Page 103 - Eclipse of God

76 Chapter 5

over against the self, no matter what completeness the self may
attain, as the other. So the self, even if it has integrated all of its
unconscious elements, remains this single self, confined within
itself. All beings existing over against me who become “included”
in my self are possessed by it in this inclusion as an It. Only then
when, having become aware of the unincludable otherness of a
being, I renounce all claim to incorporating it in any way within
me or making it a part of my soul, does it truly become Thou for
me. This holds good for God as for man.
This is certainly not a way which leads to the goal which
Jung calls the self; but it is just as little a way to the removal
of self. It simply leads to a genuine contact with the existing
being who meets me, to full and direct reciprocity with him.
It leads from the soul which places reality in itself to the soul
which enters reality.
Jung thinks that his concept of the self is also found in Meister
Eckhart. This is an error. Eckhart’s teaching about the soul is
based on the certainty of his belief that the soul is, to be sure, like
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God in freedom, but that it is created while He is uncreated.
This essential distinction underlies all that Eckhart has to say of
the relationship and nearness between God and the soul.
Jung conceives of the self which is the goal of the process
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of individuation as the “bridal unification of opposite halves”
in the soul. This means above all, as has been said, the “inte-
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gration of evil,” without which there can be no wholeness
in the sense of this teaching. Individuation thereby realizes
the complete archetype of the self, in contrast to which it
is divided in the Christian symbolic into Christ and the Anti-
christ, representing its light and its dark aspects. In the self the
two aspects are united. The self is thus a pure totality and as
such “indistinguishable from a divine image”; self- realization
is indeed to be described as “the incarnation of God.” This god
who unites good and evil in himself, whose opposites- nature