Jung On The Value of The Archetype
It is only possible to live the fullest life when we are in harmony with these symbols; wisdom is a return to them (CW8:794). To this it can be taken to mean that when a person is able to come to peace with the archetypes that lay within them they are able to begin to live a more peaceful life.
they were seeds of light broadcast in the chaos…the seed plot of a world to come…One would have to conclude from these alchemical visions that the archetypes have about them a certain effulgence, or quasi-consciousness, and that numinosity entails luminosity (CW8:388).
All the most powerful ideas in history go back to archetypes. This is particularly true of religious ideas, but the central concepts of science, philosophy, and ethics are no exception to this rule. In their present form they are variants of archetypal ideas created by consciously applying and adapting these ideas to reality. For it is the function of consciousness, not only to recognize and assimilate the external world through the gateway of the senses, but to translate into visible reality the world within us (CW8, 342). This could be taken to mean that the archetypes are what makes us, us. All of the beliefs and myths we have are all just part of the archetypes, nothing is new in the universe and everything has already existed and will continue to exist.
In his last text, Man and His Symbols, Jung stressed that "since so many people have chosen to treat archetypes as if they were part of a mechanical system that can be learned by rote, it is essential to insist that they are not mere names or even philosophical concepts. They are pieces of life itself - images that are integrally connected to the individual by the bridge of the emotions". Jung states that they are not individual concepts of the world or individual pieces of the world we must come to know as separate things, but we must come to know the machine (archetypes) as a whole, not just as individuals.
As a result, it was the importance of the experiential encounter with the archetype which Jung emphasized: "in psychology, where we speak of archetypes like the anima and animus, the wise man, the great mother, and so on ... if they are mere images whose numinosity you have never experienced, it will be as if you were talking in a dream, for you will not know what you are talking about ... their names mean very little, whereas the way they are related to you is all-important". This means that when one first encounters a new archetype, they do not always know what it means or how it will help in their life, but they must come to learn to accept it and understand it. In time, the answers will reveal themselves.
Read more about this topic: Jungian Archetypes
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