Carl Jung: Make the simple experiment of criticizing your own thoughts.

[Carl Jung: (I am now talking chiefly to the ladies.)]

It is a principle in analysis that we always try to dissociate from the unconscious, to make a difference between ourselves and
the voice, or the influence, or the mana, or the archetype—whatever you like to call it.

And you can make that difference by criticizing carefully whatever your experience may be.

But if you take it for granted in a general way that of course your thoughts, for instance, are all your own, such an obscurity

prevails that you can discern nothing.

Make the simple experiment of criticizing your own thoughts. (I am now talking chiefly to the ladies.)

You have a certain opinion about something, and when I ask you if that is what you really think, you say, "No, I must think what my idea of it really is."

And then you come to the conclusion that you think something quite different. Now, how did you come to that other opinion? Did you make it?

"No, it was just there." Who then produced it?

Who had the intention or the will to create such an opinion?

If you can realize that, you have had a trans-subjective experience. Therefore I say, don’t identify with your animus.

That is not yourself, that is a trans-subjective reality.

And mind you, the animus is as terrible a reality as the anima. Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 295

Out of the unconscious flows the well of life,

If you identify with the distinguished figure, all the minor qualities have no place in that image, but are excluded, and they will heap up and cover the fountain of life, which is of course the unconscious.

Out of the unconscious flows the well of life, and what you don’t accept in yourself naturally falls back into that well and poisons it; when you don’t recognize certain facts, they form a layer in the unconscious through which the water of life must come up, and it will be poisoned by all those things you have left down below.

If they are accepted in your conscious life, then they are mixed with other more valuable and cleaner sub- stances, and the odious qualities of the lower functions disappear more or less.

They only form little shadows here and there, sort of spice for the good things.

But by excluding them, you cause them to heap up and they become entirely evil substances; for a thing to become poisonous, you only need to repress it.

If you carefully sterilize everything that you do, you make an extract of the impurity and leave it at the bot- tom, and once the water of life is poisoned, it doesn’t need much to make everything wrong. Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1058.

Carl Jung: So don’t play the missionary. Don’t try to eat the goods of others.

If you discover what you call a truth, you should test it, try to eat it.

If it feeds you it is good, but if you cannot live by it and only assume it ought to feed other people, then it is bad.

The real test is that your truth should be good for yourself. Not one dog is coming to sniff at it if it doesn’t feed yourself.
If you are not satisfied with it, if you cannot enjoy it for twenty, fifty years, or a whole lifetime, it is no good.

If you are hungry, if you think your companions must be redeemed, and that they must be grateful to you on top of all, then you make a mistake: you may know the idea is no good.

So don’t play the missionary.

Don’t try to eat the goods of others.

Let other people belong to themselves and look after their own improvement: let them eat themselves.

If they are really satisfied, then nobody should disturb them.

If they are not satisfied with what they possess, they will probably seek something better; and if you are the one who has the better thing, they will surely come and get it from you. Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 213-214.

Carl Jung; You cannot individuate if you are a spirit; moreover, you don’t even know how spirit feels because you are in the body.

It is part of the message of Zarathustra to preach the importance of the body, otherwise the idea of individuation, as he preaches it in that chapter, implies the body.

You cannot individuate if you are a spirit; moreover, you don’t even know how spirit feels because you are in the body.

So if you speak of individuation at all, it necessarily means the individuation of beings who are in the flesh, in the living body.

It is of course meant to become a reality, or it would remain only a good idea in the mind—one would be individuated because one had such an idea in one’s head.

People ordinarily think that a right thought must be throughout, not realizing that it is only a very small noise

in the attic, and the rest of the house is as it always was, nothing having happened at all.

It is just an illusion when you think the right thought in your head means a reality; it is a reality as far as a thought reality reaches; the thought itself is real, but it has not become a reality in space.

It has not been expressed by the whole of you.

So Zarathustra has the right idea no doubt; he includes the body in the process of individuation, and he emphasizes it because without the body there would only be a disincarnated spirit. Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 202

Carl Jung: The term self is often mixed up with the idea of God. I would not do that.

The term self is often mixed up with the idea of God. I would not do that.

I would say that the term self should be reserved for that sphere which is within the reach of human experience, and we should be very careful not to use the word God too often.

As we use it, it borders on impertinence; it is unlawful to use such a concept too often.

The experience of the self is so marvelous and so complete that one is of course tempted to use the conception of God to express it.

I think it is better not to, because the self has the peculiar quality of being specific yet universal.

It is a restricted universality or a universal restrictedness, a paradox; so it is a relatively universal being and therefore doesn’t deserve to be called “God.”

You could think of it as an intermediary, or a hierarchy of ever-widening-out figures of the self till one arrives at the conception of a deity.

So we should reserve that term God for a remote deity that is supposed to be the absolute unity of all singularities.

The self would be the preceding stage, a being that is more than man and that definitely manifests; that is the thinker of our thoughts, the doer of our deeds, the maker of our lives, yet it is still within the reach of human experience.

And that thing consists of archaic elements, of all the doubtful things with which we have to struggle. For we have to struggle with the self.
The self is not apparently inimical.

It is really inimical-and it is also of course the opposite.

It is not only our best friend, but also our worst enemy; because it doesn’t see, it is as if not conscious of time and space conditions.

We must say to the self, "Now don’t be blind; for heaven’s sake be reasonable.

I shall do my best to find a place for you in this world, but you don’t know the conditions. You don’t know what military service means or tax collectors or reputations.

You have no idea of life in time and space.

So if you want me to do something for you, if you want me to help you to manifest, you must be reasonable and wait.

You should not storm at me.

If you kill me, where are your feet?"

That is what I (the ego) am. Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 977-978.

Carl Jung on Johann Sebastian Bach

After a lecture in Munich, two non-Jungian women came up to Jung and told him that great artists surely don’t have a shadow.

“What about Johann Sebastian Bach?” they asked.

Jung replied “You should be very thankful you were not married to Johann Sebastian Bach.

Jazz and all that sort of stuff is silly and stultifying. But it is even worse when they play classics in such a place. Bach, for instance. Bach talks to God. I am gripped by Bach. But I could slay a man who plays Bach in banal surroundings. Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking, Page 249.

Jaffe reports "a penchant for Negro spirituals" along with Bach, Handel Mozart, and early music. A string quartet of Schubert had to be turned off because "it moved him too much," while Beethoven’s late quartets "churned him up almost beyond endurance." C.G. Jung Speaking, Page 249.

The book [Answer to Job] "came to me" during the fever of an illness. It was as if accompanied by the great music of a Bach or a Handel. I don’t belong to the auditory type. So I did not hear anything, I just had the feeling of listening to a great composition, or rather of being at a concert. Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 115-116.

one of five music renditions played at Dr. Jung’s Funeral: https://carljungdepthpsychology.wordpress.com/.../one-of.../
Many an old craftsman who produced a marvelous piece of art was utterly unconscious of the fact.

I am rather convinced that the great composer Bach was such a fellow. He did not know what he was really producing.
He composed nice chants for the church and other things, but I am very doubtful if he knew that he was the composer Bach. Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 668.

Carl Jung: Naturally, the creative impulse has always been the maker of the individual.

Miss Hannah: But if you did not use it as a symptom which somebody has produced, but as a projection, could not concrete, objective art be the first fumbling of the individual towards individuation-with the hypothesis that if the individual was formed, the need for art would disappear?

Prof Jung: Well, if you don’t call it art, but call it the creative impulse. Naturally, the creative impulse has always been the maker of the individual.
You see, creative impulse does not appear in everybody in the same strength: certain individuals are picked, they have a particular gift.

They create something which is striking and they are then the innovators, and stick out like old man Prometheus, that great sinner against the gods.

He was an individual and he was punished for it, but he was made to stand out through his creative impulse.

Naturally, the creative impulse is forever the maker of personality and uses that individual form, that distinc- tion.

Therefore it is absolutely necessary that, in the process of individuation, everybody should become aware of his creative instinct, no matter how small it is. Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 667.