Carl Jung: The Gods envy the Perfection of Man

The one arose from the melting together of the two. He was born as a child from my own human soul, which had conceived him with resistance like a virgin. Thus it corresponds to the image that the ancients have given to us. But when the mother, my soul, was pregnant with the God, I did not know it. It even seemed to me as if my soul herself was the God, although he lived only in her body.And thus the image of the ancients is fulfilled: I pursued my soul to kill the child in it. For I am also the worst enemy of my God. But I also recognized that my enmity is decided upon in the God. He is mockery and hate and anger, since this is also a way of life.

I must say that the God could not come into being before the hero had been slain. The hero as we understand him has become an enemy of the God, since the hero is perfection. The Gods envy the perfection of man, because perfection has no need of the Gods. But since no one is perfect, we need the Gods. The Gods love perfection because it is the total way of life. But the Gods are not with him who wishes to be perfect, because he is an imitation of perfection. ~The Red Book; Page 244.

Carl Jung on “Perfection.” – Anthology

The spiritual climax is reached at the moment when life ends. Human life, therefore, is the vehicle of the highest perfection it is possible to attain; it alone generates the karma that makes it possible for the dead man to abide in the perpetual light of the Voidness without clinging to any object, and thus to rest on the hub of the wheel of rebirth, freed from all illusion of genesis and decay. Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion, Page 524-525, Para 856.

If there were no imperfections, no primordial defect in the ground of creation, why should there be any urge to create , any longing that must be fulfilled? Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 32.

The individual may strive after perfection . . . but must suffer from the opposite of his intentions for the sake of his completeness. ["Christ, A Symbol of the Self, ibid” par. 123.]

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

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


To round itself out, life calls not for perfection but for completeness; and for this the "thorn in the flesh" is needed, the suffering of defects without which there is no progress and no ascent. Carl Jung, CW 12, Par 208.

I aim at making people reasonable not perfect by analysis; if the latter possibility existed I should give up analysis at once, for when we aim at perfection we necessarily attach to ourselves a museum of the imperfections of human nature and our neighbors are unable to stand the smell! Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 183.

If there were no imperfections, no primordial defect in the ground of creation, why should there be any urge to create , any longing that must be fulfilled? Carl Jung, MDR, Page 32.

I was particularly interested in the dream which, in mid-August 1955, anticipated the death of my wife. It probably expresses the idea of life’s perfection: the epitome of all fruits, rounded into a bullet, struck her like karma.
C.G. Jung Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 310.

Before we strive after perfection, we ought to be able to live the ordinary man without self-mutilation. As for instance the ordinary physician neither imagines nor hopes to make of his patient an ideal athlete, so the psychological doctor does not dream of being able to produce saints. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 474.

A complete life, unconditionally lived, is the work of the Holy Spirit. It leads us into all dangers and defeats, and into the light of knowledge, which is to say, into maximal consciousness. This is the aim of the incarnation as well as the Creation, which wants each being to attain its perfection. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 267-268.

But he [Rilke] doesn’t have what it takes to make a man complete: body, weight, shadow. His high ethos, his capacity for abnegation, and perhaps also his physical frailty naturally led him towards a goal of completeness, but not of perfection. Perfection, it seems to me, would have broken him. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 381-382.

Before we strive after perfection, we ought to be able to live the ordinary man without self-mutilation. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 474-475

Whereas the extravert needs the object to bring his type to perfection and to cleanse his feeling, the introvert experiences this as a horrible violation and disrespect of his personality, because he absolutely refuses to be, so to speak, the chemical dry cleaner for the feelings of extraverts. Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

The hero is a very perfect man, he stands out as a human protest against nature, who is seeking to rob man of that possibility of perfection. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 30

The son became a thief, and the daughter a prostitute. Because the father would not take on his shadow, his share in the imperfection of human nature, his children were compelled to live out the dark side which he had ignored. Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, Pages 156-163

Western man has no need of more superiority over nature, whether outside or inside. He has both in almost devilish perfection. What he lacks is conscious recognition of his inferiority to the nature around and within him. He must learn that he may. not do exactly as he wills. If he does not learn this, his own nature will destroy him. He does not know that his own soul is rebelling against him in a suicidal way. In the light of the possibilities revealed by intuition, man’s earthliness is certainly a lamentable imperfection; but this very imperfection is part of his innate

being, of his reality. Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 114.