Carl Gustav Jung "Spirit and Life"

If someone asked me if I understood Carl Gustav Jung's philosophy and psychology, I would probably say that I need to live a few more years, read his books a few more times and delve a little more into his biography before I could answer. However, some of Jung's works and passages have really deeply resonated with me. The essay "Spirit and Life" is one of them - a quotation for insight.

"The fullness of life requires more than the Self; it requires the spirit, that is to say, an independent and higher complex, which alone can apparently bring about the living expression of all the soul possibilities which the consciousness of the Self cannot reach.

But just as there is a passion that seeks a blind, unbridled life, so there is a passion that wants to sacrifice the whole life of the spirit in order to achieve creative supremacy. This passion makes the spirit a malignant tumour that uselessly destroys human life. 

Life is the Spirit's criterion of truth. A spirit that denies a person all the possibilities of life and only seeks fulfilment in himself is a spirit of delusion - not without fault, because it is in his hands whether or not to deny himself. 

Life and spirit are the two forces or necessities between which man is placed. The Spirit gives his life meaning and the possibility of its greatest flourishing. But life is necessary to the spirit, for it is really nothing if it cannot be lived."

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Source:

Jung, K. G., (1994), The World of the Soul, compiled by Šuvajevs, I., Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Latvian Academy of Sciences.