'What we are to our inward vision, and what man appears to be sub specie
aeternitatis, can only be expressed by way of myth. Myth is more
individual and expresses life more precisely than does science. Science
works with concepts of averages which are far too general to do justice
to the subjective variety of an individual life.
We are a psychic
process which we do not control, or only partly direct. Consequently,
we can not have any final judgement about ourselves or our lives. If we
had, we would know everything, but at most that is only a pretense. At
bottom we never know how it has all come about. The story of a life
begins somewhere, at some particular point we happen to remember; and
even then it was already highly complex. We do not know how life is
going to turn out. Therefore the story has no beginning, and the end can
only be vaguely hinted at.
Life has always seemed to me like a
plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in
the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single
summer. Then it withers away - an ephemeral apparition. When we think of
the unending growth and decay of life and civilisations, we cannot
escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet i have never lost a sense
of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What
we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains".
-Carl Jung