The Task

"I am not concerned about the world. I am concerned about the people with whom I live. The other world is all in the newspapers. My family and my neighbors are my life—the only life that I can experience. What lies beyond is newspaper mythology. It is not of vast importance that I make a career or achieve great things for myself. What is important and meaningful to my life is that I shall live as fully as possible to fulfill the divine will within me.

"This task gives me so much to do that I have no time for any other. Let me point out that if we were all to live in that way we would need no armies, no police, no diplomacy, no politics, no banks. We would have a meaningful life and not what we have now—madness. 

"What nature asks of the apple-tree is that it shall bring forth apples, and of the pear-tree that it shall bring forth pears. Nature wants me to be simply man. But a man conscious of what I am, and of what I am doing. God seeks consciousness in man. This is the truth of the birth and the resurrection of Christ within. As more and more thinking men come to it, this is the spiritual rebirth of the world. Christ, the LOGOS—that is to say, the mind, the understanding, shining into the darkness. Christ was a new truth about man. 

"Mankind has no existence. I exist, you exist. But mankind is only a word. Be what God means you to be; don't worry about mankind. In worrying about mankind, which doesn't exist, you are avoiding looking at what does exist—the self." 

—C. G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters