Jung on writing and the soul

Posted on: Wed, 09/23/2009 - 23:17 By: Tom Swiss

“I should advise you to put it all down as beautifully as you can — in some beautifully bound book,” Jung instructed. “It will seem as if you were making the visions banal — but then you need to do that — then you are freed from the power of them. . . . Then when these things are in some precious book you can go to the book & turn over the pages & for you it will be your church — your cathedral — the silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal. If anyone tells you that it is morbid or neurotic and you listen to them — then you will lose your soul — for in that book is your soul.”

The New York Times Magazine covers the forthcoming publication of Carl Jung's "Red Book", a personal journal of visions and dreams that became the root of much of his work.

The quotation from Jung above called to mind Whitman:

Camerado! This is no book,
Who touches this, touches a man,
(Is it night? Are we here alone?)
It is I you hold, and who holds you,