C G Jung Dream Quotes & Sayings

The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach. — C. G. Jung

The "I" was not the self, but from there one could see the divine miracle. The small light resembled the great light. Henceforth, he stopped painting mandalas. The dream had expressed the unconscious developmental process, which was not linear, and he found it completely satisfying. He felt utterly alone at that time, preoccupied with something great that others didn't understand. In the dream, only he saw the tree. While they stood in the darkness, the tree appeared radiantly. Had he not had such a vision, his life would have lost meaning. — C. G. Jung

The dream gives a true picture of the subjective state, while the conscious mind denies that this state exists, or recognizes it only grudgingly. — C. G. Jung

The poet Edgar Allan Poe described the false awakening phenomenon long before Carl Jung was born. He wrote, 'All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.' Have I answered your question? — Stephen King

It is on the whole probably that we continually dream, but that consciousness makes such a noise that we do not hear it. — Carl Jung

Six weeks after his death my father appeared to me in a dream ... It was an unforgettable experience, and it forced me for the first time to think about life after death. — Carl Jung

In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes. — Carl Jung

A dream that is not understood remains a mere occurrence; understood it becomes a living experience. — Carl Jung

We do not feel as if we were producing the dreams, it is rather as if the dreams came to us. They are not subject to our control but obey their own laws. — Carl Jung

To me dreams are part of nature, which harbors no intention to deceive but expresses something as best it can. — Carl Jung

We often dream about people from whom we receive a letter by the next post. I have ascertained on several occasions that at the moment when the dream occurred the letter was already lying in the post-office of the addressee. — C. G. Jung

I was on the far side of the dream. — Reinhardt Jung

A dream is nothing but a lucky idea that comes to us from the dark, all-unifying world of the psyche. What would be more natural, when we have lost ourselves amid the endless particulars and isolated details of the world's surface, than to knock at the door of dreams and inquire of them the bearings which would bring us closer to the basic facts of human existence? — C. G. Jung

Dream the dream onward. — Carl Jung

I have always said to my pupils: "Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it when you are analyzing a dream." — Carl Jung

The dream is a series of images, which are apparently contradictory and nonsensical, but arise in reality from psychologic material which yields a clear meaning. — Carl Jung

Obviously, the problem of the shadow plays a great role in all political conflicts. If the man who had this dream had not been sensible about his shadow problem, he could easily have identified the desperate Frenchman with the "dangerous Communists" of outer life, or the official plus the prosperous man with the "grasping capitalists." In this way he would have avoided seeing that he had within him such warring elements. If people observe their own unconscious tendencies in other people, this is called a "projection." Political agitation in all countries is full of such projections, just as much as the backyard gossip of little groups and individuals. Projections of all kinds obscure our view of our fellow men, spoiling its objectivity, and thus spoiling all possibility of genuine human relationships. — C. G. Jung

The infantile dream-state of the mass man is so unrealistic that he never thinks to ask who is paying for this paradise. The balancing of accounts is left to a higher political or social authority, which welcomes the task, for its power is thereby increased; and the more power it has, the weaker and more helpless the individual becomes. — C. G. Jung

This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once: scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic. — Carl Jung

From a practical angle this factor reveals itself in that an individual who follows his dreams for a considerable time will find that they are often concerned with his relationships with other people. His dreams my warn him against trusting a certain person too much, or he may dream about a favorable and agreeable meeting with someone whom he may previously have never consciously noticed. If a dream does pick up the image of another person for us in some such fashion, there are two possible interpretations. First, the figure may be a projection, which means that the dream-image of this person is a symbol for an inner aspect of the dreamer himself. One dreams, for instance of a dishonest neighbor, but the neighbor is used by the dream as a picture of one's own dishonesty. It is the task of dream interpretation to find out in which special areas one's own dishonesty comes into play. (This is called dream interpretation on the subjective level.) — C. G. Jung

Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature; they show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and run into an impasse. — Carl Jung

The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends. — Carl Jung

Many who know something but not enough about dreams and their meaning ... are liable to succumb to the prejudice that the dream actually has a moral purpose, that it warns, rebukes, comforts, foretells the future, etc. If one believes that the unconscious always knows best, one can easily be betrayed into leaving the dreams to take the necessary decisions, and is then disappointed when the dreams become more and more trivial and meaningless ... The unconscious functions satisfactorily only when the conscious mind fufills its task to the very limit. — Carl Jung

I must learn 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. — C. G. Jung

To capture the drama of the unconscious, one had to start with the key, and the key was the dream. But the novelist's task was to pursue this dream, to unravel its meaning; the goal was to reach the relation of dream to life; the suspense was in finding this which led to a deeper significance of our acts. — Anais Nin

In each of us is another whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he sees us from the way we see ourselves. — Carl Jung

Dreaming is a philogenetically older mode of thought. — Carl Jung

The dream arises from a part of the mind unknown to us, but none the less important, and is concerned with the desires for the approaching day. — Carl Jung

The general function of dreams is to try to restore our psychological balance by producing dream material that re-establishes, in a subtle way, the total psychic equilibrium. — Carl Jung

No dream symbol can be separated from the individual who dreams it, and there is no definite or straightforward interpretation of any dream. — Carl Jung

Dreams are the facts from which we must proceed. — Carl Jung

The conscious mind allows itself to be trained like a parrot, but the unconscious does not - which is why St. Augustine thanked God for not making him responsible for his dreams. — Carl Jung

The symbol in the dream has more the value of a parable: it does not conceal, it teaches. — Carl Jung

Between the dreams of night and day there is not so great a difference. — Carl Jung

The communist world, it may be noted, has one big myth (which we call an illusion, in the vain hope that our superior judgment will make it disappear). It is the time-hallowed archetypal dream of a Golden Age (or Paradise), where everything is provided in abundance for everyone, and a great, just, and wise chief rules over a human kindergarten. — C. G. Jung

Our mind has its history, just as our body has its history. You might be just as astonished that man has an appendix, for instance. Does he know he ought to have an appendix? He is just born with it ... Our unconscious mind, like our body, is a storehouse of relics and memories of the past. A study of the structure of the unconscious collective mind would reveal the same discoveries as you make in comparative anatomy. We do not need to think that there is anything mystical about it. — Carl Jung

I came to Freud for facts. I read 'The Interpretation of Dreams' and I thought- 'Oh, here is a man who is not just theorizing away, here is a man who has got facts. — Carl Jung

Dreams are symbolic in order that they cannot be understood; in order that the wish, which is the source of the dream, may remain unknown. — Carl Jung

Whereas Freud was for the most part concerned with the morbid effects of unconscious repression, Jung was more interested in the manifestations of unconscious expression, first in the dream and eventually in all the more orderly products of religion and art and morals. — Lewis Mumford

Moyers: But if God is the god we have only imagined, how can we stand in awe of our own creation?
Campbell: How can we be terrified by a dream? You have to break past your image of God to get through to the connoted illumination. The psychologist Jung has a relevant saying: "Religion is a defense against the experience of God."
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There is a Hindu saying, "None but a god can worship a god." You have to identify yourself in some measure with whatever spiritual principle your god represents to you in order to worship him properly and live according to his word. — Joseph Campbell

It is a fact that if an impulse from one or the other sphere comes up and is not lived out, then it goes back down and tends to develop anti-human qualities. What should have been a human impulse becomes a tiger-like impulse.
For instance, a man has a feeling impulse to say something positive to someone and he blocks it off through some inhibition. He might then dream that he had a spontaneous feeling impulse on the level of a child and his conscious purpose had smashed it. The human is still there, but as a hurt child. Should he do that habitually for five years, he would no longer dream of a child who had been hurt but of a zoo full of raging wild animals in a cage.
An impulse which is driven back loads up with energy and becomes inhuman. This fact, according to Dr. Jung, demonstrates the independent existence of unconscious. — Marie-Louise Von Franz

The reactivation of original perceptions is, however, only one side of regression. The other side is regression to infantile memories, and though this might equally well be called regression to the original perceptions, it nevertheless deserves special mention because it has an importance of its own. It might even be considered as an "historical" regression. In this sense the dream can, with Freud, be described as a modified memory - modified through being projected into the present. The original scene of the memory is unable to effect its own revival, so has to be content with returning as a dream. — C. G. Jung

Those who look outside, dream. Those who look inside, awaken. — Carl Jung

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. 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. 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. — C. G. Jung

A residual sea of symbols which is shared by all mankind, usually accessed through dreams or altered states, and from which cultures draw images on which to found their religions. — Carl Jung

Mythologies were the earliest dreams of mankind, and in the psychotic delusions of his patients, Jung believed he was encountering those dreams again. Freud, too, believed that the psyche retained archaic vestiges, remnants of our earlier mental world. But for Freud these were a burden we were forced to repress. Jung instead would see them as a reservoir of vital energy, a source of meaning and power from which, through the over-development of our rational minds, modern mankind has become divorced. — Gary Valentine

The 'squaring of the circle' is one of the many archetypal motifs which form the basic patterns of our dreams and fantasies. But it is distinguished by the fact that it is one of the most important of them from the functional point of view. Indeed, it could even be called the archetype of wholeness. — Carl Jung

I can confirm by a modern dream the element of prognosis (or precognition) that can be found in an old dream quoted by Artemidorus of Daldis, in the second century A.D.: A man dreamed that he saw his father die in the flames of a house on fire. Not long afterward, he himself died in a phlegmone (fire, or high fever), which I presume was pneumonia. — C. G. Jung

The darkness which clings to every personality is the door into the unconscious and the gateway of dreams, from which those two twilight figures, the shadow and the anima, step into our nightly visions or, remaining invisible, take possession of our ego-consciousness. — Carl Jung

Unlike Freud, Jung did not believe that a dream is a mask for a meaning already known but deceitfully withheld from the consciousmind. In his view, dreams were communication, ideas expressed not always straightforwardly, but in the best way possible within the limits of the medium. Dreaming, in Jung's psychology, is a constructive process. — Jeremy Campbell

The person who looks outward dreams, the person who looks inward awakens. — Carl Jung

He who looks without, dreams; he who looks within, awakes. — Carl Jung

The dream shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is: not as I conjecture it to be, and not as he would like it to be, but as it is. — C. G. Jung

Dream analysis stands or falls with [the hypothesis of the unconscious]. Without it the dream appears to be merely a freak of nature, a meaningless conglomerate of memory-fragments left over from the happenings of the day. — Carl Jung

Whenever we touch nature we get clean. People who have got dirty through too much civilization take a walk in the woods, or a bath in the sea. Entering the unconscious, entering yourself through dreams, is touching nature from the inside and this is the same thing, things are put right again. — Carl Jung

A story told by the conscious mind has a beginning, a development, and an end, but the same is not true of a dream. Its dimensions in time and space are quite different; to understand it you must examine it from every aspect-just as you may take an unknown object in your hands and turn it over and over until you are familiar with every detail of its shape. — C. G. Jung