LIMITED & ETERNAL

British Museum
Illustrations to Young's Night Thoughts

Near the end of his final book, Jung reached some conclusions on the ultimate questions facing man.

From C. G. Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Page 325:
"The decisive question for man is this: Is he related to something infinite or not?
...
The more a man lays stress on false possessions, the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life. He feels limited because he has limited aims, and the result is envy and jealousy. If we understand and feel that there is in this life a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change.
...
Only consciousness of our narrow confinement in the self forms the link to the limitlessness of the unconscious. In such awareness we experience ourselves concurrently as limited and eternal, as both the one and the other."

Perhaps Blake would have quibbled if he had heard Jung's statement that man breaks through to awareness of the unity of the limited and the eternal, through consciousness of his constraints. But both men were struggling to reconcile the poles of a paradox. Man experiences himself as divided, as living in two worlds - the sordid world of the survival of the fittest, and the divine world of innocence where 'all things work together for good.' One which imprisons him in time and space and one which invites him to soar in his imagination.

Reconciling the opposite poles of the dilemma may have come more naturally to Blake because he spoke the language of poetry whereas Jung spoke the language of science. Blake provided us with first hand images in metaphor and pictures to facilitate the experience of reconciliation. Jung analyzed dreams and myths for the material that supported ideas and concepts which he formulated intellectually.   

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All Religions are One, (E 1)
 "The Religions of all Nations are derived from
each Nations different reception of the Poetic Genius which is
every where call'd the Spirit of Prophecy."

All Religions are One, (E 1)
  As all men are alike (tho' infinitely various) So
all Religions & as all similars have one source 
  The true Man is the source he being the Poetic Genius

There is No Natural Religion, (E 2)
  The desire of Man being Infinite the possession is Infinite
& himself Infinite
     Conclusion,   If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic
character. the Philosophic & Experimental would soon be at the
ratio of all things & stand still, unable to do other than repeat
the same dull round over again
     Application.   He who sees the Infinite in all things sees
God.  He who sees the Ratio only sees himself only.
 Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is"

Marriage of Heaven and Hell,Plate 13, (E 39)
 "I then asked Ezekiel. why he eat dung, & lay so long on his
right  & left side? he answerd. the desire of raising other men
into a  perception of the infinite" 

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 14, (E 39)
 "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would
appear  to man as it is: infinite.
   For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro'
narrow chinks of his cavern."

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 18, (E 41)
"By degrees we beheld the infinite Abyss, fiery as the smoke 
of a burning city; beneath us at an immense distance was the sun,
black but shining[;] round it were fiery tracks on which revolv'd
vast spiders, crawling after their prey; which flew or rather
swum in the infinite deep, in the most terrific shapes of animals
sprung from corruption. & the air was full of them, & seemd
composed of them; these are Devils. and are called Powers of the
air, I now asked my companion which was my eternal lot? he said,
between the black & white spiders 
  But now, from between the black & white spiders a cloud and
fire burst and rolled thro the deep blackning all beneath, so
that the nether deep grew black as a sea & rolled with a terrible
noise: beneath us was nothing now to be seen but a black tempest,
till looking east between the clouds & the waves, we saw a
cataract of blood mixed with fire and not many stones throw from
us appeard and sunk again the scaly fold of a monstrous serpent.
at last to the east, distant about three degrees appeard a fiery
crest above the waves slowly it reared like a ridge of golden
rocks till we discoverd two globes of crimson fire. from which
the sea fled away in clouds of smoke, and now we saw, it was the
head of Leviathan. his forehead was divided into streaks of green
& purple like those on a tygers forehead: soon we saw his mouth &
red gills hang just above the raging foam tinging the black deep
with beams of blood, advancing toward [PL 19] us with all the
fury of a spiritual existence.
  My friend the Angel climb'd up from his station into the mill;
I remain'd alone, & then this appearance was no more, but I found
myself sitting on a pleasant bank beside a river by moon light
hearing a harper who sung to the harp. & his theme was, The man
who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds
reptiles of the mind." 

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