Vincent Jacobs’s Reviews > Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self > Status Update

“On this level of understanding, evil appears more as a distortion, a deformation, a misinterpretation and misapplication of facts that in themselves are natural.”

“If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc.”

“Stupidity, sin, sickness, old age, and death continue to form the dark foil that sets off the joyful splendour of life.”

“Mathematics, for instance, has more than once proved that its purely logical constructions which transcend all experience subsequently coincided with the behaviour of things. This, like the events I call synchronistic, points to a profound harmony between all forms of existence.”

2/2 “Psyche and matter exist in one and the same world, and each partakes of the other, otherwise any reciprocal action would be impossible. If research could only advance far enough, therefore, we should arrive at an ultimate agreement between physical and psychological concepts.”

1/1 “Psyche cannot be totally different from matter, for how otherwise could it move matter? And matter cannot be alien to psyche, for how else could matter produce psyche?”

“The space-time quaternio is the archetypal sine qua non for any apprehension of the physical world-indeed, the very possibility of apprehending it. It is the organizing schema par excellence among the psychic quaternities. In its structure it corresponds to the psychological schema of the functions. The 3: 1 proportion frequently occurs in dreams and in spontaneous mandala-drawings.”

“…[in] the three-dimensionality of space… time can be conceived as a fourth dimension. But if we look at it in terms of the three qualities of time-past, present, future-then static space, in which changes of state occur, must be added as a fourth term. In both cases, the fourth represents an incommensurable Other that is needed for their mutual determination. Thus we measure space by time and time by space.”

2/2 “This is the treasure which the snake (or dragon) guards…
Its unrelatedness, coldness, and dangerousness express the instinctuality that with ruthless cruelty rides roughshod over all moral and any other human wishes and considerations and is therefore just as terrifying and fascinating in its effects as the sudden glance of a poisonous snake.”

1/2 “Since the shadow… is unconscious… the snake would correspond to what is totally unconscious and incapable of becoming conscious, but which, as the collective unconscious and as instinct, seems to possess a peculiar wisdom of its own and a knowledge that is often felt to be supernatural.”