PROLOGUE
Thou wilt not find the boundaries of the soul
even though thou searchest through all its ways -
so unfathomable is its essence.
Commentary
Carl Jung preceded Freud in the acceptance of those
psychological events once termed the supernatural and
the occult, but now known in modern times as the paranormal,
or psychic phenomenon. Although strong skepticism still exists on
the verity of the paranormal; the tide is ever
so slowly shifting toward the acceptance of what once seemed
the impossible. Aniela Jaffe, Jung's secretary for several
years, proves in this book her remarkable agile mind and succinct writing
and researching capabilities. Jaffe takes a selection of recorded paranormal
events, and weaves Jung's psychological theories and her own
insights into an enjoyable discourse on the two classes of
paranormal phenomenon known as apparitions and precognition.
Much like a flashlight's beam in the night, Jaffe here and there exposes
unknown distant vistas of knowledge that human science can barely understand
at this time. Such questions as: What is the scope and depth of the human
psyche? Can our psyche transcend both space and time, and if so, how?
Is it fundamental to both the physical and non-physical reality that
meaning be present? Or is the universe fundamentally meaningless?
Book Quotes
People are much more willing to submit
to a fate that has a meaning than to one which
is blind and inscrutable. p19
...I felt again and again, through it all
that mysterious guidance and help which has
led me to this very day and I know will lead
me also in the future to a goal I cannot yet
know. p25
...realization in life - individuation -
includes death too, and that the spiritual agent
of man's individual development also aims at
his decline. "Wholeness" includes life and
death, body and spirit. p109
The certainty of an inner guidance and its quieting
effect is of primary importance in human life. p25
Both accounts may be taken as examples of how the
ego submits to fate, and how even one's own death
can be accepted. p28
From the psychological standpoint this agent of fate
is the self of man - his wholeness or, in other words,
his daimon - which encompasses both consciousness
and the unconscious and leads man to the goal unknown
to him, namely to himself. p70
The images of death as a journey imply that - for the
psyche which creates these images - death is not an
end nor life after death a nothingness. p42
...and the realm of the moon is the unconscious. p82
The relationship with the irrational adds a richer,
more meaningful and even brighter dimension to life. p35
On the other hand a genuine, spontaneous contact
with the unconscious is the foundation of personality
or of personal development. p101
These possibilities, or potential forms (Jung often
speaks of "patterns") are the archetypes. p150
The kinship between the 'beyond' and the radiance of
the departed spirits or the light that accompanies
them leads to a strange conclusion; it makes it seem
as if death, the extinction of the ego-consciousness,
brings with it a considerable extension of knowledge,
an 'enlightenment'. p72
...that extrasensory perception (ESP) points to an
unconscious 'knowing' which far transcends conscious
knowledge.
p72
To become conscious means to discriminate, and
presupposes the capacity of distinguishing one value,
or one thing, from another. p73
The laws of time, space and causality come to an end
here just as they do in the field of atomic physics.
p78
The accounts disclose the vast importance unconsciously
attached to the development of the personality and
thus to the actual individuation process. p137
People who have narrowly escaped death say that they
have seen their whole life pass before their mind's eye,
and, as was subsequently established, within a few
seconds.
p82
Accounts of this kind seem to reveal that in a life
which has not yet reached its appointed end, there
is an impulse to complete it - whether in a rational
or irrational way. p36
It is an astonishing psychological fact that very young
children occasionally describe, or paint, dreams whose
images and truths far exceed their understanding. p149
The contents of the unconscious operate autonomously.
p201