Psychology and Religion

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.

There is no Archimedean point from which to judge, since the psyche is indistinguishable from its manifestations. The psyche is the object of psychology, and -fatally enough- also its subject. There is no getting away from this fact. "Psychology and Religion" (1938). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.

Since nobody is capable of recognizing just where and how much he himself is possessed and unconscious, he simply projects his own condition upon his neighbour, and thus it becomes a sacred duty to have the biggest guns and the most poisonous gas. The worst of it is that he is quite right. All one’s neighbours are in the grip of some uncontrolled and uncontrollable fear, just like oneself.

The European, on the other hand, can blow up mountains, and the World War has given us a bitter foretaste of what he is capable of when free rein is given to an intellect that has grown estranged from human nature. As a European, I cannot wish the European more “control” and more power over the nature within and around us. Indeed, I must confess to my shame that I owe my best insights (and there are some quite good ones among them) to

Parece que el error materialista fue en un comienzo inevitable. Como entre los sistemas galácticos no pudo descubrirse el trono divino, se concluyó que Dios no existía. Segundo error insalvable lo constituye el psicologismo: si después de todo Dios es algo, habrá de ser una ilusión motivada por la voluntad de poder o por la sexualidad reprimida. Tales argumentos no son nuevos. Cosas parecidas dijeron los misioneros cristianos que derrumbaron los ídolos paganos. Pero al paso que en su lucha contra los antiguos dioses los misioneros primitivos tenían conciencia de servir a un dios nuevo, los modernos iconoclastas no saben en nombre de quien destruyen los viejos valores.

What, then, shall we say to our patient with the imaginary cancer? I would tell him: “Yes, my friend, you are really suffering from a cancer-like thing, you really do harbour in yourself a deadly evil. However, it will not kill your body, because it is imaginary. But it will eventually kill your soul. It has already spoilt and even poisoned your human relations and your personal happiness and it will go on growing until it has swallowed your whole psychic existence. So that in the end you will not be a human being any more, but an evil destructive tumour.

It is not that something different is seen, but that one sees differently. It is as though the

Satori is the raison d’âtre of Zen without which

Aún cuando algunos padezcan problemas idénticos a los míos, nadie tendrá los mismos sueños que yo.

Las fantasías existen y pueden ser tan reales y tan nocivas y peligrosas como los estados físicos. Opino, también, que los trastornos anímicos son harto más peligrosos que las epidemias o terremotos. Ni las epidemias de cólera o de viruela medievales han matado a tantos hombres como ciertas discrepancias de opinión en el año 1914 o ciertos -ideales- políticos en Rusia.

. . .the shadow is merely somewhat inferior, primitive, unadapted, and awkward; not wholly bad. It even contains . . .qualities which would in a way vitalize and embellish human existence, but convention forbids!