Carl Jung: Beforehand I had imagined that I would be dumbfounded if I were to see so fantastic a thing.




Twenty-five years later, when Jung wass in Central Africa, he was reminded of those experiments by a typical chain of associations.

On the train journey from Mombassa to Nairobi, he beheld a brownish-black figure who stood motionless on a steep red cliff, leaning on a long spear and looking down at the train.

“I was enchanted by this sight-it was a picture of something utterly alien and outside my experience, but on the other hand a most intense sentiment du deja-vu.

I had the feeling that I had already experienced this moment and had always known this world which was separated from me only by distance in time. . . .

The feeling-tone of this curious experience accompanied me throughout my whole journey through savage Africa.

I can recall only one other such recognition of the immemorially known.

That was when I first observed a parapsychological phenomenon together with my former chief, Professor Eugen Bleuler.

Beforehand I had imagined that I would be dumbfounded if I were to see so fantastic a thing.

But when it happened, I was not surprised at all; I felt it was perfectly natural, something I could take for granted because I had long since been acquainted with it.” Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 10


Comments