The beginning of 1944 I broke my foot,
and this misadventure was followed by a
heart attack. In a state of
unconsciousness, I experienced deliriums
and visions which must have begun when I
hung on the edge of death and was being
given oxygen and camphor injections. The
images were so tremendous that I myself
concluded that I was close to death. My
nurse afterward told me:
"It was
as if you were surrounded by a
bright glow." |
That was a phenomenon she had
sometimes observed in the dying, she
added. I had reached the outermost
limit, and do not know whether I was in
a dream or an ecstasy. At any rate,
extremely strange things began to happen
to me.
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, as a "basileus of Kos."
[1]
In life he was an
avatar of this basileus, the
temporal embodiment of the
primal form, which has existed
from the beginning. Now he is
appearing in that primal form.
[1]
Basileus was the king (i.e.
"basileus") of Kos - a small
Greek island on the Aegean Sea.
The island of Kos was famous in
antiquity as the site of the
temple of Asklepios, and was the
birthplace of
Hippocrates.
|
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.
While I floated in space, I had been
weightless, and there had been nothing
tugging at me. And now all that was to
be a thing of the past!
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 Dr. H. 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:
"Why does
he always pretend he doesn’t
know he is a basileus of Kos?
And that he has already assumed
his primal form? He wants to
make me believe that he doesn’t
know!"
|
That irritated me. My wife reproved me
for being so unfriendly to him. She was
right; but at the time I was angry with
him for stubbornly refusing to speak of
all that had passed between us in my
vision:
"Damn it
all, he ought to watch his step.
He has no right to be so
reckless! I want to tell him to
take care of himself."
|
I was firmly convinced that his life was
in jeopardy. 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 Dr. H.
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 septicemia. He was
a good doctor; there was something of
the genius about him. Otherwise he
would not have appeared to me as a
prince of Kos.
During those weeks
I lived in a strange rhythm. By day I
was usually depressed. I felt weak and
wretched, and scarcely dared to stir.
Gloomily, I thought:
"Now I
must go back to this drab
world." |
Toward evening I would fall asleep, and
my sleep would last until about
midnight. Then I would come to myself
and lie awake for about an hour, but in
an utterly transformed state. It was as
if I were in an ecstasy. I felt as
though I were floating in space, as
though I were safe in the womb of the
universe in a tremendous void, but
filled with the highest possible feeling
of happiness.
"This is
eternal bliss," I thought. "This
cannot be described; it is far
too wonderful!"
|
Everything around me seemed enchanted.
At this hour of the night the nurse
brought me some food she had warmed for
only then was I able to take any, and I
ate with appetite. For a time it seemed
to me that she was an old Jewish woman,
much older than she actually was, and
that she was preparing ritual kosher
dishes for me. When I looked at her, she
seemed to have a blue halo around her
head. I myself was, so it seemed, in the
Pardes Rimmonim, the garden of
pomegranates,
[2]
and
the wedding of Tiferet with Malchut
was taking place. Or else I was
Rabbi Simeon bar Yochai, whose
wedding in the afterlife was being
celebrated. It was the mystic marriage
as it appears in the
Cabbalistic tradition. I cannot tell
you how wonderful it was. I could only
think continually:
"Now this is the garden of
pomegranates! Now this is the
marriage of Malchuth with
Tifereth!"
[2]
[2] Pardes
Rimmonim is the title of an old
Cabbalistic tract by Moses
Cordovero (sixteenth century).
In Cabbalistic doctrine Malchuth
and Tifereth are two of the ten
spheres of divine manifestation
in which God emerges from his
hidden state. They represent the
female and male principles
within the Godhead.
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I do not know exactly what part I played
in it. At bottom it was I myself: I was
the marriage. And my beatitude was that
of a blissful wedding.
Gradually
the garden of pomegranates faded away
and changed. There followed the
Marriage of the Lamb, in a Jerusalem
festively bedecked. I cannot describe
what it was like in detail. These were
ineffable states of joy. Angels were
present, and light. I myself was the
"Marriage of the Lamb."
That,
too, vanished, and there came a new
image, the last vision. I walked up a
wide valley to the end, where a gentle
chain of hills began. The valley ended
in a classical amphitheater. It was
magnificently situated in the green
landscape. And there, in this theater,
the hierosgamos was being celebrated.
Men and women dancers came onstage, and
upon a flower-decked couch All-father
Zeus and
Hera consummated the mystic
marriage, as it is described in the
Iliad.
All these experiences were
glorious. Night after night I floated in
a state of purest bliss:
Gradually, the motifs mingled and paled.
Usually the visions lasted for about an
hour; then I would fall asleep again. By
the time morning drew near, I would
feel:
"Now gray
morning is coming again; now
comes the gray world with its
boxes! What idiocy, what hideous
nonsense! Those inner states
were so fantastically beautiful
that by comparison this world
appeared downright ridiculous."
|
As I approached closer to life again,
they grew fainter, and scarcely three
weeks after the first vision they ceased
altogether.
It is impossible to
convey the beauty and intensity of
emotion during those visions. They were
the most tremendous things I have ever
experienced. And what a contrast the day
was: I was tormented and on edge;
everything irritated me; everything was
too material, too crude and clumsy,
terribly limited both spatially and
spiritually. It was all an imprisonment,
for reasons impossible to divine, and
yet it had a kind of hypnotic power, a
cogency, as if it were reality itself,
for all that I had clearly perceived its
emptiness. Although my belief in the
world returned to me, I have never since
entirely freed myself of the impression
that:
...this
life is a segment of existence
which is enacted in a
three-dimensional box-like
universe especially set up for
it. |
There is something else I quite
distinctly remember. At the beginning,
when I was having the vision of the
garden of pomegranates, I asked the
nurse to forgive me if she were harmed:
"There
was such sanctity in the room,"
I said, "that it might be
harmful to her."
|
Of course she did not understand me. For
me the presence of sanctity had a
magical atmosphere; I feared it might be
unendurable to others. I understood then
why one speaks of the odor of sanctity,
of
the "sweet smell" of the Holy Ghost.
This was it. There was a pneuma of
inexpressible sanctity in the room,
whose manifestation was the mysterium
coniunctionis.
I would never have
imagined that any such experience was
possible. It was not a product of
imagination. The visions and experiences
were utterly real; there was nothing
subjective about them; they all had a
quality of absolute objectivity.
We shy away from the word "eternal," but
I can describe the experience only as
the ecstasy of a non-temporal state in
which present, past, and future are one.
Everything that happens in time had been
brought together into a concrete whole.
Nothing was distributed over time,
nothing could be measured by temporal
concepts. The experience might best be
defined as a state of feeling, but one
which cannot be produced by imagination.
How can I imagine that I exist
simultaneously the day before yesterday,
today, and the day after tomorrow? There
would be things which would not yet have
begun, other things which would be
indubitably present, and others again
which would already be finished and yet
all this would be one. The only thing
that feeling could grasp would be a sum,
an iridescent whole, containing all at
once expectation of a beginning,
surprise at what is now happening, and
satisfaction or disappointment with the
result of what has happened. One is
interwoven into an indescribable whole
and yet observes it with complete
objectivity.
I experienced this
objectivity once again later on. That
was after the death of my wife. I saw
her in a dream which was like a vision.
She stood at some distance from me,
looking at me squarely. She was in her
prime, perhaps about thirty, and wearing
the dress which had been made for her
many years before by my cousin the
medium. It was perhaps the most
beautiful thing she had ever worn. Her
expression was neither joyful nor sad,
but, rather, objectively wise and
understanding, without the slightest
emotional reaction, as though she were
beyond the mist of affects. I knew that
it was not she, but a portrait she had
made or commissioned for me. It
contained the beginning of our
relationship, the events of fifty-three
years of marriage, and the end of her
life also. Face to face with such
wholeness one remains speechless, for it
can scarcely be comprehended.
The
objectivity which I experienced in this
dream and in the visions is part of a
completed individuation. It signifies
detachment from valuations and from what
we call emotional ties. In general,
emotional ties are very important to
human beings. But they still contain
projections, and it is essential to
withdraw these projections in order to
attain to oneself and to objectivity.
Emotional relationships are
relationships of desire, tainted by
coercion and constraint; something is
expected from the other person, and that
makes him and ourselves unfree.
Objective cognition lies hidden behind
the attraction of the emotional
relationship; it seems to be the central
secret. Only through objective cognition
is the real coniunctio possible.
After the illness a fruitful period of
work began for me. A good many of my
principal works were written only then.
The insight I had had, or the vision of
the end of all things, gave me the
courage to undertake new formulations. I
no longer attempted to put across my own
opinion, but surrendered myself to the
current of my thoughts. Thus one problem
after the other revealed itself to me
and took shape.
Something else,
too, came to me from my illness. I might
formulate it as an affirmation of things
as they are: an unconditional "yes" to
that which is, without subjective
protests acceptance of the conditions of
existence as I see them and understand
them, acceptance of my own nature, as I
happen to be. At the beginning of the
illness I had the feeling that there was
something wrong with my attitude, and
that I was to some extent responsible
for the mishap. But when one follows the
path of individuation, when one lives
one’s own life, one must take mistakes
into the bargain; life would not be
complete without them. There is no
guarantee not for a single moment that
we will not fall into error or stumble
into deadly peril. We may think there is
a sure road. But that would be the road
of death. Then nothing happens any
longer at any rate, not the right
things. Anyone who takes the sure road
is as good as dead.
It was only
after the illness that I understood how
important it is to affirm one’s own
destiny. In this way we forge an ego
that does not break down when
incomprehensible things happen; an ego
that endures, that endures the truth,
and that is capable of coping with the
world and with fate. Then, to experience
defeat is also to experience victory.
Nothing is disturbed neither inwardly
nor outwardly, for one’s own continuity
has withstood the current of life and of
time. But that can come to pass only
when one does not meddle inquisitively
with the workings of fate.
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.
Commentary on
Jung's NDE
Carl Jung’s
experience is a typical transcendental
NDE which shares many characteristics
with multitudes of other NDEs such as
experiencing: (1) an ultra-real and
ultra-vivid realm which is impossible to
forget, (2)
multiple realms of existence, (3)
the
Void, (4)
observations of the Earth from outer s:
pace, (5) a
heavenly temple, (6) an
encounter with the Light, (7) an
encounter with Jesus during his
experience of the Marriage Supper of the
Lamb, (8)
lessons concerning the human ego,
(9) a
timeless realm, (10)
heavenly music, (11)
feelings of intense peace and ecstasy,
(12) the
receiving of higher knowledge, (13)
mental telepathy, (14) a
life review, (15) an
understanding of the mechanics of
reincarnation, (16) meeting the
"primal form" (i.e. higher self) of
people still living on Earth, (17)
visions of the future, and (18) an
inability to adequately describe the
experience.
Jung’s experience is
remarkably similar to Dr. Eben Alexander
III, a neurosurgeon whose near-death
experience is profiled in his book, "Proof
of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into
the Afterlife." As Jung
reflected on life after death, he
recalled the meditating Hindu from his
near-death experience and interpreted it as a
parable of the archetypal Higher Self,
the God-image within. No matter what
you call it, a higher self within or
God ... once touched, it does lead to
insights and the belief that something
lies just beyond our realm here on
Earth.
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