Quote of the day

Incisive changes in history are generally attributed exclusively to external causes. It seems to me, however, that external circumstances often serve merely as occasions for a new attitude to life and the world, long prepared in the unconscious, to become manifest. CW 8 - par 594

Quote of the day

Nobody can meddle with fire or poison without being affected in some vulnerable spot; for the true physician does not stand outside his work but is always in the thick of it. CW 12 - par 5

Quote of the day

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. Conversations with Carl Jung, Evans - p. 62

Quote of the day

Psychic existence is the only category of existence of which we have immediate knowledge, since nothing can be known unless it first appears as a psychic image. Only psychic existence is immediately verifiable. To the extent that the world does not assume the form of a psychic image, it is virtually nonexistent. CW 11 - par 769

Quote of the day

The difference between the "natural" individuation process, which runs its course unconsciously, and the one which is consciously is consciously realized, is tremendous. In the first case consciousness nowhere intervenes; the end remains as dark as the beginning. In the second case so much darkness comes to light that the personality is permeated with light, and the consciousness necessarily gains in scope and insight. The encounter between conscious and unconscious has to ensure that the light which shines in the darkness is not only comprehended by the darkness, but comprehends it. CW 11 - par 756

Public Program

Monday, September 26, 2011 - Monday, October 31, 2011

A Collected Works Reading Program: Alchemical Studies, Volume 13 , Part III, pars. 144-238

Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon
Presented by J. Gordon Nelson, Ph.D.

Pre-registered: $135.00 | 12 hours CE, CN, APA available

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Quote of the day

People who merely believe and don't think always forget that they continually expose themselves to their own worst enemy: doubt. Wherever belief reigns, doubt lurks in the background. But thinking people welcome doubt: it serves them as a valuable stepping-stone to better knowledge. CW 11 - par 170

Quote of the day

Only life lived in a certain spirit is worth living. It is a remarkable fact that a life lived entirely from the ego is dull not only for the person himself but fol all concerned. CW 8 - par 645

Quote of the day

Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him his instrument. The artists is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his owns ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. CW 15 - par 157

Quote of the day

The small world of the child, the family milieu, is the model for the big world. The more intensely the family sets its stamp on the child, the more he will be emotionally inclined, as an adult, to see in the great world his former small world. Of course this must not be taken as a conscious intellectual process. On the contrary, the patient feels and sees the difference between now and then, and tries as well as he can to adapt himself. Perhaps he will even believe himself perfectly adapted, since he may be able to grasp the situation intellectually, but that does not prevent his emotions from lagging far behind his intellectual insight. CW 4 - par 312

Quote of the day

Neurosis is intimately bound up with the problem of our time and really represents an unsuccessful attempt on the part of the individual to solve the general problem in his own person. CW 7 - par 18

Quote of the day

Everything to do with religion, everything it is and asserts, touches the human soul so closely that psychology least of all can afford to overlook it. CW 11 - par 172

Quote of the day

Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not. CW 9 - par 429

Quote of the day

To have soul is the whole adventure of life, for soul is a life-giving daemon who plays his elfin game above and below human existence. CW 9 - par 56

Quote of the day

The nature of psyche reaches into obscurities far beyond the scope of our understanding. It contains as many riddles as the universe with its galactic systems, before whose majestic configurations only a mind lacking in imagination can fail to admit its own insufficiency. CW 8 - par 815

Quote of the day

The individual distinguishes himself himself by his deeds, the many by their renunciation of power. CW 7 - Par 238

Quote of the day

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 to dream the myth onwards and give it a modern dress. And whatever explanation or interpretation does to it, we do it to our own souls as well, with corresponding results for our own well-being. The archetype--let us never forget--is a psychic organ present in all of us. CW 9 - par 271

Quote of the day

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. CW 8 - par 507

Quote of the day

The more highly developed men of our time do not want to be guided by a creed or a dogma; they want to understand. So it's not surprising if they throw aside everything they do not understand.; and religious symbols, being the least intelligible of all, are generally the first to go overboard. The sacrifice of the intellect demanded by positive belief is a violation against which the conscience of the more highly developed individual rebels. CW 4 - par 434

Quote of the day

No one develops his personality because somebody tells him that it would be useful or advisable to do so. Nature has never yet been taken in by well-meaning advice. The only thing that moves nature is causal necessity, and that goes for human nature too. Without necessity nothing budges, the human personality least of all. It is tremendously conservative, not to say torpid. Only acute necessity is able to rouse it. The developing personality obeys no caprice, no command, no insight, only brute necessity; it needs the motivating force of inner or outer fatalities. Any other development would be no better than individualism. That is why the cry of "individualism" is a cheap insult when slung at the natural development of personality. CW 17 - par 293