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Peter Baynes letter [s] to Agnes “Anne’ Leay

[Letter 1 Excerpt]I see another picture of you and me joined in passionate Love in absolute surrender, and coming from us and encircling us is a soft and radiant light.

Perhaps this means that the faith of the spirit and the realization of the body are two aspects of a single truth and that men who try to find that truth by either way alone can never understand the mystery.

I have a curious feeling that you have known this from the beginning and that is why you waited.

But I had to discover it through you, so to speak.

I could have said that these two things were required theoretically, but never before have I experienced it as a clear and self-evident reality.

With you I know that the intensity of erotic passion and intensity of the spiritual faith make a single whole.

This totality is for me like the birth of a new Sun in my world.

I know it always has been true and it always will be true, but it has never been true for me before in my whole life.

That is why I told you that looking back I seem to have been blind. ~Peter Baynes, Jung’s Apprentice, Page 228

[Letter II Excerpt]

On his return to the house in Kilchberg, Peter wrote to Anne:

Anne my darling, I am tired out and my heart feels like lead. I cannot tell you yet all the arguments which C.G. used which have caused this war within.

He was so tremendously impressive because his humanity spoke to me.

He did not say I made you love me on false pretences, but he said that to marry me as he knows me and as Cary knows me would not be a natural choice for a young and gentle woman.

He said that I could not possibly raise another family at my age and with my experience because you are at the beginning of the biological phase while I am at the end of it.

He believes that I have . allowed myself to be misled by my anima and have interpreted your feeling for me, and have even sought to awaken it, on a mistaken basis.

His idea is that owing to the collapse of your relation to your father you had no psychological means of realizing yourself as a woman.

That you absolutely needed to be fully accepted erotically by an older man whose authority and interest were unimpeachable, in order to discover your true erotic personality.

That the real meaning of your relation to me was this need of becoming aware of yourself as an erotically mature and valued personality in order to choose a husband who would be really able to appreciate your quality.

He is confident I was right in getting you to realise your fine quality as a woman, but he maintains I was wrong in wanting to possess you as my mate.

With regard to my greater experience of life and all that that means, he said either you would have to repress this fact or else you would have to create an animus against me in order to defend your less developed personality from being overwhelmed.

He believes if we can hold our love now with the rein of wisdom it will be for both of us a supreme good for all our days, because it is real and fully accepted.

But if we marry we shall surely kill Eros again because the psychological reality is too heavy for any real success.

The inequality is too great and the sacrifice of other real interests too formidable.

Oh Anne, we talked all day and I tested and retested everything he said.

But what weighs most is the fact that he spoke from love.

He never attacked me, or blamed me or disapproved.

He said here are the things you are blind to because of your desire.

These are the things you need to see because of your love.

If you really mean to be worthy of her love for you look at all the facts and let her see all the facts.

He also said that I was mysticizing [sic] sexuality and that my attitude to sex was hysterical, because I had not sufficiently differentiated spiritual motives from sex motives.

He said the mysticizing of sex had surely made a deep emotional appeal to you.

And that this would certainly lead to disillusionment and disappointment, with consequent resentment.

The upshot was, wait.

Not to fan the flames but to see if wisdom and reflection would not bring the relationship into its own real course.

I am writing all this as though by command.

Love had made me weak.

It feels almost like cutting out the pith and beauty of life.

But my love for you is real. It is greater than my own will.

The old wise man in my heart is not just opinion.

It is the fruit of a life long love and study of the human soul.

Anne, it is best that I do not come to England now. I am so weak.

I would make you love me compassionately. You must let me fight for the wise way against my own weakness.

I think you had better come out here in October and let C.G. carry on the task which I failed in. You need him Anne, to find your real self.

I cannot believe it is ever wrong to love, but oh Anne, it is hard to renounce.

Your Peter.  ~Peter Baynes, Jung’s Apprentice, Pages 230-231

[Letter III Excerpt]

That is the simple truth.

There is an emotional centre which is constant and which stands apart from the tidal motions of sexuality.

It is neither an affirmation nor a plea, but a light that burns steadfastly.

[There is] a new steadiness since you gave me your passion …

I can see that when fate weaves the tie between us it is not a matter of instinct alone or feeling alone ( although both these are woven in the thread) but also a spiritual force which is concerned with generation, creation becoming.

This is the overwhelming factor which cannot be gainsaid and if that is present we have to obey or lose the most vital meaning.

…. You would just wake up and rub your eyes and see me as not in the least beautiful or heroic, but as a rather self-important, middle
aged gentleman, with considerable gaps in his teeth which art has to supply, and a pronounced tendency to long-winded psychological
explanations, lying in bed at the moment with lumbago of all things.

The fact that I love you is really true, but then you are essentially lovable, indeed, more so than any other woman I have ever seen or known or heard about.

So I have every reason to love you … I want to know that you have taken the whole tale of my 48 years into account with all that that means.

You need to look at every wrinkle of an aging horse to see what he is good for. ~Peter Baynes, Jung’s Apprentice, Page 235

Letter IV excerpt:

It is because of the ghosts that we absolutely need to hold on to a warm human hand and replenish the larder of faith by human
consideration and understanding. The ghost of your mother seduces you through your pity. You cannot harden your heart against
her just as I could not against Hilda and for that reason, Jung says she nearly pulled me over into unconscious suicide when I was in
Africa. We must surely find how we can release her [i.e. Anne’s mother’s] spirit and set her free. ~Peter Baynes, Jung’s Apprentice, Page 238

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Peter Baynes letter [s] to Agnes “Anne’ Leay

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