“All human control comes to an end when the individual is caught up in a mass movement. Then the archetypes begin to function, as happens also in the lives of individuals when they are confronted with situations that cannot be dealt with in any of the familiar ways.”
“The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not?”
“The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.”
“Individuation is thus naturally not only psychological, but also a religious process. They are organically intertwined. The “organic unity” of psychological and religious experiences, described by Dourly (1984), elevates, on one hand, an everyday being into a process of incarnation of the holy and on the other hand approximates the divine to the human doing away with its infinite remoteness and unattainability. Only if there is a “place” where a perceptual and experiential connection is possible is a pragmatic ground of Jungian inquiry justified. Our intentions here are equally practical: to explore various psychological processes identified as specifically religious and to reveal possible influences on human well-being if such processes reach dangerous levels of intensity. Jung (1940) famously said, “Wherever [the] unconscious reigns, there is bondage and possession” (p. 84). The absence of consciousness and the absence of unconsciousness or their mutual domination over the each-other are always obstacles for achieving happiness. It is the fine and fragile balance of both which protects us from fanatic entrapment on one hand and a feeling of spiritual desertion on the other.”
“The human psyche rose out of the world that she is a part of. Psyche is “in” the world the same way the world is “in” the psyche. What we conventionally call an objective world is to a lesser or greater degree part of the psyche. The objective and the subjective are only auxiliary terms while dealing with object-subject continuum. Psyche is basically immersed, in that world and is adapted to perceive it and to interact with it. We cannot know how would this “objective” world look like without the “subject.” Would there be a sound of branch falling from the tree if there was nobody in the forest? What (and how) we are able to touch, see and to hear is determined by the innate faculties of our senses. There are temperatures that we consider cold and hot, based on the functional principles of our bodies. For example humans cannot see electromagnetic wavelength outside of the spectrum of 390 – 700 nm., we cannot detect vibrations in our ears which are lower than 20 Hz and greater than 20 KHz and the like. We know they “exist” because of technological devices that extend our senses. The same is true about a priori categories of pure reason determining how we are able to think and what we are able to think. Categories of feeling and imagination (archetypes) allow us to experience the world very determined way as what we can feel and know about the “objective” world, therefore cannot go beyond the frame of those inner structures. Emotions and feelings being functions of experience “in” the objective world would have no bearing without the objective world and are thus part “of” it, as they are part of our subjective experience. Another phenomenon complicating our experience of the world is projection, or unconscious attribution of unconscious states to the object. Everything psychic is originally projected and therefore seen on the object, only gradual conscious realization of the source makes this two worlds relatively distinct. According to the theory of Lévy-Bruhl later adapted by Jung, ancient humans, or children, naturally live in the state of participation mystique, or unconscious unity. In that state object and subject overlap and are experienced as one. Hence magical thinking or believe that external beings are directly responsible for one’s mental states. According to Jung, realizations of the unconscious contents, i.e., withdrawals of projections and transforming unconscious to consciousness creates more accurate (real) picture of the world. He termed this individuation."
Vlado Šolc
