Last week me and my family went to a book festival claimed to be the biggest on Earth named the Big Bad Wolf Book Sale. It was huge believe me…and there were 3 million books offered at a almost give-away price. Books were everywhere…here, there and all around…on the floor too.
The Big Bad Wolf Book Sale – Kuala Lumpur
The first book that caught my eyes as I entered the huge hallway was “Jung by Anthony Stevens“. I look at the price tag and it reads RGT5 (USD1.50).
Well…I put it down and thought I’d look around first. Quarter way through the huge piles of books I got dizzy and thought this is simply crazy…how could anyone focus on any book in this paper swamp? I decided to get out to smoke and take a breather and just wait for the family outside. On the way out the book, which I saw first when I came in, popped up near the exit…well, well, well… and I said this ‘Jung‘ thing is asking me to pick it up, which I did… and very happy that I did! It is a gem in the piles and piles of publications there. Its a biography of Carl Gustav Jung (by Anthony Stevens), a wonderful but often misunderstood person, a psychologist / psychiatrist / scientist / a prolific writer, and least known – a great spiritualist. He discovered and developed the concept of the the Ego and the Self.
I decided to share this because Jung said:
“Nobody reads my books. I have such a hell of a trouble to make people see what I mean”
“I feel it is the duty of one who goes his own way to inform society of what he finds on his voyage of discover.”
Here he’s talking about “Individuation” : The Realization of the Self
Individuation does not shut one out from the world but gathers the world to oneself.
…is associated with coming to “selfhood,” a state reaching beyond mere “normality” or “social adaptation” to a full affirmation and acceptance of oneself as a whole entity in one’s own right
The only remedy for our civilisation’s “loss of soul” was a massive reinvestment in the inner life of the individual, so as to reestablish a personal connection with “the mythic world in which we were once at home by right of birth”
.
Not the criticism of individual contemporaries will decide the truth or falsity of these discoveries, but future generations. There are things that are not yet true today, perhaps we dare not find them true, but tomorrow they may be. So every man whose fate it is to go his individual way must proceed with hopefulness and watchfulness, ever conscious of his loneliness and its dangers.
.
The decisive question for a man is: is he related to something infinite or not?
.
To Jung, the purpose of life was to realise one’s own potential, to follow one’s own perception of the truth, and to become a whole person in one’s own right. This was the goal of individuation, as he later called it. (Anthony Stevens)
.
The increasing dependence of the individual on the state which characterised the political developments of his time Jung regarded as anything but healthy:
.
“It means that the whole nation is by way of becoming a herd of sheep, constantly relying on a shepherd to drive them into good pastures. The shepherd’s staff soon becomes a rod of iron, and the shepherds turn into wolves” [(CWX, para 423) JUNG. Anthony Stevens]
.
Science
“Science comes to a stop at the frontiers of logic, but nature does not: she thrives on ground as yet untrodden by theory”
.
Spirituality
The decisive question for a man is: is he related to something infinite or not?
.
The quest for the cosmic connection, the experience of the Sacred and Holy, is a fundamental requirement of the Self. To deny it brings spiritual decay, to embrace it illuminates the soul with meaning.
.
“to die with life”
.For the goal of old age is not senility, but wisdom
.
..
Well…I put it down and thought I’d look around first. Quarter way through the huge piles of books I got dizzy and thought this is simply crazy…how could anyone focus on any book in this paper swamp? I decided to get out to smoke and take a breather and just wait for the family outside. On the way out the book, which I saw first when I came in, popped up near the exit…well, well, well… and I said this ‘Jung‘ thing is asking me to pick it up, which I did… and very happy that I did! It is a gem in the piles and piles of publications there. Its a biography of Carl Gustav Jung (by Anthony Stevens), a wonderful but often misunderstood person, a psychologist / psychiatrist / scientist / a prolific writer, and least known – a great spiritualist. He discovered and developed the concept of the the Ego and the Self.
Satu Insan - Malaysia 