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C. G. Jung (1875–1961)
The renowned Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Gustav Jung recounted his life in
Memories, Dreams and Reflections
which is something approaching an
autobiography. As Jung believed that one’s earliest memories are not the
beginning, and the end unknown, he was left with the psychic processes
in between. His view of a lifetime was that of a plant, sustained by invisi-
ble, long-lasting roots but which itself fades and dies in a season.
Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures under-
neath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The
rhizome remains.
In the end the only events in my life worth telling are those when the
imperishable world interrupted into this transitory one. That is why
I speak chiefly of inner experiences amongst which I include my dreams
and visions.
187
During his intense and solitary childhood, Jung became aware of a
secret side of himself. He carved a manikin which he kept hidden in the
attic in a pencil box to which he added letters written in code. He had
dreams which had a profound effect on him, but which he did not share
with anyone. He created a fantasy world for himself and became aware
of himself as two personalities: No. 1 the normal child, No. 2 who had
lived in the eighteenth century, close to dreams and to a sense of God.
After studying medicine, Jung specialized in psychiatry and sent a book
he had written to Freud. When they met they talked for 13 solid hours.
They then worked together for some years until there was an acrimonious
split between them. One of the reasons for this was that Jung found
Freud’s thinking too reductionist. Jung maintained that there was a
‘collective unconscious’, a level of ideas common to all humanity, under-
lying the thinking mind, composed of ‘archetypes’. He regarded these as
psychic structures, yet also neurological, unifying mind and matter into
the unitary world of the mystics. The archetypes impinge on the personal-
ity in various ways in life, through apparent coincidences, which he called
synchronicity, but principally through dreams.
Spiritual and Mystical Experiences
201
Jung’s psychotherapy used an approach which involved both therapist
and patient being active, rather than the passive therapist model of Freud.
Patients were encouraged to face up to their own responsibility for their
situation and to grow through it.
Throughout Jung’s life, he had dreams which made such an impression
on him that he followed them up, searching out their meaning. Often they
foretold events, sometimes the death of someone he knew. Jung felt that
recognition of this mythic level of consciousness was necessary for the
wholeness of a person, but was not to be found in organized religion.
In 1944, Jung broke his foot and subsequently had a heart attack, after
which he had something like an NDE. The nurse told him that he had
been surrounded by a bright glow as he was being given oxygen and cam-
phor injections. This experience opened something in him, giving him a
deeper insight into life.
It seemed to me that I was high up in space. Far below I saw the globe
of the earth, bathed in a gloriously blue light. . .. Later I discovered
how high in space one would have to be to have so extensive a view –
approximately a thousand miles!
. . . Something new entered my field of vision. A short distance
away I saw in space a tremendous dark block of stone, like a meteorite.
. . . An entrance led into a small antechamber. To the right of the
entrance, a black Hindu sat silently in lotus posture upon a stone bench.
He wore a white gown, and I knew he expected me. . .. As I approached
the steps leading up to the entrance into the rock, a strange thing
happened: I had the feeling that everything was being sloughed
away; everything I aimed at or wished for or thought, the whole
phantasmagoria of earthly existence, fell away or was stripped from
me – an extremely painful process. Nevertheless something remained;
it was as if I now carried along with me everything I had ever experi-
enced or done, everything that had happened around me. I might also
say: it was with me, and I was it. I consisted of all that, so to speak.
I consisted of my own history, and I felt with great certainty: this is
what I am. ‘I am this bundle of what has been, and what has been
accomplished.’
This experience gave me a feeling of extreme poverty, but at the
same time of great fullness. There was no longer anything I wanted or
desired . . .. On the contrary: I had everything that I was, and that was
everything.
188
Then Jung’s doctor appeared, according to Jung, in his primal form, and
Jung realized that he was to return to earth rather than enter the rock
Religious and Spiritual Experience
202
temple. He was so disappointed, that he was subsequently hostile to the
doctor who had brought him back to life. It was three weeks before he
decided that he actually wanted to live and by then he was worried about
the doctor, who he felt sure was to die before long. In fact Jung was his
last patient, as he died of septicaemia very soon afterwards. Jung then
began a rhythm of sleep followed by lying awake in ecstasy in the night
as he seemed to revisit those realms in his visions. He found ordinary life
on earth extremely drab and irritating in comparison.
I can describe the experience only as the ecstasy of a non-temporal
state in which present, past, and future are one.
189
The illness and experience brought Jung a sense of acceptance of fate and
of his thoughts, without judging them and liberated him to write his prin-
cipal works.
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