P. 331
“

There existed long ago in Tibetan, Indian, and partly also in Chinese Buddhism the idea that the religious practice of meditation serves the goal of producing within the still-living and mortal body the diamond body into which you move, so to speak. Already in this lifetime you use your diamond body more and more as a dwelling place, so that at the moment of death, like a skin which falls off from a fruit, this mortal body falls away and the glorified body -or in Eastern language, the diamond body- is already there. The glorified body, a sort of immortal substance as carrier of the individual personality, is already produced by religious practice during one's lifetime. This same idea, which is strange to official Christian teaching, does come up vigorously in alchemical philosophy. The alchemists, too, strove from the beginning to produce such a glorified or diamond body, and Christian alchemists from the beginning identified it with the glorified body. In order to build up this glorified body, called the philosopher's stone, you must repeat the whole process of creation.

— Marie-Louise von Franz

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "There existed long ago in Tibetan, Indian, and partly also in Chinese Buddhism the idea that the religious practice of meditation serves the goal of producing within the still-living and mortal body the diamond body into which you move, so to speak. Already in this lifetime you use your diamond body more and more as a dwelling place, so that at the moment of death, like a skin which falls off from a fruit, this mortal body falls away and the glorified body -or in Eastern language, the diamond body- is already there. The glorified body, a sort of immortal substance as carrier of the individual personality, is already produced by religious practice during one's lifetime. This same idea, which is strange to official Christian teaching, does come up vigorously in alchemical philosophy. The alchemists, too, strove from the beginning to produce such a glorified or diamond body, and Christian alchemists from the beginning identified it with the glorified body. In order to build up this glorified body, called the philosopher's stone, you must repeat the whole process of creation." in the context of "P. 331" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Marie-Louise von Franz" (Quotes, Creation Myths (1972): German edition (1972) Shambhala English edition 1995; , Creation Renewed & Reversed) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Marie-Louise von Franz

About Marie-Louise von Franz

Marie-Louise von Franz (4 January 1915 – 17 February 1998), the daughter of an Austrian baron, was a Swiss Jungian psychologist and scholar who was born in Munich, Germany. She worked with Carl Jung, whom she met in 1933 and knew until his death in 1961.