Carl Jung’s near-death experience

In a hospital in Switzerland in 1944, the world-renowned psychiatrist Carl G. Jung, had a heart attack and then a near-death experience. His vivid encounter with the light, plus the intensely meaningful insights led Jung to conclude that his experience came from something real and eternal. Jung’s experience is unique in that he saw the Earth from a vantage point of about a thousand miles above it.

His incredibly accurate view of the Earth from outer space was described about two decades before astronauts in space first described it. Subsequently, as he reflected on life after death, Jung recalled the meditating Hindu from his near-death experience and read it as a parable of the archetypal Higher Self, the God-image within. Carl Jung, who founded analytical psychology, centered on the archetypes of the collective unconscious. The following is an excerpt from his autobiography entitled Memories, Dreams, Reflections describing his near-death experience.

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. I saw the deep blue sea and the continents. Far below my feet lay Ceylon, and in the distance ahead of me the subcontinent of India. My field of vision did not include the whole Earth, but its global shape was plainly distinguishable and its outlines shone with a silvery gleam through that wonderful blue light.

In many places the globe seemed colored, or spotted dark green like oxidized silver. Far away to the left lay a broad expanse – the reddish-yellow desert of Arabia; it was as though the silver of the Earth had there assumed a reddish-gold hue. Then came the Red Sea, and far, far back – as if in the upper left of a map – I could just make out a bit of the Mediterranean. My gaze was directed chiefly toward that. Everything else appeared indistinct. I could also see the snow-covered Himalayas, but in that direction it was foggy or cloudy. I did not look to the right at all. I knew that I was on the point of departing from the Earth.

Later I discovered how high in space one would have to be to have so extensive a view – approximately a thousand miles! The sight of the Earth from this height was the most glorious thing I had ever seen.

After contemplating it for a while, I turned around. I had been standing with my back to the Indian Ocean, as it were, and my face to the north. Then it seemed to me that I made a turn to the south. Something new entered my field of vision. A short distance away I saw in space a tremendous dark block of stone, like a meteorite. It was about the size of my house, or even bigger. It was floating in space, and I myself was floating in space.

I had seen similar stones on the coast of the Gulf of Bengal. They were blocks of tawny granite, and some of them had been hollowed out into temples. My stone was one such gigantic dark block. 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 that he expected me.

Two steps led up to this antechamber, and inside, on the left, was the gate to the temple. Innumerable tiny niches, each with a saucer-like concavity filled with coconut oil and small burning wicks, surrounded the door with a wreath of bright flames. I had once actually seen this when I visited the Temple of the Holy Tooth at Kandy in Ceylon; the gate had been framed by several rows of burning oil lamps of this sort.

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 experienced 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. I existed in an objective form; I was what I had been and lived. At first the sense of annihilation predominated, of having been stripped or pillaged; but suddenly that became of no consequence.

Everything seemed to be past; what remained was a “fait accompli”, without any reference back to what had been. There was no longer any regret that something had dropped away or been taken away. On the contrary: I had everything that I was, and that was everything.

Something else engaged my attention: as I approached the temple I had the certainty that I was about to enter an illuminated room and would meet there all those people to whom I belong in reality. There I would at last understand – this too was a certainty – what historical nexus I or my life fitted into. I would know what had been before me, why I had come into being, and where my life was flowing. My life as I lived it had often seemed to me like a story that has no beginning and end. I had the feeling that I was a historical fragment, an excerpt for which the preceding and succeeding text was missing.

My life seemed to have been snipped out of a long chain of events, and many questions had remained unanswered. Why had it taken this course? Why had I brought these particular assumptions with me? What had I made of them? What will follow? I felt sure that I would receive an answer to all the questions as soon as I entered the rock temple. There I would meet the people who knew the answer to my question about what had been before and what would come after.

While I was thinking over these matters, something happened that caught my attention. From below, from the direction of Europe, an image floated up. It was my doctor, or rather, his likeness – framed by a golden chain or a golden laurel wreath. I knew at once: ’Aha, this is my doctor, of course, the one who has been treating me. But now he is coming in his primal form. In life he was an avatar of the temporal embodiment of the primal form, which has existed from the beginning. Now he is appearing in that primal form.’

Presumably I too was in my primal form, though this was something I did not observe but simply took for granted. As he stood before me, a mute exchange of thought took place between us. The doctor had been delegated by the Earth to deliver a message to me, to tell me that there was a protest against my going away. I had no right to leave the Earth and must return. The moment I heard that, the vision ceased.

I was profoundly disappointed, for now it all seemed to have been for nothing. The painful process of defoliation had been in vain, and I was not to be allowed to enter the temple, to join the people in whose company I belonged.

In reality, a good three weeks were still to pass before I could truly make up my mind to live again. I could not eat because all food repelled me. The view of city and mountains from my sickbed seemed to me like a painted curtain with black holes in it, or a tattered sheet of newspaper full of photographs that meant nothing. Disappointed, I thought, “Now I must return to the “box system” again.”

For it seemed to me as if behind the horizon of the cosmos a three-dimensional world had been artificially built up, in which each person sat by himself in a little box. And now I should have to convince myself all over again that this was important! Life and the whole world struck me as a prison, and it bothered me beyond measure that I should again be finding all that quite in order. I had been so glad to shed it all, and now it had come about that I - along with everyone else – would again be hung up in a box by a thread.

I felt violent resistance to my doctor because he had brought me back to life. At the same time, I was worried about him. “His life is in danger, for heaven’s sake! He has appeared to me in his primal form! When anybody attains this form it means he is going to die, for already he belongs to the “greater company.” Suddenly the terrifying thought came to me that the doctor would have to die in my stead. I tried my best to talk to him about it, but he did not understand me. Then I became angry with him.

In actual fact I was his last patient. On April 4, 1944 – I still remember the exact date I was allowed to sit up on the edge of my bed for the first time since the beginning of my illness, and on this same day the doctor took to his bed and did not leave it again. I heard that he was having intermittent attacks of fever. Soon afterward he died of septicernia. He was a good doctor; there was something of the genius about him. Otherwise he would not have appeared to me as an avatar of the temporal embodiment of the primal form. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections

Carl Jung: Am I the one who is sitting on the stone, or am I the stone on which he is sitting?

In front of this wall was a slope in which was embedded a stone that jutted out my stone.

Often, when I was alone, I sat down on this stone, and then began an imaginary game that went something like this: "I am sitting on top of this stone and it is underneath.'

But the stone also could say "I" and think: 1 am lying here on this slope and he is sitting on top of me."

The question then arose: "Am I the one who is sitting on the stone, or am I the stone on which he is sitting?"

This question always perplexed me, and I would stand up, wondering who was what now.

The answer remained totally unclear, and my uncertainty was accompanied by a feeling of curious and fascinating darkness.

But there was no doubt whatsoever that this stone stood in some secret relationship to me.

I could sit on it for hours, fascinated by the puzzle it set me. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 20

Carl Jung: I was on the way to discovering my own myth

I was on the way to discovering my own myth.

For the building game was only a beginning.

It released a stream of fantasies which I later carefully wrote down.

I went on with my building game after the noon meal every day, whenever the weather permitted.

As soon as I was through eating, I began playing, and continued to do so until the patients arrived; and if I was finished with my work early enough in the evening, I went back to building. In the course of this activity my thoughts clarified, and I was able to grasp the fantasies whose presence in myself I dimly felt.

Naturally, I thought about the significance of what I was doing, and asked myself, "Now, really, what are you about?

You are building a small town, and doing it as if it were a rite!"

I had no answer to my question, only the inner certainty that I

This sort of thing has been consistent with me, and at any time in my later life when I came up against a blank wall, I painted a picture or hewed stone.

Each such experience proved to be a rite d'entree for the ideas and works that followed hard upon it.

Everything that I have written this year and last year, "The Undiscovered Self," "Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth," "A Psychological View of Conscience," has grown out of the
stone sculptures I did after my wife's death.

The close of her life, the end, and what it made me realize, wrenched me violently out of myself.

It cost me a great deal to regain my footing, and contact with stone helped me. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Pages 174-175

Carl Jung: "Memories, Dreams and Reflections" - Quotations

In the beginning I employed hypnosis in my private practice also, but I soon gave it up because in using it one is only groping in the dark. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Pages 119-120

Myth is the revelation of divine life in man. It is not we who invent myth; rather it speaks to us as a Word of God. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 340.

No science Myth will ever replace myth, and a myth cannot be made out of any science. For it is not that "God" is a myth, but that myth is the revelation of a divine life in man. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 340.

It is not we who invent myth; rather it speaks to us as a Word of God. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 340.

Although we human beings have our own personal life, we are in large measure the representatives, the victims and promoters of a collective spirit whose years are counted in centuries. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 91.

It was then that I dedicated myself to service of the psyche. I loved it and hated it, but it was my greatest wealth. My delivering myself over to it, as it were, was the only way by which I could endure my existence and live it as fully as possible. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 192.

Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 356.

What does God want? To act or not to act? I must find out what God wants with Me, and I must find out right away. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams Reflections, Page 38.

If there were no imperfections, no primordial defect in the ground of creation, why should there be any urge to create , any longing that must be fulfilled? ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 32.

While the man who despairs marches towards nothingness, the one who has placed his faith in the archetype follows the tracks of life and lives right into his death. Both, to be sure, remain in uncertainty, but the one lives against his instincts, the other with them. ~Carl Jung; MDR; Page 306.

After my wife's death. . . I felt an inner obligation to become what I myself am. To put it in the language of the Bollingen house, I suddenly realized that the small central section which crouched so low, so hidden was myself! ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 225.

I have always advised analysts: "Have a father confessor, or a mother confessor!" Women are particularly gifted for playing such a part. They often have excellent intuition and critical insight, and can see what men have up their sleeves, at times see also into men's anima intrigues. They see aspects that the man does not see. That is why no woman has ever been convinced that her husband is a superman! ~Carl Jung, MDR; Page 134.

Man always has some mental reservation, even in the face of divine decrees. Otherwise, where would be his freedom? And what would be the use of that freedom if it could not threaten Him who threatens it? ~Carl Jung; MDR; Page 220

I have become convinced that at least part of our psychic existence is characterized by the relativity of space and time. This relativity seems to increase, in proportion to the distance from consciousness, to an absolute condition of timelessness and spacelessness. ~Carl Jung; MDR; Page 305.

The finest and most significant conversations of my life were anonymous. ~Carl Jung; MDR; Page 145.

Rather, we must hold clearly in mind that there is no possible way for us to attain certainty concerning things that pass our understanding. ~Carl Jung; MDR, Page 300.

Hierosgamos. Sacred or spiritual marriage, union of archetypal figures in the rebirth mysteries of antiquity and also in alchemy. Typical examples are the representation of Christ and the Church as bridegroom and bride (sponsus et sponsa) and the alchemical conjunction of sun and moon. ~Carl Jung; MDR; Page 395.

Am I a combination of the lives of these ancestors and do I embody these lives again? Have I lived before in the past as a specific personality, and did I progress so far in that life that I am now able to seek a solution? I do not know. Buddha left the question open, and I like to assume that he himself did not know with certainty. In the meantime it is important to ensure that I do not stand at the end with empty hands. ~Carl Jung; MDR; Pages 317-318.

There is so much that fills me: plants, animals, clouds, day and night, and the eternal in man. The more uncertain I have felt about myself, the more there has grown up in me a feeling of kinship with all things. ~Carl Jung; MDR; Page 359.

I know only that I was born and exist, and it seems to me that I have been carried along. I exist on the foundation of something I do not know. In spite of all uncertainties, I feel a solidity underlying all existence and a continuity in my mode of being. ~Carl Jung; MDR; Page 358.

In knowing ourselves to be unique in our personal combination - that is, ultimately limited - we possess also the capacity for becoming conscious of the infinite. But only then! ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 325.

Thus we demand that the world grant us recognition for qualities which we regard as personal possessions: our talent and our beauty. The more that man lays stress on false possessions, and the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life. ~Carl Jung; MDR; Page 325

Attainment of consciousness is culture in the broadest sense, and self-knowledge is therefore the heart and essence of the process. The Oriental attributes unquestionably divine significance to the self, and according to the Christian view self-knowledge is the road to knowledge of God. ~Carl Jung; MDR; Pages 324-325

Certain souls, I imagine, feel the state of three-dimensional existence to be more blissful than that of Eternity. But perhaps that depends upon how much of completeness or incompleteness they have taken across with them from their human existence. ~Carl Jung; MDR; Page 321.

The images of the unconscious place a great responsibility upon a man. Failure to understand diem, or a shirking of ethical responsibility, deprives him of his wholeness and imposes a painful fragmentariness on his life. ~Carl Jung; MDR; Page 193.

Similarly, other people are established inalienably in my memories only if their names were entered in the scrolls of my destiny from the beginning, so that encountering them was at the same time a kind of recollection. ~Carl Jung; MDR; Page 5.

Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 183.

The crucial point is that I confront the patient as one human being to another. Analysis is a dialogue demanding two partners. ... The doctor has something to say, but so has the patient. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams, and Reflections; Page 131.

Only gradually did I discover what the mandala really is: Formation, Transformation, Eternal Mind's eternal recreation. And that is the self, the wholeness of the personality, which if all goes well is harmonious, but which cannot tolerate self-deceptions. ~Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Page 326.

Nothing so promotes the growth of consciousness as [the] inner confrontation of opposites. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 345.

Similarly, other people are established inalienably in my memories only if their names were entered in the scrolls of my destiny from the beginning, so that encountering them was at the same time a kind of recollection. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 5.

Love "bears all things" and "endures all things'* (i Cor. 13:7). These words say all there is to be said; nothing can be added to them. For we are in the deepest sense the victims and the instruments of cosmogonic "love." ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 354

The sea is like music, it has all the dreams of the soul within itself and sounds them over. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 369.

Christ cried out to the Jews, “You are the Gods” (John 10:34) but men were incapable of understanding what he meant. ~Carl Jung; Memories dreams and Reflections; Page 280

Being a part, man cannot grasp the whole. He is at its mercy. He may assent to it, or rebel against it; but he is always caught up by it and enclosed within it. He is dependent upon it and is sustained by it. Love is his light and his darkness, whose end he cannot see. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 354

Eros…might well be the first condition of all cognition and the quintessence of divinity itself. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 353.

Nothing so promotes the growth of consciousness as [the] inner confrontation of opposites. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 345.

I regret many follies which sprang from my obstinacy; but without that trait I would not have reached my goal. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 358

If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely. But loneliness is not necessarily inimical to companionship, for no one is more sensitive to companionship than the lonely man, and companionship thrives only when each individual remembers his individuality and does not identify himself with others. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 356.

"All my writings may be considered tasks imposed from within, their source was a fateful compulsion. What I wrote were things that assailed me from within myself. I permitted the spirit that moved me to speak out." ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 222.

I have also realized that one must accept the thoughts that go on within oneself of their own accord as part of one's reality. The categories of true and false are, of course, always present; but because they are not binding they take second place. The presence of thoughts is more important than our subjective judgment of them. But neither must these judgments be suppressed, for they also are existent thoughts which are part of our wholeness. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 298.

The majority of my patients consisted not of believers but of those who had lost their faith. The ones who came to me were the lost sheep. Even in this day and age the believer has the opportunity, in his church, to live the "symbolic life.” ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 140.

In science I missed the factor of meaning; and in religion, that of empiricism. Science met, to a very large extent, the needs of No. i personality, whereas the humane or historical studies provided beneficial instruction for No. 2. ~ Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams, Reflections; Page 72

When one reflects upon what consciousness really is, one is profoundly impressed by the extreme wonder of the fact that an event which takes place outside in the cosmos simultaneously produces an internal image, that it takes place, so to speak, inside as well, which is to say: becomes conscious. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 394

The myth of the necessary incarnation of God . . . can be understood as man's creative confrontation with the opposites and their synthesis in the self, the wholeness of his personality. . . . That is the goal . . . which fits man meaningfully into the scheme of creation and at the same time confers meaning upon it. –Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Page 338.

Myths which day has forgotten continue to be told by night, and powerful figures which consciousness has reduced to banality and ridiculous triviality are recognized again by poets and prophetically revived; therefore they can also be recognized "in changed form" by the thoughtful person. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 282

In science I missed the factor of meaning; and in religion, that of empiricism. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 72.

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 329.

It may even be assumed that just as the unconscious affects us, so the increase in our consciousness affects the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Page 326.

Our souls as well as our bodies are composed of individual elements which were all already present in the ranks of our ancestors. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 235.

Man's task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 326.

I had the feeling that everything was being sloughed away. . . . Nevertheless something remained; it was as if I now carried along with me everything I had ever experienced or done, everything that had happened around me. . . . I consisted of my own history, and I felt with great certainty: this is what I am. ~Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 290-291.

The risk of inner experience, the adventure of the spirit, is in any case alien to most human beings. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Pages 141-142.

Meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life and is therefore equivalent to illness. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 340.

And if we happen to have a precognitive dream, how can we possibly ascribe it to our own powers? ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 340.

I find that all my thoughts circle around God like the planets around the sun, and are as irresistibly attracted by Him. I would feel it to be the grossest sin if I were to oppose any resistance to this force. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page xi.

The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 325.

Everything in the unconscious seeks outward manifestation, and the personality too desires to evolve out of its unconscious conditions and to experience itself as a whole. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 3.

An autobiography is so difficult to write because we possess no standards, no objective foundation, from which to judge ourselves. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 3.

The older I have become, the less I have understood or had insight into or known about myself. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 358.

The psyche is distinctly more complicated and inaccessible than the body. It is, so to speak, the half of the world which comes into existence only when we become conscious of it. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflection, Page 132.

Because they are so closely akin to us and share our unknowingness, I loved all warm-blooded animals who have souls like ourselves and with whom, so I thought, we have an instinctive understanding. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 67.

In Bollingen, silence surrounds me almost audibly, and I live "in modest harmony with nature." Thoughts rise to the surface which reach back into the centuries, and accordingly anticipate a remote future. Here the torment of creation is lessened; creativity and play are close together. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 226.

I falter before the task of finding the language which might adequately express the incalculable paradoxes of love. ~Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Page 353.

Like many sons, Adler had learned from his "father" not what the father said, but what he did. Instantly, the problem of love (Eros) and power came down upon me like a leaden weight. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 153.

God is an image and those who worship him must worship him in the images of the supreme meaning. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Pages 276.

I cannot be liberated from anything that I do not possess, have not done or experienced. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Pages 276.

Individuation does not only mean that man has become truly human as distinct from animal, but that he is to become partially divine as well. That means practically that he becomes adult, responsible for his existence, knowing that he does not only depend on God but that God also depends on man. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 408.

The painful question then presented itself: Where was the money to come from? My father could raise only part of it. He applied to the University of Basel for a stipend for me, and to my shame it was granted. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 86.

If I ask the value of my life, I can only measure myself against the centuries and then I must say, Yes, it means something. Measured by the ideas of today, it means nothing. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams Reflections, Page xii.

A book of mine is always a matter of fate. A creative person has little power over his own life. He is not free. He is captive and drawn by his daimon. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 357.

A Creative person has little power over his own life. He is not free. He is captive and drawn by his daimon. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 359.

I early arrived at the insight that when no answer comes from within to the problems and complexities of life, they ultimately mean very little. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 5.

I began to blame the philosophers for rattling away when experience was lacking, and holding their tongues when they ought to have been answering with facts. In this respect they all seemed like watered-down theologians. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 104.

I maintained that psychiatry, in the broadest sense, is a dialogue between the sick psyche and the psyche of the doctor, which is presumed to be 'normal.' It is a coming to terms between the sick personality and that of the therapist, both in principle equally subjective. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 110.

If God is the highest good, why is the world, His creation, so imperfect, so corrupt, so pitiable? ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 59.

In my case it must have been a passionate urge to understand that brought about my birth. For that is the strongest element in my nature. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 297

In the end, man is an event which cannot judge itself, but, for better or worse, is left to the judgment of others. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 113.

The life of man is a dubious experiment. It is a tremendous phenomenon only in numerical terms. Individually, it is so fleeting, so insufficient, that it is literally a miracle that anything can exist and develop at all. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 6.

My aim was to show that delusions and hallucinations were not just specific symptoms of mental disease but also had a human meaning. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 110

The images of the unconscious place a great responsibility upon a man. Failure to understand them, or a shirking of ethical responsibility, deprives him of his wholeness and imposes a painful fragmentariness on his life. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 193.

I am an orphan, alone; nevertheless I am found everywhere. I am one, but opposed to myself. I am youth and old man at one and the same time. I have known neither father nor mother, because I have had to be fetched out of the deep like a fish, or fell like a white stone from heaven. In woods and mountains I roam, but I am hidden in the innermost soul of man. I am mortal for everyone, yet I am not touched by the cycle of eons. ~Carl Jung, Quoting an Alchemical Text, MDR 227

Outward circumstances are no substitute for inner experience. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page V.

When we are old, we are drawn back, both from within and from without, to memories of youth. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page viii.

My own understanding is the sole treasure I possess, and the greatest. Though infinitely small and fragile in comparison with the powers of darkness, it is still a light, my only light. Carl Jung, MDR, Page 88.

In therapy the problem is always the whole person, never the symptom alone. We must ask questions which challenge the whole personality. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 117.

The mandala is an archetypal image whose occurrence is attested throughout the ages. It signifies the wholeness of the Self. This circular image represents the wholeness of the psychic ground or, to put it in mythic terms, the divinity incarnate in man. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 334-335.

Trees in particular were mysterious and seemed to me direct embodiments of the incomprehensible meaning of life. For that reason the woods were the place where I felt closest to its deepest meaning and to its awe-inspiring workings. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 68.

What we are to our inward vision, and what man appears to be sub specie aeternitatis, can only be expressed by way of myth. Myth is more individual and expresses life more precisely than does science. Science works with concepts of averages which are far too general to do justice to the subjective variety of an individual life. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 3.

Only a mythical being has a range greater than man's. How then can man form any definite opinions about himself? ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 4.

It called the figure Atmavictu-the 'breath of life.' It is a further development of that quasi-sexual object of my childhood, which turned out to be the 'breath of life,' the creative impulse. Basically, the manikin is a kabir" ~Carl Jung, MDR, pp. 38-39.

Although there is no way to marshal valid proof of continuance of the soul after death, there are nevertheless experiences which make us thoughtful. I take them as hints, and do not presume to ascribe to them the significance of insights. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 312.

Myth is the natural and indispensable intermediate stage between unconscious and conscious cognition. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 311.

The kernel of all jealousy is lack of love. ~Carl Jung; MDR; Page 137.

Consequently, the sight of a child or a primitive will arouse certain longings in adult, civilized persons longings which relate to the unfulfilled desires and needs of those parts of the personality which have been blotted out of the total picture in favor of the adapted persona. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 244

. . . my father did not dare to think, because he was consumed by inward doubts. He was taking refuge from himself and therefore insisted on blind faith. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 73.

God is not human, I thought; that is His greatness, that nothing human impinges on Him. He is kind and terrible— both at once— and is therefore a great peril from which everyone naturally tries to save himself. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Pages 55-56.

I began to understand that the goal of psychic development is the self. There is no linear evolution; there is only a circumambulation of the self. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 196.

After this dream I gave up drawing or painting mandalas. The dream depicted the climax of the whole process of development of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 199

My family and my profession remained the base to which I could always return, assuring me that I was an actually existing, ordinary person. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 189

The self, I thought, was like the monad which I am, and which is my world. The mandala represents this monad, and corresponds to the microcosmic nature of the soul. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 206 and MDR, Page 221.

In the experience of the self it is no longer the opposites "God" and "man" that are reconciled, as it was before, but rather the opposites within the God-image itself. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 338.

... at any time in my later life, when I came up at a blank wall, I painted a picture or hewed stone. Each such experience proved to be a "rite d 'entree" for the ideas and works that followed hard upon it. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 175.

It was most essential for me to have a normal life in the real world as a counterpoise to that strange inner world. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 189

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 247.

It is the prime task of all education (of adults) to convey the archetype of the God image, or its emanations and effects, to the conscious mind. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 47.

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 154.

What is remarkable about Christianity is that in its system of dogma it anticipates a metamorphosis in the divinity, a process of historic change on the "other side." ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 327.

The angels are a strange genus: they are precisely what they are and cannot be anything else. They are in themselves soulless beings who represent nothing but the thoughts and intuitions of their Lord. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Pages 327-328.

I often asked Jung for specific data on outward happenings, but I asked in vain. Only the spiritual essence of his life's experience remained in his memory, and this alone seemed to him worth the effort of telling. ~Aniela Jaffe, MDR, vii-viii.

I have suffered enough from incomprehension and from the isolation one falls into when one says things that people do not understand. . . . ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page p. xii.

My life has been in a sense the quintessence of what I have written, not the other way around. The way I am and the way I write are a unity. All my ideas and all my endeavors are myself. Thus the "autobiography" is mere dot on the i. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page p. xii.

The feeling for the infinite, however, can be attained only if we are bounded to the utmost. . . . Only consciousness of our narrow confinement in the self forms the link to the limitlessness of the unconscious. In such awareness we experience ourselves concurrently as limited and eternal as both the one and the other. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 225.

... at any time in my later life, when I came up at a blank wall, I painted a picture or hewed stone. Each such experience proved to be a "rite d 'entree" for the ideas and works that followed hard upon it. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 175.

It was most essential for me to have a normal life in the real world as a counterpoise to that strange inner world. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 189

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 247.

It is the prime task of all education (of adults) to convey the archetype of the God image, or its emanations and effects, to the conscious mind. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 47.

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 154.

What is remarkable about Christianity is that in its system of dogma it anticipates a metamorphosis in the divinity, a process of historic change on the "other side." ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 327.

The angels are a strange genus: they are precisely what they are and cannot be anything else. They are in themselves soulless beings who represent nothing but the thoughts and intuitions of their Lord. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Pages 327-328.

I often asked Jung for specific data on outward happenings, but I asked in vain. Only the spiritual essence of his life's experience remained in his memory, and this alone seemed to him worth the effort of telling. ~Aniela Jaffe, MDR, vii-viii.

I have suffered enough from incomprehension and from the isolation one falls into when one says things that people do not understand. . . . ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page p. xii.

My life has been in a sense the quintessence of what I have written, not the other way around. The way I am and the way I write are a unity. All my ideas and all my endeavors are myself. Thus the "autobiography" is mere dot on the i. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page p. xii.

The feeling for the infinite, however, can be attained only if we are bounded to the utmost. . . . Only consciousness of our narrow confinement in the self forms the link to the limitlessness of the unconscious. In such awareness we experience ourselves concurrently as limited and eternal as both the one and the other. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 225.

Thus we remain ignorant of whether our ancestral components find an elementary gratification in our lives, or whether they are repelled. Inner peace and contentment depend in large measure upon whether or not the historical family which is inherent in the individual can be harmonized with the ephemeral conditions of the present. ~Carl Jung; MDR; Page 237.

Nature, the psyche, and life appear to me like divinity unfolded - and what more could I wish for? To me the supreme meaning of Being can consist only in the fact that it is, not that it is not or is no longer. ~Carl Jung; MDR, Page 276.

I knew that in finding the mandala as an expression of the Self I had attained what was for me the ultimate. Perhaps someone else knows more, but not I. ~Carl Jung; MDR, Page 197.

At times I feel as if I am spread out over the landscape and inside things, and am myself living in every tree, in the splashing of the waves, in the clouds and the animals that come and go, in the procession of the seasons. ~Carl Jung; MDR; Pages 225-226.

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them. They then dwell in the house next door, and at any moment a flame may dart out and set fire to his own house. Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force. ~Carl Jung; MDR; Page 277.

The collective unconscious is common to all; it is the foundation of what the ancients called the 'sympathy of all things'. ~Carl Jung; MDR; Page 138.

Carl Jung: Am I the one who is sitting on the stone, or am I the stone on which he is sitting?

In front of this wall was a slope in which was embedded a stone that jutted out my stone.

Often, when I was alone, I sat down on this stone, and then began an imaginary game that went something like this: "I am sitting on top of this stone and it is underneath.'

But the stone also could say "I" and think: 1 am lying here on this slope and he is sitting on top of me."

The question then arose: "Am I the one who is sitting on the stone, or am I the stone on which he is sitting?"

This question always perplexed me, and I would stand up, wondering who was what now.

The answer remained totally unclear, and my uncertainty was accompanied by a feeling of curious and fascinating darkness.

But there was no doubt whatsoever that this stone stood in some secret relationship to me.

I could sit on it for hours, fascinated by the puzzle it set me. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 20

Carl Jung: Now I happened to myself. Now I knew: I am myself now, now I exist.

I had another important experience at about this time.

I was taking the long road to school from Klein-Hiiningen, where we lived, to Basel, when suddenly for a single moment I had the overwhelming impression of having just emerged from a dense cloud.

I knew all at once: now I am myself!

It was as if a wall of mist were at my back, and behind that wall there was not yet an "I."

But at this moment I came upon myself.

Previously I had existed, too, but everything had merely happened to me.

Now I happened to myself.

Now I knew: I am myself now, now I exist.

Previously I had been willed to do this and that; now I willed.

This experience seemed to me tremendously important and new: there was "authority" in me.

Curiously enough, at this time and also during the months of my fainting neurosis I had lost all memory of the treasure in the attic.

Otherwise I would probably have realized even then the analogy between my feeling of authority and the feeling of value which the treasure inspired in me.

But that was not so; all memory of the pencil case had vanished. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Pages 32-33

Carl Jung: Now I happened to myself. Now I knew: I am myself now, now I exist.

I had another important experience at about this time.

I was taking the long road to school from Klein-Hiiningen, where we lived, to Basel, when suddenly for a single moment I had the overwhelming impression of having just emerged from a dense cloud.

I knew all at once: now I am myself!

It was as if a wall of mist were at my back, and behind that wall there was not yet an "I."

But at this moment I came upon myself.

Previously I had existed, too, but everything had merely happened to me.

Now I happened to myself.

Now I knew: I am myself now, now I exist.

Previously I had been willed to do this and that; now I willed.

This experience seemed to me tremendously important and new: there was "authority" in me.

Curiously enough, at this time and also during the months of my fainting neurosis I had lost all memory of the treasure in the attic.

Otherwise I would probably have realized even then the analogy between my feeling of authority and the feeling of value which the treasure inspired in me.

But that was not so; all memory of the pencil case had vanished. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Pages 32-33

Dr. Jung’s “Green Christ Vision.”:

In 1939 1 gave a seminar on the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola.

At the same time I was occupied on the studies for Psychology and Alchemy.

One night I awoke and saw, bathed in bright light at the foot of my bed, the figure of Christ on the Cross. It was not quite life-size, but extremely distinct; and I saw that his body was made of greenish gold.

The vision was marvelously beautiful, and yet I was profoundly shaken by it.

A vision as such is nothing unusual for me, for I frequently see extremely vivid hypnagogic images.

I had been thinking a great deal about the Anima Christi, one of the meditations from the Spiritual Exercises.

The vision came to me as if to point out that I had overlooked something in my reflections: the analogy of Christ with the aurum non vulgi and the viriditas of the alchemists.

When I realized that the vision pointed to this central alchemical symbol, and that I had had an essentially alchemical vision of Christ, I felt comforted.

The green gold is the living quality which the alchemists saw not only in man but also in inorganic nature.

It is an expression of the life-spirit, the anima mundi or films macrocosmi, the Anthropos who animates the whole cosmos.

This spirit has poured himself out into everything, even into inorganic matter; he is present in metal and stone. My vision was thus a union of the Christ-image with his analogue in matter, the filius macrocosmi.

If I had not been so struck by the greenish-gold, I would have been tempted to assume that something essential was missing from my "Christian" view in other words, that my traditional Christ-image was somehow inadequate and that I still had to catch up with part of the Christian development.

The emphasis on the metal, however, showed me the undisguised alchemical conception of Christ as a union of spiritually alive and physically dead matter.” Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Pages 210-211.