Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology. He would be better advised to abandon exact science, put away his scholar’s gown, bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart through out the world. There in the horrors of prisons, lunatic asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in brothels and gambling-halls, in the salons of the elegant, the Stock Exchanges, socialist meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings and ecstatic sects, through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form in his own body, he would reap richer stores of knowledge than text-books a foot thick could give him, and he will know how to doctor the sick with a real knowledge of the human Soul.” Carl Jung
AMEN, Cynthia! My life experience and my fascination with the wide range of human experience have been my greatest teachers. Using the painful times of my life as compost for understanding, serving and having compassion for others has helped me give meaning to my own suffering, which I now know is the suffering of being human.
Thanks for this; I will pass it along to my colleagues.
Many blessings, Claire~Elizabeth
Amen!!
That is so true – I am seriously considering giving up half my books. Most of the time they cause me to go searching for something outside myself instead of looking within. I think it was Rumi said “Stop learning and start knowing.”
Rita
I believe that Rumi also suggested taking the lyre down of the wall… smile.