I DON'T NEED TO BELIEVE 

In 1959 the BBC program Face to Face interviewed Carl Jung at age 84, two years before he died.

Interviewer: “Do you believe in God?”

Jung: “Now? Difficult to answer.”  After a pause Jung continued with a grin, “I know. I don’t need to believe. I know.”

Later in the interview, the interviewer asked, “You said that death is psychologically just as important as birth, like it is an integral part of life but surely it can’t be like birth if it’s an end, can it?”

Jung: “Yes, if it’s an end – and there we are not quite certain about this end. Because you know there are these peculiar faculties of the psyche that it isn’t entirely confined to space and time. You can have dreams or visions of the future, you can see around corners and such things, only ignorance deny these facts. It is quite evident that they do exist and have existed always. Now these facts show that the psyche in part at least is not dependent upon these confinements. And then what? When the psyche is not under that obligation to live in time and space alone, and obviously it doesn’t, then to that extent the psyche is not subjected to those laws and that means a practical continuation of life, of a sort of psychic existence beyond time and space.”

Interviewer: “Do you yourself believe that death is probably the end?”

Jung: “Well, I can’t say. The word ‘belief’ is a difficult thing for me. I don’t believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. If I know a thing, I know it, then I don’t need to believe it. I don’t allow myself to believe a thing just for the sake of believing it. I can’t believe it! But when there are sufficient reasons for a certain hypothesis, I shall accept.”

Interviewer: “Well now, you’ve told us that we should regard death as being a goal and to stray away from it is to evade life and life’s purpose. What advice would you give to people in their later life to enable them to do this when most of them must in fact believe that death is the end of everything?”

Jung: “Well, you see I’ve treated many old people and it’s quite interesting to see what the unconscious is doing with the fact it is apparently threatened with the complete end. It disregards it. Life behaves as if it were going on and so I think it is better for old people to live on, to look forward to the next day as if he had to spend centuries, and then he lives properly. But when he is afraid, when he doesn’t look forward, he looks back, he petrifies, he gets stiff, he dies before his time. But when he’s living on, looking forward to the great adventure that’s ahead, then he lives. And that is what the unconscious is intending to do. Of course, it is obvious that we’re all going to die and this is the sad finale of everything – but nevertheless there is something in us that doesn’t believe it apparently, but this is a psychological fact. It doesn’t mean to me that it proves something. It is simply so.”