Self Awareness
Don't We Already Have Enough?
The Answer . . .
Here, from the Wise Ones
. . . Hear
(Just
hoping that the kid who’s doing the algorithm which assembles my profile is
conscious with the understanding . . .)
Gnostic Gospels:
"Jesus said, 'If you bring forth what is within you, what you
bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what
you do not bring forth will destroy you.'"
Rumi:
"Many of the faults you see in others, dear reader, are your own nature reflected in them."
D. T. Suzuki:*
“The present state of things as we are facing
everywhere politically, economically, morally, intellectually, and spiritually
is no doubt the result of our past thoughts and deeds we have committed as
human beings through[out] the whole length of history, through aeons of
existence, not only individually but collectively — let me repeat,
collectively. As such, we are, every one of us, responsible for the present
world situation filled with [its] awesome forebodings. The bombing of Hiroshima
was not, after all, the doing of the American armies, but the doing of mankind
as a whole, and as such, we, not only the Japanese and Americans but the whole
world, are to be held responsible for the wholesale slaughter witnessed ten
years ago . . .
“As far as I can see, [we must find] the
living Shonin who is surely among us answering to the call of his name; only we
have not been able to hear his response, our ears have not yet been fully
opened innerly as well as outwardly to [that] still small voice . . .
“We must realize that modern civilization is
thoroughly oriented towards dehumanizing humanity in every possible way; that
is to say, we are fast turning into robots or statues with no human souls. Our
task is to get humanized once more.”
C. G. Jung: The
Shadow
A
man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in
addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he
is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections
upon his neighbour.
— Carl Gustav Jung "The
Philosophical Tree" (1945). In CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P.335
Unfortunately
there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines
himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied
in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an
inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it. Furthermore,
it is constantly in contact with other interests, so that it is continually
subjected to modifications. But if it is repressed and isolated from
consciousness, it never gets corrected.
"Psychology and
Religion" (1938). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.131
It
is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not
just of little weaknesses- and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism.
The individual seldom knows anything of this; to him, as an individual, it is
incredible that he should ever in any circumstances go beyond himself. But let
these harmless creatures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster; and
each individual is only one tiny cell in the monster's body, so that for better
or worse he must accompany it on its bloody rampages and even assist it to the
utmost. Having a dark suspicion of these grim possibilities, man turns a blind
eye to the shadow-side of human nature. Blindly he strives against the salutary
dogma of original sin, which is yet so prodigiously true. Yes, he even
hesitates to admit the conflict of which he is so painfully aware.
"On the Psychology
of the Unconscious" (1912). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology.
P.35
We
know that the wildest and most moving dramas are played not in the theatre but
in the hearts of ordinary men and women who pass by without exciting attention,
and who betray to the world nothing of the conflicts that rage within them
except possibly by a nervous breakdown. What is so difficult for the layman to
grasp is the fact that in most cases the patients themselves have no suspicion
whatever of the internecine war raging in their unconscious. If we remember
that there are many people who understand nothing at all about themselves, we
shall be less surprised at the realization that there are also people who are
utterly unaware of their actual conflicts.
"New Paths in
Psychology" (1912). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.425
If
you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw all his projections, then
you get an individual who is conscious of a pretty thick shadow. Such a man has
saddled himself with new problems and conflicts. He has become a serious
problem to himself, as he is now unable to say that they do this or that, they
are wrong, and they must be fought against. He lives in the "House of the
Gathering." Such a man knows that whatever is wrong in the world is in
himself, and if he only learns to deal with his own shadow he has done
something real for the world. He has succeeded in shouldering at least an
infinitesimal part of the gigantic, unsolved social problems of our day.
"Psychology and
Religion" (1938). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.140
There
is a deep gulf between what a man is and what he represents, between what he is
as an individual and what he is as a collective being. His function is developed
at the expense of the individuality. Should he excel, he is merely identical
with his collective function; but should he not, then, though he may be highly
esteemed as a function in society, his individuality is wholly on the level of
his inferior, undeveloped functions, and he is simply a barbarian, while in the
former case he has happily deceived himself as to his actual barbarism.
Psychological Types
(1921). CW 6: P.III
Taking
it in its deepest sense, the shadow is the invisible saurian tail that man
still drags behind him. Carefully amputated, it becomes the healing serpent of
the mysteries. Only monkeys parade with it.
The Integration of the
Personality. (1939).
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? Primitive man's perception of objects is conditioned
only partly by the objective behaviour of the things themselves, whereas a much
greater part is often played by intrapsychic facts which are not related to the
external objects except by way of projection. This is due to the simple fact
that the primitive has not yet experienced that ascetic discipline of mind
known to us as the critique of knowledge. To him the world is a more or less
fluid phenomenon within the stream of his own fantasy, where subject and object
are undifferentiated and in a state of mutual interpenetration.
"Psychological
Aspects of the Mother Archetype" (1939) In CW 9, Part 1: The Archetypes
and the Collective Unconscious. P. 187
We
carry our past with us, to wit, the primitive and inferior man with his desires
and emotions, and it is only with an enormous effort that we can detach
ourselves from this burden. If it comes to a neurosis, we invariably have to
deal with a considerably intensified shadow. And if such a person wants to be
cured it is necessary to find a way in which his conscious personality and his
shadow can live together.
"Answer to
Job" (1952). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.12
The
world is as it ever has been, but our consciousness undergoes peculiar changes.
First, in remote times (which can still be observed among primitives living
today), the main body of psychic life was apparently in human and in nonhuman
Objects: it was projected, as we should say now. Consciousness can hardly exist
in a state of complete projection. At most it would be a heap of emotions.
Through the withdrawal of projections, conscious knowledge slowly developed.
Science, curiously enough, began with the discovery of astronomical laws, and
hence with the withdrawal, so to speak, of the most distant projections. This
was the first stage in the despiritualization of the world. One step followed
another: already in antiquity the gods were withdrawn from mountains and
rivers, from trees and animals. Modern science has subtilized its projections
to an almost unrecognizable degree, but our ordinary life still swarms with
them. You can find them spread out in the newspapers, in books, rumours, and
ordinary social gossip. All gaps in our actual knowledge are still filled out
with projections. We are still so sure we know what other people think or what
their true character is.
"Psychology and
Religion" (1938) In CW II: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P. 140
When
we must deal with problems, we instinctively resist trying the way that leads
through obscurity and darkness. We wish to hear only of unequivocal results,
and completely forget that these results can only be brought about when we have
ventured into and emerged again from the darkness. But to penetrate the
darkness we must summon all the powers of enlightenment that consciousness can
offer.
"The Stages of
Life" (1930). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.752
Everything
that man should, and yet cannot, be or do — be it in a positive or negative
sense — lives on as a mythological figure and anticipation alongside his
consciousness, either as a religious projection or — what is still more
dangerous — as unconscious contents which then project themselves spontaneously
into incongruous objects; e.g., hygienic and other "salvationist"
doctrines or practices. All these are so many rationalized substitutes for
mythology, and their unnaturalness does more harm than good.
"The Psychology of
the Child Archetype" (1940). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the
Collective Unconscious. P.287
The
hero's main feat is to overcome the monster of darkness: it is the
long-hoped-for and expected triumph of consciousness over the unconscious. The
coming of consciousness was probably the most tremendous experience of primeval
times, for with it a world came into being whose existence no one had suspected
before. "And God said, 'Let there be light"' is the projection of
that immemorial experience of the separation of consciousness from the
unconscious.
"The Psychology of
the Child Archetype" (1940). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the
Collective Unconscious. P.284
The
symbol is a living body, corpus et anima; hence the "child" is such
an apt formula for the symbol. The uniqueness of the psyche can never enter
wholly into reality, it can only be realized approximately, though it still
remains the absolute basis of all consciousness. The deeper "layers"
of the psyche lose their individual uniqueness as they retreat farther and
farther into darkness. "Lower down," that is to say as they approach
the autonomous functional systems, they become increasingly collective until
they are universalized and extinguished in the body's materiality, i.e., in chemical
substances. The body's carbon is simply carbon. Hence "at bottom" the
psyche is simply "world." In this sense I hold Kerenyi to be
absolutely right when he says that in the symbol the world itself is speaking.
The more archaic and "deeper," that is the more physiological, the
symbol is, the more collective and universal, the more "material" it
is. The more abstract, differentiated, and specified it is, and the more its
nature approximates to conscious uniqueness and individuality, the more it
sloughs off its universal character. Having finally attained full
consciousness, it runs the risk of becoming a mere allegory which nowhere
oversteps the bounds of conscious comprehension, and is then exposed to all
sorts of attempts at rationalistic and therefore inadequate explanation.
"The Psychology of
the Child Archetype" (1940). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the
Collective Unconscious. P.291
The
masculinity of the woman and the femininity of the man are inferior, and it is
regrettable that the full value of their personalities should be contaminated
by something that is less valuable. On the other hand, the shadow belongs to
the wholeness of the personality: the strong man must somewhere be weak,
somewhere the clever man must be stupid, otherwise he is too good to be true
and falls back on pose and bluff. Is it not an old truth that woman loves the
weaknesses of the strong man more than his strength, and the stupidity of the
clever man more than his cleverness ?
Die Anima als
Schicksalsproblem des Mannes (1963) Foreward by C.G. Jung. In CW 18 261
To
remain a child too long is childish, but it is just as childish to move away
and then assume that childhood no longer exists because we do not see it. But
if we return to the "children's land" we succumb to the fear of
becoming childish, because we do not understand that everything of psychic
origin has a double face. One face looks forward, the other back. It is
ambivalent and therefore symbolic, like all living reality.
Psychology and Alchemy
(1944). CW 12. P.74
No,
the demons are not banished; that is a difficult task that still lies ahead.
Now that the angel of history has abandoned the Germans,* the demons will seek
a new victim. And that won't be difficult. Every man who loses his shadow,
every nation that falls into self-righteousness, is their prey . . . We should
not forget that exactly the same fatal tendency to collectivization is present
in the victorious nations as in the Germans, that they can just as suddenly
become a victim of the demonic powers.
"The Postwar
Psychic Problems of the Germans" (1945)
*Written
1945.
Just
as we tend to assume that the world is as we see it, we naively suppose that
people are as we imagine them to be. In this latter case, unfortunately, there
is no scientific test that would prove the discrepancy between perception and
reality. Although the possibility of gross deception is infinitely greater here
than in our perception of the physical world, we still go on naively projecting
our own psychology into our fellow human beings. In this way everyone creates
for himself a series of more or less imaginary relationships based essentially
on projection.
"General Aspects of
Dream Psychology" (1916). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the
Psyche. P.507
The
change of character brought about by the uprush of collective forces is
amazing. A gentle and reasonable being can be transformed into a maniac or a
savage beast. One is always inclined to lay the blame on external
circumstances, but nothing could explode in us if it had not been there. As a
matter of fact, we are constantly living on the edge of a volcano, and there
is, so far as we know, no way of protecting ourselves from a possible outburst
that will destroy everybody within reach. It is certainly a good thing to
preach reason and common sense, but what if you have a lunatic asylum for an
audience or a crowd in a collective frenzy? There is not much difference
between them because the madman and the mob are both moved by impersonal,
overwhelming forces.
"Psychology and
Religion" (1938). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.25
It
is the face of our own shadow that glowers at us across the Iron Curtain.
Man and His Symbols. In
CW 18: P.85
Whenever
contents of the collective unconscious become activated, they have a disturbing
effect on the conscious mind, and contusion ensues. If the activation is due to
the collapse of the individual's hopes and expectations, there is a danger that
the collective unconscious may take the place of reality. This state would be
pathological. If, on the other hand, the activation is the result of
psychological processes in the unconscious of the people, the individual may
feel threatened or at any rate disoriented, but the resultant state is not
pathological, at least so far as the individual is concerned. Nevertheless, the
mental state of the people as a whole might well be compared to a psychosis.
"The Psychological
Foundation for the Belief in Spirits (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and
Dynamics of the Psyche. P.595
The
individual ego could be conceived as the commander of a small army in the
struggle with his environments war not infrequently on two fronts, before him
the struggle for existence, in the rear the struggle against his own rebellious
instinctual nature. Even to those of us who are not pessimists our existence
feels more like a struggle than anything else. The state of peace is a
desideratum, and when a man has found peace with himself and the world it is
indeed a noteworthy event.
"Analytical
Psychology and Weltanschauung" (1928) In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics
of the Psyche. P.693
If
a man is endowed with an ethical sense and is convinced of the sanctity of
ethical values, he is on the surest road to a conflict of duty. And although
this looks desperately like a moral catastrophe, it alone makes possible a
higher differentiation of ethics and a broadening of consciousness. A conflict
of duty forces us to examine our conscience and thereby to discover the shadow.
Depth Psychology and a
New Ethic. (1949). In CW 18. P.17
The
shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one
can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become
conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as
present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of
self-knowledge.
Aion (1951). CW 9, Part
II: P.14
To
confront a person with his shadow is to show him his own light. Once one has
experienced a few times what it is like to stand judgingly between the
opposites, one begins to understand what is meant by the self. Anyone who
perceives his shadow and his light simultaneously sees himself from two sides
and thus gets in the middle.
"Good and Evil in
Analytical Psychology" (1959). In CW 10. Civilization in Transition. P.872
Filling
the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western
theosophy, but not the confrontation with the shadow and the world of darkness.
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making
the darkness conscious.
"The Philosophical
Tree" (1945). In CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P.335
A
man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in
addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he
is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections
upon his neighbour.
"The Philosophical
Tree" (1945). In CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P.335
Projections
change the world into the replica of one's own unknown face.
Aion (1955). CW 14: P.17
The
"other" may be just as one-sided in one way as the ego is in another.
And yet the conflict between them may give rise to truth and meaning — but only
if the ego is willing to grant the other its rightful personality.
"Concerning
Rebirth" (1940) In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes of the Collective
Unconscious. P.237
Good
does not become better by being exaggerated, but worse, and a small evil
becomes a big one through being disregarded and repressed. The shadow is very
much a part of human nature, and it is only at night that no shadows exist.
"A Psychological
Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity" (1942) In CW 11: Psychology and
Religion: West and East. P.286
We
know that the wildest and most moving dramas are played not in the theatre but
in the hearts of ordinary men and women who pass by without exciting attention,
and who betray to the world nothing of the conflicts that rage within them
except possibly by a nervous breakdown. What is so difficult for the layman to
grasp is the fact that in most cases the patients themselves have no suspicion
whatever of the internecine war raging in their unconscious. If we remember
that there are many people who understand nothing at all about themselves, we
shall be less surprised at the realization that there are also people who are
utterly unaware of their actual conflicts.
"New Paths in
Psychology" (1912). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.425
In
reality, the acceptance of the shadow-side of human nature verges on the
impossible. Consider for a moment what it means to grant the right of existence
to what is unreasonable, senseless, and evil! Yet it is just this that the
modern man insists upon. He wants to live with every side of himself — to know
what he is. That is why he casts history aside. He wants to break with
tradition so that he can experiment with his life and determine what value and
meaning things have in themselves, apart from traditional resuppositions.
"Psychotherapist or
the Clergy" (1932). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East.
P.528
