The human individual has always been regarded as the microcosm and image of the macrocosm, the universe. The close relationship that exists between the two is described by the term sympathia or correspondentia, signifying the acausal equivalence of events. In the Indian Upanishads, we encountered the idea of Atman (world soul) and atman (individual soul), a derivative of the form that remains a part of it. In Chinese, Tao is an untranslatable term for the wholeness of the micro- and macrocosmos, the contingent. This principle says that the whole is contained in the tiniest part of the human soul.

As long as we fail to recognize a projection, we are compulsively bound to the objects. Then our psyche and our values remain still in the external world. We have not yet extricated ourselves from the entanglements of our environment. We are plagued by fears and covetousness.

Archetypes and drives are powers existing in the psyche, which are responsible for the highest human accomplishments, but can likewise lead to ruin. The Sermons therefore calls them daemons, representing both a burden and a danger.

Every archetype is capable of producing both positive, beneficial and negative, unfair effects.

This is why the path of individuation descends first into the lowlands of what is universally human. The shadow is just the lump of clay out of which the individual is created. The danger of isolation exists precisely in the shadow, the aspects of personality that do not match up with the image one has of oneself.

The language spoken by consciousness is logical and conceptual, while the expressions of the unconscious are symbolic. To be made comprehensible to consciousness, they must first be supplemented—as it were, translated—by similar images bearing the same meaning.

The creation of consciousness is not a one-time event, but a lifelong process. This is a cyclical process, symbolized by the uroboros, the snake that swallows its own tail, and which fructifies and consumes itself.

The collision between the conscious and the unconscious and from the confusion which this causes is known in alchemy as “chaos” or “nigredo”.

These deep psychological strata, common to humanity as a whole, Jung termed the “collective unconscious”.

The Jungian method of “amplification,” that is, bringing a symbol or idea to conscious understanding by comparing it to similar ideas with the same meaning, is the only means by which their vital meaning can be maintained. The method is based on the recognition that the collective unconscious, in the present, just as in the past, is constantly reproducing similar ideas independent of tradition. Jung compared this psychic faculty for reproducing the similar to a matrix, designating the latter an “archetype.”

The path to self-becoming is unique and must be found by the individual. The soul, and not paternal authority, is the guide. It consists in the vital interaction between the ego and the self.

The unconscious helps by communicating things to us, or making figurative allusions. It has other ways, too, of informing us of things that by all logic we could not possibly know. Consider synchronistic phenomena, premonitions, and dreams that come true. When one has such experiences…one acquires a certain respect for the potentialities and arts of the unconscious.

A myth is not only a story; it is a statement made in symbols. The language of the unconscious is symbolic. A symbol speaks directly and immediately to the soul, and it is understood by the soul—even when consciousness does not understand. When a symbol touches the soul, it produces a change.