Dear Carl Jung,I have had this awful feeling lately1. But I have also had this undeniably good feeling2. And that is about right.
Your idea of life: that one hand can be bludgeoning the dog while the other caresses it - as one is (outwardly) supposed to do3. You were accepting of this gap between what was meant to be done (according to society, morals, religious proclivity etc.) and what might be the physical urge, which includes any number of things: mental, emotional, spiritual. Life was cleaved; on one side, there was yourself and, on the other, yourself again. When you look into a steamed mirror, one is looking in at the other - though both perhaps are looking out. You couldn't say. There were two of us.
You were a dualist. I imagine you hated yourself for saying so, that you wished to keep it a secret but knew you could not - it was wrong (the moral right to say so) and, once you realized you knew, someone else, somewhere in the world, realized it too. A dirty trick really.
You, sitting in your lush-green garden behind your house, your hands, Carl Jung, folded in your lap and your glasses resting beside you on the arm of a wooden chair a distant relation made for you. From there, you cursed yourself many times. A young woman approaches you by pushing aside a fan of palm leaves with the back of her hand, she smiles at you, pouts in an incredible way not out of sadness or distress but love for you, though you have no idea what her name is or where she came from. She sits down in the matching chair beside yours; your relative made several chairs for you. Then you ask her who she is, though every part of you tells you not to ask because then you'll ruin it and you want nothing else but to not ruin it, whatever it is. You curse yourself again, your head cast back against the chair top.
You never admitted death was an end. In fact, you believed that it was not an end4. You were criticized for secular beliefs, your combination of scientific facts and religious facts. You said, "Because, you know, there are these peculiar faculties of the psyche that [aren't] entirely confined to space and time. You can have dreams or visions of the future... Only ignorants deny these facts." And this is what amazes me.
I imagine you sitting in the dark, contemplating the very depths of yourself, of your friends, of your neighbors and enemies, and you had time still to contemplate what you still didn't know. This, in general, has always amazed me - and not only about yourself: the human need to see beyond and beyond that. This is not about death but what is very present in the day-to-day. How does one address himself last in all the things in the world? You took the logical path, the internal struggle of identity, and exploded it into a personal disaster - as one might call death - but simultaneously redefined it to be the complete and eternal opposite: birth. Well, done.
I wonder sometimes how deeply some personal ponds run. I mean by this, specifically, that I wonder how often co-workers contemplate themselves, their lives, the people they love, and what that means5. Sometimes I become overly concerned with this. What if they are not considering themselves at all?
You believed that the mind of men is naturally religious. You claimed art, philosophy, religion, music - everything - could be linked to man's well-being. I listen to people speaking, to music in other offices, and imagine these words and sounds penetrating the skin and bumping up against some flimsy, ghost asleep inside. How could I not laugh?
Take care of yourself,
1 I will be fired at any moment, I will be framed for a brutal crime I wouldn't dare commit, I will fall from a considerable height onto the top of my head and not die, I will comically slip in front of everyone, I will be caught lying about something not worth lying over, I will overhear someone say something awful I would feel guilty not telling someone else etc.
2 I will be informed by telegram of anything, I will hear of a disaster well before it happens so that I might easily stop it from happening, I will be invited to appear on live television and have a prior engagement, I will wake up one morning with incredible agility and athleticism etc.
3 Jung advocated the dualism of almost every aspect in life - every action was both good and bad, in a way.
4 Jung proposed that death was just as important psychologically to a person as his own birth. Therefore proposing that death was not an end of consciousness but a beginning of a new sort. In this matter, one might view life as preparation for this end or beginning. So, how should one prepare oneself for a birth so great, it requires years of practice? I ask this while looking across the hall to a man asleep at his desk, one hand grasping loosely a pen, which is aimed over a half-completed crossword puzzle.
5 Through the cubicle halls, I can often overhear any number of shameless phonecalls. How am I supposed to feel when I hear a young man, not much older than myself, scolding his girlfriend for not doing the laundry or the woman complaining to the government for alimony and child support unpaid or the general yelling that is done?
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