“Wherever the psyche does announce absolute truths – such as, for example, “God is motion,” or ” God is One “-it necessarily falls into one or the other of its own antitheses. For the two statements might equally well be: “God is rest,” or “God is All.” Through onesidedness the psyche disintegrates and loses its capacity for cognition. It becomes an unreflective (because unreflectable) succession of psychic states, each of which fancies itself its own justification because it does not, or does not yet, see any other state.
In saying this we are not expressing a value judgment, but only pointing out that the limit is very frequently over-stepped. Indeed, this is inevitable, for, as Heraclitus says, “Everything is flux.” Thesis is followed by antithesis, and between the two is generated a third factor, a lysis which was not perceptible before. In this the psyche once again merely demonstrates its antithetical nature and at no point has really got outside itself.
In my effort to depict the limitations of the psyche I do not mean to imply that only the psyche exists. It is merely that, so far as perception and cognition are concerned, we cannot see beyond the psyche. Science is tacitly convinced that a non-psychic, transcendental object exists. But science also knows how difficult it is to grasp the real nature of the object, especially when the organ of perception fails or is lacking, and when the appropriate modes of thought do not exist or have still to be created. In cases where neither our sense organs nor their artificial aids can attest the presence of a real object, the difficulties mount enormously, so that one feels tempted to assert that there is simply no real object present. I have never drawn this overhasty conclusion, for I have never been inclined to think that our senses were capable of perceiving all forms of being.”
(Carl Jung 1963 in the book “Memories, Dreams, Reflections, page 384)
