The Knowledge that Leads to Wholeness Quotes

“I observe that humans are far too possessive about their ideas, as if ideas would have no existence if they didn’t think them. Well,, let me tell you, as a dog I know for sure that I am visited by ideas all the time, and I have never once thought one into existence. Humans don’t understand ideas. They think their brain makes them.”
― Robert Lloyd, The Knowledge that Leads to Wholeness: Gnostic Myths Behind Jung's Theory of Individuation

“imagination as the voice of the soul and, therefore, the proper focus of psychology, which, after all, literally means “soul’s voice.” The imagination—as presented in this book—is not the realm of Freudian fantasies or unfulfilled wishes but the connecting link between our physical world and rational mind on the one hand and the spiritual powers that work for the evolution of humanity on the other. This “higher imagination” is the source of the knowledge that can lead us to human wholeness.”
― Robert Lloyd, The Knowledge that Leads to Wholeness: Gnostic Myths Behind Jung's Theory of Individuation

“Abandon the search for God and the creation and other matters of a similar sort. Look for him by taking yourself as the starting point. Learn who it is within you who makes everything his own and says, “My God, my mind, my thought, my soul, my body.” Learn the sources of sorrow, joy, love, hate… . If you carefully investigate these matters you will find him in yourself.”
― Robert Lloyd, The Knowledge that Leads to Wholeness: Gnostic Myths Behind Jung's Theory of Individuation

“It is evident that there has been a shadow side to our cultural fantasies; but because, for the most part, we have not faced our collective shadow, we continue to pursue a self-destructive and world-destructive path. As a people, we are devoid of a connectedness and relatedness to our planet and to people of different cultures. Some orthodox Christians try to fill the void by preaching about a Jesus that saves people from going to hell for their sins, but many other people find this image of Jesus to be a shallow misunderstanding of the true meaning of the “good news.”
― Robert Lloyd, The Knowledge that Leads to Wholeness: Gnostic Myths Behind Jung's Theory of Individuation

“The guiding self shows intentionality and intelligence; but it is as if the intentionality and intelligence is a phenomenon that only appears when an observing ego notices a kind of behind-the-scenes design to the multiplicity of affects, dreams, visions, and patterns of behaviors. Thus, the intentionality of the guiding self may be likened to a consciousness in potential because it depends upon being perceived by an observing center of existing consciousness—the ego.”
― Robert Lloyd, The Knowledge that Leads to Wholeness: Gnostic Myths Behind Jung's Theory of Individuation

“We cut ourselves off from our own roots, the roots of our being, and the very laws of our human nature. This one-sided focus puts us, today, in grave danger, because the violation of our own laws of nature brings about individual and social catastrophes.”
― Robert Lloyd, The Knowledge that Leads to Wholeness: Gnostic Myths Behind Jung's Theory of Individuation

“We focus so much on what the five senses tell us, and on what we want, and on how to use our will to create what we want, that we forget there is another side to our nature. This”
― Robert Lloyd, The Knowledge that Leads to Wholeness: Gnostic Myths Behind Jung's Theory of Individuation

“First,” began Jung, “you must always remember we can only interpret these psychic facts metaphorically. We can never proclaim with certainty that we have uncovered the total mystery of an archetype. The best we can do is to dream the myth onward and give it a modern dress. And whatever explanation or interpretation we give the archetype, we do to our own souls as well, with corresponding results for our own well-being. Therefore, our explanation should always aim to maintain an adequate connection between the conscious mind and the archetype. If we do this, we will have reconnected with our own psychic roots in the dark, primitive collective unconscious.”
― Robert Lloyd, The Knowledge that Leads to Wholeness: Gnostic Myths Behind Jung's Theory of Individuation

“Psychology can do no more than point out the facts of psychic life. We can be sure we dream and that we experience all kinds of fantasies and inexplicable coincidences, and we can determine the existence of patterns in these dreams and myths from all around the world, and from time immemorial. As a result of our observations of these facts, we can infer the presence of the archetypes intervening in our conscious lives at unpredictable moments. Sometimes they appear as saviors to protect us, and sometimes they appear as demons to judge us. But in all cases, if we ignore them or violate their will, we suffer the consequences in the form of becoming neurotic or even psychotic. This is no different than if we contaminate our lungs with nicotine, our lungs develop cancer and stop working properly.”
― Robert Lloyd, The Knowledge that Leads to Wholeness: Gnostic Myths Behind Jung's Theory of Individuation

“Seen through the eyes of Arab alchemists, or Persian mystics, the earliest Greek philosophers weren’t just thinkers or rationalists. They were links in an initiatory succession”
― Robert Lloyd, The Knowledge that Leads to Wholeness: Gnostic Myths Behind Jung's Theory of Individuation

“The hour has come to leave for the meeting place where I show him my face. He shall see the dark fire of my eyes and hear the wild wind in my voice. He will feel my presence full of stars, scanning his soul, and he shall know my raw power in his bones. I go to the meeting place where he will surrender to my fierce energy. The dancing, brooding passion goes in the cloak of night to where the human dares not go, but must. I am his destiny and his death, and he knows not my name.”
― Robert Lloyd, The Knowledge that Leads to Wholeness: Gnostic Myths Behind Jung's Theory of Individuation

“The deep truths of the soul’s origin, fall, and path of return can only be communicated by way of a full body-mind experience of peace, desire, terror, grief, acceptance, and total commitment. Eliade”
― Robert Lloyd, The Knowledge that Leads to Wholeness: Gnostic Myths Behind Jung's Theory of Individuation

“From various Gnostic myths, including the odyssey of Sophia, we learn that individuation is not an option, as if a human could decide whether or not to work on personality development. The myths show that the individuation process is not about shaping a more successful personality, but rather—to put it in mythical language—it is the attempt by the deities of the Fullness to salvage the shards of divine Light that have been lost in the infinite forms of matter in this physical realm. Translated into the language of depth psychology, this mythic statement tells us that the spiritual system within us works through our dreams and visions and intuitions, through our human relationships, through our difficult life circumstances, to gain our conscious attention so that all these experiences are gathered together, separated out from the powerful influences of the archetypes, and transformed into a new whole through the process of reflection. To”
― Robert Lloyd, The Knowledge that Leads to Wholeness: Gnostic Myths Behind Jung's Theory of Individuation

“When a person accepts the call of individuation to grow in self-knowledge, his or her ego is pregnant with the desire for gnosis. It is as if that person’s ego is the womb for the conception, gestation, and birth of the Self. In”
― Robert Lloyd, The Knowledge that Leads to Wholeness: Gnostic Myths Behind Jung's Theory of Individuation