has a longing for man and it seems there is provision for God to be created in man’s consciousness. Consciousness is the cradle of the birth of God in man.
A religious life presupposes a conscious connection of the inner and outer worlds and it requires a constant, meticulous attention to all circumstances to the best of our knowledge and our conscience.

We must watch what the gods ordain for us in the outer world, but as well as waiting for developments in the outer world we must listen to the inner world; both worlds are expressions of God.

There is no general prescription for salvation. "If thou knowest what thou doest, thou art blessed." I must know what the Church teaches but I must then ask myself what my own law is.
When someone says, in the words of the "Our Father, " "Thy will be done," we must find out, if he is capable of taking both the inside and the outside, the ego and the world, into account.

By "Thy Will" one person may mean only what his unconscious dictates, while another may disregard all his thoughts and aspirations and fatalistically accept all that happens in his outer life.

To some people we must say, "You must choose your own way; you must act." Others have to learn to refrain from acting.
Few take both into account, which is why Deus et homo is so important. Imagine a person who only sees two possibilities, two dimensions.
Rest your fingertips on the table.

The person who can only see two dimensions is aware only of the fingertips.

He does not see the curve of the hand above the fingertips combining them into a whole – just as the invisi- ble wholeness of man hovers over and combines all his possibilities.

So it is, that only the individual acts of the person are seen, rather than the whole person with both male and female aspects.

The whole man is standing in eternity and is manifested in time as a manifold: Shiva and Shakti, that is.

The Kingdom of Heaven is a primordial condition like Paradise, but it is later in time and cannot be reached by regressing, only be going forward.

We do not know whether our present order is final.

At another level a new creative solution may be required.

Instead of saying, "God is beyond good and evil," we can say, "Life is both good and evil." God is understood here as all that is beyond our capacity to grasp, beyond all our imagining. We see things only in contrast: fullness and emptiness, light and shadow.
So in China God was represented by a jade disc with a hole in the centre; the disc rests in a container like the Host in the monstrance.

The hole in the disc is a way of representing God as the unnameable and the unknown.

The Lord’s words, "Blessed are they who know what they do," seem in direct contradiction to the other words of Christ, "Forgive them for they know not what they do."

But life feeds on opposites.

When a little old woman carries wood to the pyre to burn a saint who is thought to be a heretic we might say, "Forgive her, O sancta simpicitas."

We might also say that only he is blessed who knows what-he is doing. A priori contradictions will always appear in life.
The words of the Bible and the sayings of Christ are paradox.

We too must be paradox, for only then do we live our lives, only then do we reach completeness and integration of our personalities.

To be whole is to be full of contradictions.

The unity never becomes apparent because the opposites within us operate and mingle in various ways and it is their interaction that makes the whole man.

The complete human being, the hermaphrodite, is never visible. He is indescribable, always a mystical experience.
That which shows itself is always paradoxical so there is no uniform image of the personality. Biographies seem so unreal because they attempt to give a consistent picture of someone’ s personality.
The visible image of man is that he is both Christ and the Devil at the same time; the image is truthful only when it is ambiguous and paradoxical.

That is why we can also say that doubt is a higher state than certainty.

He who doubts can see both possibilities.

It is pleasant for us when certainty is attained, but is must not last too long for certainty is not life. It looks as if God was unconscious.
Anyone who knew the goal would not have taken such a roundabout way with creation. It took a very long time for the brain to appear on the earth.
The dinosaurs give the impression of having completely empty heads; then bumps appeared, then much later horns grew from the head, and much later still the brain was formed.

It seems as if there was an urge to create something.

The least differentiated animals developed the most: only that which is incomplete can perfect itself.

Only an unconscious creative power could have worked so hesitantly which is why I think the creative God was unconscious.

This assumption also accounts for the many prehistoric catastrophes.

It does not imply that creation was accidental but that it seems as if its intention was limited in scope.

The bumps and the horns were the first experiment on the head, then the brain formed inside, then warm blood, fur and feathers appeared, and only at this stage did consciousness become a possibility.

If we assume that God was unconscious how can we explain our belief that everything existed as an idea from the beginning of time?

The unconscious has its consciousness, it reveals itself. through dreams, for otherwise we could not know any- thing about it.

God holds all of creation in the unconscious: Paul preached in Athens and said, "God scorned the time when men lived in unbelief, ’in agnosia’."

There are several passages in the New Testament that are not correctly translated for us. Metanoen was translated as "do penance" when it should actually have read "change your ways."

"Change your ways" had moral significance for the needs of that time.

If the Creator knew everything in advance history would seem like a badly running machine, misfiring now and then.

God would be responsible for each catastrophe because it must have arisen from his mistakes. The assumption of divine prescience or of a personal God makes nonsense of the world.
To understand the God-Creator as absolute potential is to recognize a power which is endowed with meaning in space and time and in causality.

Meaning is, indeed, only a quarter of the whole, but when all four come into coincidence, consciousness comes into being.

If God were almighty how could it have taken 400 million years to reach this point from a time when only fish existed, if creation was not an unconscious search and a groping in the dark?

How could we account for these enormous quantities of fish before new beings could come into existence? This is my myth about God and his creation.
The four aspects, the quaternity of the Creator- God are space, time, causality and meaning. Human consciousness is the second creator of the world.
Only through extreme differentiation and distance can consciousness come about.

A God who is a God of a people or a God of everything cannot individuate himself and so cannot really be- come conscious.

God seems to be unconscious: He does not seem to know men. He tries to see them as He is Himself. Man is also distinct from the angels because he can receive revelations, be disobedient, grow and change. God changes too and is therefore especially interested in man.
Christian dogma brought immense advances in religious comprehensions.

God the Father became the Son and His own soul, the Word that became flesh. Each son of God must awaken this new reality in himself.
But then the conflict appears: I am high, I am also so low , and on my right and left hand hang criminals.

If I can bear this I am crucified and must carry this cross and the world as well. Christ is not the Son of the Imperator; he is an illegitimate child of Nazareth "from where no good ever came."

I am a son of God when I do the simplest things; but how difficult it is to do what is absolutely unimportant when I feel I am so significant.

It is a beautiful message that one is a child of God but it can have a devilish effect.

Christ’s tragedy could be much more impressively portrayed in our day than as the figure of a preacher wan- dering through Palestine two thousand years ago, not even needing to support himself.

But how can we in our day have the idea of Christ in ourselves yet have to make a living as a bookkeeper, to meet Miss Meyer and marry her, have children and be obliged to live with them ?

Imagine an evening at "The Corner Tavern" as Mr.

So and so, a glass of beer in front of him, and in his heart the outrageous claim, "I am the son of God." How is the darkness to know the light if it does not partake of it?
God deigned to take on the image of man.

We are his eyes and ears, imago Dei in homine.

We must pray, "deliver us from evil," and not only man but God as well must be redeemed.

In the film "Green Pastures" God the Father says, "I must become a man myself" (to redeem them and my- self).

We can avoid the penalty of hybris by making a sacrifice. Each of us must find in what area his sacrifice must be made.
If we can think of the worst possible sacrifice for us we are close to knowing which we must make. A sacrifice is doing what we would force others to do.
If we hold back through fear of hybris then we fail in our task and become a homunculus. The acceptance of the shadow is a sacrifice.
For the man who feels himself to be the God- Creator the acceptance of his compensatory feminine side is also a sacrifice.

The image of the Divine Child characterizes our relation with the Self. In philosophy God is abstract, an idea, imageless.
But the Divine Child is the incarnation of an idea; it permits us personal access to an idea which we could not easily realize without it.

The most serious question to ask, it seems to me, is what will Christianity have to say in the future? What is the meaning of an attachment to the cross, what are the four functions?

What does it mean to say "He gave up the ghost" or, "My God , why hast thou forsaken me?" What does this mean for humanity?
What does it mean to say that man dies yet only the risen still live?

All these questions may become actual during the next two thousand years, in the era of Aquarius.

The more one understands wholeness and through inner experience approaches it, the more one quasi resembles God.

"The Spirit examines everything, even the depths of Divinity."

This sentence was an editorial error (in the process of veiling the Logia) which should not have been embodied in the Bible.

We must not forget that we are only ants ... but that even an ant is an imago Dei.

I do not know whether Karma creates the ego or the ego creates Karma. Carl Jung, Ostroski-Sachs, Pages 38- 43.