Decoding Jung's Metaphysics Quotes

“In other words, causality is to synchronicity as Newtonian mechanics is to quantum physics.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“The essence of both consciousness and the unconscious is thus experiential, experience being the unifying factor that brings them together as integral parts of the psyche.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“In an invited address to the Society for Psychical Research in 1919, he uttered the following memorable words: “I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything that I cannot explain as a fraud.” Unfortunately, from my perspective, many of those who call themselves Jungians do not share Jung’s courageous attitude.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“What he means by insisting that the psyche is “indisputably” or “superlatively” real is that it isn’t reducible to—i.e. explainable in terms of—something non-psychic. Instead, the psyche is ‘real’ in the sense that it is a fundamental aspect of nature. This becomes clearer, for instance, in a passage of Jung’s correspondence with Fr. White: reduce something to a whim or an imagination, then it vanishes into μὴ ὄν, i.e. nothingness. I firmly believe however that the psyche is an οὺσία. (JWL: 141) ‘Οὺσία’ (‘ Oussia’) is the Ancient Greek word for ‘substance,’ ‘essence,’ ‘gist,’ even ‘being,’ something that exists in and by itself, independently of anything else. So by claiming that the psyche is itself an οὺσία, Jung is saying that it is its own metaphysical ground or category—i.e. the ‘psychic.’ And as if to eliminate any possible doubt in this regard, he declares: The psyche deserves to be taken as a phenomenon in its own right; there are no grounds at all for regarding it as a mere epiphenomenon (ONP: 8-9, emphasis added)”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“Jung is deeply and unambiguously committed to Kantian epistemology, according to which psychic life (i.e. the Kantian ‘phenomena’) is all we can really know, everything else (i.e. the Kantian ‘noumena’) being unknowable. He expresses this commitment in passages such as: [The psyche] will never get beyond itself. All comprehension and all that is comprehended is in itself psychic, and to that extent we are hopelessly cooped up in an exclusively psychic world. (MDR: 385) And: psychic happenings constitute our only, immediate experience. … My sense impressions—for all that they force upon me a world of impenetrable objects occupying space—are psychic images, and these alone are my immediate experience … All our knowledge is conditioned by the psyche which, because it alone is immediate, is superlatively real. (MMSS: 194, emphasis added) Often, however, Jung seems to cross the boundary that separates epistemology from metaphysics and assert that the psyche is metaphysically primary: I am not alluding to the vulgar notion that anything “psychic” is either nothing at all [as in eliminative materialism 11] or at best even more tenuous than a gas [i.e. a reducible epiphenomenon, as in mainstream materialism]. Quite the contrary; I am of the opinion that the psyche is … indisputably real. (ACU: 116, emphasis added)”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“Jung is suggesting here that the psyche—through its psychoid segments—“ gradually passes over into” matter on the one end and spirit on the other. Such continuity between matter, psyche and spirit implies that there can be no fundamental metaphysical distinction between them. These three categories must, instead, represent but relative differences in degree of manifestation of one and the same substrate.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“Were Jung a solipsist, it would be very difficult to understand why he is so interested in the supposedly non-existent inner lives of his patients. Therefore, despite his overt denials, Jung must make inferences beyond what can be directly ascertained empirically. Pauli confronts Jung on this point by observing that, if one is to pursue the total elimination of everything from the interpretation of nature that is “ not ascertainable hic et nunc ” [i.e. here and now] … then one soon sees that one does not understand anything—neither the fact that one has to assign a psyche to others (only one’s own being ascertainable) nor the fact that different people are all talking about the same (physical) object … one has to introduce some structural elements of cosmic order, which “in themselves are not ascertainable.” (AA: 104, emphasis added) It is ironic that, of all people, Pauli, a physicist, has to confront Jung with the inevitability of non-ascertainable metaphysical inferences.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“Jung’s point is that all we can ever ascertain is our own introspectively accessible phenomenal inner life, everything else being theory. However, as strictly correct as this may be, unless one is prepared to adopt solipsism—the notion that only one’s own personal experiences exist—and live accordingly, one cannot avoid metaphysical inferences of one sort or another. Even under idealism, one must metaphysically extrapolate the existence of experience beyond one’s own personal boundaries, so to account for the phenomenal inner lives of other living beings and the universe at large (cf. e.g. Kastrup 2019).”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“Jung’s legacy is a treasure with the potential to enrich our lives in unsuspected ways, provided that it is discovered and properly understood. Co-opted as it has been by the mainstream—a necessary evil—it must be perused carefully if its true message and implications are to be discerned. The little volume you’ve now almost finished reading has been my attempt to facilitate such discovery. In this spirit, I leave you with Jung’s words: Nobody can know what the ultimate things are. We must, therefore, take them as we experience them. And if such experience helps to make your life healthier, more beautiful, more complete and more satisfactory to yourself and to those you love, you may safely say: “This was the grace of God.” (PR: 114)”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“Whatever our perceptual apparatus did evolve to register, we label physis or physicality; but that doesn’t mean that what it doesn’t register doesn’t exist out there. Our inability to pick out discarnate daemons with our five senses says nothing about the daemons’ metaphysical status, but only about our five senses. For all we know, those invisible entities are as real and concrete as a person.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“Jung’s work is a tour de force of the psyche, which—remarkably— leads to direct insights into the nature of life and the universe at large. Three key ideas underlie his implicit metaphysical system: first, that of the collective unconscious as a transpersonal experiential field, which generates all autonomous imagery we experience as both the perceived physical world and the worlds of dreams and visions; second, that of consciousness as an internally connected web of psychic contents that turns in upon itself so as to enable self-reflection; and third, that of daemons, autonomous psychic complexes that, although internally connected and conscious, are dissociated from their psychic surroundings.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“We can render this service to God because, “just as the unconscious affects us, so the increase in our consciousness affects the unconscious” (MDR: 358). This way, simply by reflecting upon life and world we already automatically contribute to God’s self-awareness, whether we know it or not. Jung’s view implies that human life has inevitable meaning.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“Jung’s God is an all-encompassing overmind, of which we are diminutive segments, daemons, dissociated psychic complexes.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“We, human beings, by virtue of surrounding the “mundus archetypus” and being surrounded by the “physis,” occupy the “middle position” between the two.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“The external world we perceive with our sense organs, as it is in itself, is transcendent, autonomous, independent of our volition, seemingly separate from us, animated by its own impetus and organized according to archetypes (cf. synchronicity). We perceive this world because its dynamisms impinge on ego-consciousness through the sense organs, generating the autonomous imagery of perception. In an entirely analogous manner, the collective unconscious, as it is in itself, is also transcendent, autonomous, independent of our volition, seemingly separate from us, animated by its own impetus and organized according to archetypes. We perceive the collective unconscious because its dynamisms impinge on ego-consciousness through a shared, internal psychic boundary, generating the autonomous imagery of dreams and visions. Do you see the elegant symmetry of this view?”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“We perceive this world because its dynamisms impinge on ego-consciousness through the sense organs, generating the autonomous imagery of perception. In an entirely analogous manner, the collective unconscious, as it is in itself, is also transcendent, autonomous, independent of our volition, seemingly separate from us, animated by its own impetus and organized according to archetypes. We perceive the collective unconscious because its dynamisms impinge on ego-consciousness through a shared, internal psychic boundary, generating the autonomous imagery of dreams and visions. Do you see the elegant symmetry of this view?”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“Since psyche and matter are contained in one and the same world, and moreover are in continuous contact with one another and ultimately rest on irrepresentable, transcendental factors, it is not only possible but fairly probable, even, that psyche and matter are two different aspects of one and the same thing. (ONP: 148)”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“The qualities we attribute to physicality—form, color, temperature, consistency, concreteness, etc.—are merely appearances; they are how a fundamentally psychic ‘world-soul’ presents itself on the screen of our perceptions. Such idealist interpretation allows all of Jung’s key metaphysics-related contentions—not only synchronicity—to cohere elegantly and parsimoniously.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“Jung thinks of the transpersonal ground beyond ourselves as an extension of the psychic “substance”—οὺσία— which not only links living beings together, but also living beings and the inorganic world.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“The gist of Jung’s view of the mind-body relationship is thus that the body owes its existence and function to the psyche, not the other way around.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“It is perfectly possible, psychologically, for the unconscious or an archetype to take complete possession of a man and to determine his fate down to the smallest detail. At the same time objective, non-psychic parallel phenomena can occur which also represent the archetype. It not only seems so, it simply is so, that the archetype fulfills itself not only psychically in the individual, but objectively outside the individual. (AJ: 58, emphasis added)”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“In an important sense, what Jung is saying is that our physical, waking reality is amenable to symbolic interpretation, just as our dreams are. The external world, too, conveys meaning through symbolic expression, as if it were “the dream of a greater and more comprehensive consciousness.” 8”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“Does our ego give us the opportunity to express ourselves according to the natural dispositions and abilities of our whole psyche? Or does it, instead, restrict us to the confines of our ego’s arbitrary, culture-bound notions of self-worth?”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“Just as the notes produced by guitar strings exist only abstractly, in pure potentiality, unless and until the string is actually plucked, the natural, archetypal modes of excitation of the psyche are only discernible in actual experience, not in and of themselves.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“It not infrequently happens that the archetype appears in the form of a spirit in dreams … Often it drives with unexampled passion and remorseless logic towards its goal and draws the subject under its spell”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“Jung explains this by comparing an archetype to the axial system of a crystal, which, as it were, preforms the crystalline structure in the mother liquid, although it has no material existence of its own. … The archetype in itself is empty and purely formal”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“The picture we are left with is that of a psyche divided into three layers: the bottom, primordial layer is the collective unconscious, which consists of psychoid contents that can never reach ego-consciousness (although they can still impinge on ego-consciousness and thereby cause introspectively accessible effects, such as dreams and visions). The middle layer, sandwiched between the other two, is the personal unconscious. The top layer, which we ordinarily identify with, is ego-consciousness. Psychic contents can move between the personal unconscious and ego-consciousness.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

“Indeed, in Jung’s view the psyche may be an ecosystem of communicating conscious agencies, in which ego-consciousness is merely one of the participants.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe