Deviation Actions
When you observe the world, you see people; you see houses; you see the sky; you see tangible objects. But when you observe yourself within, you see moving images, a world of images generally known as fantasies.
Yet these fantasies are facts. You see, it is a fact that the man has such and such a fantasy; and it is such a tangible fact, for instance, that when a man has a certain fantasy, another man may lose his life, or a bridge is built. These houses were all fantasies. Everything you do here, all this, everything, was fantasy to begin with, and fantasy has a proper reality. That is not to be forgotten; fantasy is not nothing. It is, of course, not a tangible object; but it is a fact nevertheless.
Fantasy is, you see, a form of energy, despite the fact that we can't measure it. It is a manifestation of something, and that is a reality. That is a reality, like for instance, the Peace Treaty of Versailles, or something like that. It is no more; you can't show it; but it has been a fact. And so psychical events are facts, are realities. And when you observe the stream of images within, you observe an aspect of the world, of the world within, because the psyche, if you understand it as a phenomenon that takes place in so-called living bodies, is a quality of matter, as our bodies consist of matter. We discover that this matter has another aspect, namely, a psychic aspect. And so it is simply the world from within, seen from within. It is just as though you were seeing into another aspect of matter. That is an idea that is not my invention. The old credos already talked of the spiritus atomis, namely, the spirit that is inserted in atoms. That means psychic is a quality that appears in matter. It doesn't matter whether we understand it or not, but this is the conclusion we come to if we draw conclusions without prejudices.
And so you see, the man who is going by the external world, by the influence of the external world—say society or sense perceptions—thinks that he is more valid, you know, because this is valid, this is real; and the man who goes by the subjective factor is not valid, because the subjective factor is nothing. No, that man is just as well based, because he bases himself upon the world from within. And so he is quite right even if he says, "Oh, it is nothing but my fantasies.” And of course, that is the introvert, and the introvert is always afraid of the external world. This he will tell you when you ask him. He will be apologetic about it; he will say, "Yes, I know, those are my fantasies.” And he has always resentment against the world in general.
Particularly America is extroverted. The introvert has no place, because he doesn't know that he beholds the world from within. That gives him dignity, and that gives him certainty, because it is the psyche of man. Nowadays particularly, the world hangs on a thin thread. Assume that certain fellows in Moscow lose their nerve or their common sense for a bit; then the whole world is in violent flames. Nowadays we are not threatened by elemental catastrophes. There is no such thing as an H-bomb; that is all man's doing. We are the great danger. The psyche is the great danger. What if something goes wrong with the psyche? And so it is demonstrated to us in our days what the power of psyche is, how important it is to know something about it. But we know nothing about it. Nobody would give credit to the idea that the psychical processes of the ordinary man have any importance whatever. One thinks, "Oh, he has just what he has in his head; he is all from his surroundings; he is taught such and such a thing, believes such and such a thing, and particularly if he is well housed and well fed, then he has no ideas at all.” And that's the great mistake, because man is just that which he is born, and he is not born as tabula rasa but as a reality.
From a transcript – Richard Evans' 1957 Interview of C. G. Jung
Transcript: gnosis.org/Evans-Jung-Intervie…
for the full interview, see it on Youtube: The World Within - C.G. Jung in His Own Words
