Jung and NDE

[Roger]

In 1944 Jung had a very serious heart infarct, and during that time he had visions. In one of his letters, he wrote (quoted here in part) " As you know, the angel of death has struck me down too and almost succeeded in wiping me off the slate....On the whole, my illness proved a most valuable experience, which gave me the inestimable opportunity of a glimpse behind the veil. The only difficulty is to get rid of the body, to get quite naked and void of the world and the ego-will. When you can give up the crazy will to live and when you seemingly fall into a bottomless mist, then the truly REAL life begins with everything you were meant to be and never reached. It is something ineffably grand. I was free,completely free and whole, as I never felt before. I found myself 15,000km from the earth, and saw an immense globe resplendent in an inexpressibly beautiful blue light.....I was in the universe where there was a solitary big rock containing a temple. I saw its entrance illuminated by a thousand small flames of coconut oil. I knew I was about to enter the temple and I would reach full knowledge. But at this moment a messenger from the world, which by then was a very insignificant corner of the universe, arrived and said I was not allowed to depart, and the whole vision collapsed completely But from then on for three weeks I slept, and was wakeful each night and experienced the complete vision. Not I was united with somebody or something, IT was united, it was the mystic hierosgamos, the mystic marriage. It was a silent invisible festival permeated by an incomparable, indescribable feeling of eternal bliss, such as I could never have imagined as being within reach of human experience. Death is the hardest thing from the outside and as long as we are outside of it. But once inside, you taste of such comleteness and peace and fulfillment that you do not want to return. As a matter ofact, during the first month after my first vision I suffered from black depressions because I felt I was recovering. It was like dying. I did not want to return to this fragmentary, restricted, narro, almost mechanical life where you were subject to the laws of gravity and conhesion, imprisoned in a system of 3 dimensions and whirled along with other bodies in the rubulent stream of time. There was fulness, meaning fulfillment , eternal movement, not movement in time. ....Whatever you do, if you do it sincerely, will eventually become the bridge to your wholeness, a good ship that carries you through the darkness of your second birth, which seems to be death from the outside".

[SM Kovalinsky]

Roger: Thanks for posting this! I read this account of Jung's in Memories, Dreams, Reflections some years ago. Much daemonic stuff there, too. Again, thanks!

[Roger]

S M Kovalinsky

Thanks for your reply about Jung and his NDE experiences. "Memories, Dreams, Refletions" remains a fascinating "autobiography", though actually Aniela Jaffe's work, but unfortunately was "auntified" (Jung's own term he was dead against such censorhip), so the original manuscript remains unpublished. The recent publication of his Red Book with its amazing paintings is the best source for his daemonic encounters. Enough material there to convince orthodoxies he was crazy!