Carl Gustav Jung

Jung — Flying Saucers (1958/1959) [DECLARADA]

Jung — Psychology and Alchemy (1944) [DECLARADA]

Jung — The Red Book: Liber Novus, Reader's Edition (2009) [DECLARADA]

Alquimia · Comentarista

«THE YEARS, OF WHICH I HAVE SPOKEN TO YOU, when I pursued the inner images, were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this.» — el Author's Note de 1957 con que se abre el Libro Rojo: declara que los años de persecución de las imágenes interiores fueron el periodo capital de su vida y que todo lo demás deriva de ahí.

«My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me. That was the stuff and material for more than only one life.» — sigue el Author's Note: describe su vida entera como elaboración de lo que irrumpió del inconsciente, corriente enigmática que amenazó con quebrarlo.

«Everything later was merely the outer classification, the scientific elaboration, and the integration into life. But the numinous beginning, which contained everything, was then.» — cierra el Author's Note ordenando su obra posterior como clasificación externa y elaboración científica de un comienzo al que llama numinoso.

«If I speak in the spirit of this time,5 I must say: no one and nothing can justify what I must proclaim to you.» — arranque del Liber Primus: declara que nada puede justificar lo que va a proclamar; el 5 dentro de la cita es la llamada a nota del volumen.

«I have learned that in addition to the spirit of this time there is still another spirit at work, namely that which rules the depths of everything contemporary.» — la distinción que gobierna el libro entero: junto al espíritu de este tiempo obra otro que rige las profundidades de todo lo contemporáneo.

«The spirit of this time would like to hear of use and value. I also thought this way, and my humanity still thinks this way.» — caracteriza al espíritu de este tiempo por lo que pide, utilidad y valor, y se incluye entre quienes pensaban así.

«But that other spirit forces me nevertheless to speak, beyond justification, use, and meaning.» — la compulsión con que describe su propio hablar.

«He took away my belief in science, he robbed me of the joy of explaining and ordering things,» — lo que dice haber perdido a manos del espíritu de las profundidades: la fe en la ciencia y el gozo de explicar y ordenar.

«But the supreme meaning is the path, the way and the bridge to what is to come.» — la fórmula central del prólogo del Liber Primus: el sentido supremo es camino, vía y puente hacia lo que ha de venir.

«It is not the coming God himself, but his image which appears in the supreme meaning.» — la acotación que pone en el mismo lugar: lo que aparece en el sentido supremo no es el dios venidero sino su imagen.

«The supreme meaning is not a meaning and not an absurdity, it is image and force in one, magnificence and force together.» — define el sentido supremo por lo que no es, ni sentido ni absurdo, y por ser imagen y fuerza a la vez.

«But nonsense is the inseparable and undying brother of the supreme meaning.» — el par que no separa: el sinsentido como hermano inseparable e inmortal del sentido supremo.

«It is true, it is true, what I speak is the greatness and intoxication and ugliness of madness.» — admite el cargo de locura en vez de defenderse, después de que el espíritu de este tiempo se lo hiciera.

«Something happened to my spirit, however, which I must call mercy.» — nombra gracia lo que le ocurrió al espíritu tras callar su humanidad.

«The mercy which happened to me gave me belief, hope, and sufficient daring, not to resist further the spirit of the depths, but to utter his word. But before I could pull myself together to really do it, I needed a visible sign that would show me that the spirit of the depths in me was at the same time the ruler of the depths of world affairs.» — la condición que se puso antes de hablar: un signo visible de que el espíritu de las profundidades era a la vez el señor de las profundidades de los asuntos del mundo.

«It happened in October of the year 1913 as I was leaving alone for a journey, that during the day I was suddenly overcome in broad daylight by a vision: I saw a terrible flood that covered all the northern and low-lying lands between the North Sea and the Alps. It reached from England up to Russia, and from the coast of the North Sea right up to the Alps. I saw yellow waves, swimming rubble, and the death of countless thousands.» — la visión de octubre de 1913 que consigna como ese signo: una inundación terrible sobre las tierras bajas del norte entre el Mar del Norte y los Alpes.

«As a psychologist, I am not qualified to contribute anything useful to the question of the physical reality of UFOs» — la abstención que declara en el prefacio de su libro sobre los platillos: no se tiene por calificado para opinar sobre la realidad física de los ovnis.

«Both are wide of the mark: I am an empiricist, who keeps within the boundaries set for him by the theory of knowledge.» — cómo se define y el límite que se pone él mismo: empirista dentro de las fronteras de la teoría del conocimiento.

«I do not know what the explanation is of such happenings.» — abstención declarada sobre el mecanismo de esas visiones, dicha justo después de contar tres casos.

«I must leave to the physicists» — la antigravedad: abstención declarada y remitida a otra disciplina.

«So I am fully aware of the risk I am taking in proposing to communicate my views concerning certain contemporary events, which seem to me important, to those who are patient enough to hear me.» — abre la introducción midiendo el riesgo de hablar de sucesos contemporáneos, y no el de equivocarse sobre los objetos.

«In this latter respect I have made an interesting and quite unexpected discovery.» — el descubrimiento que anuncia no es sobre los objetos sino sobre la conducta de la prensa que los reporta.

«I am not alone in this, as the Hermetic philosophy of the Middle Ages had already arrived at very similar conclusions» — declara la compañía doctrinal de su propia lectura.

«it cannot, for the reasons I have described, be integrated directly into consciousness, but is forced to manifest itself indirectly in the form of spontaneous projections.» — el arquetipo no se integra derecho a la conciencia y por eso se manifiesta de rodeo, como proyección espontánea.

«Here I must beg the reader to eschew the popular misconception that this background is “metaphysical”. This view is a piece of gross carelessness of which even professional people are guilty. It is far more a question of instincts which influence not only our outward behaviour but also the psychic structure. The psyche is not an arbitrary fantasy; it is a biological fact subject to the laws of life.» — rechaza que ese trasfondo sea metafísico y lo llama descuido grave incluso de profesionales: es cuestión de instintos, y la psique es un hecho biológico sujeto a las leyes de la vida.

«But I must emphasize that nothing will have been proved.» — corta su propio argumento sobre los números del cuadro con la advertencia de que nada quedará probado.

«As a contemporary painting is usually rather difficult to interpret, because its whole aim is to abolish meaning and form and replace them by something strange, I have followed the method of showing it to as many different people as possible, in this way conducting a kind of Rorschach test.» — declara su método ante el cuadro contemporáneo: enseñarlo a cuanta gente pudo, a modo de test de Rorschach.

«it seems to me sufficiently safe to conclude that in my examples a central archetype consistently appears, which I have called the archetype of the self.» — la conclusión que extrae de todos sus ejemplos: aparece de modo constante un arquetipo central que llama el sí-mismo.

«From the psychological standpoint, and having regard to the limits set to all scientific knowledge, I have called the mediating or “uniting” symbol which necessarily proceeds from a sufficiently great tension of opposites the “self”.» — define el sí-mismo como el símbolo mediador o unificador que procede de una tensión de opuestos suficientemente grande.

«I chose this term in order to make clear that I am concerned primarily with the formulation of empirical facts and not with dubious incursions into metaphysics.» — explica su elección del término: quiere formular hechos empíricos y no hacer incursiones dudosas en la metafísica.

«The amplificatory method I have used for interpreting the meaning has proved fruitful when applied to historical as well as contemporary material.» — reivindica su método amplificatorio por haber rendido lo mismo sobre material histórico que contemporáneo.

«the UFO might be a sort of Charon is certainly one that I have not met in the literature so far» — declara como propia y sin precedente conocido por él la idea del ovni como una especie de Caronte.

«But anyone who really knows the human psyche will agree with me when I say that it is one of the darkest and most mysterious regions in the whole of our experience.» — sitúa la psique entre las regiones más oscuras de la experiencia, y apoya la afirmación en el conocimiento práctico.

«At the same time such critics never hesitate to derive all religions—with the exception of their own—from the nature of the psyche.» — señala la inconsecuencia de esos críticos: derivan de la psique todas las religiones menos la propia.

«Hence it largely forfeits its own life, because prevented from exerting the formative influence on consciousness natural to it; what is more, it remains in its original form—unchanged, for nothing changes in the unconscious.» — de ahí saca la razón de que lo proyectado se fosilice.

«His deciding motives, his ruling interests and impulses, do not spring from the sphere of Christianity, but from the unconscious and undeveloped psyche, which is as pagan and archaic as ever.» — sostiene que en ese caso los motivos que deciden siguen viniendo de una psique pagana y arcaica.

«It has yet to be understood that the mysteriuwm magnum is not only an actuality but is first and foremost rooted in the human psyche.» — sitúa el gran misterio en la psique humana sin negarle realidad; la capa de texto imprime mysteriuwm.

«We simply do not know the ultimate derivation of the archetype any more than we know the origin of the psyche.» — declara la ignorancia de fondo sobre el origen del arquetipo, y la equipara a la que hay sobre el origen de la psique.

«The importance of alchemy for the historical development of chemistry is obvious, but its cultural importance is still so little known that it seems almost impossible to say in a few words wherein that consisted.» — distingue las dos importancias de la alquimia y declara que la cultural sigue sin saberse.

«It is to this surface as the dream is to consciousness, and just as the dream compensates the conflicts of the conscious mind, so alchemy endeavours to fill in the gaps left by the Christian tension of opposites.» — la analogía que ordena su libro: la alquimia es al cristianismo lo que el sueño a la conciencia, un relleno compensatorio.

«Perhaps the most pregnant expression of this is the axiom of Maria Prophetissa quoted above, which runs like a leitmotif throughout almost the whole of the lifetime of alchemy, extending over more than seventeen centuries.» — data la vigencia del axioma de María en más de diecisiete siglos y lo toma por leitmotiv del arte.

«This goes to show that the unconscious does not simply act contrary to the conscious mind but modifies it more in the manner of an opponent or partner.» — enmienda la idea de que el inconsciente sea el mero opuesto de la conciencia.

«We know that the mask of the unconscious is not rigid—it refiects the face we turn towards it.» — sostiene que el inconsciente devuelve el gesto con que se lo mira; la capa de texto imprime refiects.

«In nature the opposites seek one another—les extrémes se touchent—and so it is in the unconscious, and particularly in the archetype of unity, the self.» — el contraste: en la naturaleza y en el inconsciente los opuestos se buscan, y el sí-mismo es el arquetipo donde eso ocurre.

«But as soon as the unconscious begins to manifest itself they split asunder, as at the Creation; for every act of dawning consciousness is a creative act, and it is from this psychological experience that all our cosmogonic symbols are derived.» — deriva los símbolos cosmogónicos de una experiencia psicológica.

«Alchemy is pre-eminently concerned with the seed of unity which lies hidden in the chaos of ‘Tiamat and forms the counterpart to the divine unity.» — dice cuál es para él el objeto propio de la alquimia: la semilla de unidad escondida en el caos, contrapartida de la unidad divina.

«It must nevertheless be stressed that side by side with the distinct leanings of alchemy (and of the unconscious) towards quaternity there is always a vacillation between three and four which comes out over and over again.» — consigna la oscilación entre tres y cuatro sin resolverla a favor de ninguno.

«I cannot presume to pass judgment on his final decisions, because I know from experience that all coercion—be it suggestion, insinuation, or any other method of persuasion—ultimately proves to be nothing but an obstacle to the highest and most decisive experience of all, which is to be alone with his own self, or whatever else one chooses to call the objectivity of the psyche.» — funda su abstención terapéutica: toda coerción acaba siendo obstáculo para la experiencia más decisiva, estar a solas con el propio sí-mismo.

«Not that I am passive or inactive meanwhile: I help the patient to understand all the things that the unconscious produces during the conflict.» — precisa en qué consiste su espera: no en pasividad, sino en ayudar a entender lo que el inconsciente produce.

«This is not, as one might suppose, a prerogative of the case in question, but a universal fact which only struck me some ten years ago when first I began to come to grips with the ideas and symbolism of alchemy.» — data su propio encuentro con la alquimia unos diez años antes y lo presenta como el momento en que vio el hecho como general.

«For more than thirty years I have interested myself in this oracle technique, or method of exploring the unconscious, for it has seemed to me of uncommon significance» — en su prólogo al I Ching de Richard Wilhelm declara treinta años de trato con la técnica oracular y la nombra, desde su oficio, método de exploración de lo inconsciente.

«In order to understand what such a book is all about, it is imperative to cast off certain prejudices of the Western mind» — pone como condición de lectura el abandono de ciertos prejuicios occidentales, y no una erudición previa.

«we know now that what we term natural laws are merely statistical truths and thus must necessarily allow for exceptions» — sostiene que la física moderna dejó las leyes naturales en verdades estadísticas, y de ahí saca su licencia para leer el libro en serio.

«The Chinese mind, as I see it at work in the I Ching, seems to be exclusively preoccupied with the chance aspect of events» — formula lo que él ve operar en el libro: la atención puesta en el aspecto de azar de los sucesos.

«While the Western mind carefully sifts, weighs, selects, classifies, isolates, the Chinese picture of the moment encompasses everything down to the minutest nonsensical detail, because all of the ingredients make up the observed moment» — opone el procedimiento selectivo occidental a una imagen del momento que no descarta nada.

«This assumption involves a certain curious principle that I have termed synchronicity,2 a concept that formulates a point of view diametrically opposed to that of causality» — nombra ahí la sincronicidad y la declara opuesta punto por punto a la causalidad; el troceo trae pegada la llamada de nota, releída en el crudo y conservada dentro de la cita.

«synchronicity takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance, namely, a peculiar interdependence of objective events among themselves as well as with the subjective (psychic) states of the observer or observers» — da el contenido del término: interdependencia entre los sucesos objetivos y los estados psíquicos de quien observa.

«The ancient Chinese mind contemplates the cosmos in a way comparable to that of the modern physicist, who cannot deny that his model of the world is a decidedly psychophysical structure» — empareja la mirada china antigua con la del físico moderno por el mismo motivo: el observador entra en el modelo.

«In the I Ching, the only criterion of the validity of synchronicity is the observer’s opinion that the text of the hexagram amounts to a true rendering of his psychic condition» — acota su propio principio: dentro del libro, el único criterio de validez es el juicio de quien consulta.

«Inasmuch as situations are unique and cannot be repeated, experimenting with synchronicity seems to be impossible under ordinary conditions» — declara el límite experimental de lo que propone: la unicidad de cada situación impide repetir el experimento.

«according to the old tradition, it is “spiritual agencies,” acting in a mysterious way, that make the yarrow stalks give a meaningful answer» — consigna la explicación de la tradición antigua, distinta de la suya, y dice en la misma plana que su argumento nunca pasó por una mente china.

«For this purpose I made an experiment strictly in accordance with the Chinese conception: I personified the book in a sense, asking its judgment about its present situation, i.e., my intention to present it to the Western mind» — describe la consulta que hace al oráculo sobre el propio libro y sobre su intención de presentarlo a la mente occidental.

«Although this procedure is well within the premises of Taoist philosophy, it appears exceedingly odd to us» — adscribe su procedimiento a las premisas de la filosofía taoísta y consigna a la vez su rareza para el lector occidental.

«However, it was Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) who was the great explorer of the psychological treasures of the esoteric corpus, especially the alchemical corpus (Psychologie und Alchemie, 1926/1952; Mysterium Conjunctionis, 1955/1956, etc.).» — Antoine Faivre le da el lugar de gran explorador de los tesoros psicológicos del corpus esotérico, sobre todo el alquímico, y enumera dos de sus libros con sus fechas.

«It would also certainly have to reserve a specific place for the works of Carl Gustav Jung and his disciples, thanks to which an important strain of esotericism was restored in an interesting manner, with a view to a better understanding of the psyche.» — Faivre reserva un lugar a Jung y sus discípulos: gracias a ellos una vertiente importante del esoterismo quedó restituida para entender mejor la psique.

«everywhere in various disguises. Any motif returns in the end to an archetypology such as that of C.G. Jung, i.e., an anthropology.» — el riesgo que Faivre ve en partir de los motivos: todo motivo acaba remitiendo a una arquetipología como la de Jung, es decir a una antropología.

«They cheerfully admit the existence of a collective unconscious, even to the point of conferring upon it a properly esoteric dimension (which Jung had not tried to), that of a transconciousness branching out upon an imaginal world.» — el límite que Faivre marca: hay quien confiere al inconsciente colectivo una dimensión propiamente esotérica, cosa que Jung no intentó.

«He showed that Jung must be seen as a “late offshoot of Romanticism” who “returns to the unaltered sources of psychiatric romanticism and philosophy of nature.”» — Wouter Hanegraaff recoge la tesis de que Jung es retoño tardío del romanticismo que vuelve a las fuentes inalteradas del romanticismo psiquiátrico y la filosofía de la naturaleza.

«If understood as a historical current that tried to demarcate itself from spiritualism (for example Pasi, “Occultism,” 1367), then Jung has very little to do with it.» — Hanegraaff acota la etiqueta de ocultismo aplicada a Jung: entendida como corriente histórica que se demarcaba del espiritismo, tiene muy poco que ver con ella.

«Jung believed that psychology should become the foundation of all other disciplines, including history: its role should be “to counter the fragmentation of the sciences, and to provide a basis for a synthesis of all knowledge.”» — Hanegraaff consigna su ambición disciplinar: que la psicología fuera fundamento de todas las demás disciplinas, la historia incluida.

«Jung, however, wanted an unbroken historical continuity from antiquity to his own time, and created one by postulating a lineage from gnosticism and neoplatonism through alchemy up to modern psychology:» — Hanegraaff señala la segunda diferencia con sus predecesores románticos alemanes: Jung quería continuidad histórica ininterrumpida y la creó postulando un linaje del gnosticismo y el neoplatonismo por la alquimia hasta la psicología.

«Reacting to the enormous popularity of such interpretations in post-war Jungian milieus and alchemical scholarship, Principe and Newman have sharply criticized Jung for effectively writing laboratory alchemy out of the picture and claiming that “alchemy’s real concern was the transformation of the psyche.”» — Hanegraaff consigna la crítica de Lawrence Principe y William Newman: haber dejado fuera del cuadro la alquimia de laboratorio.

«Tilton points out that the “projection” of psychical contents onto the matter in the alembic was understood by Jung not as a conscious process, as assumed by Principe and Newman, but as an unconscious one.» — Hanegraaff recoge de Hereward Tilton la precisión sobre qué entendía Jung por proyección de contenidos psíquicos en el alambique: un proceso inconsciente.

«In other words, Jung calls purely “spiritual” alchemy a degenerate phenomenon! Further» — la conclusión que Hanegraaff extrae de esos pasajes, con el signo de admiración del impreso.

«The incompatibility of Jungian psychology with the most basic principles of historical research is acknowledged even by scholars who are otherwise sympathetic towards Jung’s work,124 and is hardly in need of further demonstration.» — Hanegraaff sostiene que la incompatibilidad de la psicología junguiana con los principios básicos de la investigación histórica la reconocen incluso estudiosos simpatizantes de su obra.

«Academic study of the “occult sciences” had seemed all but dead by the end of the nineteenth century, but Jung’s psychology seemed capable of making the Waste Land revive, by causing “magic” and astrology to appear in a new light as well.» — y consigna a la vez por qué su obra pudo ser aire fresco: el estudio académico de las ciencias ocultas parecía muerto y su psicología prometía revivirlo.

«Obviously this amounted to a systematic assault on the entire fabric of nineteenth-century positivism,130 and illustrates Jung’s ambition of setting up psychology as the master-science relevant not just to the humanities, but perhaps even to physics.» — Hanegraaff lee la sincronicidad como asalto sistemático a todo el tejido del positivismo decimonónico y como muestra de su ambición de ciencia maestra.

«Summing up: from the perspective of the academic study of “Western esotericism,” Jung’s essential contribution is that he took the basic idea (invented by German Romantic mesmerism, with Ennemoser as the paradigmatic example) of a history of the magical “nightside of nature” and its experiential manifestations, but repackaged it in modern psychological terms as the history of Western culture’s suppressed unconscious.» — el balance que Hanegraaff hace de su aporte esencial para el estudio académico del esoterismo.

«The neglect of this lineage in favor of a Freudocentric one has resulted, as Sonu Shamdasani puts it, in “nothing less than the complete mislocation of Jung and complex psychology in the intellectual history of the twentieth century.”» — Hanegraaff cita a Sonu Shamdasani: descuidar ese linaje en favor de uno freudocéntrico equivale a una completa dislocación de Jung en la historia intelectual del siglo XX.

«It should perhaps be noted that the study of Jung’s intellectual roots remains a problematic subject. The most comprehensive work to date, Noll 1994, firstly focuses exclusively on Jung’s early work, and secondly is at times more polemically anti-Jungian than the sources warrant.» — la advertencia que Hammer pone en nota sobre el libro de Richard Noll de 1994, la obra más completa hasta la fecha sobre las raíces intelectuales de Jung y a su juicio más polémica de lo que las fuentes justifican.

«The incorporation of Jungianism into the Esoteric Tradition is hardly surprising, considering that there are good reasons for regarding Jung himself as an esotericist, as well as someone who adapted esoteric motifs to the requirements of a psychologizing and scientistic epoch.» — Olav Hammer explica por qué no le extraña la entrada del junguianismo en la Tradición Esotérica.

«Jung’s wide-ranging intellectual appetite led him to immerse himself in a vast range of non-Christian religious traditions. Foremost among these were contemporary esotericism, gnosticism, alchemy and a variety of Asian religions.» — las tradiciones en que Hammer dice que Jung se sumergió: esoterismo contemporáneo, gnosticismo, alquimia y varias religiones asiáticas.

«Firstly, Jung wanted to be seen by posterity as an empirical scholar, and therefore throughout most of his life actively denied being influenced by gnostic and esoteric worldviews.» — la primera de las tres razones que Hammer da para la dificultad crítica: Jung quería pasar a la posteridad como estudioso empírico y negó activamente esa influencia.

«Most famously, Martin Buber had in Eclipse of God (1952) divulged the secret that Jung had written a gnosticizing manuscript bearing the title Septem sermones ad mortuos, and claimed that Jung privately harbored gnostic sympathies. Jung, who for personal reasons disliked Buber, took this to be an open accusation, and entered into a heated polemic in which he vehemently denied any such links» — Hammer recuerda la divulgación de Martin Buber sobre el manuscrito gnostizante Septem sermones ad mortuos y la polémica encendida que siguió.

«Secondly, Jung and the Jung family have withdrawn key documents from public scrutiny, which has meant that much of our knowledge of Jung’s personal development is known primarily from Jung’s more or less mythological authobiography» — la segunda razón de Hammer: documentos clave retirados del escrutinio público por Jung y su familia.

«Thirdly, Jung wrote several versions of a number of his more important papers. When they were published in his Collected Works, they were arranged thematically rather than chronologically and were published to reflect the latest revisions rather than in a format suitable for the historically interested scholar.» — la tercera razón de Hammer: las Collected Works se ordenaron por tema y recogen las últimas revisiones, no en forma útil para el historiador.

«Like many Western interpreters of his time, Jung had the idea that yoga involves or produces abnormal psychic states and is aimed at total detachment from the external world, or at transcendental unity without differentiation.» — Thomas Cleary consigna la idea que atribuye a Jung y a muchos intérpretes occidentales de su tiempo sobre el yoga.

«In the first section of this text, for example, Wilhelm translates zhixu zhiling zhi shen, which means a spirit (i.e., mind) that is completely open and completely effective, as "God of Utmost Emptiness and Life" Based on this sort of translation, Jung thought that the Chinese had no idea that they were discussing psychological phenomena. He then tried to repsychologize the terminology, but since he did not quite understand it to begin with he could not but wind up» — Cleary adjudica a la traducción de Wilhelm que Jung creyera que los chinos no sabían estar hablando de fenómenos psicológicos.

«Since Jung's "collective unconscious" still has form, from the point of view of the golden flower it must therefore be classified with the lower soul and ordinary mind; his hope was to make this conscious in order to transcend it, but Jung himself appears to have become so involved in the discovery and discussion of the unconscious that he became attached to it and as a consequence was never able to experience the higher soul and open the golden flower, His commentary on Wilhelm's translation bears witness to this, as do his other writings on Eastern» — Cleary sitúa el inconsciente colectivo de Jung, desde el punto de vista de la flor de oro, del lado del alma inferior y la mente ordinaria.

«10. People who enter into contemplative practices without this sort of theoretical preparation are easily deluded by unusual psychic experiences. Jung, himself a prime model of this, projected his imaginations on Taoism and thus believed that the teaching of the golden flower came from "abnormal psychic states" This false belief may be attributed partly to Wilhelm's inexpert translation of the text, but it also seems to be due in large measure to Jung's own arbitrary ideas and personality interpretations.» — el juicio de Cleary sobre el origen de esa lectura: proyectó sus imaginaciones sobre el taoísmo y creyó por eso que la enseñanza venía de estados psíquicos anormales.

«faculties and capacities of the individual. Jung would also have done well to observe the warning of the text that "you cannot handle attainment with a careless or arrogant attitude," for the careless arrogance of his essays on the Golden Flower hindered him from a more serious and sober investigation of Taoism as much as did lack of resources.» — Cleary aplica a sus ensayos sobre la flor de oro la advertencia del propio texto contra el ánimo descuidado o arrogante.

«As a result of his misconception about the nature of Taoist practical philosophy, Jung thought that he himself was a pioneer in psychological interpretation; but since he did not understand the original Taoist concepts to begin with, his attempts to interpret them psychologically were based on his own imaginations and not on the real meanings of the ideas as they are understood by Taoists themselves.» — la objeción de fondo de Cleary: al no entender los conceptos taoístas de partida, sus interpretaciones psicológicas se apoyaron en sus propias imaginaciones.

«Although Jung credited The Secret of the Golden Flower with having clarified his own work on the unconscious, he maintained serious reservations about the practice taught in the book.» — Cleary consigna la relación doble de Jung con el libro: le acredita haber aclarado su propio trabajo sobre el inconsciente y guarda a la vez reservas serias sobre su práctica.

«Buddhists have long said that teachings must be adapted to local psychological and social climates. I do not agree, however, that Jung's approach to the unconscious outlined in his introduction to The Secret of the Golden Flower is actually equivalent to the golden flower practice.» — Cleary niega la equivalencia que Jung propone entre su propio método y la práctica de la flor de oro.

«Furthermore, Jung does not show how his method is actually equivalent to the golden flower practice. Apart from the fact that he was faced with a garbled translation of a corrupt text with the last few chapters missing, Jung was admittedly preoccupied with expounding his own theories.» — Cleary objeta que no muestre en qué su método equivale a la práctica, y anota que trabajaba sobre una traducción confusa de un texto corrupto y sin los últimos capítulos.

«Jung's case against Westerners trying to practice the golden flower method would have been stronger if he had been able to clarify what was culture specific and could not be imitated usefully, and if he had adequately defined cultic behaviors that inhibit the efficiency of mind-purifying practices. But even so, he made a useful contribution to the study of this issue by raising doubts that needed expression and questions that called for examination.» — el reconocimiento que Cleary le hace dentro de su misma objeción.

«The psychological approach to the study of religion is not itself invalidated, however, by the shortcomings in Jung's own practical work on Eastern teachings; on the contrary, it increases its validity with fuller and more accurate information and analysis. Jung's caveats about practice, therefore, should be understood in reference to cultism, which involves fixation and therefore cannot in any case foster authentic realization of golden flower mind blossoming.» — y el deslinde de Cleary: las limitaciones del trabajo práctico de Jung sobre las enseñanzas orientales no invalidan el enfoque psicológico del estudio de la religión.

«Over the years I had attempted to read the Wilhelm/ Baynes translation of this important text several times, but found it inaccessible. Jung's commentary, moreover, seemed contradictory and confused. Giving up in frustration, I finally began to look for the original Chinese work.» — Cleary declara su punto de partida como lector: la traducción le resultó inaccesible y el comentario de Jung, contradictorio y confuso.

«It needed the experience and the courage of C. G. Jung to look at the psychological facts, and thus rediscover the connection of the pictures of the Rosarium to psychology.» — Theodor Abt le adjudica el haber recuperado la conexión de las imágenes del Rosarium con la psicología.

«It is the great merit of C. G. Jung to have shown the way to a better understanding of this branch of alchemy.» — Abt le adjudica el mérito de haber abierto la vía de comprensión de esa rama de la alquimia.

«for Carl Gustav Jung alchemy with all its symbols and processes is the projection of the archetypes and the collective unconscious on matter. The opus alchymicum is in fact the process of individuation by which one becomes the self.» — Abt cita en traducción el resumen que M. Ullmann hace de la posición de Jung sobre la alquimia.

«But contrary to Ullmann, who misunderstood Jung’s research, the goal of the alchemical work is precicely not an identification of the adept with the self, but the coagulation of a durable relationship of the soul of the adept with the self.» — Abt objeta a Ullmann el punto exacto: el fin no es identificarse con el sí-mismo sino coagular una relación duradera con él.

«Jung first worked out and formulated this hypothesis in his book Psychology and Alchemy (first published in German in 1944, now in the Collected Works Volume 12) then in his book the Psychology of the Transference and later in his Alchemical Studies which culminated in his summa, the Mysterium coniunctionis.» — Abt traza la serie de libros en que Jung fue formulando esa hipótesis, hasta el Mysterium coniunctionis.

«These great dreams or so-called visions of Zosimos were interpreted in depth by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung.» — Abt remite a la interpretación que Jung hizo de las visiones de Zósimo.

«By the uncovering of the historical facts presented here, the discoveries of C. G Jung concerning the meaning of religious-symbolic alchemy are further reinforced.» — la última frase del volumen de Abt, que devuelve el libro a su marco declarado.

«Carl Jung believed the four elements represent an archetypal quarternity of the highest order, so deeply ingrained in the human psyche that each of us is unconsciously driven by the search for the perfect balance or integration of these elements in our lives.» — Dennis William Hauck le atribuye leer los cuatro elementos como cuaternidad arquetípica y la búsqueda inconsciente de su equilibrio.

«For Jung, Fire represented the thinking function, Air the intuition function, Water the feeling function, and Earth the sensation function.» — la correspondencia entre elementos y funciones psíquicas que Hauck le adjudica.

«Conjunction can be seen as the creation of an intuitive “overself” and the achievement of what Carl Jung named individuation, in which the fragmented self is reunified into the original whole.» — Hauck pone la individuación como equivalente de la Conjunción alquímica.

«The Latin version accepted by most modern scholars is that used by Carl Jung in his alchemy seminars:» — Hauck declara que la versión latina de la Tabla aceptada por la mayoría de los estudiosos es la que Jung usó en sus seminarios de alquimia.

«Judging from the annotations, it appears that he gave it to someone (the handwriting is not that of Emma Jung, Toni Wolff, or Maria Moltzer) to read, who then commented on Jung’s editing, indicating that some sections which he had intended to cut should be retained.» — Sonu Shamdasani, en su introducción al Libro Rojo, infiere de las anotaciones un lector externo que no era Emma Jung, Toni Wolff ni Maria Moltzer.

«Andreas and Vreni Jung assisted during countless visits to consult books and manuscripts in Jung’s library, and Andreas Jung provided invaluable information from the Jung family archives.» — Shamdasani, en los agradecimientos, nombra a los familiares que dieron acceso a la biblioteca y a los archivos de la familia.