timulation;
the highest degree is a final transmutation of the psyche. If this goal is
attained in life, we have acquired the terrestrial stone. In contrast, the
celestial stone belongs with the eschatological concepts and the celestial
tincture is the apokatastasis.

It is an interesting question whether the resolution of conflicts, with
evasion of the process in the outer world, cannot be accomplished
subjectively, by battles with symbols (personifications) and in symbols,
thus amounting to an abbreviation of the process. Theoretically this is
not impossible, for the conflicts do not indeed lie in the external world,
but in our emotional disposition towards it; if we change this disposition
by an inner development, the external world has a different value for the
libido.

"The projection into the cosmic is the primal privilege of the libido, for
it naturally enters into our perception through the gates of all the
senses and apparently from without, and actually, in the form of the
pleasure and pain qualities of perception. These, as we all know, we
attribute without further deliberation to the object, and their cause, in
spite of philosophical deliberation, we are continually inclined to look
for in the object, while the object is often hopelessly innocent of it."
(Jung, in Jb. ps. F., III, p. 222; with which compare the Freudian
transference concept and Ferenczi's essay on "Introjektion und
Ubertragung," in Jb. ps. F., I, p. 422.) Jung calls attention to the
frequently described immediate projection of the libido in love poetry, as
in the following example from the Edda (H. Gering):

"In Gymer's Courtyard I saw walking
The maiden, dear to me;
From the brightness of her arms glowed the heavens,
And all the eternal sea."

The mystic looks for the conflicts that he desires to do away with, in
man, the place where they really exist. With this theoretical presumption
the possible objection against all mysticism is averted, namely that it is
valueless because it rests merely upon imagined experiences, upon
fanaticism. This objection, though not to be overlooked, does not apply to
mysticism, which accomplishes an actual ethical work of enduring value--but
to the other path that issues from introversion, namely magic (not to
mention physical and spiritual suicide). This is nicely expressed, too, in
an allegorical way by saying that magically-made gold melts, as the story
goes, or turns into mud (i.e.