Liber Novus (The Red Book) by C. G. Jung
“To the superficial observer, it will appear like madness."
from The Red Book (Jung) by Carl Gustav Jung
Liber Novus (The Red Book) by C. G. Jung
Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is
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the making of Liber Novus was by no means a peculiar and idiosyncratic activity, nor the product of a psychosis. Rather, it indicates the close intersections between psychological and artistic experimentation with which many individuals were engaged at this time.
C. G. Jung • The Red Book
If you have still not learned this from the old holy books, then go there, drink the blood and eat the flesh of him who was mocked61 and tormented for the sake of our sins, so that you totally become his nature, deny his being-apart-from-you; you should be he himself, not Christians but Christ, otherwise you will be of no use to the coming God.
C. G. Jung • The Red Book
Liber Novus thus presents a series of active imaginations together with Jung’s attempt to understand their significance. This work of understanding encompasses a number of interlinked threads: an attempt to understand himself and to integrate and develop the various components of his personality; an attempt to understand the structure of the human
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Jung considered that his fantasy had depicted not what would happen to him, but to Europe. In other words, that it was a precognition of a collective event, what he would later call a “big” dream.88 After this realization, he attempted to see whether and to what extent this was true of the other fantasies that he experienced, and to understand the
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precognition of a collective event
Therefore he who strives for the highest finds the deepest.
C. G. Jung • The Red Book
Joy at the smallest things comes to you only when you have accepted death. But if you look out greedily for all that you could still live, then nothing is great enough for your pleasure, and the smallest things that continue to surround you are no longer a joy. Therefore I behold death, since it teaches me how to live.
C. G. Jung • The Red Book
Just as Christ tormented the flesh through the spirit, the God of this time will torment the spirit through the flesh. For our spirit has become an impertinent whore, a slave to words created by men and no longer the divine word itself.204
C. G. Jung • The Red Book
But if you try to reach the station called Insight before you pass through the town called Emotion, you never reach your destination.