Writing!

...I know such formulations (mandalas, or that which symbolizes the divine) remind one fatally of wild metaphysical speculations.  I am sorry, but it is exactly what the human mind produces and has always produced.  A psychology which assumes that it could do without such facts must artificially exclude them.  I should call this a philosophic prejudice, inadmissible from the empirical standpoint.  I should emphasize, perhaps, that we do not establish a metaphysical truth through such formulations.  It is merely a statement that the mind functions in such a way...

 I should not hesitate for a moment to suppress all speculations about the possible consequences of an experience as abstruse and as remote as the mandala, were this feasible.  But to me, unfortunately, this type of experience is neither abstruse nor remote.  On the contrary, it is an almost daily concern in my profession.  I know a fair number of people who have to take their experience seriously if they want to live at all.  They can only choose between the devil and the deep sea.  The devil is the mandala or something equivalent to it and the deep sea their neurosis.  The devil is at least somewhat heroic, but the sea is spiritual death. 

The well-meaning rationalist will point out that I am driving out the devil by Baalzebub and that I replace an honest neurosis by the cheat of a religious belief.  Concerning the former I have nothing to reply, being no metaphysical expert, but concerning the latter, I must point out that there is no question of belief, but of experience.

Religious experience is absolute.  It is indisputable.  You can only say that you have never had such an experience, and your opponent will say: "Sorry, I have."  And there your discussion will come to an end.  No matter what the world thinks about religious experience, the one who has it possesses the great treasure of a thing that has provided him with a source of life, meaning and beauty and that has given a new splendor to the world and to mankind.  He has pistis (an inner certainty about God's existence, given by God) and peace.  Where is the criterion by which you could say that such a life is not legitimate, that such experience is not valid and that such pistis is mere illusion?  Is there, as a matter of fact, any better truth than the one that helps you to live?

This is the reason why I take carefully into account the symbols produced by the unconscious mind.  They are the only things able to convince the critical mind of modern people.  They are convincing for very old-fashioned reasons.  They are simply overwhelming, which is an English rendering of the Latin word "convincere."  The thing that cures a neurosis must be as convincing as the neurosis; and since the latter is only too real, the helpful experience must be of equal reality. 

It must be a very real illusion, if you want to put it pessimistically.  But what is the difference between a real illusion and a healing religious experience?  It is merely a difference in words.  You can say, for instance, that life is a disease with a very bad prognosis, it lingers on for years to end with death; or that normality is a generally prevailing constitutional defect; or that man is an animal with a fatally overgrown brain.  This kind of thinking is the prerogative of habitual grumblers with bad digestions.

Nobody can know what the ultimate things are.  We must, therefore, take them as we experience them.  And if such experience helps to make your life healthier, more beautiful, more complete and more satisfactory to yourself and to those you love, you may safely say: "This was the grace of God."

The conclusion to C.G. Jung,
Psychology and Religion
1938 (paragraph breaks added...)

Paintings by Mark Rothko