Life Is Something That Has To Be

The Biographies Of Great Artists Make It Abundantly Clear That The Creative Urge Is Often So Imperious That It Battens On Their Humanity And Yokes Everything To The Service Of The Work, Even At The Cost Of Health And Ordinary Human Happiness. The Unborn Work In The Psyche Of The Artist Is A Force Of Nature That Achieves Its End Either With Tyrannical Might Or With The Subtle Cunning Of Nature Herself, Quite Regardless Of The Personal Fate Of The Man Who Is Its Vehicle.

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.

I Hold The View That The Alchemist’s Hope Of Conjuring Out Of Matter The Philosophical Gold, Or The Panacea, Or The Wonderful Stone, Was Only In Part An Illusion, An Effect Of Projection; For The Rest It Corresponded To Certain Psychic Facts That Are Of Great Importance In The Psychology Of The Unconscious. As Is Shown By The Texts And Their Symbolism, The Alchemist Projected What I Have Called The Process Of Individuation Into The Phenomena Of Chemical Change.

The Sad Truth Is That Man's Real Life Consists Of A Complex Of Inexorable Opposites - Day And Night, Birth And Death, Happiness And Misery, Good And Evil. We Are Not Even Sure That One Will Prevail Against The Other, That Good Will Overcome Evil, Or Joy Defeat Pain. Life Is A Battleground. It Always Has Been And Always Will Be; And If It Were Not So, Existence Would Come To An End.

The Wine Of Youth Does Not Always Clear With Advancing Years; Sometimes It Grows Turbid.