Listing: Jung ideas & concepts
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"WHERE LOVE RULES, THERE IS NO WILL TO POWER;
AND WHERE POWER PREDOMINATES, THERE LOVE IS LACKING.
THE ONE IS THE SHADOW OF THE OTHER."
— Carl Jung from The Psychology of the Unconscious
LOVE & PSYCHE
"… ABSURD PREJUDICE TO SUPPOSE THAT EXISTENCE CAN ONLY BE PHYSICAL.
As a matter of fact, the only form of existence of which we have immediate knowledge
is psychic [i.e., in the mind]. We might as well say, on the contrary, that
physical existence is a mere inference, since we know of matter only in so far as
we perceive psychic images mediated by the senses." - Carl Jung
My life is a story of the realisation of the unconscious. -- Carl Jung" by Gerhard Wehr, page166
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"...It is my mind, with its store of images, that gives the world color and sound; and that supremely real and rational certainty which I can "experience" is, in its most simple form, an exceedingly complicated structure of mental images. Thus there is, in a certain sense, nothing that is directly experienced except the mind itself. Everything is mediated through the mind, translated, filtered, allegorized, twisted, even falsified by it. We are . . . enveloped in a cloud of changing and endlessly shifting images. -- Carl Jung" by Gerhard Wehr, page166
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Concept of Collective Unconscious at Jung
ARCHETYPES CONSTITUTE THE STRUCTURE OF THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS - they are psychic innate dispositions to experience and represent basic human behavior and specific situations. Thus mother-child relationship is governed by the mother archetype. Father-child - by the father archetype. Birth, death, power and failure are controlled by archetypes. The religious and mystique experiences are also governed by archetypes.
THE MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL IS THE SELF, which is the archetype of the Center of the psychic person, his/her totality or wholeness. The Center is made of the conjunction of consciousness and unconscious reached through the individuation process .
ARCHETYPES MANIFEST THEMSELVES THROUGH ARCHETYPAL IMAGES in all the cultures and religious systems, in dreams and visions. Therefore a great deal of Jungian interest in psyche focuses on interpretation of dreams and symbols in order to discover the compensation induced by archetypes as marks of psyche transformation.
“THE OPPOSITES ARE CONTAINED IN THE PLEROMA, BUT BECAUSE THEY ARE EQUALLY BALANCED,THEY ARE VOID. Although the opposites are manifested in individuals, they are not balanced and void.The individual’s task is to pursue his own distinctness, and this involves him in distinguishinghimself from the opposites."
The word "compensation" refers to what Jung believes to be the psychic version of homeostasis, that is the ability of the body to maintain a certain equilibrium and stability. Thus archetypes are related to the basic functioning of our psyche.
THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS IS AN UNIVERSAL DATUM meaning that every human being is endowed with this psychic archetype-layer since his/her birth. One can not acquire this strata by education or other conscious efforts because it is innate.
We may also describe it as a universal library of human knowledge, or the sage in man, the very transcendental wisdom that guides mankind.
Jung stated that the religious life must be linked with the experience of the archetypes of the collective unconscious. Thus, God himself is experienced like an archetype on the psychic level.
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Definitions
ARCHETYPES
"THE CONTENTS OF THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS ARE ARCHETYPES, PRIMORDIAL IMAGES THAT REFLECT BASIC PATTERNS THAT ARE COMMON TO US ALL, AND WHICH HAVE EXISTED UNIVERSALLY SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME." - Carl Jung
As the ego looks in the direction of the Self, the transpersonal
center of the psyche (transcending the individual), it tends to experience the Self not as a unity
(at least not at first) but as a multiplicity of archetypal factors that one can think of as being
represented by mythological gods.
The gods can be seen to stand for the archetypes, the basic patterns within the human psyche
that exist independent of personal experience. We all have all of them present, and it is in our
best interest to honor all of them at appropriate times and in any given situation because without
this balance we run the risk of over identification with one element and
thereby do violence to all the others. In turn, this sort of extremism throws our psyche out
of whack and we can only see one facet of ourselves and the world.
– partially paraphased from Eternal Drama by Edward F. Edinger (GoodReads).
THE PSYCHE CONSISTS ESSENTIALLY OF IMAGES. It is a series of images in the truest sense, not an accidental juxtaposition or sequence, but a structure that is throughout full of meaning and purpose;
it is a "picturing" of vital activities. 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 10, Para 618
VISIONARY FICTION...
"a strange something that derives its existence from the hinterlands of man’s mind—that suggests the abyss of time separating us from pre-human ages, or evokes a superhuman world of contrasting light and darkness.
It is a primordial experience which surpasses man’s understanding, and to which he is in danger therefore of succumbing. The value and the force of the experience are given by its enormity. It arises from timeless depths; it is foreign and cold. Many-sided, demonic and grotesque. […] The primordial experiences rend from top to bottom the curtain upon which is painted the picture of an ordered world. And allow a glimpse into the unfathomed abyss of what has not yet become. Is it a vision of other worlds, of the obscuration of the spirit, or of the beginning of things before the age of man, or of the unborn generations of the future?" -- Carl G. Jung
ART & THE ARTIST...
"Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument.
The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize
its purpose through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims,
but as an artist he is 'man' in a higher sense...he is 'collective man,' one who carries and shapes the unconscious,
psychic forms of mankind… In his capacity as an artist...he is objective and impersonal... even inhuman...
for as an artist he is his work, and not a human being… On one side he is a human being with a personal life,
while in the other side he is an impersonal, creative process… The secret of artistic creation and of the
effectiveness of art is to be found in a return to the state of 'participation mystique'...to that level of experience
at which it is man who lives, and not the individual, at which the weal or woe of the
single human being does not count, but only human existence. This is why every great work of art
is objective and impersonal, but none the less profoundly moves us each and all.
And this is also why the personal life of the poet cannot be held essential
to his art...but at most a help or hindrance to his creative task." -- Carl G. Jung
Carl Jung & Visionary fiction: Part #1 / Part #2
ACTIVE IMAGINATION
From.Mystical Experience Registry
Jungian Active Imagination & Hypnagogia
PICTURED ABOVE: "... other figures of my fantasies" (left-to-right), Philemon, Ka, Elijah, and Salome.
PRACTICE
PSYCHOLOGISTS
Ira Progoff (twilight imaging)
Related links: Carl Jung page / My Jung project / ColinWilson / Maslow
CARL JUNG
Mind, Matter, Philemon, “active imagination” & ideas as independent entities
“I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything
I cannot explain as a fraud.” -- Carl Jung
Jung on "Active Imagination"
“I really prefer the term 'imagination' to 'fantasy', because there is a difference
between the two ... fantasy is mere nonsense, a phantasm, a fleeting impression; but imagination is active, purposeful creation. And this is exactly the distinction I make too. A fantasy is more or less your own invention, and remains on the surface of personal things and conscious expectations. But active imagination, as the term denotes, means that the images have a life of their own and that the symbolic events develop according to their own logic - that is, of course, if your conscious reason does not interfere.
You begin by concentrating upon a starting point...When you concentrate on a mental picture, it begins to stir, the image becomes enriched by details, it moves and develops. Each time, naturally, you mistrust it and have the idea that you have just made it up, that it is merely you own invention. But you have to overcome that doubt, because it is not true. We can really produce precious little by our conscious mind. All the time we are dependent upon things that literally fall into our consciousness …
Unconscious co-operation: For instance, if my unconscious should prefer not to give me ideas, I could not proceed with my lecture, because I could not invent the next step. You all know the experience when you want to mention a name or a word which you know quite well, and it simply does not present itself; but sometime later it drops into your memory. We depend entirely upon the benevolent co-operation of our unconscious. If it does not co-operate, we are completely lost.
Unconscious as guide: Therefore I am convinced that we cannot do much in the way of conscious invention; we over-estimate the power of intention and the will. And so when we concentrate on an inner picture and when we are careful not to interrupt the natural flow of events, our unconscious will produce a series of images which make up a complete story.”
Example: PHILEMON
Things in the psyche: “Philemon and the other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life. Philemon represented a force which was not myself. In my fantasies I had conversations with him, and he said things which I had not consciously thought. For I observed clearly that it was he who spoke, not I.
Nothing new: “He said I treated thoughts as if I generated them myself, but in his view thoughts were like animals in the forest, or people in a room, or birds in the air, and added, "If you should see people in a room, you would not think that you had made those people, or that you were responsible for them."
Psychic objectivity: “It was he who taught me psychic objectivity, or the reality of the psyche. Through him the distinction was clarified between myself and the object of my thought. He confronted me in an objective manner, and I understood that there is something in me which can say things that I do not know and do not intend, things which may even be used against me.” -- Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1965, p.183
JUNG IDEAS: POLITICS
COLLECTIVE SUBHUMAN
What the public still doesn’t know and can’t get into its head is that the collective man is subhuman, nothing but a beast-man, as was clearly demonstrated by the exquisite bestiality of the young German fighters during the Blitzkrieg in Poland. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 282
INDIVIDUAL VOICE
Any organization in which the voice of the individual is no longer heard is in danger of degenerating into a subhuman monster. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 282
WE MAKE OUR OWN EPOCH:
“The great events of world history, are, at bottom, profoundly unimportant. In the last analysis, the essential thing is the life of the individual. This alone makes history, here alone do the great transformations first take place, and the whole future, the whole history of the world, ultimately spring as a gigantic summation from these hidden sources in individuals. In our most private and most subjective lives we are not only the passive witnesses of our age, and its sufferers, but also its makers. We make our own epoch.” – Carl Jung
PARTICLE OF THE MASS:
“No one can flatter himself that he is immune to the spirit of his own epoch, or even that he possesses a full understanding of it. Irrespective of our conscious convictions, each one of us, without exception, being a particle of the general mass, is somewhere attached to, colored by, or even undermined by the spirit which goes through the mass. Freedom stretches only as far as the limits of our consciousness.” – Carl Jung, Paracelsus the Physician (1942)
NON-DOCTRINAIRE:
"The political and social isms of our day preach every conceivable ideal, but, under this mask, they pursue the goal of lowering the level of our culture by restricting or altogether inhibiting the possibilities of individual development. " – Carl Jung
JUNG ON SPEAKING OUT ABOUT WORLD ATROCITIES
Why Carl Jung did not speak out more on world atrocities, especially in his elder years. He writes in a letter...
"You are quite right: I also ask myself why I do not use the means that appear to be at my disposal to do my bit in combatting (sic) the atrocities that are going on in the world.
"I can give no rational reasons for this.
"In such matters I usually wait for an order from within.
"I have heard nothing of the kind.
"The world situation has got so hopelessly out of hand that even the most stirring words signify nothing.
"It would be more to the point, or so it seems to me, if each of us were sure of his own attitude.
"But an individual who thinks that his voice is heard afar merely exposes himself to the suspicion that he is one of that band who have said something in order to prove to themselves that they have done something whereas in reality they have done nothing at all.
"Words have become much too cheap.
"Being is more difficult and is therefore fondly replaced by verbalizing. "
– Carl Jung, letter to Jean Vontobel-Ruosch, April 28, 1959
INDIVIDUALISM:
I am afraid of America which educates its children away from being individuals into being mass-educated people. These are the Marxists without knowing it. ~Carl Jung, J.E.T., Pages 90-95
“It is the individual's task to differentiate himself from all the others and stand on his own feet. All collective identities . . . interfere with the fulfillment of this task. Such collective identities are crutches for the lame, shields for the timid, beds for the lazy, nurseries for the irresponsible. . . . ” - Carl Jung
“Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.” - Carl Jung
“To find out what is truly individual in ourselves, profound reflection is needed; and suddenly we realize how uncommonly difficult the discovery of individuality is.” - Carl Jung
“The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.” - Carl Jung
“For, in order to turn the individual into a function of the State, his dependence on anything beside the State must be taken from him.” - Carl Jung
“Yet the real carrier of life is the individual. He alone feels happiness, he alone has virtue and responsibility and any ethics whatever. The masses and the state have nothing of the kind. Only man as an individual human being lives; the state is just a system, a mere machine for sorting and tabulating the masses. Anyone, therefore, who thinks in terms of men minus the individual, in huge numbers, atomizes himself and becomes a thief and a robber to himself. He is infected with the leprosy of collective thinking and has become an inmate of that insalubrious stud-farm called the totalitarian State. … The goal of [the individual] is a higher one than the fulfilment of collective ideals, which are all nothing but makeshifts and conditions for bare existence. Since this is the absolute foundation, nobody will deny their importance, but collective ideals are not by a long way the breath of life which a man needs in order to live. If his soul does not live nothing can save him from stultification. His life is the soil in which his soul can and must develop. He has only the mystery of his living soul to set against the overwhelming might and brutality of collective convictions." – - Carl Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1963 (pars. 194 & 198)
INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS:
"Jung stressed the importance of individual rights in a persons relation to the state and society.
He saw that the state was treated as "a quasi-animate personality from whom everything is expected" but that this personality was "only camouflage for those individuals who know how to manipulate it", and referred to the state as a form of slavery.
He also thought that the state "swallowed up [people's] religious forces", and therefore that the state had "taken the place of God"—making it comparable to a religion in which "state slavery is a form of worship."
Jung observed that governments "stage acts of state" comparable to religious displays: "Brass bands, flags, banners, parades and monster demonstrations are no different in principle from ecclesiastical processions, cannonades and fire to scare off demons."
From Jung's perspective, this replacement of God with the state in a mass society led to the dislocation of the religious drive and resulted in the same fanaticism of the church-states of the dark ages—wherein the more the state is 'worshiped', the more freedom and morality are suppressed; this ultimately leaves the individual psychically undeveloped with extreme feelings of marginalization." From The Native American Taoist.
PARTY & STATE
To Heinz Westmann
Dear Mr. Westmann, 12 July 1947
Best thanks for your letter and your news about the Present Question Conference.
The theme is indeed very interesting: "What is the critical problem in human relationships today?"
Human relationships today are threatened by collective systems, quite apart from the fact that they are still, or always were, in a dubious and unsatisfactory condition.
The collective systems, styled "party" or "State," have a destructive effect on human relationships.
And they can easily be destroyed, too, because individuals are still in a condition of unconsciousness which cannot cope with the tremendous growth and fusion of the masses.
As yon know, the main endeavour of all totalitarian States is to undermine personal relationships through fear and mistrust, the result being an atomized mass in which the human psyche is completely stifled.
Even the relation between parents and children, the closest and most natural of all, is torn asunder by the State.
All big organizations that pursue exclusively materialistic aims are the pacemakers of mass-mindedness.
The sole possibility of stopping this is the development of consciousness in the single individual, who thereby is rendered immune to the lure of collective organizations.
This alone keeps his soul alive, for its life depends on the human relationship.
The accent must fall on conscious personalization and not on State organization.
The latter inevitably leads to the blight of totalitarianism.
In this sense I wish your undertaking every success.
I am writing you this instead of a special greeting and leave it to you to make what use you will of this letter.
With best regards,
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 472.
INDIVIDUALIST:
“UNTIL YOU MAKE THE UNCONSCIOUS CONSCIOUS,
it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
-- Carl Jung
"In so far as society is itself composed of individualized human beings, it is completely at the mercy of ruthless individualists. Let it band together into groups and organizations as much as it likes – it is just this banding together and the resultant extinction of the individual personality that makes it succumb so readily to a dictator. A million zeros joined together do not, unfortunately, add up to one. Ultimately everything depends on the quality of the individual, but our fatally short-sighted age thinks only in terms of large numbers and mass organizations, though one would think that the world had seen more than enough of what a well-disciplined mob can do in the hand of a single madman...
People go on blithely organizing and believing in the sovereign remedy of mass action, without the least consciousness of the fact that the most powerful organizations in the world can be maintained only by the greatest ruthlessness of their leaders and the cheapest of slogans.”
"The supreme danger which threatens individuals as well as whole nations is a psychic danger. Reason has proved itself completely powerless, precisely because its arguments have an effect only on the conscious mind and not on the unconscious. The greatest danger of all comes from the masses, in whom the effects of the unconscious pile up cumulatively and the reasonableness of the conscious mind is stifled. Every mass organization is a latent danger just as much as a heap of dynamite is. It lets loose effects which no man wants and no man can stop." C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self
Carl Gustav Jung – The Undiscovered Self
JUNG IDEAS & CONCEPTS
---Happiness ---
Trust that which gives you meaning and accept it as your guide -- Carl Jung
The more you deliberately seek happiness the more sure you are not to find it. -- Carl Jung
The more a man lays stress on false possessions, and the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life. He feels limited because he has limited aims, and the result is envy and jealousy. If we understand and feel that here in this life we already have a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change. ~Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
JUNG'S FACTORS: HAPPINESS
1. HEALTH: Good physical & mental health.
2. RELATIONSHIPS: Good personal & intimate relationships.
3. AESTHETICS: Faculty for perceiving beauty in art & nature.
4. FULFILMENT: Reasonable standards of living & satsfactory work.
5. METAPHYSICS: A philosophic or religious point of view capable of coping successfully with the vicissitudes of life.
--- Collective unconscious ---
The theory of the collective unconscious is one of Jung’s more unique theories; Jung believed, unlike many of his contemporaries, that all the elements of an individual’s nature are present from birth, and that the environment of the person brings them out (rather than the environment creating them). Jung felt that people are born with a “blueprint” already in them that will determine the course of their lives, something which, while controversial at the time, is fairly widely supported to today owing to the amount of evidence there is in the animal kingdom for various species being born with a repertoire of behaviours uniquely adapted to their environments. It has been observed that these behaviours in animals are activated by environmental stimuli in the same manner that Jung felt human behaviours are brought to the fore. According to Jung, “the term archetype is not meant to denote an inherited idea, but rather an inherited mode of functioning, corresponding to the inborn way in which the chick emerges from the egg, the bird builds its nest, a certain kind of wasp stings the motor ganglion of the caterpillar, and eels find their way to the Bermudas. In other words, it is a ‘pattern of behaviour’. This aspect of the archetype, the purely biological one, is the proper concern of scientific psychology.”
Jung believed that these blueprints are influenced strongly by various archetypes in our lives, such as our parents and other relatives, major events (births, deaths, etc.), and archetypes originating in nature and in our cultures (common symbols and elements like the moon, the sun, water, fire, etc.). All of these things come together to find expression in the psyche, and are frequently reflected in our stories and myths.
Jung did not rule out the spiritual, despite the biological basis he described the personality as having; he also felt there was an opposing spiritual polarity which greatly impacts the psyche. - Greater Cincinnati Friends of Jung
---Myth ---
Myth: a (usually collective) tale, fable, or dogma that unconsciously symbolizes the activities of the collective unconscious. Natural, intermediate stage between conscious and unconscious cognition. Like religious symbols, myths aren't invented, they arise from the unconscious.
Myths more accurate than science: Example: legends of the "treasure hard to attain" symbolize the inward treasure of contact with the real Self we must struggle through so many issues to locate. Jung says myths describe inner reality more accurately than so-called scientific truths. They are a kind of therapy for the problems of humanity. They also let a person know what's going on in his unconscious (it's not you, but the "gods" talking).
---Individuation ---
Individuation: the process by which a person integrates unconscious contents into consciousness, thereby becoming a psychologically whole individual. Self-realization. Release from persona and identification with the collective unconscious. An ongoing dialog between ego and Self in which the ego is relativized. Individuation can only unfold in the context of a relationship with others.
Seasons of life: In life's first half individuation takes the form of adaptation to culture; in the second half, the ego turns inward and confronts the archetypal ground behind it. Individuation is the human expression of life's inborn urge toward growth, expansion, and development of innate capacities. It is therefore both a synthesis and an entelechy of the self, a creation of the new and expression of something already present in germinal form.
Four categories "of work": Classic individuation falls very roughly into four categories, all of which recur and interpenetrate: shadow work, anima /animus work, Wise Old Man/Wise Woman work, and Self work. At each stage the ego integrates the personal aspect of the constellated key archetype; energy from its nonpersonal aspect regresses into the unconscious to activate the next archetype. Individuation is not a road, it's a spiral around the Self.
Values that help community. Individuation begins with guilt and need for expiation due to splitting with conformity, for which the person must give some equivalent: values that help the community.
---Synchronicity ---
Synchronicity: a meaningful, but noncausal, connection between an inner and outer event separated by time and space, but, like the Tao, a whole at some level. Example: waking up (inner event) near the time a relative dies (outer event). Jung shared the classic Chinese view that all events happening during this moment of time share its qualities. Synchronicity works because time is a fabric (Einstein) interwoven w/ space.
Fourth triad: Synchronicity, which fulfills as a fourth the triad of space/time continuum, indestructible energy, and causality, takes three forms: the coincidence of a psychic event with an objective one that takes place simultaneously; of a psychic state with a phantasm (dream or vision) which later turns out to be a reflection of an objective and more or less simultaneous distant event; the same, but the event perceived happens in the future--the phantasm is its present form.
Constellation of an archetype: Behind all these phenomena Jung places the archetype or the constellation of an archetype,which, in his view, is a process that engages equally objective manifestations, in the physical world, and subjective ones, in the psychological universe.Synchronicity, as an explicative theory, applies to phenomena from the area of parapsychology,prevision and premonition. FROM Carl Jung- Synchronicity.
Astrology as synchronicity: Jung thought of astrology (which he called the sum of all psychological knowledge of antiquity), the I Ching, and paranormal events as examples of synchronicity. Often triggered by an intense affect that causes anabaissement du niveau mental and corresponding charging of an ordering (not causing) archetype, synchronistic events demonstrate how active archetypes underlie and cut across the spacetime continuum and express their psychoid quality.
Acausal orderedness: Unlike the "primitive" or the East, we tend not to see meaning in chance because we focus on single events and their causes, not on how chance events arrange themselves in groups or series. Synchronicity is one example of acausal orderedness, the underlying equivalence of psychic and physical processes, and represent acts of creation in time of an eternal pattern (Bergson).
---Freud ---
Freud versus Jung: “To him (Freud) the unconscious was a product of consciousness, and it simply contained the remnants, I mean, it was sort of a storeroom where all the discarded things of consciousness were heaped up and left.
“But to me (Jung) the unconscious, then was already a matrix, a sort of basis of consciousness of a creative nature, namely, capable of autonomous acts, autonomous intrusions into consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 153.
---Roots: Christianity ---
The effort to bring about a transformation in the human psyche is of primeval origin. We find traces of such attempts in all primitive religions, in the West as well as in the East.
The initiation ceremonies, with their tortures and tests, are all magic preparations, undertaken at puberty and other stages of human existence, to bring about a certain spiritual transformation.
These primitive stages develop e d gradually into the mysteries of antiqu1ty.
Perhaps the best known of the s e are the celebrated Eleusinian Mysteries.
This mystery cult, with its magic and religious initiations, flourished throughout antiquity and lingered on as late as 622 A. D. when it was dissolved by a Byzantine edict.
Apparently it vanished entirely, very few traces remain, so that we really know exceedingly little of the actual content of the Eleusinian Mysteries.
The little we know is what we c an gather from the allusions in various writers, and from remnants which have been found through excavation.
The main idea seems to have been the idea of transformation: human consciousness had to be changed until it was capable of experiencing the feeling of immortality while still in this life.
We find similar initiations in the Egyptian Isis Mysteries, in fact it is prob able that the Eleusinian Mysteries originated in Egypt.
The writings of Plutarch give us a valuable insight into certain later aspects of these Egyptian mysteries.
And Apuleius' ancient and famous story, "The Golden Ass", is really a mystery throughout, and the end contains an excellent description of the process of transformation, even to complete enlightenment.
There were many other mystery cults, based on the process of initiation, such as the Samothracean cults of the Cabiri and of Demeter.
All these flowed together early in our era and formed, with Neo Platonism, the so-called Hellenistic Syncretism which is a conglomeration of many variations of religions and philosophies. H. Leisegang's writings show vividly the numberless traces left by many peculiar spiritual movements.
It was from this s oil that Christianity was born.
The idea that Christianity dropped from Heaven as a direct revelation is an historical forgery.
Its essential content is rich in philosophical ideas which re ach back beyond Plato and Pythagoras.
We find traces of similar spiritual movements in Judaism but the dogmatic attitude of the Rabbis largely obliterated them.
The only exception is the Cabbala which is really Gnostic.
There is still a sect in existence, near Basra and Kut-el-Amara in Mesopotamia, the Mandaeans, called the Christians of John the Baptist, who are in possession of original Gnostic writings.
A Neo-Platonic sect lingered on in Baghdad till the middle of the 11th century when it was stamped out by Islam.
These mystery cults disappeared almost entirely in the West, they flowed into Christianity.
So we need not be surprised to find attempts to produce a spiritual transformation very early in the history of Christianity itself.
Philo of Alexandria in his book " Devita contemplativa " describes pre-Christian monasteries which served later as models for the early Christian monasteries in Egypt and elsewhere.
The purpose of such monasteries was to provide a sanctuary, where efforts to obtain a thorough spiritual transformation could be undertaken in peace. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology aka ETH Lectures, 16th June 1939, Lecture 8, Page 154
---Alchemy ---
“The tremendous role which the opposites and their union play in alchemy helps us to understand why the alchemists were so fond of paradoxes. In order to attain this union, they tried not only to visualize the opposites together but to express them in the same breath. Characteristically, the paradoxes cluster most thickly round the arcane substance, which was believed to contain the opposites in uncombined form as the prima materia, and to amalgamate them as the lapis Philosophorum. Thus the lapis is called on the one hand base, cheap, immature, volatile, and on the other hand precious, perfect, and solid; or the prima materia is base and noble, or precious and parvi momenti (of little moment). The materia is visible to all eyes, the whole world sees it, touches it, loves it, and yet no one knows it. 'This stone therefore is no stone,' says the Turba, 'that thing is cheap and costly, dark, hidden, and known to everyone, having one name and many names.' The stone is 'thousand-named' like the gods of the mystery religions, the arcane substance is 'One and All'.” ~Carl Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, Pages 42-48.
Alchemist quest (from Jung's alchemy class 1941; click here for the full lecture)
“To the alchemist, matter was endowed with a living soul, and as he met this soul everywhere in his experiments, he concluded that at the bottom of all these individual, physical manifestations, there was a universal, all-permeating soul, an anima mundi (soul of the world), which was the cause of every living substance and of its particular form...
“For man has the yearning in himself to become what he would call the perfect man.
“Or rather, there is the image of a perfect and complete being in his unconscious.
“… the idea or feeling that everything in man is striving towards completion.
“Therefore, we are not surprised when we learn that the alchemists themselves drew a direct parallel between the imperfection of nature and the imperfection of man, and that they saw in the lapis philosophorum (philosopher's stone), the perfect materia, an analogy to Christ, the perfect, divine man.
“But the outstanding and remarkable characteristic of alchemy is the fact that the alchemists did not search for perfection in man but in matter.
“Matter was endowed with a divine soul in their eyes...
“No one need remain ignorant of the fact that he is striving for power, that he wants to become very rich, that he would be a tyrant if he had the chance, that he is pleasure seeking, envious of other people, and so on.
“Everyone can know such things of him or herself, because they are mere ego knowledge.
“But Self-knowledge is something completely different, it is learning to know of the things which are unknown.
“And when someone learns to know of these, he may say of himself that he is a fountain, from which two streams arise; one flows towards the East, where the sun rises, and the other towards the West, where the sun sets.
“… two contrary streams flow from man and two eagles arise from them.
“These are the volatile substances for the alchemist, he calls them spiritus, spiritual potentialities.
“They fly up, fall down again, naked, are re-feathered below and fly up yet again.”
---Miscellaneous ---
I CANNOT DEFINE FOR YOU WHAT GOD IS. I can only say that my work has proved empirically that the pattern of god exists in every man and that this pattern has its disposal the greatest energies for trans-formation and transfiguration of his natural being. ~C.G. Jung in “Jung and the story of our time”, Laurens Van der Post, p. 216.
THE MORE A MAN LAYS STRESS ON FALSE POSSESSIONS, and the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life. He feels limited because he has limited aims, and the result is envy and jealousy. If we understand and feel that here in this life we already have a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change. ~Carl Jung (Book: Memories, Dreams, Reflections https://amzn.to/3vZvyeo)
WE NEED MORE UNDERSTANDING OF HUMAN NATURE, because the only real danger that exists is man himself . . . We know nothing of man, far too little. His psyche should be studied because we are the origin of all coming evil.
THE UNCONSCIOUS IS NOT JUST EVIL BY NATURE, it is also the source of the highest good: not only dark but also light, not only bestial, semihuman, and demonic but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, “divine.” The Practice of Psychotherapy (1953)
NIGHTS THROUGH DREAMS tell the myths forgotten by the day. Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963)
OFTEN THE HANDS WILL SOLVE A MYSTERY that the intellect has struggled with in vain.
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)
WE ARE LIVING IN WHAT THE GREEKS CALLED the right time for a “metamorphosis of the gods,” i.e. of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science. The Undiscovered Self (1958)
ART IS A KIND OF INNATE DRIVE that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is “man” in a higher sense— he is “collective man”— one who carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic forms of mankind. Psychology & Literature(1930)
ONE LOOKS BACK WITH APPRECIATION to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
WE SHOULD NOT PRETEND TO UNDERSTAND the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy. Psychological Types, or, The Psychology of Individuation (1921)
THE HEALTHY MAN DOES NOT TORTURE OTHERS – generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.
THE DREAM IS THE SMALL HIDDEN DOOR in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach. The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man (1934)
MISTAKES ARE, AFTER ALL, THE FOUNDATIONS OF TRUTH, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not.
WHAT CAN A MAN SAY ABOUT WOMAN, HIS OWN OPPOSITE? I mean of course something sensible, that is outside the sexual program, free of resentment, illusion, and theory. Where is the man to be found capable of such superiority? Woman always stands just where the man’s shadow falls, so that he is only too liable to confuse the two. Then, when he tries to repair this misunderstanding, he overvalues her and believes her the most desirable thing in the world. Women In Europe (1927)
EVERY FORM OF ADDICTION IS BAD, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism.
THE EROTIC INSTINCT IS SOMETHING QUESTIONABLE, and will always be so whatever a future set of laws may have to say on the matter. It belongs, on the one hand, to the original animal nature of man, which will exist as long as man has an animal body. On the other hand, it is connected with the highest forms of the spirit. But it blooms only when the spirit and instinct are in true harmony. If one or the other aspect is missing, then an injury occurs, or at least there is a one-sided lack of balance which easily slips into the pathological. Too much of the animal disfigures the civilized human being, too much culture makes a sick animal. The Psychology of the Unconscious(1943)
NO TREE, IT IS SAID, CAN GROW TO HEAVEN unless its roots reach down to hell.
YOUR VISION WILL BECOME CLEAR ONLY WHEN you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.
WHEN AN INNER SITUATION is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.
A MAN WHO HAS NOT PASSED THROUGH the inferno of his passions has never overcome them. Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962)
PEOPLE WILL DO ANYTHING, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will PRACTICE Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn the literature of the whole world – all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls. Thus the soul has gradually been turned into a Nazareth from which nothing good can come. Psychology & Alchemy(1952)
PSYCHOANALYSIS CANNOT BE CONSIDERED a method of education if by education we mean the topiary art of clipping a tree into a beautiful artificial shape. But those who have a higher conception of education will prize most the method of cultivating a tree so that it fulfills to perfection its own natural conditions of growth. The Theory of Psychoanalysis (1913)
GREAT TALENTS ARE THE MOST LOVELY and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off. Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.
EMOTION IS THE CHIEF SOURCE OF all becoming-conscious. There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion. Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype (1938)
WE ARE SO CAPTIVATED BY AND ENTANGLED in our subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions. The Symbolic Life (1953); also in Man and His Symbols (1964)
NOTHING HAS A STRONGER INFLUENCE psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent. The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.
SELDOM, OR PERHAPS NEVER, DOES A MARRIAGE DEVELOP into an individual relationship smoothly and without crises; there is no coming to consciousness without pain. Contributions To Analytical Psychology (1928)
THE DYNAMIC PRINCIPLE OF FANTASY IS PLAY, a characteristic also of the child, and as such it appears inconsistent with the principle of serious work. But without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable. It is therefore short-sighted to treat fantasy, on account of its risky or unacceptable nature, as a thing of little worth. Psychological Types, or, The Psychology of Individuation (1921)
THE MEETING OF TWO PERSONALITIES is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. Modern Man In Search of a Soul (1933)