Collective Unconscious
ARCHAIC PSYCHE
Nests of Ancestors
ARCHAIC PSYCHE
Nests of Ancestors
The spirit of the depths took my understanding and all my knowledge and placed them at the service of the inexplicable and the paradoxical.
He robbed me of speech and writing for everything that was not in his service, namely the melting together of sense and nonsense, which produces the supreme meaning.
~Carl Jung; The Red Book, Page 229
I have never really succeeded in convincing an Indian that if no conscious ego is present there can be no conscious memory either. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 466-467
It is the tradition that a satori experience is imageless and they therefore say it was imageless. That it cannot possibly have been imageless is proved by the fact that they remember something definite. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 466-467
By definition, the self is a combination of consciousness and the
Unconscious and is therefore more comprehensive than the ego.
Only what is associated with the ego can become conscious.
But since the ego is only a part of the whole, I can become conscious
only of a part.
The whole can be comprehended only by a whole.
Therefore, when the self qua whole grasps something, it grasps
the whole.
But this whole is much too big for the ego to grasp.
It can only be divined, but this is not cognition.
I can become conscious neither of the whole of myself nor of the
whole of the world.
I know that the East believes in a consciousness without a subject
and says that the personal atman is capable of encompassing the
knowledge of the whole.
Nevertheless the East also says that dreamless sleep is the highest
stage of cognition.
For us this is an inconceivable paradox because dreamless sleep
is, for us, the epitome of an unconscious state in which no
consciousness exists, as we understand it.
Empirically, we do not know what happens in this state, since there
is no subject to cognize it, at least for us.
On the contrary, I must admit that as my cognition
is piecemeal and that my ego is far from being able to cognize a
whole.
Also, I have never discovered, either in the literature or in
conversation with an Oriental, any cognition that could be said
to be a cognition of the whole.
It is merely said to be so, just as we Christians say that we are
redeemed of our sins by Christ.
Unfortunately I haven't yet noticed anything of the sort, any
more than I have noticed a cognition of the self as subject.
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 523-524
He robbed me of speech and writing for everything that was not in his service, namely the melting together of sense and nonsense, which produces the supreme meaning.
~Carl Jung; The Red Book, Page 229
I have never really succeeded in convincing an Indian that if no conscious ego is present there can be no conscious memory either. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 466-467
It is the tradition that a satori experience is imageless and they therefore say it was imageless. That it cannot possibly have been imageless is proved by the fact that they remember something definite. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 466-467
By definition, the self is a combination of consciousness and the
Unconscious and is therefore more comprehensive than the ego.
Only what is associated with the ego can become conscious.
But since the ego is only a part of the whole, I can become conscious
only of a part.
The whole can be comprehended only by a whole.
Therefore, when the self qua whole grasps something, it grasps
the whole.
But this whole is much too big for the ego to grasp.
It can only be divined, but this is not cognition.
I can become conscious neither of the whole of myself nor of the
whole of the world.
I know that the East believes in a consciousness without a subject
and says that the personal atman is capable of encompassing the
knowledge of the whole.
Nevertheless the East also says that dreamless sleep is the highest
stage of cognition.
For us this is an inconceivable paradox because dreamless sleep
is, for us, the epitome of an unconscious state in which no
consciousness exists, as we understand it.
Empirically, we do not know what happens in this state, since there
is no subject to cognize it, at least for us.
On the contrary, I must admit that as my cognition
is piecemeal and that my ego is far from being able to cognize a
whole.
Also, I have never discovered, either in the literature or in
conversation with an Oriental, any cognition that could be said
to be a cognition of the whole.
It is merely said to be so, just as we Christians say that we are
redeemed of our sins by Christ.
Unfortunately I haven't yet noticed anything of the sort, any
more than I have noticed a cognition of the self as subject.
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 523-524
Bronze head of Hypnos (the god or spirit (daimon) of sleep), Possibly Roman, 1st-2nd century AD
THE OCEAN OF BECOMING
Navigating Our Collective Inheritance
In the past it was called the Akashic Record, Imaginal or Image Space & in its immensity, The Abyss
Psyche = highest intensity in the smallest space. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 43-47.
If we are to do justice to the essence of the thing we call spirit, we should really speak of a “higher” consciousness rather than of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 643.
Sure enough, we must believe in Reason.
But it should not prevent us from recognizing a mystery when we meet one.
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 87-91.
The state of the Holy Spirit means a restitution of the original oneness of the unconscious on the level of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 133-138
Our fantasies are always hovering on the point of our insufficiency where a defect ought to be compensated. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 305-306.
To Harold Lloyd Long
Dear Sir, 15 November 1958
The derogatory interpretations of the unconscious are usually due
to the fact that the observer projects his primitivity and his blindness
into the unconscious.
He thereby pursues the secret goal of protecting himself against
the inexorable demands of nature in the widest sense of the word.
As the term "unconscious" denotes, we don't know it.
It is the unknown, of which we can say anything we like.
Not one of our statements will be necessarily true.
The reason why the unconscious appears to us in such a disagreeable
form is because we are afraid of it, and we revile it because we hope
that by this method we can free ourselves from its attractions.
It is a puzzler-! admit-to anybody who occasionally indulges in thinking.
Sincerely yours,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 464-465
Navigating Our Collective Inheritance
In the past it was called the Akashic Record, Imaginal or Image Space & in its immensity, The Abyss
Psyche = highest intensity in the smallest space. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 43-47.
If we are to do justice to the essence of the thing we call spirit, we should really speak of a “higher” consciousness rather than of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 643.
Sure enough, we must believe in Reason.
But it should not prevent us from recognizing a mystery when we meet one.
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 87-91.
The state of the Holy Spirit means a restitution of the original oneness of the unconscious on the level of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 133-138
Our fantasies are always hovering on the point of our insufficiency where a defect ought to be compensated. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 305-306.
To Harold Lloyd Long
Dear Sir, 15 November 1958
The derogatory interpretations of the unconscious are usually due
to the fact that the observer projects his primitivity and his blindness
into the unconscious.
He thereby pursues the secret goal of protecting himself against
the inexorable demands of nature in the widest sense of the word.
As the term "unconscious" denotes, we don't know it.
It is the unknown, of which we can say anything we like.
Not one of our statements will be necessarily true.
The reason why the unconscious appears to us in such a disagreeable
form is because we are afraid of it, and we revile it because we hope
that by this method we can free ourselves from its attractions.
It is a puzzler-! admit-to anybody who occasionally indulges in thinking.
Sincerely yours,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 464-465
Modern physics is truly entering the sphere of the invisible and intangible, as it were. It is in reality a field of probabilities, which is exactly the same as the unconscious.
~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 36.
Through his inner vision the prophet discerns from the needs of his time the helpful image in the collective unconscious and expresses it in the symbol: because it speaks out of the collective unconscious it speaks for everyone-le vrai mot de la situation! ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 59-63.
The psyche is the greatest of all cosmic wonders and the sine qua non of the world as an object. It is in the highest degree odd that Western man, with but very few and ever fewer exceptions, apparently pays so little regard to this fact. Swamped by the knowledge of external objects, the subject of all knowledge has been temporarily eclipsed to the point of seeming nonexistence. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 357.
The collective unconscious…appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Par. 325
I am no longer alone with myself, and I can only artificially recall the scary and beautiful feeling of solitude. This is the shadow side of the fortune of love. ~Carl Jung; ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Introduction, Page 196.
Outward circumstances are no substitute for inner experience. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page V.
How else could it have occurred to man to divide the cosmos, on the analogy of day and night, summer and winter, into a bright day-world and a dark night-world peopled with fabulous monsters, unless he had the prototype of such a division in himself, in the polarity between the conscious and the invisible and unknowable unconscious? ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Page 187.
If attention is directed to the unconscious, the unconscious will yield up its contents, and these in turn will fructify the conscious like a fountain of living water. For consciousness is just as arid as the unconscious if the two halves of our psychic life are separated. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Page 163
The collective unconscious…appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Par. 325.
There is no consciousness without discrimination of opposites. ~Carl Jung; CW 9i: 178.
The ‘realm of the Mothers’ has not a few connections with the womb, with the matrix, which frequently symbolizes the creative aspect of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 182.
Water is the commonest symbol for the unconscious. The lake in the valley is the unconscious, which lies, as it were, underneath consciousness, so that it is often referred to as the ‘subconscious,’ usually with the pejorative connotation of an inferior consciousness. Water is the ‘valley spirit,’ the water dragon of Tao, whose nature resembles water- a yang in the yin, therefore, water means spirit that has become unconscious.” (Carl Jung, CW 9i, para 40)
It is when we come to a summit in life that the archetypal symbols appear. These primeval pictures of human life form the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Pages 176-177
Because of its unconscious component the self is so far removed from the conscious mind that it can only be partially expressed by human figures; the other part of it has to be expressed by objective, abstract symbols. The human figures are father and son, mother and daughter, king and queen, god and goddess…. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 314-315
...the Church severed the coniunctio from the physical realm altogether, and natural philosophy turned it into an abstract theoria. These developments meant the gradual transformation of the archetype into a psychological process which, in theory, we can call a combination of conscious and unconscious processes. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 295.
Just as conscious contents can vanish into the unconscious, other contents can also arise from it. Besides a majority of mere recollections, really new thoughts and creative ideas can appear which have never been conscious before. They grow up from the dark depths like a lotus. ~Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, Page 37.
The realm of the psyche is immeasurably great and filled with living reality. At its brink lies the secret of matter and of spirit. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 69-71
The language I speak must be ambiguous, must have two meanings, in order to do justice to the dual aspect of our psychic nature. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 69-71
~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 36.
Through his inner vision the prophet discerns from the needs of his time the helpful image in the collective unconscious and expresses it in the symbol: because it speaks out of the collective unconscious it speaks for everyone-le vrai mot de la situation! ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 59-63.
The psyche is the greatest of all cosmic wonders and the sine qua non of the world as an object. It is in the highest degree odd that Western man, with but very few and ever fewer exceptions, apparently pays so little regard to this fact. Swamped by the knowledge of external objects, the subject of all knowledge has been temporarily eclipsed to the point of seeming nonexistence. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 357.
The collective unconscious…appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Par. 325
I am no longer alone with myself, and I can only artificially recall the scary and beautiful feeling of solitude. This is the shadow side of the fortune of love. ~Carl Jung; ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Introduction, Page 196.
Outward circumstances are no substitute for inner experience. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page V.
How else could it have occurred to man to divide the cosmos, on the analogy of day and night, summer and winter, into a bright day-world and a dark night-world peopled with fabulous monsters, unless he had the prototype of such a division in himself, in the polarity between the conscious and the invisible and unknowable unconscious? ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Page 187.
If attention is directed to the unconscious, the unconscious will yield up its contents, and these in turn will fructify the conscious like a fountain of living water. For consciousness is just as arid as the unconscious if the two halves of our psychic life are separated. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Page 163
The collective unconscious…appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Par. 325.
There is no consciousness without discrimination of opposites. ~Carl Jung; CW 9i: 178.
The ‘realm of the Mothers’ has not a few connections with the womb, with the matrix, which frequently symbolizes the creative aspect of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 182.
Water is the commonest symbol for the unconscious. The lake in the valley is the unconscious, which lies, as it were, underneath consciousness, so that it is often referred to as the ‘subconscious,’ usually with the pejorative connotation of an inferior consciousness. Water is the ‘valley spirit,’ the water dragon of Tao, whose nature resembles water- a yang in the yin, therefore, water means spirit that has become unconscious.” (Carl Jung, CW 9i, para 40)
It is when we come to a summit in life that the archetypal symbols appear. These primeval pictures of human life form the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Pages 176-177
Because of its unconscious component the self is so far removed from the conscious mind that it can only be partially expressed by human figures; the other part of it has to be expressed by objective, abstract symbols. The human figures are father and son, mother and daughter, king and queen, god and goddess…. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 314-315
...the Church severed the coniunctio from the physical realm altogether, and natural philosophy turned it into an abstract theoria. These developments meant the gradual transformation of the archetype into a psychological process which, in theory, we can call a combination of conscious and unconscious processes. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 295.
Just as conscious contents can vanish into the unconscious, other contents can also arise from it. Besides a majority of mere recollections, really new thoughts and creative ideas can appear which have never been conscious before. They grow up from the dark depths like a lotus. ~Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, Page 37.
The realm of the psyche is immeasurably great and filled with living reality. At its brink lies the secret of matter and of spirit. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 69-71
The language I speak must be ambiguous, must have two meanings, in order to do justice to the dual aspect of our psychic nature. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 69-71
“For the collective unconscious we could use the word God. But I prefer not to use big words, I am quite satisfied with humble scientific language because it has the great advantage of bringing that whole experience into our immediate vicinity.
“You all know what the collective unconscious is, you have certain dreams that carry the hallmark of the collective unconscious; instead of dreaming of Aunt This or Uncle That, you dream of a lion, and then the analyst will tell you that this is a mythological motif, and you will understand that it is the collective unconscious.
“This God is no longer miles of abstract space away from you in an extra-mundane sphere. This divinity is not a concept in a theological textbook, or in the Bible; it is an immediate thing, it happens in your dreams at night, it causes you to have pains in the stomach, diarrhea, constipation, a whole host of neuroses.
“If you try to formulate it, to think what the unconscious is after all, you wind up by concluding that it is what the prophets were concerned with; it sounds exactly like some things in the Old Testament. There God sends plagues upon people, he burns their bones in the night, he injures their kidneys, he causes all sorts of troubles. Then you come naturally to the dilemma: Is that really God? Is God a neurosis?
“Now that is a shocking dilemma, I admit, but when you think consistently and logically, you come to the conclusion that God is a most shocking problem. And that is the truth, God has shocked people out of their wits. Think what he did to old Hosea. He was a respectable man and he had to marry a prostitute. Probably he suffered from a strange kind of mother complex.”
“It is only through the psyche that we can establish that God acts upon us, but we are unable to distinguish whether these actions emanate from God or from the unconscious. We cannot tell whether God and the unconscious are two different entities. Both are border-line concepts for transcendental contents. But empirically it can be established, with a sufficient degree of probability, that there is in the unconscious an archetype of wholeness. Strictly speaking, the God-image does not coincide with the unconscious as such, but with this special content of it, namely the archetype of the Self.” “God is reality itself.”
“God is a psychic fact of immediate experience, otherwise there would never have been any talk of God. The fact is valid in itself, requiring no non-psychological proof and inaccessible to any form of non-psychological criticism. It can be the most immediate and hence the most real of experiences, which can be neither ridiculed nor disproved.”
“All modern people feel alone in the world of the psyche because they assume that there is nothing there that they have not made up. This is the very best demonstration of our God-almighty-ness, which simply comes from the fact that we think we have invented everything physical – that nothing would be done if we did not do it; for that is our basic idea and it is an extraordinary assumption. Then one is all alone in one’s psyche, exactly like the Creator before the creation. But through a certain training, something suddenly happens which one has not created, something objective, and then one is no longer alone. That is the object of certain initiations, to train people to experience something which is not their intention, something strange, something objective with which they cannot identify.
“This experience of the objective fact is all-important, because it denotes the presence of something which is not I, yet is still physical. Such an experience can reach a climax where it becomes an experience of God.”
Jung quotes from: The Visions Seminars, Answer to Job, Jung Letters, Vol. 2, and the December 1961 issue of Good Housekeeping.
“You all know what the collective unconscious is, you have certain dreams that carry the hallmark of the collective unconscious; instead of dreaming of Aunt This or Uncle That, you dream of a lion, and then the analyst will tell you that this is a mythological motif, and you will understand that it is the collective unconscious.
“This God is no longer miles of abstract space away from you in an extra-mundane sphere. This divinity is not a concept in a theological textbook, or in the Bible; it is an immediate thing, it happens in your dreams at night, it causes you to have pains in the stomach, diarrhea, constipation, a whole host of neuroses.
“If you try to formulate it, to think what the unconscious is after all, you wind up by concluding that it is what the prophets were concerned with; it sounds exactly like some things in the Old Testament. There God sends plagues upon people, he burns their bones in the night, he injures their kidneys, he causes all sorts of troubles. Then you come naturally to the dilemma: Is that really God? Is God a neurosis?
“Now that is a shocking dilemma, I admit, but when you think consistently and logically, you come to the conclusion that God is a most shocking problem. And that is the truth, God has shocked people out of their wits. Think what he did to old Hosea. He was a respectable man and he had to marry a prostitute. Probably he suffered from a strange kind of mother complex.”
“It is only through the psyche that we can establish that God acts upon us, but we are unable to distinguish whether these actions emanate from God or from the unconscious. We cannot tell whether God and the unconscious are two different entities. Both are border-line concepts for transcendental contents. But empirically it can be established, with a sufficient degree of probability, that there is in the unconscious an archetype of wholeness. Strictly speaking, the God-image does not coincide with the unconscious as such, but with this special content of it, namely the archetype of the Self.” “God is reality itself.”
“God is a psychic fact of immediate experience, otherwise there would never have been any talk of God. The fact is valid in itself, requiring no non-psychological proof and inaccessible to any form of non-psychological criticism. It can be the most immediate and hence the most real of experiences, which can be neither ridiculed nor disproved.”
“All modern people feel alone in the world of the psyche because they assume that there is nothing there that they have not made up. This is the very best demonstration of our God-almighty-ness, which simply comes from the fact that we think we have invented everything physical – that nothing would be done if we did not do it; for that is our basic idea and it is an extraordinary assumption. Then one is all alone in one’s psyche, exactly like the Creator before the creation. But through a certain training, something suddenly happens which one has not created, something objective, and then one is no longer alone. That is the object of certain initiations, to train people to experience something which is not their intention, something strange, something objective with which they cannot identify.
“This experience of the objective fact is all-important, because it denotes the presence of something which is not I, yet is still physical. Such an experience can reach a climax where it becomes an experience of God.”
Jung quotes from: The Visions Seminars, Answer to Job, Jung Letters, Vol. 2, and the December 1961 issue of Good Housekeeping.
I have landed in the Eastern sphere through the waters of the unconscious, for the truths of the unconscious can never be thought up, they can be reached only by following a path which all cultures right down to the most primitive level have called the way of initiation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 87.
Hence there is only one collective unconscious, which is everywhere identical with itself, from which everything psychic takes shape before it is Personalized, modified, assimilated, etc. by external influences. ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume I, Page 408.
For the psyche this means a relative eternality and a relative non-separation from other psyches, or a oneness with them. ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume I, Page 256.
It is very probable that only what we call consciousness is contained in space and time, and that the rest of the psyche. the unconscious, exists in a state of relative spacelessness and timelessness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume I, Page 256.
Accordingly the capacity to nullify space and time must somehow inhere in the psyche, or, to put it another way, the psyche does not exist wholly in time and space.
~Carl Jung, Letters Volume I, Page 256.
It is under all conditions a most advisable thing to keep to the conscious and rational side, i.e., to maintain that side. One never should lose sight of it. It is the safeguard without which you would lose yourself on unknown seas. You would invite illness, indeed, if you should give up your conscious and rational orientation.
On the other hand, it is equally true that life is not only rational. To a certain extent you have to keep your senses open to the non-rational aspects of existence. . . .
The unconscious itself is neither tricky nor evil - it is Nature, both beautiful and terrible. . . .
The best way of dealing with the unconscious is the creative way. . . ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 108-109.
Jung has said that the unconscious long identified as the oceanic in man, is Nature.
The seeker of himself often feels cast adrift, setting a course between light and dark but ultimately moved along by unseen currents deep within. ~Claire Dunne, Wounded Healer of the Soul, Page 87.
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 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.
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 sin to be repented, of course, is unconsciousness. ~Carl Jung, Aion, Pages 191-192
As intelligent beings, however, we are dependent on human society; the unconscious is no substitute for reality. ~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.
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.
We can never enter the collective unconscious but we can send the anima or animus to bring us information. By making things with your hands without conscious intent you find a vision of the things of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, The Cornwall Seminar, Page 26.
The principle of individuation demands a dissociation or differentiation of the male and the female in ourselves. We must dissociate our self from the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 26.
Relationships must be fostered as far as possible and maintained, and thus a morbid transference can be avoided. ~Carl Jung; Cornwall Seminar; Page 5.
Collective relationships must be based on individual relationships, for an individual cannot exist without relatedness, for we are each cells in an organism. When we make individual relationships we lay the foundations for an invisible church. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 20.
Intuition [is] perception via the unconscious.
~Carl Jung; "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious", 1950.
So far as I can grasp the nature of the collective unconscious, it seems to me like an omnipresent continuum, an unextended Everywhere.
That is to say, when something happens here at point A which touches upon or affects the collective unconscious, it has happened everywhere hence the strange parallelism of the Chinese and European periods of style, which Wilhelm recently demonstrated to me at the China Institute, or the unfathomable simultaneity of the Christ and Krishna myth.
myth. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 58.
The unconscious itself is neither tricky nor evil - it is Nature, both beautiful and terrible. . . . The best way of dealing with the unconscious is the creative way. . . ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 108-109.
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 provisionalness of life is indescribable. Everything you do, whether watching a cloud or cooking soup, is done on the edge of eternity and is followed by the suffix of infinity. . ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 125-128.
Hence there is only one collective unconscious, which is everywhere identical with itself, from which everything psychic takes shape before it is Personalized, modified, assimilated, etc. by external influences. ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume I, Page 408.
For the psyche this means a relative eternality and a relative non-separation from other psyches, or a oneness with them. ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume I, Page 256.
It is very probable that only what we call consciousness is contained in space and time, and that the rest of the psyche. the unconscious, exists in a state of relative spacelessness and timelessness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume I, Page 256.
Accordingly the capacity to nullify space and time must somehow inhere in the psyche, or, to put it another way, the psyche does not exist wholly in time and space.
~Carl Jung, Letters Volume I, Page 256.
It is under all conditions a most advisable thing to keep to the conscious and rational side, i.e., to maintain that side. One never should lose sight of it. It is the safeguard without which you would lose yourself on unknown seas. You would invite illness, indeed, if you should give up your conscious and rational orientation.
On the other hand, it is equally true that life is not only rational. To a certain extent you have to keep your senses open to the non-rational aspects of existence. . . .
The unconscious itself is neither tricky nor evil - it is Nature, both beautiful and terrible. . . .
The best way of dealing with the unconscious is the creative way. . . ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 108-109.
Jung has said that the unconscious long identified as the oceanic in man, is Nature.
The seeker of himself often feels cast adrift, setting a course between light and dark but ultimately moved along by unseen currents deep within. ~Claire Dunne, Wounded Healer of the Soul, Page 87.
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 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.
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 sin to be repented, of course, is unconsciousness. ~Carl Jung, Aion, Pages 191-192
As intelligent beings, however, we are dependent on human society; the unconscious is no substitute for reality. ~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.
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.
We can never enter the collective unconscious but we can send the anima or animus to bring us information. By making things with your hands without conscious intent you find a vision of the things of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, The Cornwall Seminar, Page 26.
The principle of individuation demands a dissociation or differentiation of the male and the female in ourselves. We must dissociate our self from the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 26.
Relationships must be fostered as far as possible and maintained, and thus a morbid transference can be avoided. ~Carl Jung; Cornwall Seminar; Page 5.
Collective relationships must be based on individual relationships, for an individual cannot exist without relatedness, for we are each cells in an organism. When we make individual relationships we lay the foundations for an invisible church. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 20.
Intuition [is] perception via the unconscious.
~Carl Jung; "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious", 1950.
So far as I can grasp the nature of the collective unconscious, it seems to me like an omnipresent continuum, an unextended Everywhere.
That is to say, when something happens here at point A which touches upon or affects the collective unconscious, it has happened everywhere hence the strange parallelism of the Chinese and European periods of style, which Wilhelm recently demonstrated to me at the China Institute, or the unfathomable simultaneity of the Christ and Krishna myth.
myth. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 58.
The unconscious itself is neither tricky nor evil - it is Nature, both beautiful and terrible. . . . The best way of dealing with the unconscious is the creative way. . . ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 108-109.
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 provisionalness of life is indescribable. Everything you do, whether watching a cloud or cooking soup, is done on the edge of eternity and is followed by the suffix of infinity. . ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 125-128.
Modern physics is truly entering the sphere of the invisible and intangible, as it were.
It is in reality a field of probabilities, which is exactly the same as the unconscious.
~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 36.
If we can successfully develop that function which I have called transcendent, the disharmony ceases and we can then enjoy the favorable side of the unconscious. The unconscious then gives us all the encouragement and help that a bountiful nature can shower upon a man. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 502.
I can only gaze with wonder and awe at the depths and heights of our psychic nature. Its non-spatial universe conceals an untold abundance of images which have accumulated over millions of years of development… The only equivalent of the universe within is the universe without. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 331.
Consciousness and Becoming Conscious Consciousness is the divine light; it is the possibility of seeing oneself, and this means to me that it is the very basis of life.
Consciousness is the transformation and the transformer of the primordial instinctual images.
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.
Consciousness is only possible if a spark of the essence becomes detached from the unconscious, religiously one could say from God.
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.
We must become conscious for God because, through us, God becomes conscious and then becomes man.
We have to realize the inborn divine will, which is the process of individuation.
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 recognize what is different from me.
Man is the dividing line of the acts of consciousness; he illuminates the night of the unconscious around him.
The actuality of things is a great puzzle.
What existed before and outside us? At a certain time a vast change must have taken place; yet even then, at that moment,
the possibility of consciousness must already have been present in the world.
If a sudden separation occurs in the pleroma there arises the possibility of creation and consciousness.
In the completeness of the pleroma there is nothing to explain or distinguish because change and causality cease to exist
there.
When we have achieved our greatest capacity for consciousness the task is to continue our efforts to carry into reality what we have learned.
In certain areas this cannot be done -- I could not commit a murder, for instance.
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.
The positive result of analysis enables us to become unconscious again.
Analysis is an intermezzo that lasts until the individual's greatest possible capacity for consciousness has been achieved.
Then he can return to nature and re-enter the dark current of life, practice Zen, or spend his time in alehouses.
Unfortunately the last possibility does not agree with my health!
We do not know our own role in life.
We behave like the lizard; we do what it does except that we also talk ...
We approach life from the side of consciousness, but at certain times we have to make the sacrificium intellectus.
We must sacrifice everything and become again as a child; not to remain a child, be it understood, but to re-enter childhood.
This state implies a divinely transformed nature, a higher level of existence, and a more profound realization of the world.
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.
This higher consciousness must be re-integrated into the dark flow of life so that we see then only that, which is immediately before our eyes.
Even Goethe could only know a fraction of his possibilities and his destiny.
Mankind today is faced with problems that formerly concerned only the gods.
Man can now choose between total destructiveness and complete constructiveness.
These are superhuman possibilities.
The light of consciousness needs to be clearly distinguished from the cunning of the unfathomable depths of the spirit.
The psyche is emancipated from instinctual patterns and from causality. The psyche is also the scene of conflicts between instinct and free will, for instincts are without order and collide with the organised consciousness.
Europeans are especially likely to believe that they can replace instinct by intellect.
~Carl Jung; Conversations with C.G. Jung; Consciousness and becoming Conscious; Pages 9-13.
It is in reality a field of probabilities, which is exactly the same as the unconscious.
~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 36.
If we can successfully develop that function which I have called transcendent, the disharmony ceases and we can then enjoy the favorable side of the unconscious. The unconscious then gives us all the encouragement and help that a bountiful nature can shower upon a man. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 502.
I can only gaze with wonder and awe at the depths and heights of our psychic nature. Its non-spatial universe conceals an untold abundance of images which have accumulated over millions of years of development… The only equivalent of the universe within is the universe without. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 331.
Consciousness and Becoming Conscious Consciousness is the divine light; it is the possibility of seeing oneself, and this means to me that it is the very basis of life.
Consciousness is the transformation and the transformer of the primordial instinctual images.
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.
Consciousness is only possible if a spark of the essence becomes detached from the unconscious, religiously one could say from God.
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.
We must become conscious for God because, through us, God becomes conscious and then becomes man.
We have to realize the inborn divine will, which is the process of individuation.
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 recognize what is different from me.
Man is the dividing line of the acts of consciousness; he illuminates the night of the unconscious around him.
The actuality of things is a great puzzle.
What existed before and outside us? At a certain time a vast change must have taken place; yet even then, at that moment,
the possibility of consciousness must already have been present in the world.
If a sudden separation occurs in the pleroma there arises the possibility of creation and consciousness.
In the completeness of the pleroma there is nothing to explain or distinguish because change and causality cease to exist
there.
When we have achieved our greatest capacity for consciousness the task is to continue our efforts to carry into reality what we have learned.
In certain areas this cannot be done -- I could not commit a murder, for instance.
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.
The positive result of analysis enables us to become unconscious again.
Analysis is an intermezzo that lasts until the individual's greatest possible capacity for consciousness has been achieved.
Then he can return to nature and re-enter the dark current of life, practice Zen, or spend his time in alehouses.
Unfortunately the last possibility does not agree with my health!
We do not know our own role in life.
We behave like the lizard; we do what it does except that we also talk ...
We approach life from the side of consciousness, but at certain times we have to make the sacrificium intellectus.
We must sacrifice everything and become again as a child; not to remain a child, be it understood, but to re-enter childhood.
This state implies a divinely transformed nature, a higher level of existence, and a more profound realization of the world.
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.
This higher consciousness must be re-integrated into the dark flow of life so that we see then only that, which is immediately before our eyes.
Even Goethe could only know a fraction of his possibilities and his destiny.
Mankind today is faced with problems that formerly concerned only the gods.
Man can now choose between total destructiveness and complete constructiveness.
These are superhuman possibilities.
The light of consciousness needs to be clearly distinguished from the cunning of the unfathomable depths of the spirit.
The psyche is emancipated from instinctual patterns and from causality. The psyche is also the scene of conflicts between instinct and free will, for instincts are without order and collide with the organised consciousness.
Europeans are especially likely to believe that they can replace instinct by intellect.
~Carl Jung; Conversations with C.G. Jung; Consciousness and becoming Conscious; Pages 9-13.
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. ~Carl Jung
We can understand thinking, feeling and sensation but intuition is another thing. We do not know how we arrive at an intuition, it is perception by way of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 99.
Psychologically, we can project a father-figure on the image of our own future greater personality onto others...
.. . As the Crystal materializes from the Saturated-Solution from the Matrix of the Earth ... . So the Fetus gestation from the Placenta of the Womb of Womb/Man ... . {As the Archetypal-Image manifesting ly materializes from the Collective Unconscious ~ Universal-Mind ~ Unus Mundus Realm ... . So the Atom - Atman - Sun - Planet manifests from Unus Mundus realm - the Womb of Space. -Jung, Atom & Archetype
The unconscious is a living being with its use, object, and goal, and is eternally looking for a way to reach that goal - a way which is not our personal one, but the human way, mankind's way. ~ Carl Jung, Lecture VI 2June1934, Page 113.
The collective unconscious is a source in which all the past and all the future lie, it does not belong to the individual, but to mankind. ~ Carl Jung, Lecture VI 2June1934, Page 113.
The unconscious contains not only memories but also the germs of the new, creative seeds. ~ Carl Jung, Lecture VI 2June1934, Page 113.
And we can construct or even predict the unconscious of our days when we know what it has been yesterday. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 17.
The collective unconscious is a source in which all the past and all the future lie, it does not belong to the individual, but to mankind.
So you see, in our days we have such and such a view of the world, a particular philosophy, but in the unconscious we have a different one. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 17.
The collective unconscious is a source in which all the past and all the future lie, it does not belong to the individual, but to mankind. ~ Carl Jung, Lecture VI 2June1934, Page 113.
The unconscious contains not only memories but also the germs of the new, creative seeds. ~ Carl Jung, Lecture VI 2June1934, Page 113.
And we can construct or even predict the unconscious of our days when we know what it has been yesterday. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 17.
The collective unconscious is a source in which all the past and all the future lie, it does not belong to the individual, but to mankind.
So you see, in our days we have such and such a view of the world, a particular philosophy, but in the unconscious we have a different one. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 17.
For my private use I call the sphere of paradoxical existence, i.e., the instinctive unconscious, the Pleroma , a term borrowed from Gnosticism. ~Jung, Letters Vol. 1, 59-63
The psyche experiences itself and is at the same time a general phenomenon; everything that exists depends on this fact. ~Carl Jung, Lecture I, 20April1934, Pages 94.
Through his inner vision the prophet discerns from the needs of his time the helpful image in the collective unconscious and expresses it in the symbol: because it speaks out of the collective unconscious it speaks for everyone-le vrai mot de la situation! ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 59-63.
With a disordered consciousness order can come out of the unconscious, just as conversely unconscious chaos can break into the too narrow cosmos of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 59-63.
At the founding of the great religions there was to begin with a collective disorientation which everywhere constellated in the unconscious an overwhelming principle of order (the collective longing for redemption.) ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 59-63.
The self must become as small as and yet smaller than the ego although it is the ocean of divinity: “God is as small as me,” says Angelus Silesius. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 335-337.
The unconscious is largely identical with the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems, which are the physiological counterparts of the polarity of unconscious contents. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 278.
Everything is mediated through the mind, translated, filtered, allegorized, twisted, even falsified by it. ~Carl Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, Page 327, Para 623.
[T]he collective unconscious is simply Nature — and since Nature contains everything it also contains the unknown.
... So far as we can see, the collective unconscious is identical with Nature to the extent that Nature herself, including matter, is unknown to us.
I have nothing against the assumption that the psyche is a quality of matter or matter the concrete aspect of the psyche, provided that 'psyche' is defined as the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung; Letters, vol. 2, P 450
The mental state of the first years of life does not differ from the collective
unconscious; it is a world rich of images. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 182.
It is an actual empirical fact that the unconscious is no mirror of our ordinary world but has creative phantasies and living structures of its own. ~Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 184.
If we consider the psyche as a whole, we come to the conclusion that the unconscious psyche likewise exists in a space-time continuum, where time is no longer time and space no longer space. Accordingly, causality ceases too. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 546-548.
We cannot examine the unconscious with a psychological microscope and lay bare its structure, if we could, we should see that it begins its work from within, like the crystal. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 192.
When things fall into the unconscious, it is only the power of reproduction which is lost; no event is lost, nothing has ever not happened, it is all stored up, and even after ten thousand years can come up in its pristine freshness. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 191.
But the ground-plan of these images [Archetypal] is universal and must be assumed to be pre-existent, since it can be demonstrated in the dreams of small children or uneducated persons who could not possibly have been influenced by tradition.
The pre-existent pattern is irrepresentable because it is totally unconscious.
It functions as an arranger of representable material.
Thus the archetype as a phenomenon is conditioned by place and time, but on the other hand it is an invisible structural pattern independent of place and time, and like the instincts proves to be an essential component of the psyche.~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 538-539.
You know what my attitude is to the unconscious. There is no point in delivering oneself over to it to the last drop. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 239-240.
The unconscious can realize itself only with the help of consciousness and under its constant control.
At the same time consciousness must keep one eye on the unconscious and the other focused just as clearly on the potentialities of human existence and human relationships. --Jung, Letters Vol. 1, 239-240
We can really produce precious little by our conscious mind ... we depend entirely upon the benevolent cooperation of our unconscious. — C. G. Jung, The Tavistock Lectures
Thus your soul is your own self in the spiritual world. As the abode of the spirits, however, the spiritual world is also an outer world. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 288
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. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Alchemy, Lecture VII, Page 67.
Only a few individuals succeed in throwing off mythology in a time of a certain intellectual supremacy - the mass never frees itself. Carl Jung (The Psychology of the Unconscious, 1943
Without doubt, also, the realization of the opposite hidden in the unconscious, i.e. the 'reversal', signifies reunion with the unconscious laws of being, and the purpose of this reunion is the attainment of conscious life or, expressed in Chinese terms, the bringing about of the Tao. ~Carl Jung, Secret of the Golden Flower, Pages 95-96.
At last I discovered that they [The East] call the unconscious consciousness, indeed enlightenment. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 204.
We sleep a third of our life away and in the remaining two-thirds we are only more or less conscious. ~Carl Jung, Lecture II, 27April1934, Page 96.
If the unconscious stopped living nothing would happen in consciousness, for all that comes into our heads proceeds from the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Lecture II, 27April1934, Pages 97.
Consciousness is essentially the psyche's organ of perception, it is the eye and ear of the psyche. ~Carl Jung, Lecture II, 27April1934, Pages 98.
Alert consciousness is a very rare condition, it is tiring and expensive, and as it requires so much energy we prefer to let ourselves live in a kind of torpor. ~Carl Jung, Lecture II, 27April1934, Pages 96.
The following is from an essay called 'Mind and Earth' by Carl Jung (1931):
"[I] must go... into the nature... of the unconscious if I am to deal adequately with the conditioning of the mind by the earth. [...] [T]he psyche... is a much more comprehensive and darker field of experience than the narrow, brightly lit area of consciousness, for the psyche also includes the unconscious."
"Its contents, the archetypes, are as it were the hidden foundations of the conscious mind,... the roots which the psyche has sunk not only in the earth in the narrower sense but in the world in general."
The psyche experiences itself and is at the same time a general phenomenon; everything that exists depends on this fact. ~Carl Jung, Lecture I, 20April1934, Pages 94.
Through his inner vision the prophet discerns from the needs of his time the helpful image in the collective unconscious and expresses it in the symbol: because it speaks out of the collective unconscious it speaks for everyone-le vrai mot de la situation! ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 59-63.
With a disordered consciousness order can come out of the unconscious, just as conversely unconscious chaos can break into the too narrow cosmos of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 59-63.
At the founding of the great religions there was to begin with a collective disorientation which everywhere constellated in the unconscious an overwhelming principle of order (the collective longing for redemption.) ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 59-63.
The self must become as small as and yet smaller than the ego although it is the ocean of divinity: “God is as small as me,” says Angelus Silesius. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 335-337.
The unconscious is largely identical with the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems, which are the physiological counterparts of the polarity of unconscious contents. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 278.
Everything is mediated through the mind, translated, filtered, allegorized, twisted, even falsified by it. ~Carl Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, Page 327, Para 623.
[T]he collective unconscious is simply Nature — and since Nature contains everything it also contains the unknown.
... So far as we can see, the collective unconscious is identical with Nature to the extent that Nature herself, including matter, is unknown to us.
I have nothing against the assumption that the psyche is a quality of matter or matter the concrete aspect of the psyche, provided that 'psyche' is defined as the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung; Letters, vol. 2, P 450
The mental state of the first years of life does not differ from the collective
unconscious; it is a world rich of images. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 182.
It is an actual empirical fact that the unconscious is no mirror of our ordinary world but has creative phantasies and living structures of its own. ~Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 184.
If we consider the psyche as a whole, we come to the conclusion that the unconscious psyche likewise exists in a space-time continuum, where time is no longer time and space no longer space. Accordingly, causality ceases too. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 546-548.
We cannot examine the unconscious with a psychological microscope and lay bare its structure, if we could, we should see that it begins its work from within, like the crystal. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 192.
When things fall into the unconscious, it is only the power of reproduction which is lost; no event is lost, nothing has ever not happened, it is all stored up, and even after ten thousand years can come up in its pristine freshness. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 191.
But the ground-plan of these images [Archetypal] is universal and must be assumed to be pre-existent, since it can be demonstrated in the dreams of small children or uneducated persons who could not possibly have been influenced by tradition.
The pre-existent pattern is irrepresentable because it is totally unconscious.
It functions as an arranger of representable material.
Thus the archetype as a phenomenon is conditioned by place and time, but on the other hand it is an invisible structural pattern independent of place and time, and like the instincts proves to be an essential component of the psyche.~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 538-539.
You know what my attitude is to the unconscious. There is no point in delivering oneself over to it to the last drop. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 239-240.
The unconscious can realize itself only with the help of consciousness and under its constant control.
At the same time consciousness must keep one eye on the unconscious and the other focused just as clearly on the potentialities of human existence and human relationships. --Jung, Letters Vol. 1, 239-240
We can really produce precious little by our conscious mind ... we depend entirely upon the benevolent cooperation of our unconscious. — C. G. Jung, The Tavistock Lectures
Thus your soul is your own self in the spiritual world. As the abode of the spirits, however, the spiritual world is also an outer world. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 288
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. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Alchemy, Lecture VII, Page 67.
Only a few individuals succeed in throwing off mythology in a time of a certain intellectual supremacy - the mass never frees itself. Carl Jung (The Psychology of the Unconscious, 1943
Without doubt, also, the realization of the opposite hidden in the unconscious, i.e. the 'reversal', signifies reunion with the unconscious laws of being, and the purpose of this reunion is the attainment of conscious life or, expressed in Chinese terms, the bringing about of the Tao. ~Carl Jung, Secret of the Golden Flower, Pages 95-96.
At last I discovered that they [The East] call the unconscious consciousness, indeed enlightenment. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 204.
We sleep a third of our life away and in the remaining two-thirds we are only more or less conscious. ~Carl Jung, Lecture II, 27April1934, Page 96.
If the unconscious stopped living nothing would happen in consciousness, for all that comes into our heads proceeds from the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Lecture II, 27April1934, Pages 97.
Consciousness is essentially the psyche's organ of perception, it is the eye and ear of the psyche. ~Carl Jung, Lecture II, 27April1934, Pages 98.
Alert consciousness is a very rare condition, it is tiring and expensive, and as it requires so much energy we prefer to let ourselves live in a kind of torpor. ~Carl Jung, Lecture II, 27April1934, Pages 96.
The following is from an essay called 'Mind and Earth' by Carl Jung (1931):
"[I] must go... into the nature... of the unconscious if I am to deal adequately with the conditioning of the mind by the earth. [...] [T]he psyche... is a much more comprehensive and darker field of experience than the narrow, brightly lit area of consciousness, for the psyche also includes the unconscious."
"Its contents, the archetypes, are as it were the hidden foundations of the conscious mind,... the roots which the psyche has sunk not only in the earth in the narrower sense but in the world in general."
The personal layer of the unconscious is distinct from the collective unconscious.
The personal unconscious contains lost memories, painful ideas that are repressed (i.e., forgotten on purpose), subliminal perceptions, by which are meant sense-perceptions that were not strong enough to reach consciousness, and finally, contents that are not yet ripe for consciousness.["The Personal and the Collective Unconscious," ibid., par. 103.]
The personal unconscious contains lost memories, painful ideas that are repressed (i.e., forgotten on purpose), subliminal perceptions, by which are meant sense-perceptions that were not strong enough to reach consciousness, and finally, contents that are not yet ripe for consciousness.["The Personal and the Collective Unconscious," ibid., par. 103.]
But one thing I will tell you: the exploration of the unconscious has in fact
and in truth discovered the age-old, timeless way of initiation.
--Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 140-143.
The relational function with the unconscious must not be transformed into a relational function with the conscious world! ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 317.
I am indeed convinced that creative imagination is the only primordial phenomenon accessible to us, the real Ground of the psyche, the only immediate reality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 59-63.
First: these qualities are differentiated and separate in us;
therefore they do not cancel each other out, but are effective.
Thus we are the victims of the pairs of opposites. The Pleroma is rent within us.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 348.
…it must be pointed out that just as the human body shows a common anatomy over and above all racial differences, so, too, the psyche possesses a common substratum transcending all differences in culture and consciousness.
~Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 84.
In my view it is absolutely essential always to have our consciousness well enough in hand to pay sufficient attention to our reality, to the Here and Now.
Otherwise we are in danger of being overrun by an unconscious which knows nothing of this human world of ours. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 239-240.
This field is the collective unconscious where the treasure is hidden, the royal treasure in the sea. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 113.
The unconscious comes into action through the attitude of the conscious in active imagination. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 98.
We must know how the human psyche came into being for in the unconscious the old ways are always trodden again. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 98.
When things fall into the unconscious, it is only the power of reproduction which is lost; to event is lost, nothing has ever not happened, it is all stored up, and even after ten thousand years can come up in its pristine freshness. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 22Feb1935, Pages 191.
and in truth discovered the age-old, timeless way of initiation.
--Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 140-143.
The relational function with the unconscious must not be transformed into a relational function with the conscious world! ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 317.
I am indeed convinced that creative imagination is the only primordial phenomenon accessible to us, the real Ground of the psyche, the only immediate reality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 59-63.
First: these qualities are differentiated and separate in us;
therefore they do not cancel each other out, but are effective.
Thus we are the victims of the pairs of opposites. The Pleroma is rent within us.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 348.
…it must be pointed out that just as the human body shows a common anatomy over and above all racial differences, so, too, the psyche possesses a common substratum transcending all differences in culture and consciousness.
~Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 84.
In my view it is absolutely essential always to have our consciousness well enough in hand to pay sufficient attention to our reality, to the Here and Now.
Otherwise we are in danger of being overrun by an unconscious which knows nothing of this human world of ours. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 239-240.
This field is the collective unconscious where the treasure is hidden, the royal treasure in the sea. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 113.
The unconscious comes into action through the attitude of the conscious in active imagination. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 98.
We must know how the human psyche came into being for in the unconscious the old ways are always trodden again. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 98.
When things fall into the unconscious, it is only the power of reproduction which is lost; to event is lost, nothing has ever not happened, it is all stored up, and even after ten thousand years can come up in its pristine freshness. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 22Feb1935, Pages 191.
…the brain is complete with the history of the world and every child is born with an unconscious assumption of the world. But for this we could not grasp the world at all. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 27.
The ego never lacks moral and rational counterarguments, which one cannot and should not set aside so long as it is possible to hold on to them.
For you only feel yourself on the right road when the conflicts of duty seem to have resolved themselves, and you have become the victim of a decision made over your head or in defiance of the heart.
From this we can see the numinous power of the self, which can hardly be experienced in any other way.
For this reason the experience of the self is always a defeat for the ego.
The extraordinary difficulty in this experience is that the self can be distinguished only conceptually from what has always been referred to as "God," but not practically. Both concepts apparently rest on an identical
numinous factor which is a condition of reality.
The ego enters into the picture only so far as it can offer resistance, defend itself, and in the event of defeat still affirm its existence.
~Carl Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, Page 545, Para 778.
The ego never lacks moral and rational counterarguments, which one cannot and should not set aside so long as it is possible to hold on to them.
For you only feel yourself on the right road when the conflicts of duty seem to have resolved themselves, and you have become the victim of a decision made over your head or in defiance of the heart.
From this we can see the numinous power of the self, which can hardly be experienced in any other way.
For this reason the experience of the self is always a defeat for the ego.
The extraordinary difficulty in this experience is that the self can be distinguished only conceptually from what has always been referred to as "God," but not practically. Both concepts apparently rest on an identical
numinous factor which is a condition of reality.
The ego enters into the picture only so far as it can offer resistance, defend itself, and in the event of defeat still affirm its existence.
~Carl Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, Page 545, Para 778.
Ferdinand Max Bredt - The Sirens (1902)
TRUTH IS EMBELLISHED IN OBSCURITY
Jung reduced archetypes to a select few that mostly matched up with ancient godforms that described human behavior sets and transformational forces. But archetypes are not limited to that in any way. The forces of nature and the elements have always been considered archetypal -- floods, hurricanes, volcanoes, tornadoes, earthquakes, fire, ocean, river, mountain, cave, stars, lightning, voidspace -- the abyss of the transcendent imagination. Nietzsche famously claimed, "And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
The Unconscious Mind is not unconscious at all. Only the conscious mind is unconscious of the consciousness of the Unconscious Mind. There are archetypes emerging in science that have an ancient history in symbolism with meaningful messages that resound through the ages: "Turning and turning within the widening gyre..." They have been resurrected in scientific forms to explain even the mathematical mysteries of the microcosm and the macrocosm: vortex, gyre, spiral, solitons, toroids, entanglement, spin, singularity, black holes, flower of life, fractal iteration, interference patterns, and more. (Card) --Iona Miller, SGJ
Jung reduced archetypes to a select few that mostly matched up with ancient godforms that described human behavior sets and transformational forces. But archetypes are not limited to that in any way. The forces of nature and the elements have always been considered archetypal -- floods, hurricanes, volcanoes, tornadoes, earthquakes, fire, ocean, river, mountain, cave, stars, lightning, voidspace -- the abyss of the transcendent imagination. Nietzsche famously claimed, "And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
The Unconscious Mind is not unconscious at all. Only the conscious mind is unconscious of the consciousness of the Unconscious Mind. There are archetypes emerging in science that have an ancient history in symbolism with meaningful messages that resound through the ages: "Turning and turning within the widening gyre..." They have been resurrected in scientific forms to explain even the mathematical mysteries of the microcosm and the macrocosm: vortex, gyre, spiral, solitons, toroids, entanglement, spin, singularity, black holes, flower of life, fractal iteration, interference patterns, and more. (Card) --Iona Miller, SGJ
"We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul." - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
You are quite right in supposing that I reckon astrology among those movements which, like theosophy, etc., seek to assuage an irrational thirst for knowledge but actually lead it into a sidetrack.
Astrology is knocking at the gates of our universities: a Tibingen professor has switched over to astrology and a course on astrology was given at Cardiff University last year.
Astrology is not mere superstition but contains some psychological facts (like theosophy) which are of considerable importance.
Astrology has actually nothing to do with the Stars but is the 5000 year old psychology of antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Unfortunately I cannot explain or prove this to you a letter.
You are also quite right in your view that people who subscribe all out to any of these movements exclude authentic experience for the sake of believed hypotheses, not knowing that they are mere hypotheses but believing them to be knowledge.
But in all these dubious fields there is at least something that is worth knowing and that our present-day rationalism has cast aside rather too hastily.
This something is projected psychology. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, pg. 56
She saw all manner of things which she projected into the outer world as ghost figures: ghosts which were connected with herself and ghosts connected with other people. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, pg. 32
You are quite right in supposing that I reckon astrology among those movements which, like theosophy, etc., seek to assuage an irrational thirst for knowledge but actually lead it into a sidetrack.
Astrology is knocking at the gates of our universities: a Tibingen professor has switched over to astrology and a course on astrology was given at Cardiff University last year.
Astrology is not mere superstition but contains some psychological facts (like theosophy) which are of considerable importance.
Astrology has actually nothing to do with the Stars but is the 5000 year old psychology of antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Unfortunately I cannot explain or prove this to you a letter.
You are also quite right in your view that people who subscribe all out to any of these movements exclude authentic experience for the sake of believed hypotheses, not knowing that they are mere hypotheses but believing them to be knowledge.
But in all these dubious fields there is at least something that is worth knowing and that our present-day rationalism has cast aside rather too hastily.
This something is projected psychology. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, pg. 56
She saw all manner of things which she projected into the outer world as ghost figures: ghosts which were connected with herself and ghosts connected with other people. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, pg. 32
Participation mystique "denotes a peculiar kind of psychological connection with objects, and consists in the fact that the subject cannot clearly distinguish himself from the object but is bound to it by a direct relationship which amounts to partial identity." (Jung 1921: para 781).
The unconscious . . . is the source of the instinctual forces of the psyche and of the forms or categories that regulate them, namely the archetypes. ~Carl Jung; The Structure of the Psyche; CW 8, par. 342.
From Mark Winborn (Ed.). Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond. Fisher King Press, 2014.
CONCLUSION The concept of participation mystique has evolved and expanded in range since C.G. Jung adopted it from Lucien Lévy-Bruhl approximately 100 years ago. The analyst authors who contributed to this volume have explored the concept from fresh perspectives. No longer can participation mystique accurately be utilized as a label to describe the psychological orientation of ‘primitive’ people or be considered an undeveloped or non-psychological way of being. When viewed through the perspective offered by the authors of these chapters, the concept provides a contemporary lens for perceiving “the sympathy of all things.”[1] Participation mystique is better used to describe the complex mix of unconscious and implicit connections/influences that exist: between people, people and animals, people and their environment (including nature), and sometimes between people and things. Because the nature of participation mystique is complex, it sometimes facilitates the analytic process and sometimes obstructs – depending upon our response to the field that has been constellated.
The ongoing developments in quantum physics, complex systems theory, field theory, and philosophy emphasize the inter-relationship of all things in ways never imagined several generations ago. As philosopher Dan Zahavi puts it, “the three regions ‘self ’, ‘others’, and ‘world’ belong together; they reciprocally illuminate one another, and can only be understood in their interconnection.”[2] The conceptual framework created by Jung anticipated the developments of the intersubjective movement in psychoanalysis.[3] As such, we can think of participation mystique as being almost synonymous in function with intersubjectivity, but also as a term which moves beyond the realm of ‘subjectivities’ to include other elements of our environment and the environment itself. Jung’s concept of participation mystique also includes the influence of the collective psyche which is not present in intersubjective theories.
The preceding chapters illustrate the current vitality of the concept. Our desire is that participation mystique will begin to be seen as a broadly reaching concept – an element of which can be found in many other analytic terms and experiences. These chapters highlight the importance of engaging with each other and our environments from the perspective of participation mystique; a perspective which permits a deeper empathic engagement with our patients and the world to emerge.
Mark Winborn, PhD, NCPsyA
Editor, Shared Realities
http://psychoanalyticmuse.blogspot.com/2015/02/shared-realities-participation-mystique.html
[1] C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1961, 138. In this passage Jung used this phrase to describe the common foundation of the collective unconscious but it many ways it better describes the experience of participation mystique. [2] Dan Zahavi, “Beyond Empathy: Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 8 (2001): 151–167. [3] Intersubjective psychoanalysis emerged, in part, out of the influence of phenomenological
philosophy.
The unconscious . . . is the source of the instinctual forces of the psyche and of the forms or categories that regulate them, namely the archetypes. ~Carl Jung; The Structure of the Psyche; CW 8, par. 342.
From Mark Winborn (Ed.). Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond. Fisher King Press, 2014.
CONCLUSION The concept of participation mystique has evolved and expanded in range since C.G. Jung adopted it from Lucien Lévy-Bruhl approximately 100 years ago. The analyst authors who contributed to this volume have explored the concept from fresh perspectives. No longer can participation mystique accurately be utilized as a label to describe the psychological orientation of ‘primitive’ people or be considered an undeveloped or non-psychological way of being. When viewed through the perspective offered by the authors of these chapters, the concept provides a contemporary lens for perceiving “the sympathy of all things.”[1] Participation mystique is better used to describe the complex mix of unconscious and implicit connections/influences that exist: between people, people and animals, people and their environment (including nature), and sometimes between people and things. Because the nature of participation mystique is complex, it sometimes facilitates the analytic process and sometimes obstructs – depending upon our response to the field that has been constellated.
The ongoing developments in quantum physics, complex systems theory, field theory, and philosophy emphasize the inter-relationship of all things in ways never imagined several generations ago. As philosopher Dan Zahavi puts it, “the three regions ‘self ’, ‘others’, and ‘world’ belong together; they reciprocally illuminate one another, and can only be understood in their interconnection.”[2] The conceptual framework created by Jung anticipated the developments of the intersubjective movement in psychoanalysis.[3] As such, we can think of participation mystique as being almost synonymous in function with intersubjectivity, but also as a term which moves beyond the realm of ‘subjectivities’ to include other elements of our environment and the environment itself. Jung’s concept of participation mystique also includes the influence of the collective psyche which is not present in intersubjective theories.
The preceding chapters illustrate the current vitality of the concept. Our desire is that participation mystique will begin to be seen as a broadly reaching concept – an element of which can be found in many other analytic terms and experiences. These chapters highlight the importance of engaging with each other and our environments from the perspective of participation mystique; a perspective which permits a deeper empathic engagement with our patients and the world to emerge.
Mark Winborn, PhD, NCPsyA
Editor, Shared Realities
http://psychoanalyticmuse.blogspot.com/2015/02/shared-realities-participation-mystique.html
[1] C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1961, 138. In this passage Jung used this phrase to describe the common foundation of the collective unconscious but it many ways it better describes the experience of participation mystique. [2] Dan Zahavi, “Beyond Empathy: Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 8 (2001): 151–167. [3] Intersubjective psychoanalysis emerged, in part, out of the influence of phenomenological
philosophy.
The psyche, which we have a tendency to take for a subjective face, is really a face that extends outside of us, outside of time, outside of space. -CG Jung, Emma Jung, Toni Wolff, Collection of Remembrances
The collective unconscious is the foundation of life, the eternal truth of life, the eternal basis and the eternal goal. It is the endless sea from which life originates and into which life flows back, and it remains forever the same.
~Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 380.
But the principle of the unconscious is the autonomy of the psyche itself, reflecting in the play of its images not the world but itself, even though it utilizes the illustrative possibilities offered by the sensible world in order to make its images clear. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 146.
By moving to a field model, Jung’s view of the archetypes of the collective unconscious can be reformulated. Each archetype can be seen as a node embedded within the larger context of a polycentric whole, with sets of links or connections weaving the archetypes into a network that has scale-free properties.
–Joseph Cambray, Synchronicity.
The collective unconscious is the foundation of life, the eternal truth of life, the eternal basis and the eternal goal. It is the endless sea from which life originates and into which life flows back, and it remains forever the same.
~Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 380.
But the principle of the unconscious is the autonomy of the psyche itself, reflecting in the play of its images not the world but itself, even though it utilizes the illustrative possibilities offered by the sensible world in order to make its images clear. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 146.
By moving to a field model, Jung’s view of the archetypes of the collective unconscious can be reformulated. Each archetype can be seen as a node embedded within the larger context of a polycentric whole, with sets of links or connections weaving the archetypes into a network that has scale-free properties.
–Joseph Cambray, Synchronicity.
Bruneel, Abyss Stares Back
“The sea is the favorite symbol for the unconscious, the mother of all that lives.”
--Jung, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, The Psychology of the Child Archetype P.298
In Jungian psychology, a part of the unconscious mind, shared by a society, a people, or all humankind, that is the product of ancestral experience and contains such concepts as science, religion, and morality. . . inborn unconscious psychic material common to humankind, accumulated by the experience of all preceding generations.
The unconscious mind of man sees correctly even when conscious reason is blind and impotent. ~Carl Jung; Answer to Job; CW 11; Psychology and Religion: West and East; Page 608.
Where one is identified with the collective unconscious, there is no recognition of the things which come from the unconscious, they cannot be distinguished from those of the self.
Such a condition is a possession by the anima or animus. Possession by the animus or anima creates a certain psychological hermaphroditism.
The principle of individuation demands a dissociation or differentiation of the male and the female in ourselves. We must dissociate our self from the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 26.
When you can establish a communication between yourself and your other side, you begin a certain development. Then the anima begins to function properly, and you begin to find that the anima has certain qualities behind her, and you can learn of her power. You can learn about the contents of the collective unconscious.
Then the anima becomes less and less a personification, she becomes a function, but only when the collective unconscious is exhausted, when the constellated problems or images have been realized; that is , when you have already obtained an impersonal attitude. The result brought about by communion with the anima results in individuation. By this objectivation you are detached from those things which you were identified.
Formerly emotion had you, but by this objectivation you learn what you really are, you cut yourself out of the historical process; you fit yourself to be no longer just the product of the historical process, you become the maker of the new day; you are your own sun-rise. Until we do this, we are merely the result of the past. But, by achieving this connection with the soul figure, you become the ruler of your own fate. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 27.
The concept of the unconscious is for me an exclusively psychological concept, and not a philosophical concept of a metaphysical nature. In my view the unconscious is a psychological borderline concept, which covers all psychic contents or processes that are not conscious, i.e., not related to the ego in any perceptible way. My justification for speaking of the existence of unconscious processes at all is derived simply and solely from experience. ~Carl Jung; Definitions; CW 6, par. 837.
Our unconscious is surely located in the body, and you mustn't think this a contradiction to the statement I usually make, that the collective unconscious is everywhere; for if you could put yourself into your sympathetic system, you would know what sympathy is-you would understand why the nervous system is called sympathetic. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 749-751.
That center, that other order of consciousness which to me is unconscious, would be the self, and that doesn't confine itself to myself, to my ego: it can include I don't know how many other people. ~ Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 783.
It is the idea that the self is not identical with one particular individual. No individual can boast of having the self: there is only the self that can boast of having many individuals. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 782.
Not for a moment dare we succumb to the illusion that an archetype can be finally explained and disposed of. Even the best attempts at explanation are only more or less successful translations into another metaphorical language. (Indeed, language itself is only an image.) The most we can do is dream the myth onwards and give it a modern dress. --Jung
--Jung, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, The Psychology of the Child Archetype P.298
In Jungian psychology, a part of the unconscious mind, shared by a society, a people, or all humankind, that is the product of ancestral experience and contains such concepts as science, religion, and morality. . . inborn unconscious psychic material common to humankind, accumulated by the experience of all preceding generations.
The unconscious mind of man sees correctly even when conscious reason is blind and impotent. ~Carl Jung; Answer to Job; CW 11; Psychology and Religion: West and East; Page 608.
Where one is identified with the collective unconscious, there is no recognition of the things which come from the unconscious, they cannot be distinguished from those of the self.
Such a condition is a possession by the anima or animus. Possession by the animus or anima creates a certain psychological hermaphroditism.
The principle of individuation demands a dissociation or differentiation of the male and the female in ourselves. We must dissociate our self from the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 26.
When you can establish a communication between yourself and your other side, you begin a certain development. Then the anima begins to function properly, and you begin to find that the anima has certain qualities behind her, and you can learn of her power. You can learn about the contents of the collective unconscious.
Then the anima becomes less and less a personification, she becomes a function, but only when the collective unconscious is exhausted, when the constellated problems or images have been realized; that is , when you have already obtained an impersonal attitude. The result brought about by communion with the anima results in individuation. By this objectivation you are detached from those things which you were identified.
Formerly emotion had you, but by this objectivation you learn what you really are, you cut yourself out of the historical process; you fit yourself to be no longer just the product of the historical process, you become the maker of the new day; you are your own sun-rise. Until we do this, we are merely the result of the past. But, by achieving this connection with the soul figure, you become the ruler of your own fate. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 27.
The concept of the unconscious is for me an exclusively psychological concept, and not a philosophical concept of a metaphysical nature. In my view the unconscious is a psychological borderline concept, which covers all psychic contents or processes that are not conscious, i.e., not related to the ego in any perceptible way. My justification for speaking of the existence of unconscious processes at all is derived simply and solely from experience. ~Carl Jung; Definitions; CW 6, par. 837.
Our unconscious is surely located in the body, and you mustn't think this a contradiction to the statement I usually make, that the collective unconscious is everywhere; for if you could put yourself into your sympathetic system, you would know what sympathy is-you would understand why the nervous system is called sympathetic. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 749-751.
That center, that other order of consciousness which to me is unconscious, would be the self, and that doesn't confine itself to myself, to my ego: it can include I don't know how many other people. ~ Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 783.
It is the idea that the self is not identical with one particular individual. No individual can boast of having the self: there is only the self that can boast of having many individuals. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 782.
Not for a moment dare we succumb to the illusion that an archetype can be finally explained and disposed of. Even the best attempts at explanation are only more or less successful translations into another metaphorical language. (Indeed, language itself is only an image.) The most we can do is dream the myth onwards and give it a modern dress. --Jung
The collective unconscious contains the whole spiritual heritage of mankind's evolution, born anew in the brain structure of every individual. His conscious mind is an ephemeral phenomenon that accomplishes all provisional adaptations and orientations, for which reason one can best compare its function to orientation in space. The unconscious, on the other hand, is the source of the instinctual forces of the psyche and of the forms. or categories that regulate them, namely the archetypes. All the, most powerful ideas in history go back to archetypes. This is particularly ,true of religious ideas, but the central concepts of science, philosophy, and ethics are no exception to this rule. In their present form they are variants of archetypal ideas, created by consciously applying and adapting these ideas to reality. For it is the function of consciousness not only to recognize and assimilate the external world through the gateway of the senses, but to translate into visible reality the world within us. -Jung
What Jung called the unconscious, Arnold Mindell calls space-time dreaming
“I am saying that there are organizing fields in the background: call them the mind of god, the processmind, the quantum wave function, or space-time dreaming fields. This is the most evidence-based explanation of experience I know of. We sense fields entangling things as if they were the earth's atmospheres, powers and fields making us dance. This dreaming is a common ground; it is like Einstein's space-time ether concept, connecting ordinary observers in different places in the universe. Dreaming is something like the four-dimensional space-time experience of general relativity.” Arnold Mindell 2013, Dance of the Ancient One, p. 69-70.
Anyone who has any ego-consciousness at all takes it for granted that he knows himself.
But the ego knows only its own contents, not the unconscious and its contents.
People measure their self-knowledge by what the average person in their social environment knows of himself, but not by the real psychic facts which are for the most part hidden from them. In this respect the psyche behaves like the body, of whose physiological and anatomical structure the average person knows very little too. ~Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self, CW 10, par. 491.
“I am saying that there are organizing fields in the background: call them the mind of god, the processmind, the quantum wave function, or space-time dreaming fields. This is the most evidence-based explanation of experience I know of. We sense fields entangling things as if they were the earth's atmospheres, powers and fields making us dance. This dreaming is a common ground; it is like Einstein's space-time ether concept, connecting ordinary observers in different places in the universe. Dreaming is something like the four-dimensional space-time experience of general relativity.” Arnold Mindell 2013, Dance of the Ancient One, p. 69-70.
Anyone who has any ego-consciousness at all takes it for granted that he knows himself.
But the ego knows only its own contents, not the unconscious and its contents.
People measure their self-knowledge by what the average person in their social environment knows of himself, but not by the real psychic facts which are for the most part hidden from them. In this respect the psyche behaves like the body, of whose physiological and anatomical structure the average person knows very little too. ~Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self, CW 10, par. 491.
Renier Gamboa
Dear Dr. N., 2 December 1937
I have the feeling that you are really going a bit too far.
We should make a halt before something destructive. You know what my attitude is to the unconscious.
There is no point in delivering oneself over to it to the last drop.
If that were the right procedure, nature would never have invented consciousness, and then the animals would be the ideal embodiments of the unconscious.
In my view it is absolutely essential always to have our consciousness well enough in hand to pay sufficient attention to our reality, to the Here and Now.
Otherwise we are in danger of being overrun by an unconscious which knows nothing of this human world of ours.
The unconscious can realize itself only with the help of consciousness and under its constant control.
At the same time consciousness must keep one eye on the unconscious and the other focused just as clearly on the potentialities of human existence and human relationships.
I certainly don't want to interfere, but before I go to India I would beg you to reflect on this warning.
With kindest regards,
Yours, Carl
~Letters, Volume 1, Pages 239-240
I have the feeling that you are really going a bit too far.
We should make a halt before something destructive. You know what my attitude is to the unconscious.
There is no point in delivering oneself over to it to the last drop.
If that were the right procedure, nature would never have invented consciousness, and then the animals would be the ideal embodiments of the unconscious.
In my view it is absolutely essential always to have our consciousness well enough in hand to pay sufficient attention to our reality, to the Here and Now.
Otherwise we are in danger of being overrun by an unconscious which knows nothing of this human world of ours.
The unconscious can realize itself only with the help of consciousness and under its constant control.
At the same time consciousness must keep one eye on the unconscious and the other focused just as clearly on the potentialities of human existence and human relationships.
I certainly don't want to interfere, but before I go to India I would beg you to reflect on this warning.
With kindest regards,
Yours, Carl
~Letters, Volume 1, Pages 239-240
The development of Western philosophy during the last two centuries has succeeded in isolating the mind in its own sphere and in severing it from its primordial oneness with the universe.
Man himself has ceased to be the microcosm and eidolon of the cosmos, and his "anima" is no longer the consubstantial scintilla, or spark of the Anima Mundi, the World Soul.
Psychology accordingly treats all metaphysical claims and assertions as mental phenomena, and regards them as statements about the mind and its structure that derive ultimately from certain unconscious dispositions.
It does not consider them to be absolutely valid or even capable of establishing a metaphysical truth. We have no intellectual means of ascertaining whether this attitude is right or wrong. We only know that there is no evidence for, and no possibility of proving, the validity of a metaphysical postulate such as "Universal Mind."
If the mind asserts the existence of a Universal Mind, we hold that it is merely making an assertion. We do not assume that by such an assertion the existence of a Universal Mind has been established.
There is no argument against this reasoning, but no evidence, either, that our conclusion is ultimately right. In other words, it is just as possible that our mind is nothing but a perceptible manifestation of a Universal Mind.
Yet we do not know, and we cannot even see, how it would be possible to recognize whether this is so or not. Psychology therefore holds that the mind cannot establish or assert anything beyond itself. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion, Psychological Commentary to the Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, Page 476, Paras 759-760.
You trust your unconscious as if it were a loving father. But it is nature and cannot be made use of as if it were a reliable human being. It is inhuman and it needs the human mind to function usefully for man's purposes. Nature is an incomparable guide if you know how to follow her. ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume 1, Page 283.
The unconscious is useless without the human mind. It always seeks its collective purposes and never your individual destiny. Your destiny is the result of the collaboration between the conscious and the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume 1, Page 283.
You trust your unconscious as if it were a loving father. But it is nature and cannot be made use of as if it were a reliable human being. It is inhuman and it needs the human mind to function usefully for man's purposes. Nature is an incomparable guide if you know how to follow her. She is like the needle of the compass pointing to the North, which is most useful when you have a good man-made ship and when you know how to navigate. That's about the position. If you follow the river, you surely come to the sea finally. But if you take it literally you soon get stuck in an impassable gorge and you complain of being misguided. The unconscious is useless without the human mind. It always seeks its collective purposes and never your individual destiny. Your destiny is the result of the collaboration between the conscious and the unconscious.
~Carl Jung, Letters Volume 1, Page 283.
Man himself has ceased to be the microcosm and eidolon of the cosmos, and his "anima" is no longer the consubstantial scintilla, or spark of the Anima Mundi, the World Soul.
Psychology accordingly treats all metaphysical claims and assertions as mental phenomena, and regards them as statements about the mind and its structure that derive ultimately from certain unconscious dispositions.
It does not consider them to be absolutely valid or even capable of establishing a metaphysical truth. We have no intellectual means of ascertaining whether this attitude is right or wrong. We only know that there is no evidence for, and no possibility of proving, the validity of a metaphysical postulate such as "Universal Mind."
If the mind asserts the existence of a Universal Mind, we hold that it is merely making an assertion. We do not assume that by such an assertion the existence of a Universal Mind has been established.
There is no argument against this reasoning, but no evidence, either, that our conclusion is ultimately right. In other words, it is just as possible that our mind is nothing but a perceptible manifestation of a Universal Mind.
Yet we do not know, and we cannot even see, how it would be possible to recognize whether this is so or not. Psychology therefore holds that the mind cannot establish or assert anything beyond itself. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion, Psychological Commentary to the Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, Page 476, Paras 759-760.
You trust your unconscious as if it were a loving father. But it is nature and cannot be made use of as if it were a reliable human being. It is inhuman and it needs the human mind to function usefully for man's purposes. Nature is an incomparable guide if you know how to follow her. ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume 1, Page 283.
The unconscious is useless without the human mind. It always seeks its collective purposes and never your individual destiny. Your destiny is the result of the collaboration between the conscious and the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume 1, Page 283.
You trust your unconscious as if it were a loving father. But it is nature and cannot be made use of as if it were a reliable human being. It is inhuman and it needs the human mind to function usefully for man's purposes. Nature is an incomparable guide if you know how to follow her. She is like the needle of the compass pointing to the North, which is most useful when you have a good man-made ship and when you know how to navigate. That's about the position. If you follow the river, you surely come to the sea finally. But if you take it literally you soon get stuck in an impassable gorge and you complain of being misguided. The unconscious is useless without the human mind. It always seeks its collective purposes and never your individual destiny. Your destiny is the result of the collaboration between the conscious and the unconscious.
~Carl Jung, Letters Volume 1, Page 283.
This unconscious is like the air, which is the same everywhere, is breathed by everybody, and yet belongs to no one. Its contents (called archetypes) are the prior conditions or patterns of psychic formation in general.
They have an esse in potentia et in actu but not in re, for as res they are no longer what they were but have become psychic contents.
They are in themselves non-perceptible, irrepresentable (since they precede all representation), everywhere and "eternally" the same.
Hence there is only one collective unconscious, which is everywhere identical with itself, from which everything psychic takes shape before it is personalized, modified, assimilated, etc. by external influences. [Letters Volume 1, Pages 408-412]
[T]here is in the unconscious an archetype of wholeness that manifests itself spontaneously in dreams, etc., and a tendency, independent of the conscious will, to relate other archetypes to this center. . . .
Consequently, it does not seem improbable that the archetype of wholeness occupies, as such, a central position, which approximates it to the God-image. . . .
Strictly speaking, the God-image does not coincide with the unconscious as such, but with a special content of it, namely, the archetype of the self. It is this archetype from which we can no longer distinguish the God-image empirically.
We can arbitrarily postulate a difference between these two entities, but that does not help us at all.
On the contrary, it only helps us to separate man from God, and prevents God from becoming [hu]man.
Faith is certainly right when it impresses on [our] mind and heart how infinitely far away and inaccessible God is; but it also teaches [God's] nearness, [God's] immediate presence, and it is just this nearness that has to be empirically real if it is not to lose all significance.
Only that which acts upon me do I recognize as real and actual. But that which has no effect upon me might as well not exist.
The religious need longs for wholeness, and therefore lays hold of the images of wholeness offered by the unconscious, which independently of the conscious mind, rise up from the depths of our psychic nature ~Carl Jung; "Answer to Job"; CW 11, par. 757.
The symbols aiming at wholeness . . . are the remedy with whose help [illness] can be repaired by restoring to the conscious mind a spirit and an attitude which from time immemorial have been felt as solving and healing in their effects.
They are "représentations collectives" [collective images] that facilitate the much needed union of conscious and unconscious.
This union cannot be accomplished either intellectually or in a purely practical sense because in the former case the instincts rebel and in the latter case reason and morality. . . .
[T]he conflict can only be resolved through the symbol. . . .
The synthesis of conscious and unconscious can only be implemented by a conscious confrontation with the latter, and this is not possible unless one understands what the unconscious is saying.
During this process we come upon the symbols . . . , and in coming to terms with them we reestablish the lost connection with ideas and feelings that make a synthesis of the personality possible. ~Carl Jung; "A Psychological Approach to the Trinity" in CW 11, par. 285
They have an esse in potentia et in actu but not in re, for as res they are no longer what they were but have become psychic contents.
They are in themselves non-perceptible, irrepresentable (since they precede all representation), everywhere and "eternally" the same.
Hence there is only one collective unconscious, which is everywhere identical with itself, from which everything psychic takes shape before it is personalized, modified, assimilated, etc. by external influences. [Letters Volume 1, Pages 408-412]
[T]here is in the unconscious an archetype of wholeness that manifests itself spontaneously in dreams, etc., and a tendency, independent of the conscious will, to relate other archetypes to this center. . . .
Consequently, it does not seem improbable that the archetype of wholeness occupies, as such, a central position, which approximates it to the God-image. . . .
Strictly speaking, the God-image does not coincide with the unconscious as such, but with a special content of it, namely, the archetype of the self. It is this archetype from which we can no longer distinguish the God-image empirically.
We can arbitrarily postulate a difference between these two entities, but that does not help us at all.
On the contrary, it only helps us to separate man from God, and prevents God from becoming [hu]man.
Faith is certainly right when it impresses on [our] mind and heart how infinitely far away and inaccessible God is; but it also teaches [God's] nearness, [God's] immediate presence, and it is just this nearness that has to be empirically real if it is not to lose all significance.
Only that which acts upon me do I recognize as real and actual. But that which has no effect upon me might as well not exist.
The religious need longs for wholeness, and therefore lays hold of the images of wholeness offered by the unconscious, which independently of the conscious mind, rise up from the depths of our psychic nature ~Carl Jung; "Answer to Job"; CW 11, par. 757.
The symbols aiming at wholeness . . . are the remedy with whose help [illness] can be repaired by restoring to the conscious mind a spirit and an attitude which from time immemorial have been felt as solving and healing in their effects.
They are "représentations collectives" [collective images] that facilitate the much needed union of conscious and unconscious.
This union cannot be accomplished either intellectually or in a purely practical sense because in the former case the instincts rebel and in the latter case reason and morality. . . .
[T]he conflict can only be resolved through the symbol. . . .
The synthesis of conscious and unconscious can only be implemented by a conscious confrontation with the latter, and this is not possible unless one understands what the unconscious is saying.
During this process we come upon the symbols . . . , and in coming to terms with them we reestablish the lost connection with ideas and feelings that make a synthesis of the personality possible. ~Carl Jung; "A Psychological Approach to the Trinity" in CW 11, par. 285
Where one is identified with the collective unconscious, there is no recognition of the things which come from the unconscious, they cannot be distinguished from those of the self. Such a condition is a possession by the anima or animus. Possession by the animus or anima creates a certain psychological hermaphroditism. The principle of individuation demands a dissociation or differentiation of the male and the female in ourselves. We must dissociate our self from the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 26.
Without consciousness there would, practically speaking, be no world, for the world exists as such only in so far as it is consciously reflected and consciously expressed by a psyche. Consciousness is a precondition of being.
Thus the psyche is endowed with the dignity of a cosmic principle, which philosophically and in fact gives it a position coequal with the principle of physical being.
The carrier of this consciousness is the individual, who does not produce the psyche on his own volition but is, on the contrary, pre-formed by it and nourished by the gradual awakening of consciousness during childhood.
If the psyche must be granted an overriding empirical importance, so also must the individual, who is the only immediate manifestation of the psyche.
This fact must be expressly emphasized for two reasons.
Firstly, the individual psyche, just because of its individuality, is an exception to the statistical rule and is therefore robbed of one of its main characteristics when subjected to the leveling influence of statistical evaluation.
Secondly, the Churches grant it validity only in so far as it acknowledges their dogmas – in other words, when it surrenders to a collective category.
In both cases the will to individuality is regarded as egotistic obstinacy.
Science devalues it as subjectivism, and the Churches condemn it morally as heresy and spiritual pride.
As to the latter charge, it should not be forgotten that, unlike other religions, Christianity holds at its core a symbol which has for its content the individual way of life of a man, the Son of Man, and that it even regards this individuation process as the incarnation and revelation of God himself.
Hence the development of the self acquires a significance whose full implications have hardly begun to be appreciated, because too much attention to externals blocks the way to immediate inner experience.
Were not the autonomy of the individual the secret longing of many people, this hard-pressed phenomenon would scarcely be able to survive the collective suppression either morally or spiritually.
All these obstacles make it more difficult to arrive at a correct appreciation of the human psyche, but they count for very little beside one other remarkable fact that deserves mentioning.
This is the common psychiatric experience that the devaluation of the psyche and other resistances to psychological enlightenment are based in large measure on fear – on panic fear of the discoveries that might be made in the realm of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self
The collective unconscious must be thought of as a world of images equivalent to the outer world which, is the world of real objects.
This formulation must be limited, however, by the recognition that both worlds are psychological functions only, that is, they are subjective.
The collective unconscious is also defined as the unknown side of objective reality. Anima and animus are as it were messengers from the world of unknown images to our consciousness (op. persona).
We can never enter the collective unconscious but we can send the anima or animus to bring us information.
By making things with your hands without conscious intent you find a vision of the things of the unconscious.
The inspiration working through your hands is animus or anima.
This function is personified, and we consider it as intelligent.
So we should talk to our animus or anima.
To do this requires a certain dissociation, allowing the side associations to come up, and from these you can conclude the character of the ruler of these side associations.
In difficult situations you talk to yourself, intuitively knowing that you are yourself and also that other.
So you listen to the inner mentor, you develop the inner ear; or you write automatically, and a word is formed by your hand, or your mouth speaks that which you have not thought.
Where one is identified with the collective unconscious, there is no recognition of the things which come from the unconscious, they cannot be distinguished from those of the self.
Such a condition is a possession by the anima or animus.
Possession by the animus or anima creates a certain psychological hermaphroditism.
The principle of individuation demands a dissociation or differentiation of the male and the female in ourselves.
We must dissociate our self from the unconscious.
In states of excitement we speak to ourselves as though to an excited horse, that bit is the part possessed by the anima. In a woman the animus is multiform so that he cannot be nailed down so wall as the anima.
When you can establish a communication between yourself and your to your other side, you begin a certain development.
Then the anima begins to function properly, and you begin to find that the anima begins to function properly, and you begin to find that the anima has certain qualities behind her, and you can learn of her power.
You can learn about the contents of the collective unconscious.
Then the anima becomes less and less a personification, she becomes a function, but only when the collective unconscious is exhausted, when the constellated problems or images have been realized; that is, when you have already obtained an impersonal attitude.
The result brought about by communion with the anima results in individuation.
By this objectivation you are detached from those things to which you were identified.
Formerly the emotion had you, but by this objectivation you learn what you really are, you cut yourself out of the historical process; you fit yourself to be no longer just the product of the historical process.
You become the maker of the now day; you are your own sun-rise.
Until we do this, we are merely the result of the past.
But, by achieving this connection with the soul figure, you become the ruler of your own fate. ~Carl Jung; Cornwall Seminar, Pages 26-27
. . . The unconscious contains, as it were, two layers: the personal and the collective. The personal layer ends at the earliest memories of infancy, but the collective layer comprises the preinfantile period, that is, the residues of ancestral life. Whereas the memory-images of the personal unconscious are, as it were, filled out, because they are images personally experienced by the individual, the archetypes of the collective unconscious are not filled out because they are forms not personally experienced. When, on the other hand, psychic energy regresses, going beyond even the period of early infancy, and breaks into the legacy of ancestral life, the mythological images are awakened: these are the archetypes. An interior spiritual world whose existence we never suspected opens out and displays contents that seem to stand in sharpest contrast to all our former ideas.
-C.G. Jung, CW 7, par. 118
. . . I have often been asked where the archetypes or primordial images come from. It seems to me that their origins can only be explained from assuming them to be deposits of the constantly repeated experiences of humanity. One of the commonest and at the same time most impressive experiences is the apparent movement of the sun every day. We certainly cannot discover anything of the kind in the unconscious, so far as the known physical process is concerned. What we do find, on the other hand, is the myth of the sun-hero in all its countless variations. It is this myth, and not the physical process, that forms the sun archetype. The same can be said of the phases of the moon. The archetype is a kind of readiness to produce over and over again the same or similar mythical ideas. Hence it seems as though what is impressed upon the unconscious were exclusively the subjective fantasy-ideas aroused by the physical process. We may therefore assume that the archetypes are recurrent impressions made by subjective reactions. Naturally this assumption only pushes the problem further back without solving it. There is nothing to prevent us from assuming that certain archetypes exist even in animals, that they are grounded in the peculiarities of the living organism itself and are therefore direct expressions of life whose nature cannot be further explained. Not only are the archetypes, apparently, impressions of the ever-repeated typical experiences, but at the same time, they behave empirically like agents that tend toward the repetition of these same experiences. For when an archetype appears in a dream, in a fantasy, or in life, it always brings with it a certain influence or power by virtue of which it either exercises a numinous or fascinating effect, or impels to action. -C.G. Jung, CW 7, par. 109
. . . No matter how beautiful and perfect [we] may believe [our] reason to be, [we] can always be certain that it is only one of the possible mental functions, and covers only that one side of the phenomenal world which corresponds to it. But the irrational, that which is not agreeable to reason, rings it about on all sides. And the irrational is likewise a psychological function -- in a word, it is the collective unconscious. -C.G. Jung, CW 7, par. 110
From:
On the Archetype of the Self
. . . This "something" is strange to us and yet so near, wholly ourselves and yet unknowable, a virtual centre of so mysterious a constitution that it can claim anything -- kinship with beasts and gods, with crystals and with stars -- without moving us to wonder, without even exciting our disapprobation. This "something" claims all that and more, and having nothing in our hands that could fairly be opposed to these claims, it is surely wiser to listen to this voice.
I have called this centre the Self. Intellectually, the Self is no more than a psychological concept, a construct that serves to express an unknowable essence which we cannot grasp as such, since by definition it transcends our powers of comprehension. It might equally be called "the God within us." The beginnings of our whole psychic life seem to be inextricably rooted in this point, and all our highest and ultimate purposes seem to be striving toward it. This paradox is unavoidable, as always, when we try to define something that lies beyond the bourn of our understanding.
I hope it has become sufficiently clear to the attentive reader that the Self has as much to do with the ego as the sun with the earth. They are not interchangeable. Nor does it imply a deification of [the hu]man or a dethronement of God. What is beyond our understanding is in any case beyond its reach. When, therefore, we make use of a concept of a God, we are simply formulating a definite psychological fact, namely the independence and sovereignty of certain psychological contents that express themselves by their power to thwart our will, to obsess our consciousness, and to influence our moods and actions. We may be outraged at the idea of an inexplicable mood, a nervous disorder, or an uncontrollable vice being, so to speak, a manifestation of God. But it would be an irreparable loss for religious experience if such things, perhaps even evil things, were artificially segregated from the sum of autonomous psychic contents. It is an apotropaic euphemism [giving a bad thing a good name in order to avert its disfavor] to dispose of these things with a "nothing but" explanation. In that way they are merely repressed, and as a rule only an apparent advantage is gained, a new twist given to illusion. The personality is not enriched by it, only impoverished and smothered. What seems evil, or at least meaningless and valueless to contemporary experience and knowledge, might on a higher level of experience and knowledge appear as the source of the best -- everything depending, naturally, on the use one makes of one's seven devils. To explain them as meaningless robs the personality of its proper shadow, and with this it looses its form. The living form needs deep shadow if it is to appear plastic. Without shadow it remains a two-dimensional phantom, a more-or-less well-brought-up child.
Here I am alluding to a problem that is far more significant than these few simple words would seem to suggest: [hu]mankind is, in essentials, psychologically still in a state of childhood -- a stage that cannot be skipped. The vast majority needs authority, guidance, and law. This fact cannot be overlooked. The Pauline overcoming of the law falls only to the [person] who knows how to put his [or her] soul in the place of conscience. Very few are capable of this ("Many are called, but few are chosen"). And these few tread this path only from inner necessity, not to say suffering, for it is sharp as the edge of a razor.
The conception of God as an autonomous psychic content makes God into a moral problem -- and that, admittedly, is very uncomfortable. But if this problem does not exist, God is not real, for nowhere can [God] touch our lives. [God] is then either a historical and intellectual bogey or a philosophical sentimentality.
If we leave the idea of "divinity" quite out of account and speak only of "autonomous contents," we maintain a position that is intellectually and empirically correct, but we silence a note which, psychologically, should not be missing. By using the concept of a divine being, we give apt expression to the peculiar way in which we experience the workings of these autonomous contents. We could also use the term "daemonic," provided that this does not imply that we are still holding up our sleeves some concretized God who conforms exactly to our wishes and ideas. Our intellectual conjuring tricks do not help us make a reality of the God we desire any more than the world accommodates itself to our expectations. Therefore, by affixing the attribute "divine" to the workings of autonomous contents, we are admitting their relatively superior force. And it is this superior force that has at all times constrained [humans] to ponder the inconceivable and even to impose the greatest sufferings upon themselves in order to give these workings their due. It is a force as real as hunger and the fear of death.
Without consciousness there would, practically speaking, be no world, for the world exists as such only in so far as it is consciously reflected and consciously expressed by a psyche. Consciousness is a precondition of being.
Thus the psyche is endowed with the dignity of a cosmic principle, which philosophically and in fact gives it a position coequal with the principle of physical being.
The carrier of this consciousness is the individual, who does not produce the psyche on his own volition but is, on the contrary, pre-formed by it and nourished by the gradual awakening of consciousness during childhood.
If the psyche must be granted an overriding empirical importance, so also must the individual, who is the only immediate manifestation of the psyche.
This fact must be expressly emphasized for two reasons.
Firstly, the individual psyche, just because of its individuality, is an exception to the statistical rule and is therefore robbed of one of its main characteristics when subjected to the leveling influence of statistical evaluation.
Secondly, the Churches grant it validity only in so far as it acknowledges their dogmas – in other words, when it surrenders to a collective category.
In both cases the will to individuality is regarded as egotistic obstinacy.
Science devalues it as subjectivism, and the Churches condemn it morally as heresy and spiritual pride.
As to the latter charge, it should not be forgotten that, unlike other religions, Christianity holds at its core a symbol which has for its content the individual way of life of a man, the Son of Man, and that it even regards this individuation process as the incarnation and revelation of God himself.
Hence the development of the self acquires a significance whose full implications have hardly begun to be appreciated, because too much attention to externals blocks the way to immediate inner experience.
Were not the autonomy of the individual the secret longing of many people, this hard-pressed phenomenon would scarcely be able to survive the collective suppression either morally or spiritually.
All these obstacles make it more difficult to arrive at a correct appreciation of the human psyche, but they count for very little beside one other remarkable fact that deserves mentioning.
This is the common psychiatric experience that the devaluation of the psyche and other resistances to psychological enlightenment are based in large measure on fear – on panic fear of the discoveries that might be made in the realm of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self
The collective unconscious must be thought of as a world of images equivalent to the outer world which, is the world of real objects.
This formulation must be limited, however, by the recognition that both worlds are psychological functions only, that is, they are subjective.
The collective unconscious is also defined as the unknown side of objective reality. Anima and animus are as it were messengers from the world of unknown images to our consciousness (op. persona).
We can never enter the collective unconscious but we can send the anima or animus to bring us information.
By making things with your hands without conscious intent you find a vision of the things of the unconscious.
The inspiration working through your hands is animus or anima.
This function is personified, and we consider it as intelligent.
So we should talk to our animus or anima.
To do this requires a certain dissociation, allowing the side associations to come up, and from these you can conclude the character of the ruler of these side associations.
In difficult situations you talk to yourself, intuitively knowing that you are yourself and also that other.
So you listen to the inner mentor, you develop the inner ear; or you write automatically, and a word is formed by your hand, or your mouth speaks that which you have not thought.
Where one is identified with the collective unconscious, there is no recognition of the things which come from the unconscious, they cannot be distinguished from those of the self.
Such a condition is a possession by the anima or animus.
Possession by the animus or anima creates a certain psychological hermaphroditism.
The principle of individuation demands a dissociation or differentiation of the male and the female in ourselves.
We must dissociate our self from the unconscious.
In states of excitement we speak to ourselves as though to an excited horse, that bit is the part possessed by the anima. In a woman the animus is multiform so that he cannot be nailed down so wall as the anima.
When you can establish a communication between yourself and your to your other side, you begin a certain development.
Then the anima begins to function properly, and you begin to find that the anima begins to function properly, and you begin to find that the anima has certain qualities behind her, and you can learn of her power.
You can learn about the contents of the collective unconscious.
Then the anima becomes less and less a personification, she becomes a function, but only when the collective unconscious is exhausted, when the constellated problems or images have been realized; that is, when you have already obtained an impersonal attitude.
The result brought about by communion with the anima results in individuation.
By this objectivation you are detached from those things to which you were identified.
Formerly the emotion had you, but by this objectivation you learn what you really are, you cut yourself out of the historical process; you fit yourself to be no longer just the product of the historical process.
You become the maker of the now day; you are your own sun-rise.
Until we do this, we are merely the result of the past.
But, by achieving this connection with the soul figure, you become the ruler of your own fate. ~Carl Jung; Cornwall Seminar, Pages 26-27
. . . The unconscious contains, as it were, two layers: the personal and the collective. The personal layer ends at the earliest memories of infancy, but the collective layer comprises the preinfantile period, that is, the residues of ancestral life. Whereas the memory-images of the personal unconscious are, as it were, filled out, because they are images personally experienced by the individual, the archetypes of the collective unconscious are not filled out because they are forms not personally experienced. When, on the other hand, psychic energy regresses, going beyond even the period of early infancy, and breaks into the legacy of ancestral life, the mythological images are awakened: these are the archetypes. An interior spiritual world whose existence we never suspected opens out and displays contents that seem to stand in sharpest contrast to all our former ideas.
-C.G. Jung, CW 7, par. 118
. . . I have often been asked where the archetypes or primordial images come from. It seems to me that their origins can only be explained from assuming them to be deposits of the constantly repeated experiences of humanity. One of the commonest and at the same time most impressive experiences is the apparent movement of the sun every day. We certainly cannot discover anything of the kind in the unconscious, so far as the known physical process is concerned. What we do find, on the other hand, is the myth of the sun-hero in all its countless variations. It is this myth, and not the physical process, that forms the sun archetype. The same can be said of the phases of the moon. The archetype is a kind of readiness to produce over and over again the same or similar mythical ideas. Hence it seems as though what is impressed upon the unconscious were exclusively the subjective fantasy-ideas aroused by the physical process. We may therefore assume that the archetypes are recurrent impressions made by subjective reactions. Naturally this assumption only pushes the problem further back without solving it. There is nothing to prevent us from assuming that certain archetypes exist even in animals, that they are grounded in the peculiarities of the living organism itself and are therefore direct expressions of life whose nature cannot be further explained. Not only are the archetypes, apparently, impressions of the ever-repeated typical experiences, but at the same time, they behave empirically like agents that tend toward the repetition of these same experiences. For when an archetype appears in a dream, in a fantasy, or in life, it always brings with it a certain influence or power by virtue of which it either exercises a numinous or fascinating effect, or impels to action. -C.G. Jung, CW 7, par. 109
. . . No matter how beautiful and perfect [we] may believe [our] reason to be, [we] can always be certain that it is only one of the possible mental functions, and covers only that one side of the phenomenal world which corresponds to it. But the irrational, that which is not agreeable to reason, rings it about on all sides. And the irrational is likewise a psychological function -- in a word, it is the collective unconscious. -C.G. Jung, CW 7, par. 110
From:
On the Archetype of the Self
. . . This "something" is strange to us and yet so near, wholly ourselves and yet unknowable, a virtual centre of so mysterious a constitution that it can claim anything -- kinship with beasts and gods, with crystals and with stars -- without moving us to wonder, without even exciting our disapprobation. This "something" claims all that and more, and having nothing in our hands that could fairly be opposed to these claims, it is surely wiser to listen to this voice.
I have called this centre the Self. Intellectually, the Self is no more than a psychological concept, a construct that serves to express an unknowable essence which we cannot grasp as such, since by definition it transcends our powers of comprehension. It might equally be called "the God within us." The beginnings of our whole psychic life seem to be inextricably rooted in this point, and all our highest and ultimate purposes seem to be striving toward it. This paradox is unavoidable, as always, when we try to define something that lies beyond the bourn of our understanding.
I hope it has become sufficiently clear to the attentive reader that the Self has as much to do with the ego as the sun with the earth. They are not interchangeable. Nor does it imply a deification of [the hu]man or a dethronement of God. What is beyond our understanding is in any case beyond its reach. When, therefore, we make use of a concept of a God, we are simply formulating a definite psychological fact, namely the independence and sovereignty of certain psychological contents that express themselves by their power to thwart our will, to obsess our consciousness, and to influence our moods and actions. We may be outraged at the idea of an inexplicable mood, a nervous disorder, or an uncontrollable vice being, so to speak, a manifestation of God. But it would be an irreparable loss for religious experience if such things, perhaps even evil things, were artificially segregated from the sum of autonomous psychic contents. It is an apotropaic euphemism [giving a bad thing a good name in order to avert its disfavor] to dispose of these things with a "nothing but" explanation. In that way they are merely repressed, and as a rule only an apparent advantage is gained, a new twist given to illusion. The personality is not enriched by it, only impoverished and smothered. What seems evil, or at least meaningless and valueless to contemporary experience and knowledge, might on a higher level of experience and knowledge appear as the source of the best -- everything depending, naturally, on the use one makes of one's seven devils. To explain them as meaningless robs the personality of its proper shadow, and with this it looses its form. The living form needs deep shadow if it is to appear plastic. Without shadow it remains a two-dimensional phantom, a more-or-less well-brought-up child.
Here I am alluding to a problem that is far more significant than these few simple words would seem to suggest: [hu]mankind is, in essentials, psychologically still in a state of childhood -- a stage that cannot be skipped. The vast majority needs authority, guidance, and law. This fact cannot be overlooked. The Pauline overcoming of the law falls only to the [person] who knows how to put his [or her] soul in the place of conscience. Very few are capable of this ("Many are called, but few are chosen"). And these few tread this path only from inner necessity, not to say suffering, for it is sharp as the edge of a razor.
The conception of God as an autonomous psychic content makes God into a moral problem -- and that, admittedly, is very uncomfortable. But if this problem does not exist, God is not real, for nowhere can [God] touch our lives. [God] is then either a historical and intellectual bogey or a philosophical sentimentality.
If we leave the idea of "divinity" quite out of account and speak only of "autonomous contents," we maintain a position that is intellectually and empirically correct, but we silence a note which, psychologically, should not be missing. By using the concept of a divine being, we give apt expression to the peculiar way in which we experience the workings of these autonomous contents. We could also use the term "daemonic," provided that this does not imply that we are still holding up our sleeves some concretized God who conforms exactly to our wishes and ideas. Our intellectual conjuring tricks do not help us make a reality of the God we desire any more than the world accommodates itself to our expectations. Therefore, by affixing the attribute "divine" to the workings of autonomous contents, we are admitting their relatively superior force. And it is this superior force that has at all times constrained [humans] to ponder the inconceivable and even to impose the greatest sufferings upon themselves in order to give these workings their due. It is a force as real as hunger and the fear of death.
Jung introduced the term to represent a form of the unconscious (that part of the mind containing memories and impulses of which the individual is not aware) common to mankind as a whole and originating in the inherited structure of the brain. It is distinct from the personal unconscious, which arises from the experience of the individual. According to Jung, the collective unconscious contains archetypes, or universal primordial images and ideas.
The sea is the favorite symbol for the unconscious, the mother of all that lives.
~Carl Jung; Special Phenomenology; Part IV; Psyche & Symbol.
The sea is the favorite symbol for the unconscious, the mother of all that lives.
~Carl Jung; Special Phenomenology; Part IV; Psyche & Symbol.
The unconscious is the unwritten history of mankind from time unrecorded. ~Carl Jung; A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity; In CW 11; Psychology and Religion: West and East; Page 280.
Collective unconscious is a term of analytical psychology, coined by Carl Jung. It is proposed to be a part of the unconscious mind, expressed in humanity and all life forms with nervous systems, and describes how the structure of the psyche autonomously organizes experience. Jung distinguished the collective unconscious from the personal unconscious, in that the personal unconscious is a personal reservoir of experience unique to each individual, while the collective unconscious collects and organizes those personal experiences in a similar way with each member of a particular species.
For Jung, “My thesis then, is as follows: in addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents.”
Jung linked the collective unconscious to 'what Freud called "archaic remnants" - mental forms whose presence cannot be explained by anything in the individual's own life and which seem to be aboriginal, innate, and inherited shapes of the human mind'.
Collective unconscious is a term of analytical psychology, coined by Carl Jung. It is proposed to be a part of the unconscious mind, expressed in humanity and all life forms with nervous systems, and describes how the structure of the psyche autonomously organizes experience. Jung distinguished the collective unconscious from the personal unconscious, in that the personal unconscious is a personal reservoir of experience unique to each individual, while the collective unconscious collects and organizes those personal experiences in a similar way with each member of a particular species.
For Jung, “My thesis then, is as follows: in addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents.”
Jung linked the collective unconscious to 'what Freud called "archaic remnants" - mental forms whose presence cannot be explained by anything in the individual's own life and which seem to be aboriginal, innate, and inherited shapes of the human mind'.
Nobody can say where man ends. That is the beauty of it. The unconscious of man can reach God knows where. There we are going to make discoveries. ~Four Filmed Interviews with Richard I. Evans" (1957). Conversations with Carl Jung.
” Probably None of My Empirical Concepts Has Met With So Much Misunderstanding as the Idea of the Collective Unconscious.
I. Definition The collective unconscious is part of the psyche which can be negatively distinguished from a personal unconscious by the fact that it does not, like the latter, owe its existence to personal experience and consequently is not a personal acquisition. While the personal unconscious is made up essentially of contents which have at one time been conscious but which have disappeared from consciousness through having been forgotten or repressed, the contents of the collective unconscious have never been individually acquired, but owe their existence exclusively to heredity. I have chosen the term ‘collective’ since this part of the unconscious is not individual, but universal. And unlike the personal soul its contents and modes of behavior are relatively the same everywhere and in all individuals. It is, in other words, identical in all men and thus constitutes a common psychic substrate of a super personal nature which is present in every one of us. --C.G. Jung, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious
When I was working on the stone tablets, I became aware of the fateful links between me and my ancestors. I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family, which is passed on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished. It is difficult to determine whether these questions are more of a personal or more of a general (collective) nature. It seems to me that the latter is the case. A collective problem, if not recognized as such, always appears as a personal problem, and in individual cases may give the impression that something is out of order in the realm of the personal psyche. The personal sphere is indeed disturbed, but such disturbances need not be primary; they may well be secondary, the consequence of an insupportable change in the social atmosphere. The cause of disturbance is, therefore, not to be sought in the personal surroundings, but rather in the collective situation. Psychotherapy has hitherto taken this matter far too little into account. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams, Reflections; Pages 233-234.
“Since the gods are without doubt personifications of psychic forces, to assert their metaphysical existence is as much an intellectual presumption as the opinion that they could ever be invented.
Not that "psychic forces" have anything to do with the conscious mind, fond as we are of playing with the idea that consciousness and psyche are identical. This is only another piece of intellectual presumption.
"Psychic forces" have far more to do with the realm of the unconscious. Our mania for rational explanations obviously has its roots in our fear of metaphysics, for the two were always hostile brothers.
Hence anything unexpected that approaches us from that dark realm is regarded either as coming from outside and therefore as real, or else as an hallucination and therefore not true.
The idea that anything could be real or true which does not come from outside has hardly begun to dawn on contemporary man.” ~Carl Jung; "Wotan" (1936). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.387
Anyone who penetrates into the unconscious with purely biological assumptions will become stuck in the instinctual sphere and be unable to advance beyond it, for he will be pulled back again and again into physical existence. ~Carl Jung; The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Psychological commentary; CW 11; Psychology and Religion: West and East; Page 843.
” Probably None of My Empirical Concepts Has Met With So Much Misunderstanding as the Idea of the Collective Unconscious.
I. Definition The collective unconscious is part of the psyche which can be negatively distinguished from a personal unconscious by the fact that it does not, like the latter, owe its existence to personal experience and consequently is not a personal acquisition. While the personal unconscious is made up essentially of contents which have at one time been conscious but which have disappeared from consciousness through having been forgotten or repressed, the contents of the collective unconscious have never been individually acquired, but owe their existence exclusively to heredity. I have chosen the term ‘collective’ since this part of the unconscious is not individual, but universal. And unlike the personal soul its contents and modes of behavior are relatively the same everywhere and in all individuals. It is, in other words, identical in all men and thus constitutes a common psychic substrate of a super personal nature which is present in every one of us. --C.G. Jung, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious
When I was working on the stone tablets, I became aware of the fateful links between me and my ancestors. I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family, which is passed on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished. It is difficult to determine whether these questions are more of a personal or more of a general (collective) nature. It seems to me that the latter is the case. A collective problem, if not recognized as such, always appears as a personal problem, and in individual cases may give the impression that something is out of order in the realm of the personal psyche. The personal sphere is indeed disturbed, but such disturbances need not be primary; they may well be secondary, the consequence of an insupportable change in the social atmosphere. The cause of disturbance is, therefore, not to be sought in the personal surroundings, but rather in the collective situation. Psychotherapy has hitherto taken this matter far too little into account. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams, Reflections; Pages 233-234.
“Since the gods are without doubt personifications of psychic forces, to assert their metaphysical existence is as much an intellectual presumption as the opinion that they could ever be invented.
Not that "psychic forces" have anything to do with the conscious mind, fond as we are of playing with the idea that consciousness and psyche are identical. This is only another piece of intellectual presumption.
"Psychic forces" have far more to do with the realm of the unconscious. Our mania for rational explanations obviously has its roots in our fear of metaphysics, for the two were always hostile brothers.
Hence anything unexpected that approaches us from that dark realm is regarded either as coming from outside and therefore as real, or else as an hallucination and therefore not true.
The idea that anything could be real or true which does not come from outside has hardly begun to dawn on contemporary man.” ~Carl Jung; "Wotan" (1936). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.387
Anyone who penetrates into the unconscious with purely biological assumptions will become stuck in the instinctual sphere and be unable to advance beyond it, for he will be pulled back again and again into physical existence. ~Carl Jung; The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Psychological commentary; CW 11; Psychology and Religion: West and East; Page 843.
Francis Danby ~ Apocalypse (Angel In The Sun) ~ 1829
The collective unconscious is an universal datum, that is, 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 effort 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 experience must be linked with the experience of the archetypes of the collective unconscious. Thus, God himself is lived like a psychic experience of the path that leads one to the realization of his/her psychic wholeness.
Jung on the Collective Unconscious
The collective unconscious - so far as we can say anything about it at all - appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. In fact, the whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious... We can therefore study the collective unconscious in two ways, either in mythology or in the analysis of the individual. (From The Structure of the Psyche, CW 8, par. 325.)
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 experience must be linked with the experience of the archetypes of the collective unconscious. Thus, God himself is lived like a psychic experience of the path that leads one to the realization of his/her psychic wholeness.
Jung on the Collective Unconscious
The collective unconscious - so far as we can say anything about it at all - appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. In fact, the whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious... We can therefore study the collective unconscious in two ways, either in mythology or in the analysis of the individual. (From The Structure of the Psyche, CW 8, par. 325.)
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Fair Use Notice
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
