Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘Existence’ is not a settled metaphysical given but a term under continuous interrogation across ontological, phenomenological, and contemplative registers. Aurobindo reads Existence as the first term of Sachchidananda — an eternal, self-luminous reality inseparable from Consciousness and Bliss — against which unconsciousness, pain, and individual separateness are revealed as surface distortions rather than fundamental facts. Jung, by contrast, grounds existence epistemologically: psychic existence is declared the only category of existence of which we possess immediate knowledge, making the psyche the sine qua non of any knowable world rather than a mere epiphenomenon of biology. Merleau-Ponty refuses to privilege either body or consciousness as the origin, locating existence instead in the irreducible ambiguity of incarnate being, where body and existence presuppose one another without reduction. Heidegger’s Dasein makes existence a temporal and ontological burden — always mine, always towards-death, never simply present-at-hand. Giegerich sharpens this by insisting that the soul does not exist as an entity at all, but is logical life, movement preceding Being rather than a mode of it. Descartes and Plotinus supply the classical poles: existence as necessary predicate of divine perfection versus derived, dependent being reflecting Authentic Being. The term’s depth-psychological valence, then, spans from existential facticity to ontological plenitude, with the status of psychic existence as its most contested and generative node.
Psychic existence is the only category of existence of which we have immediate knowledge, since nothing can be known unless it first appears as a psychic image. Only psychic existence is immediately verifiable.
Jung argues that psychic existence is epistemologically primary — the necessary precondition of all knowable reality — yet paradoxically treated by most as only semi-existent.
, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958thesis
the category of existence, the indispensable sine qua non of all existence, namely the psyche, should be treated as if it were only semi-existent.
Hillman, citing Jung, foregrounds the paradox that the psyche — the condition of any existence being known — is systematically demoted to a lesser ontological status than the material world it discloses.
, Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion, 1985thesis
Existence, Consciousness, Bliss, these are everywhere the three inseparable divine terms. None of them is really separate, though our mind and our mental experience can make not only the distinction, but the separation.
Aurobindo posits Existence as one of three co-essential divine realities, arguing that their apparent separability in human experience is a surface illusion imposed by mental limitation rather than an ontological fact.
, The Synthesis of Yoga, 1948thesis
Neither body nor existence can be regarded as the original of the human being, since they presuppose each other, and because the body is solidified or generalized existence, and existence a perpetual incarnation.
Merleau-Ponty dissolves the hierarchy between body and existence by declaring each the condition of the other, making existence an ongoing incarnational process rather than a substrate or fact.
, Phenomenology of Perception, 1962thesis
the soul does not exist, it is not an entity, or being, or ‘factor,’ it is logical life, logical movement.
Giegerich radically distinguishes the soul from existence as such, arguing that the soul precedes Being logically rather than temporally, and therefore cannot be conceived in ontological or existential terms.
, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020thesis
all things that exist are what they are as terms of that existence, terms of that conscious force, terms of that delight of being.
Aurobindo presents the entirety of manifest reality as an expression of a single self-delighting Existence, making individual things modes of that primordial consciousness-force rather than independent entities.
, The Life Divine, 1939thesis
neither the cosmos nor the individual consciousness is the fundamental truth of existence; for both depend upon and exist by the transcendental Divine Being.
Aurobindo situates both cosmic and individual existence as derivative of a transcendental reality, resisting reductions to either subjectivism or cosmic monism.
, The Life Divine, 1939supporting
plunged into it as if into a luminous abyss of existence, we can reach a superconscience which may be described as the gate of the Absolute.
Aurobindo frames the highest spiritual attainment as an immersion into existence itself — not its negation — with the Absolute approachable through intensification rather than annihilation of being.
, The Life Divine, 1939supporting
if there is nothing else, no essential Existence or Being supporting the creative Power, and there is not, either, a sustaining Void or Nihil, then this Consciousness which…
Aurobindo argues that consciousness alone, without a foundational Existence or Being beneath it, cannot account for the reality of the universe, collapsing into pure subjectivism.
, The Life Divine, 1939supporting
We are infinitely important to the All, but to us the All is negligible; we alone are important to ourselves. This is the sign of the original ignorance which is the root of the ego.
Aurobindo identifies the ego’s constriction of existence to its own centre as the fundamental cognitive error that falsifies the human experience of being.
, The Life Divine, 1939supporting
Matter is not a Primary we have established elsewhere… Its existence is but a pale reflection, and less complete than that of the things implanted in it.
Plotinus grades existence by proximity to Authentic Being, assigning to material existence the lowest ontological density and deriving it from the Intellectual sphere.
, The Six Enneads, 270supporting
you cannot treat existence as a property among others… you are not comparing either existence with existence or a property with a property, but existence with a property.
An objector presses Descartes on the logical impropriety of treating existence as one perfection among others in the ontological argument, anticipating Kant’s later critique.
, Meditations on First Philosophy, 2008supporting
necessary existence (which alone is in question here) does not belong to the nature of a body, however perfect.
Descartes distinguishes necessary existence — which belongs only to the supremely perfect being — from the contingent existence characteristic of all finite, material things.
, Meditations on First Philosophy, 2008supporting
Since existence is more ‘perfect’ or complete than nonexistence, the perfect being that we imagine must have existence or it would be imperfect.
Armstrong expounds Anselm’s ontological argument, in which existence functions as a perfection whose absence would render the supreme concept of God self-contradictory.
, A History of God, 1993supporting
you cannot find the Tathagata even in this life, why do you want to solve the problem of whether I will continue to exist or cease to exist… after death?
Thich Nhat Hanh presents the Buddha’s refusal to predicate existence or non-existence of the liberated being, pointing toward a mode of being that exceeds all binary ontological categories.
, The Sun My Heart, 1988supporting
existence is therefore contained in the concept of a thing that is possible. If, then, this thing is rejected, the internal possibility of the thing is rejected—which is self-contradictory.
Jung, via Kant, exposes the tautological structure of the ontological argument’s claim that existence is contained within the concept of the supremely real being.
, Psychological Types, 1921supporting
an Energy without a Being or Existence possessing it or a Consciousness supplying it, an Energy working originally in the void… looks itself very much like a mental construction, an unreality.
Aurobindo argues that energy or matter without a grounding Existence or Consciousness collapses into incoherence, requiring a prior ontological foundation to be intelligible.
, The Life Divine, 1939supporting
The imaginal can of course be taken as metaphysical reality, in which case it is a mystification and would have been reified and positivized.
Giegerich cautions against treating imaginal psychology’s constructs as positive existential realities, arguing this reification betrays the soul’s inherently negative, logical character.
, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020aside
Delight of being is universal, illimitable and self-existent, not dependent on particular causes, the background of all backgrounds, from which pleasure, pain and other more neutral experiences emerge.
Aurobindo distinguishes delight of existence — a self-grounded ontological fact — from the contingent pleasures and pains that arise against it as surface fluctuations.
, The Life Divine, 1939aside
freed implying freedom from the eight thraldoms: the ever-recurring round of pleasure concomitant with existence as a deva; the incessant warfare concomitant with existence as an asura.
The Tibetan Buddhist framework enumerates distinct modes of conditioned existence across realms, treating liberation as freedom from the particular sufferings constitutive of each existential state.
, The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz Edition), 1927aside
Non-existence has been ruled out of the discussion… We are thus left with Existence, Sameness, Difference.
Plato’s Timaeus establishes Existence as one of three all-pervading Forms alongside Sameness and Difference, with non-existence excluded as incapable of bearing true predicates.
, Plato’s cosmology the Timaeus of Plato, 1997aside