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Re: The Red Book: Liber Novus, by C.G. Jung

PostPosted: Sun Dec 01, 2013 1:51 am
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Chapter 1: Refinding the Soul

[HI ii(r)] [30]
Cap i. [31]

[2] When I had the vision of the flood in October of the year 1913, it happened at a time that was significant for me as a man. At that time, in the fortieth year of my life, I had achieved everything that I had wished for myself. I had achieved honor, power, wealth, knowledge, and every human happiness. Then my desire for the increase of these trappings ceased, the desire ebbed from me and horror came over me. [32] The vision of the flood seized me and I felt the spirit of the depths, but I did not understand him. [33] Yet he drove me on with unbearable inner longing and I said:

[1] [34] "My soul, where are you? Do you hear me? I speak, I call you -- are you there? I have returned, I am here again. I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you, I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I have come to you again. Should I tell you everything I have seen, experienced, and drunk in? Or do you not want to hear about all the noise of life and the world? But one thing you must know: the one thing I have learned is that one must live this life.

This life is the way, the long sought-after way to the unfathomable, which we call divine. [35] There is no other way, all other ways are false paths. I found the right way, it led me to you, to my soul. I return, tempered and purified. Do you still know me? How long the separation lasted! Everything has become so different. And how did I find you? How strange my journey was! What words should I use to tell you on what twisted paths a good star has guided me to you? Give me your hand, my almost forgotten soul. How warm the joy at seeing you again, you long disavowed soul. Life has led me back to you. Let us thank the life I have lived for all the happy and all the sad hours, for every joy, for every sadness. My soul, my journey should continue with you. I will wander with you and ascend to my solitude." [36]

[2] The spirit of the depths forced me to say this and at the same time to undergo it against myself, since I had not expected it then. I still labored misguidedly under the spirit of this time, and thought differently about the human soul. I thought and spoke much of the soul. I knew many learned words for her, I had judged her and turned her into a scientific object. [37] I did not consider that my soul cannot be the object of my judgment and knowledge; much more are my judgment and knowledge the objects of my soul. [38] Therefore the spirit of the depths forced me to speak to my soul, to call upon her as a living and self-existing being. I had to become aware that I had lost my soul.

From this we learn how the spirit of the depths considers the soul: he sees her as a living and self-existing being, and with this he contradicts the spirit of this time for whom the soul is a thing dependent on man, which lets herself be judged and arranged, and whose circumference we can grasp. I had to accept that what I had previously called my soul was not at all my soul, but a dead system. [39] Hence I had to speak to my soul as to something far off and unknown, which did not exist through me, but through whom I existed.

He whose desire turns away from outer things, reaches the place of the soul. [40] If he does not find the soul, the horror of emptiness will overcome him, and fear will drive him with a whip lashing time and again in a desperate endeavor and a blind desire for the hollow things of the world. He becomes a fool through his endless desire, and forgets the way of his soul, never to find her again. He will run after all things, and will seize hold of them, but he will not find his soul, since he would find her only in himself. Truly his soul lies in things and men, but the blind one seizes things and men, yet not his soul in things and men. He has no knowledge of his soul. How could he tell her apart from things and men? He could find his soul in desire itself, but not in the objects of desire. If he possessed his desire, and his desire did not possess him, he would lay a hand on his soul, since his desire is the image and expression of his soul. [41]

If we possess the image of a thing, we possess half the thing.

The image of the world is half the world. He who possesses the world but not its image possesses only half the world, since his soul is poor and has nothing. The wealth of the soul exists in images. [42] He who possesses the image of the world, possesses half the world, even if his humanity is poor and owns nothing. [43] But hunger makes the soul into a beast that devours the unbearable and is poisoned by it. My friends, it is wise to nourish the soul, otherwise you will breed dragons and devils in your heart. [44]

Re: The Red Book: Liber Novus, by C.G. Jung

PostPosted: Sun Dec 01, 2013 1:52 am
by admin
Chapter 2: Soul and God

[HI ii(r)2] [45]
Cap. ii.

On the second night I called out to my soul: [46]

"I am weary, my soul, my wandering has lasted too long, my search for myself outside of myself. Now I have gone through events and find you behind all of them. For I made discoveries on my erring through events, humanity, and the world. I found men. And you, my soul, I found again, first in images within men and then you yourself. I found you where I least expected you. You climbed out of a dark shaft. You announced yourself to me in advance in dreams. [47] They burned in my heart and drove me to all the boldest acts of daring, and forced me to rise above myself. You let me see truths of which I had no previous inkling. You let me undertake journeys, whose endless length would have scared me, if the knowledge of them had not been secure in you.

I wandered for many years, so long that I forgot that I possessed a soul. [48] Where were you all this time? Which Beyond sheltered you and gave you sanctuary? Oh, that you must speak through me, that my speech and I are your symbol and expression! How should I decipher you?

Who are you, child? My dreams have represented you as a child and as a maiden. [49] I am ignorant of your mystery. [50] Forgive me if I speak as in a dream, like a drunkard -- are you God? Is God a child, a maiden? [51] Forgive me if I babble. No one else hears me. I speak to you quietly, and you know that I am neither a drunkard nor someone deranged, and that my heart twists in pain from the wound, whose darkness delivers speeches full of mockery: "You are lying to yourself! You spoke so as to deceive others and make them believe in you. You want to be a prophet and chase after your ambition." The wound still bleeds, and I am far from being able to pretend that I do not hear the mockery.

How strange it sounds to me to call you a child, you who still hold the all-without-end in your hand. [52] I went on the way of the day, and you went invisibly with me, putting the pieces together meaningfully, and letting me see the whole in each part.

You took away where I thought to take hold, and you gave me where I did not expect anything and time and again you brought about fate from new and unexpected quarters. Where I sowed, you robbed me of the harvest, and where I did not sow, you give me fruit a hundredfold. And time and again I lost the path and found it again where I would never have foreseen it. You upheld my belief, when I was alone and near despair. At every decisive moment you let me believe in myself."

***

[2] Like a tired wanderer who had sought nothing in the world apart from her, shall I come closer to my soul. I shall learn that my soul finally lies behind everything, and if I cross the world, I am ultimately doing this to find my soul. Even the dearest are themselves not the goal and end of the love that goes on seeking, they are symbols of their own souls.

My friends, do you guess to what solitude we ascend?

I must learn that the dregs of my thought, my dreams, are the speech of my soul. I must carry them in my heart, and go back and forth over them in my mind, like the words of the person dearest to me. Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. Why should I henceforth not love my dreams and not make their riddling images into objects of my daily consideration? You think that the dream is foolish and ungainly. What is beautiful? What is ungainly? What is clever? What is foolish? The spirit of this time is your measure, but the spirit of the depths surpasses it at both ends. Only the spirit of this time knows the difference between large and small. But this difference is invalid, like the spirit which recognizes it. / [fol. ii(r) / ii(v)]

***

The spirit of the depths even taught me to consider my action and my decision as dependent on dreams. Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language. [53] One would like to learn this language, but who can teach and learn it? Scholarliness alone is not enough; there is a knowledge of the heart that gives deeper insight. [54] The knowledge of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of you like the green seed from the dark earth. Scholarliness belongs to the spirit of this time, but this spirit in no way grasps the dream, since the soul is everywhere that scholarly knowledge is not.

But how can I attain the knowledge of the heart? You can attain this knowledge only by living your life to the full. You live your life fully if you also live what you have never yet lived, but have left for others to live or to think. [55] You will say: "But I cannot live or think everything that others live or think." But you should say: "The life that I could still live, I should live, and the thoughts that I could still think, I should think." It appears as though you want to flee from yourself so as not to have to live what remains unlived until now. [56] But you cannot flee from yourself. It is with you all the time and demands fulfillment. If you pretend to be blind and dumb to this demand, you feign being blind and deaf to yourself. This way you will never reach the knowledge of the heart.

The knowledge of your heart is how your heart is.

From a cunning heart you will know cunning.

From a good heart you will know goodness.

So that your understanding becomes perfect, consider that your heart is both good and evil. You ask, "What? Should I also live evil?"

The spirit of the depths demands: "The life that you could still live, you should live. Well-being decides, not your well-being, not the well-being of the others, but only well-being."

Well-being is between me and others, in society. I, too, lived -- which I had not done before, and which I could still do. I lived into the depths, and the depths began to speak. The depths taught me the other truth. It thus united sense and nonsense in me.

I had to recognize that I am only the expression and symbol of the soul. In the sense of the spirit of the depths, I am as I am in this visible world a symbol of my soul, and I am thoroughly a serf, completely subjugated, utterly obedient. The spirit of the depths taught me to say: "I am the servant of a child." Through this dictum I learn above all the most extreme humility, as what I most need.

The spirit of this time of course allowed me to believe in my reason. He let me see myself in the image of a leader with ripe thoughts. But the spirit of the depths teaches me that I am a servant, in fact the servant of a child. This dictum was repugnant to me and I hated it. But I had to recognize and accept that my soul is a child and that my God in my soul is a child. [57]

If you are boys, your God is a woman.
If you are women, your God is a boy.
If you are men, your God is a maiden.
The God is where you are not.
So: it is wise that one has a God; this serves for your perfection.
A maiden is the pregnant future.
A boy is the engendering future.
A woman is: having given birth.
A man is: having engendered.
So: if you are childlike beings now, your God will descend from the height of ripeness to age and death.
But if you are developed beings, having engendered or given birth, in body or in soul, so your God rises from the radiant cradle, to the incalculable height of the future, to the maturity and fullness of the coming time.
He who still has his life before him is a child.
He who lives life in the present is developed.
If you thus live all that you can live, you are developed.
He who is a child in this time, his God dies.
He who is developed in this time, his God continues to live.
The spirit of the depths teaches this mystery.
Prosperous and woeful are those whose God is developed!
Prosperous and woeful are those whose God is a child!
What is better, that man has life ahead of him, or that God does?
I know no answer. Live; the unavoidable decides.
The spirit of the depths taught me that my life is encompassed by the divine child. [58] From his hand everything unexpected came to me, everything living.
This child is what I feel as an eternally springing youth in me. [59]
In childish men you feel the hopeless transience. All that you saw passing is yet to come for him. His future is full of transience.
But the transience of the things coming toward you has never yet experienced a human meaning.
Your continuing to live is a living onward. You engender and give birth to what is to come, you are fecund, you live onward.
The childish is unfruitful, what is to come to him is what already has been engendered and already withered. It does not live onward. [60]


My God is a child, so wonder not that the spirit of this time in me is incensed to mockery and scorn. There will be no one who will laugh at me as I laughed at myself.

Your God should not be a man of mockery, rather you yourself will be the man of mockery. You should mock yourself and rise above this. If you have still not learned this from the old holy books, then go there, drink the blood and eat the flesh of him who was mocked [61] and tormented for the sake of our sins, so that you totally become his nature, deny his being-apart-from-you; you should be he himself, not Christians but Christ, otherwise you will be of no use to the coming God.

Is there any one among you who believes he can be spared the way? Can he swindle his way past the pain of Christ? I say: "Such a one deceives himself to his own detriment. He beds down on thorns and fire. No one can be spared the way of Christ, since this way leads to what is to come. You should all become Christs. [62]

You do not overcome the old teaching through doing less, but through doing more. Every step closer to my soul excites the scornful laughter of my devils, those cowardly ear-whisperers and poison-mixers. It was easy for them to laugh, since I had to do strange things.

Re: The Red Book: Liber Novus, by C.G. Jung

PostPosted: Sun Dec 01, 2013 1:53 am
by admin
Chapter 3: On the Service of the Soul

[HI ii(v)]
Cap. iii.

[63] On the following night I had to write down all the dreams that I could recollect, true to their wording. [64] The meaning of this act was dark to me. Why all this? Forgive the fuss that rises in me. Yet you want me to do this. What strange things are happening to me? I know too much not to see on what swaying bridges I go. Where are you leading me? Forgive my excessive apprehension, brimful of knowledge. My foot hesitates to follow you. Into what mist and darkness does your path lead? Must I also learn to do without meaning? If this is what you demand, then so be it. This hour belongs to you. What is there, where there is no meaning? Only nonsense, or madness, it seems to me. Is there also a supreme meaning? Is that your meaning, my soul? I limp after you on crutches of understanding. I am a man and you stride like a God. What torture! I must return to myself, to my smallest things. I saw the things of my soul as small, pitiably small. You force me to see them as large, to make them large. Is that your aim? I follow, but it terrifies me. Hear my doubts, otherwise I cannot follow, since your meaning is a supreme meaning, and your steps are the steps of a God.

I understand, I must not think either; should thought, too, no longer be? I should give myself completely into your hands -- but who are you? I do not trust you. Not once to trust, is that my love for you, my joy in you? Do I not trust every valiant man, and not you, my soul? Your hand lies heavy on me, but I will, I will. Have I not sought to love men and trust them, and should I not do this with you? Forget my doubts, I know it is ignoble to doubt you. You know how difficult it is for me to set aside the beggar's pride I take in my own thought. I forgot that you are also one of my friends, and have the first right to my trust. Should what I give them not belong to you? I recognize my injustice. It seems to me that I despised you. My joy at finding you again was not genuine. I also recognize that the scornful laughter in me was right.

I must learn to love you. [65] Should I also set aside self-judgment? I am afraid. Then the soul spoke to me and said: "This fear testifies against me!" It is true, it testifies against you. It kills the holy trust between you and me.

[2] How hard is fate! If you take a step toward your soul, you will at first miss the meaning. You will believe that you have sunk into meaninglessness, into eternal disorder. You will be right! Nothing will deliver you from disorder and meaninglessness, since this is the other half of the world.

Your God is a child, so long as you are not childlike. Is the child order, meaning? Or disorder, caprice? Disorder and meaninglessness are the mother of order and meaning. Order and meaning are things that have become and are no longer becoming.

You open the gates of the soul to let the dark flood of chaos flow into your order and meaning. If you marry the ordered to the chaos you produce the divine child, the supreme meaning beyond meaning and meaninglessness.

You are afraid to open the door? I too was afraid, since we had forgotten that God is terrible. Christ taught: God is love. [66] But you should know that love is also terrible.

I spoke to a loving soul and as I drew nearer to her, I was overcome by horror, and I heaped up a wall of doubt, and did not anticipate that I thus wanted to protect myself from my fearful soul.

You dread the depths; it should horrify you, since the way of what is to come leads through it. You must endure the temptation of fear and doubt, and at the same time acknowledge to the bone that your fear is justified and your doubt is reasonable. How otherwise / [fol. ii(v) / iii(r)] could it be a true temptation and a true overcoming?

Christ totally overcomes the temptation of the devil, but not the temptation of God to good and reason. [67] Christ thus succumbs to cursing. [68]

You still have to learn this, to succumb to no temptation, but to do everything of your own will; then you will be free and beyond Christianity.

I have had to recognize that I must submit to what I fear; yes, even more, that I must even love what horrifies me. We must learn such from that saint who was disgusted by the plague infections; she drank the pus of plague boils and became aware that it smelled like roses. The acts of the saint were not in vain. [69]

In everything regarding your salvation and the attainment of mercy, you are dependent on your soul. Thus no sacrifice can be too great for you. If your virtues hinder you from salvation, discard them, since they have become evil to you. The slave to virtue finds the way as little as the slave to vices. [70]

If you believe that you are the master of your soul, then become her servant. If you were her servant, make yourself her master, since she needs to be ruled. These should be your first steps.

***

During six further nights, the spirit of the depths was silent in me, since I swayed between fear, defiance, and nausea, and was wholly the prey of my passion. I could not and did not want to listen to the depths. But on the seventh night, the spirit of the depths spoke to me: "Look into your depths, pray to your depths, waken the dead." [71]

But I stood helpless and did not know what I could do. I looked into myself, and the only thing I found within was the memory of earlier dreams, all of which I wrote down without knowing what good this would do. I wanted to throw everything away and return to the light of day. But the spirit stopped me and forced me back into myself.

Re: The Red Book: Liber Novus, by C.G. Jung

PostPosted: Sun Dec 01, 2013 1:54 am
by admin
Chapter 4: The Desert

[HI iii (r)]
Cap. iv.

[72] Sixth night. My soul leads me into the desert, into the desert of my own self. I did not think that my soul is a desert, a barren, hot desert, dusty and without drink. The journey leads through hot sand, slowly wading without a visible goal to hope for? How eerie is this wasteland. It seems to me that the way leads so far away from mankind. I take my way step by step, and do not know how long my journey will last.

Why is my self a desert? Have I lived too much outside of myself in men and events? Why did I avoid my self? Was I not dear to myself? But I have avoided the place of my soul. I was my thoughts, after I was no longer events and other men. But I was not my self, confronted with my thoughts. I should also rise up above my thoughts to my own self. My journey goes there, and that is why it leads away from men and events into solitude. Is it solitude, to be with oneself? Solitude is true only when the self is a desert. [73] Should I also make a garden out of the desert? Should I people a desolate land? Should I open the airy magic garden of the wilderness? What leads me into the desert, and what am I to do there? Is it a deception that I can no longer trust my thoughts? Only life is true, and only life leads me into the desert, truly not my thinking, that would like to return to thoughts, to men and events, since it feels uncanny in the desert. My soul, what am I to do here? But my soul spoke to me and said, "Wait." I heard the cruel word. Torment belongs to the desert. [74]

Through giving my soul all I could give, I came to the place of the soul and found that this place was a hot desert, desolate and unfruitful. No culture of the mind is enough to make a garden out of your soul. I had cultivated my spirit, the spirit of this time in me, but not that spirit of the depths that turns to the things of the soul, the world of the soul. The soul has its own peculiar world. Only the self enters in there, or the man who has completely become his self, he who is neither in events, nor in men, nor in his thoughts. Through the turning of my desire from things and men, I turned my self away from things and men, but that is precisely how I became the secure prey of my thoughts, yes, I wholly became my thoughts.

***

[2] I also had to detach myself from my thoughts through turning my desire away from them. And at once, I noticed that my self became a desert, where only the sun of unquiet desire burned. I was overwhelmed by the endless infertility of this desert. Even if something could have thrived there, the creative power of desire was still absent. Wherever the creative power of desire is, there springs the soil's own seed. But do not forget to wait. Did you not see that when your creative force turned to the world, how the dead things moved under it and through it, how they grew and prospered, and how your thoughts flowed in rich rivers? If your creative force now turns to the place of the soul, you will see how your soul becomes green and how its field bears wonderful fruit.

Nobody can spare themselves the waiting and most will be unable to bear this torment, but will throw themselves with greed back at men, things, and thoughts, whose slaves they will become from then on. Since then it will have been clearly proved that this man is incapable of enduring beyond things, men, and thoughts, and they will hence become his master and he will become their fool, since he cannot be without them, not until even his soul has become a fruitful field. Also he whose soul is a garden, needs things, men, and thoughts, but he is their friend and not their slave and fool.

Everything to come was already in images: to find their soul, the ancients went into the desert. [75] This is an image. The ancients lived their symbols, since the world had not yet become real for them. Thus they went into the solitude of the desert to teach us that the place of the soul is a lonely desert. There they found the abundance of visions, the fruits of the desert, the wondrous flowers of the soul. Think diligently about the images that the ancients have left behind. They show the way of what is to come. Look back at the collapse of empires, of growth and death, of the desert and monasteries, they are the images of what is to come. Everything has been foretold. But who knows how to interpret it?

When you say that the place of the soul is not, then it is not. But if you say that it is, then it is. Notice what the ancients said in images: the word is a creative act. The ancients said: in the beginning was the Word. [76] Consider this and think upon it.

The words that oscillate between nonsense and supreme meaning are the oldest and truest.

Re: The Red Book: Liber Novus, by C.G. Jung

PostPosted: Sun Dec 01, 2013 1:54 am
by admin
Chapter 4A: Experiences in the Desert

[HI iii(r) 2]

[77] After a hard struggle I have come a piece of the way nearer to you. How hard this struggle was! I had fallen into an undergrowth of doubt, confusion, and scorn. I recognize that I must be alone with my soul. I come with empty hands to you, my soul. What do you want to hear? But my soul spoke to me and said, "If you come to a friend, do you come to take?" I knew that this should not be so, but it seems to me that I am poor and empty. I would like to sit down near you and at least feel the breath of your animating presence. My way is hot sand. All day long, sandy, dusty paths. My patience is sometimes weak and once I despaired of myself, as you know.

My soul answered and said, "You speak to me as if you were a child complaining to its mother. I am not your mother." I do not want to complain, but let me say to you that mine is a long and dusty road. You are to me like a shady tree in the wilderness. I would like to enjoy your shade. But my soul answered, "You are pleasure-seeking. Where is your patience? Your time has not yet run its course. Have you forgotten why you went into the desert?"

My faith is weak my face is blind from all that shimmering blaze of the desert sun. The heat lies on me like lead. Thirst torments me, I dare not think how unendingly long my way is, and above all, I see nothing in front of me. But the soul answered, "You speak as if you have still learned nothing. Can you not wait? Should everything fall into your lap ripe and finished? You are full, yes, you teem with intentions and desirousness! -- Do you still not know that the way to truth stands open only to those without intentions?"

I know that everything you say, Oh my soul, is also my thought. But I hardly live according to it. The soul said, "How, tell me, do you then believe that your thoughts should help you?" I would always like to refer to the fact that I am a human being, just a human being who is weak and sometimes does not do his best. But the soul said, "Is this what you think it means to be human?" You are hard, my soul, but you are right. How little we still commit ourselves to living. We should grow like a tree that likewise does not know its law. We tie ourselves up with intentions, not mindful of the fact that intention is the limitation, yes, the exclusion of life. We believe that we can illuminate the darkness with an intention, and in that way aim past the light. [78] How can we presume to want to know in advance, from where the light will come to us?

Let me bring only one complaint before you: I suffer from scorn, my own scorn. But my soul said to me, "Do you think little of yourself?" I do not believe so. My soul answered, "Then listen, do you think little of me? Do you still not know that you are not writing a book to feed your vanity, but that you are speaking with me? How can you suffer from scorn if you address me with those words that I give you? Do you know, then, who I am? Have you grasped me, defined me, and made me into a dead formula? Have you measured the depths of my chasms, and explored all the ways down which I am yet going to lead you? Scorn cannot challenge you if you are not vain to the marrow of your bones." Your truth is hard. I want to lay down my vanity before you, since it blinds me. See, that is why I also believed my hands were empty when I came to you today. I did not consider that it is you who fills empty hands if only they want to stretch out, yet they do not want to. I did not know that I am your vessel, empty without you but brimming over with you.

[2] This was my twenty-fifth night in the desert. This is how long it took my soul to awaken from a shadowy being to her own life, until she could approach me as a free-standing being separate from me. And I received hard but salutary words from her. I needed that taking in hand, since I could not overcome the scorn within me.

The spirit of this time considers itself extremely clever, like every such spirit of the time. But wisdom is simpleminded, not just simple. Because of this, the clever person mocks wisdom, since mockery is his weapon. He uses the pointed, poisonous weapon, because he is struck by naive wisdom. If he were not struck, he would not need the weapon. Only in the desert do we become aware of our terrible simplemindedness, but we are afraid of admitting it. "That is why we are scornful. But mockery / [fol. iii(r) / iii(v)] does not attain simplemindedness. The mockery falls on the mocker, and in the desert where no one hears and answers, he suffocates from his own scorn.

The cleverer you are, the more foolish your simplemindedness. The totally clever are total fools in their simplemindedness. We cannot save ourselves from the cleverness of the spirit of this time through increasing our cleverness, but through accepting what our cleverness hates most, namely simplemindedness. Yet we also do not want to be artificial fools because we have fallen into simplemindedness, rather we will be clever fools. That leads to the supreme meaning. Cleverness couples itself with intention. Simplemindedness knows no intention. Cleverness conquers the world, but simplemindedness, the soul. So take on the vow of poverty of spirit in order to partake of the soul. [79]

Against this the scorn of my cleverness rose up. [80] Many will laugh at my foolishness. But no one will laugh more than I laughed at myself.

So I overcame scorn. But when I had overcome it, I was near to my soul, and she could speak to me, and I was soon to see the desert becoming green.

Re: The Red Book: Liber Novus, by C.G. Jung

PostPosted: Sun Dec 01, 2013 1:56 am
by admin
Chapter 5: Descent into Hell in the Future

[HI iii (v)]
Cap. v.

[81] In the following night, the air was filled with many voices. A loud voice called, "I am falling." Others cried out confused and excited during this: "Where to? What do you want?" Should I entrust myself to this confusion? I shuddered. It is a dreadful deep. Do you want me to leave myself to chance, to the madness of my own darkness? Wither? Wither? You fall, and I want to fall with you, whoever you are.

The spirit of the depths opened my eyes and I caught a glimpse of the inner things, the world of my soul, the many-formed and changing. [Image iii (v) I]

***

I see a gray rock face along which I sink into great depths. [82] I stand in black dirt up to my ankles in a dark cave. Shadows sweep over me. I am seized by fear, but I know I must go in. I crawl through a narrow crack in the rock and reach an inner cave whose bottom is covered with black water. But beyond this I catch a glimpse of a luminous red stone which I must reach. I wade through the muddy water. The cave is full of the frightful noise of shrieking voices. [83] I take the stone, it covers a dark opening in the rock. I hold the stone in my hand, peering around inquiringly. I do not want to listen to the voices, they keep me away. [84] But I want to know. Here something wants to be uttered. I place my ear to the opening. I hear the flow of underground waters. I see the bloody head of a man on the dark stream. Someone wounded, someone slain floats there. I take in this image for a long time, shuddering. I see a large black scarab floating past on the dark stream.

In the deepest reach of the stream shines a red sun, radiating through the dark water. There I see -- and a terror seizes me -- small serpents on the dark rock walls, striving toward the depths, where the sun shines. A thousand serpents crowd around, veiling the sun. Deep night falls. A red stream of blood, thick red blood springs up, surging for a long time, then ebbing. I am seized by fear. What did I see? [85] [Image iii(v) 2]

Heal the wounds that doubt inflicts on me, my soul. That too is to be overcome, so that I can recognize your supreme meaning. How far away everything is, and how I have turned back! My spirit is a spirit of torment, it tears asunder my contemplation, it would dismantle everything and rip it apart. I am still a victim of my thinking. When can I order my thinking to be quiet, so that my thoughts, those unruly hounds, will crawl to my feet? How can I ever hope to hear your voice louder, to see your face clearer, when all my thoughts howl?

I am stunned, but I want to be stunned, since I have sworn to you, my soul, to trust you even if you lead me through madness. How shall I ever walk under your sun if I do not drink the bitter draught of slumber to the lees? Help me so that I do not choke on my own knowledge. The fullness of my knowledge threatens to fall in on me. My knowledge has a thousand voices, an army roaring like lions; the air trembles when they speak, and I am their defenseless sacrifice. Keep it far from me, science that clever knower, [86] that bad prison master who binds the soul and imprisons it in a lightless cell. But above all protect me from the serpent of judgment, which only appears to be a healing serpent, yet in your depths is infernal poison and agonizing death. I want to go down cleansed into your depths with white garments and not rush in like some thief, seizing whatever I can and fleeing breathlessly. Let me persist in divine [87] astonishment, so that I am ready to behold your wonders. Let me lay my head on a stone before your door, so that I am prepared to receive your light.

***

[2] When the desert begins to bloom, it brings forth strange plants. You will consider yourself mad, and in a certain sense you will in fact be mad. [88] To the extent that the Christianity of this time lacks madness, it lacks divine life. Take note of what the ancients taught us in images: madness is divine. [89] But because the ancients lived this image concretely in events, it became a deception for us, since we became masters of the reality of the world. It is unquestionable: if you enter into the world of the soul, you are like a madman, and a doctor would consider you to be sick. What I say here can be seen as sickness, but no one can see it as sickness more than I do.

This is how I overcame madness. If you do not know what divine madness is, suspend judgment and wait for the fruits. [90] But know that there is a divine madness which is nothing other than the overpowering of the spirit of this time through the spirit of the depths. Speak then of sick delusion when the spirit of the depths can no longer stay down and forces a man to speak in tongues instead of in human speech, and makes him believe that he himself is the spirit of the depths. But also speak of sick delusion when the spirit of this time does not leave a man and forces him to see only the surface, to deny the spirit of the depths and to take himself for the spirit of the times. The spirit of this time is ungodly, the spirit of the depths is ungodly; balance is godly.

Because I was caught up in the spirit of this time, precisely what happened to me on this night had to happen to me, namely that the spirit of the depths erupted with force, and swept away the spirit of this time with a powerful wave. But the spirit of the depths had gained this power, because I had spoken to my soul during 25 nights in the desert and I had given her all my love and submission. But during the 25 days, I gave all my love and submission to things, to men, and to the thoughts of this time. I went into the desert only at night.

Thus can you differentiate sick and divine delusion. Whoever does the one and does without the other you may call sick since he is out of balance.

But who can withstand fear when the divine intoxication and madness comes to him? Love, soul, and God are beautiful and terrible. The ancients brought over some of the beauty of God into this world, and this world became so beautiful that it appeared to the spirit of the time to be fulfillment, and better than the bosom of the Godhead. The frightfulness and cruelty of the world lay under wraps and in the depths of our hearts. If the spirit of the depths seizes you, you will feel the cruelty and cry out in torment. The spirit of the depths is pregnant with iron, fire, and death. You are right to fear the spirit of the depths, as he is full of horror.

You see in these days what the spirit of the depths bore. You did not believe it, but you would have known it if you had taken counsel with your fear. [91]

Blood shone at me from the red light of the crystal, and when I picked it up to discover its mystery, there lay the horror uncovered before me: in the depths of what is to come lay murder. The blond hero lay slain. The black beetle is the death that is necessary for renewal; and so thereafter, a new sun glowed, the sun of the depths, full of riddles, a sun of the night. And as the rising sun of spring quickens the dead earth, so the sun of the depths quickened the dead, and thus began the terrible struggle between light and darkness. Out of that burst the powerful and ever unvanquished source of blood. This was what was to come, which you now experience in your life, and it is even more than that. (I had this vision on the night of 12 December 1913.)

Depths and surface should mix so that new life can develop. Yet the new life does not develop outside of us, but within us. What happens outside us in these days is the image that the peoples live in events, to bequeath this image immemorially to far-off times so that they might learn from it for their own way, just as we learned from the images that the ancients had lived before us in events.

Life does not come from events, but from us. Everything that happens outside has already been.

Therefore whoever considers the event from outside always sees only that it already was, and that it is always the same. But whoever looks from inside, knows that everything is new. The events that happen are always the same. But the creative depths if man are not always the same. Events signify nothing, they signify only in us. We create the meaning of events. The meaning is and always was artificial. We make it.

Because of this we seek in ourselves the meaning if events, so that the way of / [fol. iii(v) / iv(r)] what is to come becomes apparent and our life can flow again.

That which you need comes from yourself, namely the meaning of the event. The meaning of events is not their particular meaning. This meaning exists in learned books. Events have no meaning.

The meaning of events is the way of salvation that you create. The meaning of events comes from the possibility of life in this world that you create. It is the mastery if this world and the assertion of your soul in this world.

This meaning of events is the supreme meaning, that is not in events, and not in the soul, but is the God standing between events and the soul, the mediator of life, the way, the bridge and the going across. [92]

I would not have been able to see what was to come if I could not have seen it in myself.

Therefore I take part in that murder; the sun of the depths also shines in me after the murder has been accomplished; the thousand serpents that want to devour the sun are also in me. I myself am a murderer and murdered, sacrificer and sacrificed. [93] The upwelling blood streams out of me.

You all have a share in the murder. [94] In you the reborn one will come to be, and the sun of the depths will rise, and a thousand serpents will develop from your dead matter and fall on the sun to choke it. Your blood will stream forth. The peoples demonstrate this at the present time in unforgettable acts, that will be written with blood in unforgettable books for eternal memory. [95]

But I ask you, when do men fall on their brothers with mighty weapons and bloody acts? They do such if they do not know that their brother is themselves. They themselves are sacrificers, but they mutually do the service of sacrifice. They must all sacrifice each other, since the time has not yet come when man puts the bloody knife into himself, in order to sacrifice the one he kills in his brother. But whom do people kill? They kill the noble, the brave, the heroes. They take aim at these and do not know that with these they mean themselves. They should sacrifice the hero in themselves, and because they do not know this, they kill their courageous brother.

The time is still not ripe. But through this blood sacrifice, it should ripen. So long as it is possible to murder the brother instead of oneself, the time is not ripe. Frightful things must happen until men grow ripe. But anything else will not ripen humanity. Hence all this that takes place in these days must also be, so that the renewal can come. Since the source of blood that follows the shrouding of the sun is also the source of the new life. [96]

As the fate of the peoples is represented to you in events, so will it happen in your heart. If the hero in you is slain, then the sun of the depths rises in you, glowing from afar, and from a dreadful place. But all the same, everything that up till now seemed to be dead in you will come to life, and will change into poisonous serpents that will cover the sun, and you will fall into night and confusion. Your blood also will stream from many wounds in this frightful struggle. Your shock and doubt will be great, but from such torment the new life will be born. Birth is blood and torment. Your darkness, which you did not suspect since it was dead, will come to life and you will feel the crush of total evil and the conflicts of life that still now lie buried in the matter of your body. But the serpents are dreadful evil thoughts and feelings.

You thought you knew that abyss? Oh you clever people! It is another thing to experience it. Everything will happen to you. Think of all the frightful and devilish things that men have inflicted on their brothers. That should happen to you in your heart. Suffer it yourself through your own hand, and know that it is your own heinous and devilish hand that inflicts the suffering on you, but not your brother, who wrestles with his own devils. [97]

I would like you to see what the murdered hero means. Those nameless men who in our day have murdered a prince are blind prophets who demonstrate in events what then is valid only for the soul. [98] Through the murder of princes we will learn that the prince in us, the hero, is threatened. [99] Whether this should be seen as a good or a bad sign need not concern us. What is awful today is good in a hundred years, and in two hundred years is bad again. But we must recognize what is happening: there are nameless ones in you who threaten your prince, the hereditary ruler.

But our ruler is the spirit of this time, which rules and leads in us all. It is the general spirit in which we think and act today. He is of frightful power, since he has brought immeasurable good to this world and fascinated men with unbelievable pleasure. He is bejewelled with the most beautiful heroic virtue, and wants to drive men up to the brightest solar heights, in everlasting ascent. [100]

The hero wants to open up everything he can. But the nameless spirit of the depths evokes everything that man cannot. Incapacity prevents further ascent. Greater height requires greater virtue. We do not possess it. We must first create it by learning to live with our incapacity. We must give it life. For how else shall it develop into ability?

We cannot slay our incapacity and rise above it. But that is precisely what we wanted. Incapacity will overcome us and demand its share of life. Our ability will desert us, and we will believe, in the sense of the spirit of this time, that it is a loss. Yet it is no loss but a gain, not for outer trappings, however, but for inner capability.

The one who learns to live with his incapacity has learned a great deal. This will lead us to the valuation of the smallest things, and to wise limitation, which the greater height demands. If all heroism is erased, we fall back into the misery of humanity and into even worse. Our foundations will be caught up in excitement since our highest tension, which concerns what lies outside us, will stir them up. We will fall into the cesspool of our underworld, among the rubble of all the centuries in us. [101]

The heroic in you is the fact that you are ruled by the thought that this or that is good, that this or that performance is indispensable, this or that cause is objectionable, this or that goal must be attained in headlong striving work, this or that pleasure should be ruthlessly repressed at all costs. Consequently you sin against incapacity. But incapacity exists. No one should deny it, find fault with it, or shout it down. [102]

Re: The Red Book: Liber Novus, by C.G. Jung

PostPosted: Sun Dec 01, 2013 1:57 am
by admin
Chapter 6: Splitting of the Spirit

[HI iv(r)]
Cap. vi.

But on the fourth night I cried, "To journey to Hell means to become Hell oneself. [103] It is all frightfully muddled and interwoven. On this desert path there is not just glowing sand, but also horrible tangled invisible beings who live in the desert. I didn't know this. The way is only apparently clear, the desert is only apparently empty. It seems inhabited by magical beings who murderously attach themselves to me and daimonically change my form. I have evidently taken on a completely monstrous form in which I can no longer recognize myself. It seems to me that I have become a monstrous animal form for which I have exchanged my humanity. This way is surrounded by hellish magic, invisible nooses have been thrown over me and ensnare me."

But the spirit of the depths approached me and said, "Climb down into your depths, sink!"

But I was indignant at him and said, "How can I sink? I am unable to do this myself."

Then the spirit spoke words to me that appeared ridiculous, and he said, "Sit yourself down, be calm."

But I cried out indignantly: "How frightful, it sounds like nonsense, do you also demand this of me? You overthrew the mighty Gods who mean the most to us. My soul, where are you? Have I entrusted myself to a stupid animal, do I stagger like a drunkard to the grave, do I stammer stupidities like a lunatic? Is this your way, my soul? The blood boils in me and I would strangle you if I could seize you. You weave the thickest darknesses and I am like a madman caught in your net. But I yearn, teach me."

But my soul spoke to me saying, "My path is light."

Yet I indignantly answered, "Do you call light what we men call the worst darkness? Do you call day night?"

To this my soul spoke a word that roused my anger: "My light is not of this world."

I cried, "I know of no other world."

The soul answered, "Should it not exist because you know nothing of it?"

I: "But our knowledge? Does our knowledge also not hold good for you? What is it going to be, if not knowledge? Where is security? Where is solid ground? Where is light? Your darkness is not only darker than night, but bottomless as well. If it's not going to be knowledge, then perhaps it will do without speech and words too?"

My soul: "No words."

I: "Forgive me, perhaps I'm hard of hearing, perhaps I misinterpret you, perhaps I ensnare myself in self-deceit and monkey business, and I am a rascal grinning at myself in a mirror, a fool in my own madhouse. Perhaps you stumble over my folly?"

My soul: "You delude yourself, you do not deceive me. Your words are lies to you, not me."

I: "But could I wallow in raging nonsense, and hatch absurdity and perverse monotony?"

My soul: "Who gives you thoughts and words? Do you make them? Are you not my serf, a recipient who lies at my door and picks up my alms? And you dare think that what you devise and speak could be nonsense? Don't you know yet that it comes from me and belongs to me?"

So I cried full of anger, "But then my indignation must also come from you, and in me you are indignant against yourself." My soul then spoke the ambiguous words: "That is civil war." [104]

I was afflicted with pain and rage, and I answered back, "How painful, my soul, to hear you use hollow words; I feel sick. Comedy and drivel -- but I yearn. I can also crawl through mud and the most despised banality. I can also eat dust; that is part of Hell. I do not yield, I am defiant. You can go on devising torments, spider-legged monsters, ridiculous, hideous, frightful theatrical spectacles. Come close, I am ready. Ready, my soul, you who are a devil, to wrestle with you too. You donned the mask of a God, and I worshiped you. Now you wear the mask of a devil, a frightful one, the mask of the banal, of eternal mediocrity! Only one favor! Give me a moment to step back and consider! Is the struggle with this mask worthwhile? Was the mask of God worth worshiping? I cannot do it, the lust for battle burns in my limbs. No, I cannot leave the battlefield defeated. I want to seize you, crush you, monkey, buffoon. Woe if the struggle is unequal, my hands grab at air. But your blows are also air, and I perceive trickery."

***

I find myself again on the desert path. It was a desert vision, a vision of the solitary who has wandered down long roads. There lurk invisible robbers and assassins and shooters of poison darts. Suppose the murderous arrow is sticking in my heart?

***

[2] As the first vision had predicted to me, the assassin appeared from the depths, and came to me just as in the fate of the peoples of this time a nameless one appeared and leveled the murder weapon at the prince. [105]

I felt myself transformed into a rapacious beast. My heart glowered in rage against the high and beloved, against my prince and hero, just as the nameless one of the people, driven by greed for murder, lunged at his dear prince. Because I carried the murder in me, I foresaw it. [106]

Because I carried the war in me, I foresaw it. I felt betrayed and lied to by my king. Why did I feel this way? He was not as I had wished him to be. He was other than I expected. He should be the king in my sense, not in his sense. He should be what I called ideal. My soul appeared to me hollow, tasteless and meaningless. But in reality what I thought of her was valid for my ideal.

It was a / [fol iv(r) / iv(v)] vision of the desert, I struggled with mirror images of myself. It was civil war in me. I myself was the murderer and the murdered. The deadly arrow was stuck in my heart, and I did not know what it meant. My thoughts were murder and the fear of death, which spread like poison everywhere in my body.

And thus was the fate of the people: The murder of one was the poisonous arrow that flew into the hearts of men, and kindled the fiercest war. This murder is the indignation of incapacity against will, a Judas betrayal that one would like someone else to have committed. [107] We are still seeking the goat that should bear our sin. [108]

Everything that becomes too old becomes evil, the same is true of your highest. Learn from the suffering of the crucified God that one can also betray and crucify a God, namely the God of the old year. If a God ceases being the way of life, he must fall secretly. [109]

The God becomes sick if he oversteps the height of the zenith. That is why the spirit of the depths took me when the spirit of this time had led me to the summit. [110]

Re: The Red Book: Liber Novus, by C.G. Jung

PostPosted: Sun Dec 01, 2013 1:58 am
by admin
Chapter 7: Murder of the Hero

[HI iv(v)] [111]
Cap. vii.

On the following night, however, I had a vision: [112] I was with a youth in high mountains. It was before daybreak, the Eastern sky was already light. Then Siegfried's horn resounded over the mountains with a jubilant sound. [113] We knew that our mortal enemy was coming. We were armed and lurked beside a narrow rocky path to murder him. Then we saw him coming high across the mountains on a chariot made of the bones of the dead. He drove boldly and magnificently over the steep rocks and arrived at the narrow path where we waited in hiding. As he came around the turn ahead of us, we fired at the same time and he fell slain. Thereupon I turned to flee, and a terrible rain swept down. But after this [114] I went through a torment unto death and I felt certain that I must kill myself, if I could not solve the riddle of the murder of the hero. [115]

Then the spirit of the depths came to me and spoke these words:

"The highest truth is one and the same with the absurd." This statement saved me, and like rain after a long hot spell, it swept away everything in me which was too highly tensed.

Discordians don't have dogmas, which are absolute beliefs; we have catmas which are relative meta-beliefs. And the central discordian catma is, as I said before, any affirmation is true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense. And if you repeat this 666 times, you will achieve supreme enlightenment -- IN SOME SENSE!

-- Maybe Logic -- The Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson, directed by Deepleaf Productions


Then I had a second vision: [116] I saw a merry garden, in which forms walked clad in white silk, all covered in colored light, some reddish, the others blueish and greenish. [117] [Image iv(v)]

***

I know, I have stridden across the depths. Through guilt I have become a newborn. [118]

***

[2] We also live in our dreams, we do not live only by day. Sometimes we accomplish our greatest deeds in dreams. [119]

In that night my life was threatened since I had to kill my lord and God, not in single combat, since who among mortals could kill a God in a duel? You can reach your God only as an assassin, [120] if you want to overcome him.

But this is the bitterest for mortal men: our Gods want to be overcome, since they require renewal. If men kill their princes, they do so because they cannot kill their Gods, and because they do not know that they should kill their Gods in themselves.

If the God grows old, he becomes shadow, nonsense, and he goes down. The greatest truth becomes the greatest lie, the brightest day becomes darkest night.

As day requires night and night requires day, so meaning requires absurdity and absurdity requires meaning.

Day does not exist through itself, night does not exist through itself.

The reality that exists through itself is day and night.

So the reality is meaning and absurdity.

Noon is a moment, midnight is a moment, morning comes from night, evening turns into night, but evening comes from the day and morning turns into day.

So meaning is a moment and a transition from absurdity to absurdity, and absurdity only a moment and a transition from meaning to meaning. [121]

Oh that Siegfried, blond and blue-eyed, the German hero, had to fall by my hand, the most loyal and courageous! He had everything in himself that I treasured as the greater and more beautiful; he was my power, my boldness, my pride. I would have gone under in the same battle, and so only assassination was left to me. If I wanted to go on living, it could only be through trickery and cunning.

Judge not! Think of the blond savage of the German forests, who had to betray the hammer-brandishing thunder to the pale Near-Eastern God who was nailed to the wood like a chicken marten. The courageous were overcome by a certain contempt for themselves. But their life force bade them to go on living, and they betrayed their beautiful wild Gods, their holy trees and their awe of the German forests. [122]

What does Siegfried mean for the Germans! What does it tell us that the Germans suffer Siegfried's death! That is why I almost preferred to kill myself in order to spare him. But I wanted to go on living with a new God. [123]

After death on the cross Christ went into the underworld and became Hell. So he took on the form of the Antichrist, the dragon. The image of the Antichrist, which has come down to us from the ancients, announces the new God, whose coming the ancients had foreseen.

Gods are unavoidable. The more you flee from the God, the more surely you fall into his hand.

The rain is the great stream of tears that will come over the peoples, the tearful flood of released tension after the constriction of death had encumbered the peoples with horrific force. It is the mourning of the dead in me, which precedes burial and rebirth. The rain is the fructifying of the earth, it begets the new wheat, the young, germinating God. [124]

Re: The Red Book: Liber Novus, by C.G. Jung

PostPosted: Sun Dec 01, 2013 2:00 am
by admin
Chapter 8: The Conception of the God

[HI iv(v) 2]
Cap. viii.

On the second night thereafter, I spoke to my soul and said, "This new world appears weak and artificial to me. Artificial is a bad word, but the mustard seed that grew into a tree, the word that was conceived in the womb of a virgin, became a God to whom the earth was subject." [125]

As I spoke thus, the spirit of the depths suddenly erupted. He filled me with intoxication and mist and spoke these words with a powerful voice: [OB iv (v)] "I have received your sprout, you who are to come!

I have received it in deepest need and lowliness.

I covered it in shabby patchwork and bedded down on poor words. And mockery worshiped it, your child, your wondrous child, the child of one who is to come, who should announce the father, a fruit that is older than the tree on which it grew.

In pain will you conceive and joyful is your birth.

Fear is your herald, doubt stands to your right, disappointment to your left.

We passed by in our ridiculousness and senselessness when we caught sight of you.

Our eyes were blinded and our knowledge fell silent when we received your radiance.

You new spark of an eternal fire, into which night were you born?

You will wring truthful prayers from your believers, and they must speak of your glory in tongues that are atrocious to them.

You will come over them in the hour of their disgrace, and will become known to them in what they hate, fear, and abhor. [126]

Your voice, the rarest pleasing sound, will be heard amid the stammerings of wretches, rejects, and those condemned as worthless.

Your realm will be touched by the hands of those who also worshiped before the most profound lowliness, and whose longing drove them through the mud tide of evil.

You will give your gifts to those who pray to you in terror and doubt, and your light will shine upon those whose knees must bend before you unwillingly and who are filled with resentment.

Your life is with he who has overcome himself / [fol. iv(v) / v(r)] [OB v (r)] and who has disowned his self-overcoming. [127]

I also know that the salvation of mercy is given only to those who believe in the highest and faithlessly betray themselves for thirty pieces of silver. [128]

Those who will dirty their pure hands and cheat on their best knowledge against error and take their virtues from a murderer's grave are invited to your great banquet.

The constellation of your birth is an ill and changing star.

These, oh child of what is to come, are the wonders that will bear testimony that you are a veritable God."

[2] When my prince had fallen, the spirit of the depths opened my vision and let me become aware of the birth of the new God.

The divine child approached me out of the terrible ambiguity, the hateful-beautiful, the evil-good, the laughable-serious, the sick-healthy, the inhuman-human and the ungodly-godly. [129]

I understood that the God [130] whom we seek in the absolute was not to be found in absolute beauty, goodness, seriousness, elevation, humanity or even in godliness. Once the God was there.

I understood that the new God would be in the relative. If the God is absolute beauty and goodness, how should he encompass the fullness of life, which is beautiful and hateful, good and evil, laughable and serious, human and inhuman? How can man live in the womb of the God if the Godhead himself attends only to one-half of him? [131]

If we have risen near the heights of good and evil, then our badness and hatefulness lie in the most extreme torment. Man's torment is so great and the air of the heights so weak that he can hardly live anymore. The good and the beautiful freeze to the ice of the absolute idea, [132] and the bad and hateful become mud puddles full of crazy life.

Therefore after his death Christ had to journey to Hell, otherwise the ascent to Heaven would have become impossible for him. Christ first had to become his Antichrist, his underworldly brother.

No one knows what happened during the three days Christ was in Hell. I have experienced it. [133] The men of yore said that he had preached there to the deceased. [134] What they say is true, but do you know how this happened?

It was folly and monkey business, an atrocious Hell's masquerade of the holiest mysteries. How else could Christ have saved his Antichrist? Read the unknown books of the ancients, and you will learn much from them. Notice that Christ did not remain in Hell, but rose to the heights in the beyond. [135]

Our conviction of the value of the good and beautiful has become strong and unshakable, that is why life can extend beyond this and still fulfil everything that lay bound and yearning. But the bound and yearning is also the hateful and bad. Are you again indignant about the hateful and the bad?

Through this you can recognize how great are their force and value for life. Do you think that it is dead in you? But this dead can also change into serpents. [136] These serpents will extinguish the prince of your days.

Do you see what beauty and joy came over men when the depths unleashed this greatest war? And yet it was a frightful beginning. [137]

If we do not have the depths, how do we have the heights? Yet you fear the depths, and do not want to confess that you are afraid of them. It is good, though, that you fear yourselves; say it out loud that you are afraid of yourselves. It is wisdom to fear oneself. Only the heroes say that they are fearless. But you know what happens to the hero.

With fear and trembling, looking around yourselves with mistrust, go thus into the depths, but do not do this alone; two or more is greater security since the depths are full of murder. Also secure yourselves the way of retreat. Go cautiously as if you were cowards, so that you pre-empt the soul murderers. [138] The depths would like to devour you whole and choke you in mud.

He who journeys to Hell also becomes Hell; therefore do not forget from whence you come. The depths are stronger than us; so do not be heroes, be clever and drop the heroics, since nothing is more dangerous than to play the hero. The depths want to keep you; they have not returned very many up to now, and therefore men fled from the depths and attacked them.

What if the depths, due to the assault, now change themselves into death? But the depths indeed have changed themselves into death; therefore when they awoke they inflicted a thousand-fold death. [139] We cannot slay death, as we have already taken all life from it. If we still want to overcome death, then we must enliven it.

Therefore on your journey be sure to take golden cups full of the sweet drink of life, red wine, and give it to dead matter, so that it can win life back. The dead matter will change into black serpents. Do not be frightened, the serpents will immediately put out the sun of your days, and a night with wonderful will-o'-the-wisps will come over you. [140]

Take pains to waken the dead. Dig deep mines and throw in sacrificial gifts, so that they reach the dead. Reflect in good heart upon evil, this is the way to the ascent. But before the ascent, everything is night and Hell.

What do you think of the essence of Hell? Hell is when the depths come to you with all that you no longer are or are not yet capable of. Hell is when you can no longer attain what you could attain. Hell is when you must think and feel and do everything that you know you do not want. Hell is when you know that your having to is also a wanting to, and that you yourself are responsible for it. Hell is when you know that everything serious that you have planned with yourself is also laughable, that everything fine is also brutal, that everything good is also bad, that everything high is also low, and that everything pleasant is also shameful.

But the deepest Hell is when you realize that Hell is also no Hell, but a cheerful Heaven, not a Heaven in itself, but in this respect a Heaven, and in that respect a Hell.

That is the ambiguity of the God: he is born from a dark ambiguity and rises to a bright ambiguity. Unequivocalness is simplicity and leads to death. [141] But ambiguity is the way of life. [142] If the left foot does not move, then the right one does, and you move. The God wills this. [143]

You say: the Christian God is unequivocal, he is love. [144] What is more ambiguous than love? Love is the way of life, but your love is only on the way of life if you have a left and a right.

Nothing is easier than to play at ambiguity and nothing is more difficult than living ambiguity. He who plays is a child; his God is old and dies. He who lives is awakened; his God is young and goes on. He who plays hides from the inner death. He who lives feels the going onward and immortality. So leave the play to the players. Let fall what wants to fall; if you stop it, it will sweep you away. There is a true love that does not concern itself with neighbors. [145]

When the hero was slain and the meaning recognized in the absurdity, when all tension came rushing down from gravid clouds, when everything had become cowardly and looked to its own rescue, I became aware of the birth of the God. [146] Opposing me, the God sank into my heart when I was confused by mockery and worship, by grief and laughter, by yes and no.

The one arose from the melting together of the two. He was born as a child from my own human soul, which had conceived him with resistance like a virgin. Thus it corresponds to the image that the ancients have given to us. [147] But when the mother, my soul, was pregnant with the God, I did not know it. It even seemed to me as if my soul herself was the God, although he lived only in her body. [148]

And thus the image of the ancients is fulfilled: I pursued my soul to kill the child in it. For I am also the worst enemy of my God. [149] But I also recognized that my enmity is decided upon in the God. He is mockery and hate and anger, since this is also a way of life.

I must say that the God could not come into being before the hero had been slain. The hero as we understand him has become an enemy of the God, since the hero is perfection. The Gods envy the perfection of man, because perfection has no need of the Gods. But since no one is perfect, we need the Gods. The Gods love perfection because it is the total way of life. But the Gods are not with him who wishes to be perfect, because he is an imitation of perfection. [150]

Imitation was a way of life when men still needed the heroic prototype. [151] The monkey's manner is a way of life for monkeys, and for man as long as he is like a monkey. Human apishness has lasted a terribly long time, but the time will come when a piece of that apishness will fall away from men.

That will be a time of salvation and the dove, and the eternal fire, and redemption will descend.

Then there will no longer be a hero, and no one who can imitate him. Because from that time henceforth all imitation is cursed. The new God laughs at imitation and discipleship. He needs no imitators and no pupils. He forces men through himself. The God is his own follower in man. He imitates himself.

We think that there is singleness within us, and communality outside us. Outside of us is the communal in relation to the external, while singleness refers to us. We are single if we are in ourselves, but communal in relation to what is outside us. But if we are outside of ourselves, then we are single and selfish in the communal. Our self suffers privation if we are outside ourselves, and thus it satisfies its needs with communality. Consequently, communality is distorted into singleness. If we are in ourselves, we fulfil the need of the self, we prosper, and through this we become aware of the needs of the communal and can fulfil them. [152]

If we set a God outside of ourselves, he tears us loose from the self, since the God is more powerful than we are. Our self falls into privation. But if the God moves into the self, he snatches us from what is outside us. [153] We arrive at singleness in ourselves. So the God becomes communal in reference to what is outside us, but single in relation to us. No one has my God, but my God has everyone, including myself. The Gods of all individual men always have all other men, including myself. So it is always only the one God despite his multiplicity. You arrive at him in yourself and only through your self seizing you. It seizes you in the advancement of your life.

The hero must fall for the sake of our redemption, since he is the model and demands imitation. But the measure of imitation is fulfilled. [154] We should become reconciled to solitude in ourselves and to the God outside of us. If we enter into this solitude then the life of the God begins. If we are in ourselves, then the space around us is free, but filled by the God.

Our relations to men go through this empty space and also through the God. But earlier it went through selfishness since we were outside ourselves. Therefore the spirit foretold to me that the cold of outer space will spread across the earth. [155] With this he showed me in an image that the God will step between men and drive every individual with the whip of icy cold to the warmth of his own monastic hearth. Because people were beside themselves, going into raptures like madmen.

Selfish desire ultimately desires itself. You find yourself in your desire, so do not say that desire is vain. If you desire yourself, you produce the divine son in your embrace with yourself. Your desire is the father of the God, your self is the mother of the God, but the son is the new God, your master.

If you embrace your self, then it will appear to you as if the world has become cold and empty. The coming God moves into this emptiness.

If you are in your solitude, and all the space around you has become cold and unending, then you have moved far from men, and at the same time you have come near to them as never before. Selfish desire only apparently led you to men, but in reality it led you away from them and in the end to yourself, which to you and to others was the most remote. But now, if you are in solitude, your God leads you to the God of others, and through that to the true neighbor, to the neighbor of the self in others.

If you are in yourself, you become aware of your incapacity. You will see how little capable you are of imitating the heroes and of being a hero yourself. So you will also no longer force others to become heroes. Like you, they suffer from incapacity. Incapacity, too, wants to live, but it will overthrow your Gods. [BP v (r)] / [fol. v(r) / v(v)]

Re: The Red Book: Liber Novus, by C.G. Jung

PostPosted: Sun Dec 01, 2013 2:01 am
by admin
Chapter 9: Mysterium. Encounter

[HI v(v)]
Cap. ix.

On the night when I considered the essence of the God, I became aware of an image: I lay in a dark depth. An old man stood before me. He looked like one of the old prophets. [156] A black serpent lay at his feet. Some distance away I saw a house with columns. A beautiful maiden steps out of the door. She walks uncertainly and I see that she is blind. The old man waves to me and I follow him to the house at the foot of the sheer wall of rock. The serpent creeps behind us. Darkness reigns inside the house. We are in a high hall with glittering walls. A bright stone the color of water lies in the background. As I look into its reflection, the images of Eve, the tree, and the serpent appear to me. After this I catch sight of Odysseus and his journey on the high seas. Suddenly a door opens on the right, onto a garden full of bright sunshine. We step outside and the old man says to me, "Do you know where you are?"

I: "I am a stranger here and everything seems strange to me, anxious as in a dream. Who are you?"

E: "I am Elijah [157] and this is my daughter Salome." [158]

One of the most striking of the passages in the New Testament that recognises Re-incarnation is that in which Jesus refers to the prophecy in Malachi that Elijah or Elias would return to earth. The prophecy itself occurs in the last verse but one of the Old Testament, " Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord." Jesus refers to this, according to the eleventh chapter of Matthew, as follows: " But what went ye out for to see? a man clothed in soft raiment? . . . But wherefore went ye out? To see a prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and much more than a prophet. This is he of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way before thee. Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not arisen a greater than John the Baptist . . . And if ye are willing to receive it this is Elijah which is to come. He that hath ears to hear let him hear/'

The same idea is expressed in the ninth chapter of Mark, as follows: —

"And they asked him, saying, The scribes say that Elijah must first come. And he said unto them, Elijah indeed cometh first, and restoreth all things; and how is it written of the Son of man, that he should suffer many things and be set at nought? But I say unto you, that Elijah is come, and they have also done unto him whatsoever they listed, even as it is written of him."

Again, in the seventeenth chapter of Matthew, we read: —

"And his disciples asked him, saying, Why then say the scribes that Elijah must come first? And he answered and said, Elijah indeed cometh, and shall restore all things; but I say unto you that Elijah is come already and they knew him not, but did unto him whatsoever they listed. Even so shall the Son of man also suffer of them. Then understood the disciples that he spake to them of John the Baptist."

In what sense these words can be taken except as meaning that John the Baptist was a Re-incarnation of Elijah it would be difficult to say. The remarkable words above quoted, " He that hath ears let him hear," show that the information was given out rather for the use of the enlightened than of the common multitude, who might be expected not to understand its full significance; but it is evident, from another passage, that Jesus assumed a widespread knowledge around Him of the principle of Re-incarnation, for in the sixteenth chapter of Matthew we read: —

"Now, when Jesus came into the parts of Caesarea Philippi he asked his disciples, saying: Who do men say that the Son of man is? And they said, Some say John the Baptist; some Elijah; and others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.

-- The Growth of the Soul, by A.P. Sinnett


I: "The daughter of Herod, the bloodthirsty woman?"

E: "Why do you judge so? You see that she is blind. She is my daughter, the daughter of the prophet."

I: "What miracle has united you?"

E: "It is no miracle, it was so from the beginning. My wisdom and my daughter are one."

I am shocked, I am incapable of grasping it.

E: "Consider this: her blindness and my sight have made us companions through eternity."

I: "Forgive my astonishment, am I truly in the underworld?"

S: "Do you love me?"

I: "How can I love you? How do you come to this question? I see only one thing, you are Salome, a tiger, your hands are stained with the blood of the holy one. How should I love you?"

S: "You will love me."

I: "I? Love you? Who gives you the right to such thoughts?"

S: "I love you."

I: "Leave me be, I dread you, you beast."

S: "You do me wrong. Elijah is my father, and he knows the deepest mysteries. The walls of his house are made of precious stones. His wells hold healing water and his eyes see the things of the future. And what wouldn't you give for a single look into the infinite unfolding of what is to come? Are these not worth a sin for you?"

I: "Your temptation is devilish. I long to be back in the upper world. It is dreadful here. How oppressive and heavy is the air!"

E: "What do you want? The choice is yours."

I: "But I do not belong to the dead. I live in the light of day. Why should I torment myself here with Salome? Do I not have enough of my own life to deal with?"

E: "You heard what Salome said."

I: "I cannot believe that you, the prophet, can recognize her as a daughter and a companion. Is she not engendered from heinous seed? Was she not vain greed and criminal lust?"

E: "But she loved a holy man."

I: "And shamefully shed his precious blood."

E: "She loved the prophet who announced the new God to the world. She loved him, do you understand that? For she is my daughter."

I: "Do you think that because she is your daughter, she loved the prophet in John, the father?"

E: "By her love shall you know her."

I: "But how did she love him? Do you call that love?"

E: "What else was it?"

I: "I am horrified. Who wouldn't be horrified if Salome loved him?"

E: ''Are you cowardly? Consider this, I and my daughter have been one since eternity"

I: "You pose dreadful riddles. How could it be that this unholy woman and you, the prophet of your God, could be one?"

E: "Why are you amazed? But you see it, we are together."

I: "What my eyes see is exactly what I cannot grasp. You, Elijah, who are a prophet, the mouth of God, and she, a bloodthirsty horror. You are the symbol of the most extreme contradiction."

E: "We are real and not symbols."

I see how the black serpent writhes up the tree, and hides in the branches. Everything becomes gloomy and doubtful. Elijah rises, I follow and we go silently back through the hall. [159] Doubt tears me apart. It is all so unreal and yet a part of my longing remains behind. Will I come again? Salome loves me, do I love her? I hear wild music, a tambourine, a sultry moonlit night, the bloody-staring head of the holy one [160] -- fear seizes me. I rush out. I am surrounded by the dark night. It is pitch black all around me. Who murdered the hero? Is this why Salome loves me? Do I love her, and did I therefore murder the hero? She is one with the prophet, one with John, but also one with me? Woe, was she the hand of the God? I do not love her, I fear her. Then the spirit of the depths spoke to me and said: "Therein you acknowledge her divine power." Must I love Salome? [161]

***

[2] [162] This play that I witnessed is my play, not your play. It is my secret, not yours. You cannot imitate me. My secret remains virginal and my mysteries are inviolable, they belong to me and cannot belong to you. You have your own. [163]

He who enters into his own must grope through what lies at hand, he must sense his way from stone to stone. He must embrace the worthless and the worthy with the same love. A mountain is nothing, and a grain of sand holds kingdoms, or also nothing. Judgment must fall from you, even taste, but above all pride, even when it is based on merit. Utterly poor, miserable, unknowingly humiliated, go on through the gate. Turn your anger against yourself, since only you stop yourself from looking and from living. The mystery play is soft like air and thin smoke, and you are raw matter that is disturbingly heavy. But let your hope, which is your highest good and highest ability, lead the way and serve you as a guide in the world of darkness, since it is of like substance with the forms of that world. [164] [Image v (v)] [165]

The scene of the mystery play is a deep place like the crater of a volcano. My deep interior is a volcano, that pushes out the fiery-molten mass of the unformed and the undifferentiated. Thus my interior gives birth to the children of chaos, of the primordial mother. He who enters the crater also becomes chaotic matter, he melts. The formed in him dissolves and binds itself anew with the children of chaos, the powers of darkness, the ruling and the seducing, the compelling and the alluring, the divine and the devilish. These powers stretch beyond my certainties and limits on all sides, and connect me with all forms and with all distant beings and things, through which inner tidings of their being and their character develop in me.

Because I have fallen into the source of chaos, into the primordial beginning, I myself become smelted anew in the connection with the primordial beginning, which at the same time is what has been and what is becoming. At first I come to the primordial beginning in myself. But because I am a part of the matter and formation of the world, I also come into the primordial beginning of the world in the first place. I have certainly participated in life as someone formed and determined, but only through my formed and determined consciousness and through this in a formed and determined piece of the whole world, but not in the unformed and undetermined aspects of the world that likewise are given to me. Yet it is given only to my depths, not to my surface, which is a formed and determined consciousness.

The powers of my depths are predetermination and pleasure. [166] Predetermination or forethinking [167] is Prometheus, [168] who, without determined thoughts, brings the chaotic to form [169] and definition, who digs the channels and holds the object before pleasure. Forethinking also comes before thought. But pleasure is the force that desires and destroys forms without form and definition. It loves the form in itself that it takes hold of, and destroys the forms that it does not take. The forethinker is a seer, but pleasure is blind. It does not foresee, but desires what it touches. Forethinking is not powerful in itself and therefore does not move. But pleasure is power, and therefore it moves. Forethinking needs pleasure to be able to come to form. Pleasure needs forethinking to come to form, which it requires. [170] If pleasure lacked forming, pleasure would dissolve in manifoldness and become splintered and powerless through unending division, lost to the unending. If a form does not contain and compress pleasure within itself, it cannot reach the higher, since it always flows like water from above to below. All pleasure, when left alone, flows into the deep sea and ends in the deathly stillness of dispersal into unending space. Pleasure is not older than forethinking, and forethinking is not older than pleasure. Both are equally old and in nature intimately one. Only in man does the separate existence of both principles become apparent.

Apart from Elijah and Salome I found the serpent as a third principle. [171] It is a stranger to both principles although it is associated with both. The serpent taught me the unconditional difference in essence between the two principles in me. If I look across from forethinking to pleasure, I first see the deterrent poisonous serpent. If I feel from pleasure across to forethinking, likewise I feel first the cold cruel serpent. [172] The serpent is the earthly essence of man of which he is not conscious. Its character changes according to peoples and lands, since it is the mystery that flows to him from the nourishing earth-mother. [173]

The earthly (numen loci) separates forethinking and pleasure in man, but not in itself. The serpent has the weight of the earth in itself, but also its changeability and germination from which everything that becomes emerges. It is always the serpent that causes man to become enslaved now to one, now to the other principle, so that it becomes error. One cannot live with forethinking alone, or with pleasure alone. You need both. But you cannot be in forethinking and in pleasure at the same time, you must take turns being in forethinking and pleasure, obeying the prevailing law, unfaithful to the other so to speak. But men prefer one or the other. Some love thinking and establish the art of life on it. They practice their thinking and their circumspection, so they lose their pleasure. Therefore they are old and have a sharp face. The others love pleasure, they practice their feeling and living. Thus they forget thinking. Therefore they are young and blind. Those who think base the world on thought, those who feel, on feeling. You find truth and error in both.

The way of life writhes like the serpent from right to left and from left to right, from thinking to pleasure and from pleasure to thinking. Thus the serpent is an adversary and a symbol of enmity, but also a wise bridge that connects right and left through longing, much needed by our life. [174]

The place where Elijah and Salome live together is a dark space and a bright one. The dark space is the space of forethinking. It is dark, so he who lives there requires vision. [175] This space is limited, so forethinking does not lead into the extended distance, but into the depth of the past and the future. The crystal is the formed thought that reflects what is to come in what has gone before.


Eve / [fol. v(v) / vi(r)] and the serpent show me that my next step leads to pleasure and from there again on lengthy wanderings like Odysseus. He went astray when he played his trick at Troy. [176] The bright garden is the space of pleasure. He who lives there needs no vision; [177] he feels the unending. [178] A thinker who descends into his forethinking finds his next step leading into the garden of Salome. Therefore the thinker fears his forethought, although he lives on the foundation of forethinking. The visible surface is safer than the underground. Thinking protects against the way of error, and therefore it leads to petrification.

A thinker should fear Salome, since she wants his head, especially if he is a holy man. A thinker cannot be a holy person, otherwise he loses his head. It does not help to hide oneself in thought. There the solidification overtakes you. You must turn back to motherly forethought to obtain renewal. But forethought leads to Salome.

[179] Because I was a thinker and caught sight of the hostile principle of pleasure from forethinking, it appeared to me as Salome. If I had been one who felt, and had groped my way toward forethinking, then it would have appeared to me as a serpent-encoiled daimon, if I had actually seen it. But I would have been blind. Therefore I would have felt only slippery, dead, dangerous, allegedly overcome, insipid, and mawkish things, and I would have pulled back with the same shudder I felt in turning from Salome.

The thinker's passions are bad, therefore he has no pleasure. The thoughts of one who feels [180] are bad, therefore he has no thoughts. He who prefers to think than to feel, [181] leaves his feeling [182] to rot in darkness. It does not grow ripe, but in moldiness produces sick tendrils that do not reach the light. He who prefers to feel than to think leaves his thinking in darkness, where it spins its nets in gloomy places, desolate webs in which mosquitos and gnats become enmeshed. The thinker feels the disgust of feeling, since the feeling in him is mainly disgusting. The one who feels thinks the disgust of thinking, since the thinking in him is mainly disgusting. So the serpent lies between the thinker and the one who feels. They are each other's poison and healing.

In the garden it had to become apparent to me that I loved Salome. This recognition struck me, since I had not thought it. What a thinker does not think he believes does not exist, and what one who feels does not feel he believes does not exist. You begin to have a presentiment of the whole when you embrace your opposite principle, since the whole belongs to both principles, which grow from one root. [183]

Elijah said: "You should recognize her through her love!" Not only do you venerate the object, but the object also sanctifies you. Salome loved the prophet, and this sanctified her. The prophet loved God, and this sanctified him. But Salome did not love God, and this profaned her. But the prophet did not love Salome, and this profaned him. And thus they were each other's poison and death. May the thinking person accept his pleasure, and the feeling person accept his own thought. Such leads one along the way. [184]