Seneca’s words:
"Nothing can be more commendable and beneficial if you persevere in the pursuit of wisdom.
It is what would be ridiculous
to wish for when it is in your power to attain it.
There is no need to lift up your hands to Heaven, or to pray the servant of the temple to admit you to the ear of the idol that your prayers
may be heard the better.
God is near thee; with thee.
Yes, Lucilius, a holy spirit resides within us, the observer of
good and evil, and our constant guardian."
today's resonance with the fall of Roman civilization:
"If any of us had been living in that period
of antiquity, he would have seen clearly that
that culture
must inevitably collapse because humanity revolted
against it."
"Against what fearful powers of seduction Christ had
to defend himself by means of his hope of the absolute
world beyond.
It is well known that even before the spread
of Christianity a remarkable expectation of redemption
had taken possession of mankind."
Jung
“Psychologically, God
is the name of a representation-complex
which is grouped
around a strong feeling (the sum of libido).
Properly,
the feeling is what gives character and reality to the complex.
The attributes and symbols of the divinity must belong in a consistent manner
to the feeling (longing, love,
libido, and so on).”
“in the Deity man honors
his own libido, and naturally in the form of the image or
symbol of the present object of transference."
and so, our response echoes Faust:
"Thus we, our hellish boluses compounding,
Among these vales and hills surrounding,
Worse than the pestilence, have passed.
Thousands were done to death from poison of my giving;
And I must hear, by all the living,
The shameless murderers praised at last!”
Excerpt From
Psychology of the Unconscious / A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. A Contribution to the History of the Evolution of Thought
C. G. Jung