Aging & Dying; Metaphors
The Boundless Expanse
There is no loneliness, but all-ness or infinitely increasing completeness.
Such dreams occur at the gateway of death.
They interpret the mystery of death.
They don't predict it but they show you the right way to approach the end.
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 145-146
Such dreams occur at the gateway of death.
They interpret the mystery of death.
They don't predict it but they show you the right way to approach the end.
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 145-146
This spectacle of old age would be unendurable did we not know that our psyche reaches into a region held captive neither by change in time nor by limitation of place.
In that form of being our birth is a death and our death a birth.
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 568.
From the middle of life, only he who is willing to die with life remains living. Since what takes place in the secret hour of life's midday is the reversal of the parabola, the birth of death ... ~Carl Jung; Soul and death, CW 8, §800.
From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life. ~Carl Jung; CW 8; Para 800.
Unfortunately I know far too little of X.'s personal life to presume to an opinion, but with young people one must always be careful in this respect, because the demands of instinct are only too easily covered up by deceptive spiritual interests. …I would conjecture that this is so because middle life has set in too early in consequence of a relatively short life expectancy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 169.
You must be in the middle of life, surrounded by death on all sides. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 370.
Life is an energetic process like any other. But every energetic process is in principle irreversible and therefore unequivocally directed toward a goal, and the goal is the state of rest ... From the middle of life, only he who is willing to die with life remains living. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 75.
I'm inclined to believe that something of the human soul remains after death, since already in this conscious life we have evidence that the psyche exists in a relative space and in a relative time, that is in a relatively non-extended and eternal state. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 29-30.
It isn't possible to kill part of your "self" unless you kill yourself first. If you ruin your conscious personality, the so-called ego-personality, you deprive the self of its real goal, namely to become real itself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 25-26.
The spectacle of eternal Nature gives me a painful sense of my weakness and perishability, and I find no joy in imagining an equanimity in conspectu mortis. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 119.
In that form of being our birth is a death and our death a birth.
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 568.
From the middle of life, only he who is willing to die with life remains living. Since what takes place in the secret hour of life's midday is the reversal of the parabola, the birth of death ... ~Carl Jung; Soul and death, CW 8, §800.
From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life. ~Carl Jung; CW 8; Para 800.
Unfortunately I know far too little of X.'s personal life to presume to an opinion, but with young people one must always be careful in this respect, because the demands of instinct are only too easily covered up by deceptive spiritual interests. …I would conjecture that this is so because middle life has set in too early in consequence of a relatively short life expectancy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 169.
You must be in the middle of life, surrounded by death on all sides. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 370.
Life is an energetic process like any other. But every energetic process is in principle irreversible and therefore unequivocally directed toward a goal, and the goal is the state of rest ... From the middle of life, only he who is willing to die with life remains living. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 75.
I'm inclined to believe that something of the human soul remains after death, since already in this conscious life we have evidence that the psyche exists in a relative space and in a relative time, that is in a relatively non-extended and eternal state. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 29-30.
It isn't possible to kill part of your "self" unless you kill yourself first. If you ruin your conscious personality, the so-called ego-personality, you deprive the self of its real goal, namely to become real itself. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 25-26.
The spectacle of eternal Nature gives me a painful sense of my weakness and perishability, and I find no joy in imagining an equanimity in conspectu mortis. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 119.
Carl Jung on Death
“We are so convinced that death is simply the end of a process that it does not ordinarily occur to us to conceive of death as a goal and a fulfillment.”
“It would seem to be more in accord with the collective psyche of humanity to regard death as the fulfillment of life’s meaning and as its goal in the truest sense, instead of a meaningless cessation.”
“Death is the hardest thing from the outside and as long as we are outside of it. But once inside you taste of such completeness and peace and fulfillment that you don’t want to return.”
“…death appears as a joyful event. In light of eternity, it is a wedding…The soul attains, as it were, its missing half, it achieves wholeness.
“What happens after death is so unspeakably glorious that our imagination and our feelings ado not suffice to form even an approximate conception of it.”
"Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose."
"We need the coldness of death to see clearly. Life wants to live and to die, to begin and to end. You are not forced to live eternally; but you can also die, since there is a will in you for both. Life and death must strike a balance in your existence. Today's men need a large slice of death, since too much incorrectness lives in them, and too much correctness died in them. What stays in balance is correct, what disturbs balance is incorrect. But if balance has been attained, then that which preserves it is incorrect and that which disturbs it is correct. Balance is at once life and death. For the completion of life a balance with death is fitting. If I accept death, then my tree greens, since dying increases life. If I plunge into the death encompassing the world, then my buds break open. How much our life needs death!"
"Joy at the smallest things comes to you only when you have accepted death. But if you look out greedily for all that you could still live, then nothing is great enough for your pleasure, and the smallest things that continue to surround you are no longer a joy. Therefore I behold death, since it teaches me how to live. If you accept death, it is altogether like a frosty night and an anxious misgiving, but a frosty night in a vineyard full of sweet grapes. You will soon take pleasure in your wealth. Death ripens. One needs death to be able to harvest the fruit. Without death, life would be meaningless, since the long-lasting rises again and denies its own meaning. To be, and to enjoy your being, you need death, and limitation enables you to fulfill your being."
The maximum awareness which has been attained anywhere forms, so it seems to me, the upper limit of knowledge to which the dead can attain. That is probably why earthly life is of such great significance, and why it is that what a human being "brings over" at the time of his death is so important.
Only here, in life on earth, where the opposites clash together, can the general level of consciousness be raised. That seems to be man's metaphysical task which he cannot accomplish without "mythologizing."
Myth is the natural and indispensable intermediate stage between unconscious and conscious cognition. True, the unconscious knows more than consciousness does; but it is knowledge of a special sort, knowledge in eternity, usually without reference to the here and now, not couched in language of the intellect.
Only when we let its statements amplify themselves, as has been shown above by the example of numerals, does it come within the range of our understanding; only then does a new aspect become perceptible to us.
This process is convincingly repeated in every successful dream analysis. That is why it is so important not to have any preconceived, doctrinaire opinions about the statements made by dreams. As soon as a certain "monotony of interpretation" strikes us, we know that our approach has become doctrinaire and hence sterile.
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, Pages 311-312.
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.
The spiritual climax is reached at the moment when life ends. Human life, therefore, is the vehicle of the highest perfection it is possible to attain; it alone generates the karma that makes it possible for the dead man to abide in the perpetual light of the Voidness without clinging to any object, and thus to rest on the hub of the wheel of rebirth, freed from all illusion of genesis and decay. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion, Page 524-525, Para 856.
“We are so convinced that death is simply the end of a process that it does not ordinarily occur to us to conceive of death as a goal and a fulfillment.”
“It would seem to be more in accord with the collective psyche of humanity to regard death as the fulfillment of life’s meaning and as its goal in the truest sense, instead of a meaningless cessation.”
“Death is the hardest thing from the outside and as long as we are outside of it. But once inside you taste of such completeness and peace and fulfillment that you don’t want to return.”
“…death appears as a joyful event. In light of eternity, it is a wedding…The soul attains, as it were, its missing half, it achieves wholeness.
“What happens after death is so unspeakably glorious that our imagination and our feelings ado not suffice to form even an approximate conception of it.”
"Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose."
"We need the coldness of death to see clearly. Life wants to live and to die, to begin and to end. You are not forced to live eternally; but you can also die, since there is a will in you for both. Life and death must strike a balance in your existence. Today's men need a large slice of death, since too much incorrectness lives in them, and too much correctness died in them. What stays in balance is correct, what disturbs balance is incorrect. But if balance has been attained, then that which preserves it is incorrect and that which disturbs it is correct. Balance is at once life and death. For the completion of life a balance with death is fitting. If I accept death, then my tree greens, since dying increases life. If I plunge into the death encompassing the world, then my buds break open. How much our life needs death!"
"Joy at the smallest things comes to you only when you have accepted death. But if you look out greedily for all that you could still live, then nothing is great enough for your pleasure, and the smallest things that continue to surround you are no longer a joy. Therefore I behold death, since it teaches me how to live. If you accept death, it is altogether like a frosty night and an anxious misgiving, but a frosty night in a vineyard full of sweet grapes. You will soon take pleasure in your wealth. Death ripens. One needs death to be able to harvest the fruit. Without death, life would be meaningless, since the long-lasting rises again and denies its own meaning. To be, and to enjoy your being, you need death, and limitation enables you to fulfill your being."
The maximum awareness which has been attained anywhere forms, so it seems to me, the upper limit of knowledge to which the dead can attain. That is probably why earthly life is of such great significance, and why it is that what a human being "brings over" at the time of his death is so important.
Only here, in life on earth, where the opposites clash together, can the general level of consciousness be raised. That seems to be man's metaphysical task which he cannot accomplish without "mythologizing."
Myth is the natural and indispensable intermediate stage between unconscious and conscious cognition. True, the unconscious knows more than consciousness does; but it is knowledge of a special sort, knowledge in eternity, usually without reference to the here and now, not couched in language of the intellect.
Only when we let its statements amplify themselves, as has been shown above by the example of numerals, does it come within the range of our understanding; only then does a new aspect become perceptible to us.
This process is convincingly repeated in every successful dream analysis. That is why it is so important not to have any preconceived, doctrinaire opinions about the statements made by dreams. As soon as a certain "monotony of interpretation" strikes us, we know that our approach has become doctrinaire and hence sterile.
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, Pages 311-312.
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.
The spiritual climax is reached at the moment when life ends. Human life, therefore, is the vehicle of the highest perfection it is possible to attain; it alone generates the karma that makes it possible for the dead man to abide in the perpetual light of the Voidness without clinging to any object, and thus to rest on the hub of the wheel of rebirth, freed from all illusion of genesis and decay. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion, Page 524-525, Para 856.
Józef Simmler's oil painting "Śmierć Barbary Radziwiłłówny" from 1860. It shows the moment of death of Barbara Radziwiłł, second wife of Polish King Sigismund II Augustus.
Inner development can advance enormously if there is knowledge of the nearness of the end. It seems as if a further step in consciousness has to be reached before the end of life.
~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 16.
'I was smelling flowers in the yard, and when I stood up I took a deep breath and the blood all rushed to my brain and I woke up on my back in the grass. I had apparently fainted, or died, for about sixty seconds. During that timeless moment of unconsciousness I saw the golden eternity. I saw heaven. It was perfect, the golden solitude, the golden emptiness, Something-Or- Other, something surely humble. There was a rapturous ring of silence abiding. There was no question of being alive or not being alive, of likes and dislikes, of near or far, no question of giving or gratitude, no question of mercy or judgment, or of suffering or its opposite or anything. It was the womb itself..infinite completion, the joyful mysterious essence of Arrangement. It seemed like one smiling smile, one adorable adoration, one gracious and adorable charity, everlasting safety, roses, infinite brilliant immaterial gold ash, the Golden Age. The "golden" came from the sun in my eyelids, and the "eternity" from my sudden instant realization as I woke up that I had just been where it all came from and where it was all returning, the everlasting So, and so never coming or going; therefore I call it the golden eternity but you can call it anything you want. As I regained consciousness I felt so sorry I had a body and a mind suddenly realizing I didn't even have a body and a mind and nothing had ever happened and everything is alright forever and forever and forever, O thank you thank you thank you.' - Jack Kerouac
It seems that the unconscious is interested how one dies,
that is whether the attitude of consciousness is adjusted to dying or not.
The urge, so often seen in those who are dying to set to rights whatever is
still wrong, might point to the same direction. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 223.
Often people come for analysis who wish to be prepared to meet death. They can make astonishingly good progress in a short time and then die peacefully.
~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page16.
A man who has no more fear is on the brink of the abyss. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 398-400.
Through comprehending the dark, the nocturnal, the abyssal in you, you become utterly simple. And you prepare to sleep through the millennia like everyone else, and you sleep down into the womb of the millennia, and your walls resound with ancient temple chants. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 267.
Carl Jung; The Red Book and The Dead:
1. Jung's critical task in "working over" his fantasies was to differentiate the voices and characters.
For example, in the Black Books, it is Jung's "I" who speaks the Sermones to the dead. In Scrutinies, it is not Jung's "I" but Philemon who speaks them.
In the Black Books, the main figure with whom Jung has dialogues is his soul. In some sections of Liber Novus, this is changed to the serpent and the bird. In one conversation in January 1916, his soul explained to him that when the Above and Below are not united, she falls into three parts-a serpent, the human soul, and the bird or heavenly soul, which visits the Gods.
Thus Jung's revision here can be seen to reflect his understanding of the tripartite nature of his soul. ~Red Book, Introduction
2. I: "But I do not belong to the dead. I live in the light of day: Why should I torment myself here with Salome? Do I not have enough of my own life to deal with?" ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
When the time has come and you open the door to the dead, your horrors will also afflict your brother, for your countenance proclaims the disaster. Hence withdraw and enter solitude, since no one can give you counsel if you wrestle with the dead. Do not
cry for help if the dead surround you, otherwise the living will take flight, and they are your only bridge to the day. Live the life of the day and do not speak of mysteries, but dedicate the night to bringing about the salvation of the dead. ~Carl Jung; Red Book
3. Then turn to the dead listen to their lament and accept them with love. Be not their blind spokesman / there are prophets who in the end have stoned themselves. But we seek salvation and hence we need to revere what has become and to accept the dead, who have fluttered through the air and lived like bats under our roofs since time immemorial. The new will be built on the old and the meaning of what has become will become manifold. Your poverty in what has become you will thus deliver into the wealth of the future ~Carl Jung; Red Book
4. In Book II of the Odyssey, Odysseus makes a libation to the dead to enable them to speak. Walter Burkert notes: "The dead drink the pourings and indeed the blood they
are invited to come to the banquet, to the satiation with blood; as the libations seep into the earth, so the dead will send good things up above"
Jung had used this motif in a metaphorical sense in 1912 in Transformations and Symbols of the Libido: "like Odysseus, I have sought to allow this shade [Miss Frank Miller] to drink only as much so as to make it speak so it can give away some of the secrets of the underworld" ~Red Book, Footnote #223.
5. On the significance of the Sermones that follow; Jung said to Aniela Jaffe that the discussions with the dead formed the prelude to what he would subsequently communicate to the world, and that their content anticipated his later books. "From that time on, the dead have become ever more distinct for me as the voices of the unanswered, unresolved and unredeemed." The questions he was required to answer did not come from the world around him, but from the dead. One element that astonished him was the fact that the dead appeared to know no more than they did when they died. One would have assumed that they had attained greater knowledge since death. This explained the tendency of the dead to encroach upon life, and why in China important family events have to be reported to the ancestors. He felt that the dead were waiting for the answers of the living (MP, pp. 258-9; Memories, p. 217). See note 134 (p. 243), above, concerning Christ's preaching to the dead in Hell. ~Red Book; Footnote 78.
6. I teach this God to the dead since they desired entry and teaching. But I do not teach him to living men since they did not desire my teaching. Why; indeed, should I teach them? Therefore, I take away from them no kindly hearer of prayers, their father in Heaven. What concern is my foolishness to the living? The dead need salvation, since they are a great waiting flock hovering over their graves, and long for the knowledge that belief and the rejection of belief have breathed their last. But whoever has fallen ill and is near death wants knowledge, and he sacrifices pardon." ~Philemon; Red Book.
7 I could not grasp what else Diahmon said. I spent a long time pondering his words, which evidently he had spoken to the dead, and I was horrified by the atrocities that attend the rebirth of a God. ~Carl Jung; Red Book
http://carljungdepthpsychology.blogspot.com/2013/04/carl-jung-red-book-and-dead.html
Inner development can advance enormously if there is knowledge of the nearness of the end. It seems as if a further step in consciousness has to be reached before the end of life.
~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 16.
'I was smelling flowers in the yard, and when I stood up I took a deep breath and the blood all rushed to my brain and I woke up on my back in the grass. I had apparently fainted, or died, for about sixty seconds. During that timeless moment of unconsciousness I saw the golden eternity. I saw heaven. It was perfect, the golden solitude, the golden emptiness, Something-Or- Other, something surely humble. There was a rapturous ring of silence abiding. There was no question of being alive or not being alive, of likes and dislikes, of near or far, no question of giving or gratitude, no question of mercy or judgment, or of suffering or its opposite or anything. It was the womb itself..infinite completion, the joyful mysterious essence of Arrangement. It seemed like one smiling smile, one adorable adoration, one gracious and adorable charity, everlasting safety, roses, infinite brilliant immaterial gold ash, the Golden Age. The "golden" came from the sun in my eyelids, and the "eternity" from my sudden instant realization as I woke up that I had just been where it all came from and where it was all returning, the everlasting So, and so never coming or going; therefore I call it the golden eternity but you can call it anything you want. As I regained consciousness I felt so sorry I had a body and a mind suddenly realizing I didn't even have a body and a mind and nothing had ever happened and everything is alright forever and forever and forever, O thank you thank you thank you.' - Jack Kerouac
It seems that the unconscious is interested how one dies,
that is whether the attitude of consciousness is adjusted to dying or not.
The urge, so often seen in those who are dying to set to rights whatever is
still wrong, might point to the same direction. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 223.
Often people come for analysis who wish to be prepared to meet death. They can make astonishingly good progress in a short time and then die peacefully.
~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page16.
A man who has no more fear is on the brink of the abyss. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 398-400.
Through comprehending the dark, the nocturnal, the abyssal in you, you become utterly simple. And you prepare to sleep through the millennia like everyone else, and you sleep down into the womb of the millennia, and your walls resound with ancient temple chants. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 267.
Carl Jung; The Red Book and The Dead:
1. Jung's critical task in "working over" his fantasies was to differentiate the voices and characters.
For example, in the Black Books, it is Jung's "I" who speaks the Sermones to the dead. In Scrutinies, it is not Jung's "I" but Philemon who speaks them.
In the Black Books, the main figure with whom Jung has dialogues is his soul. In some sections of Liber Novus, this is changed to the serpent and the bird. In one conversation in January 1916, his soul explained to him that when the Above and Below are not united, she falls into three parts-a serpent, the human soul, and the bird or heavenly soul, which visits the Gods.
Thus Jung's revision here can be seen to reflect his understanding of the tripartite nature of his soul. ~Red Book, Introduction
2. I: "But I do not belong to the dead. I live in the light of day: Why should I torment myself here with Salome? Do I not have enough of my own life to deal with?" ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
When the time has come and you open the door to the dead, your horrors will also afflict your brother, for your countenance proclaims the disaster. Hence withdraw and enter solitude, since no one can give you counsel if you wrestle with the dead. Do not
cry for help if the dead surround you, otherwise the living will take flight, and they are your only bridge to the day. Live the life of the day and do not speak of mysteries, but dedicate the night to bringing about the salvation of the dead. ~Carl Jung; Red Book
3. Then turn to the dead listen to their lament and accept them with love. Be not their blind spokesman / there are prophets who in the end have stoned themselves. But we seek salvation and hence we need to revere what has become and to accept the dead, who have fluttered through the air and lived like bats under our roofs since time immemorial. The new will be built on the old and the meaning of what has become will become manifold. Your poverty in what has become you will thus deliver into the wealth of the future ~Carl Jung; Red Book
4. In Book II of the Odyssey, Odysseus makes a libation to the dead to enable them to speak. Walter Burkert notes: "The dead drink the pourings and indeed the blood they
are invited to come to the banquet, to the satiation with blood; as the libations seep into the earth, so the dead will send good things up above"
Jung had used this motif in a metaphorical sense in 1912 in Transformations and Symbols of the Libido: "like Odysseus, I have sought to allow this shade [Miss Frank Miller] to drink only as much so as to make it speak so it can give away some of the secrets of the underworld" ~Red Book, Footnote #223.
5. On the significance of the Sermones that follow; Jung said to Aniela Jaffe that the discussions with the dead formed the prelude to what he would subsequently communicate to the world, and that their content anticipated his later books. "From that time on, the dead have become ever more distinct for me as the voices of the unanswered, unresolved and unredeemed." The questions he was required to answer did not come from the world around him, but from the dead. One element that astonished him was the fact that the dead appeared to know no more than they did when they died. One would have assumed that they had attained greater knowledge since death. This explained the tendency of the dead to encroach upon life, and why in China important family events have to be reported to the ancestors. He felt that the dead were waiting for the answers of the living (MP, pp. 258-9; Memories, p. 217). See note 134 (p. 243), above, concerning Christ's preaching to the dead in Hell. ~Red Book; Footnote 78.
6. I teach this God to the dead since they desired entry and teaching. But I do not teach him to living men since they did not desire my teaching. Why; indeed, should I teach them? Therefore, I take away from them no kindly hearer of prayers, their father in Heaven. What concern is my foolishness to the living? The dead need salvation, since they are a great waiting flock hovering over their graves, and long for the knowledge that belief and the rejection of belief have breathed their last. But whoever has fallen ill and is near death wants knowledge, and he sacrifices pardon." ~Philemon; Red Book.
7 I could not grasp what else Diahmon said. I spent a long time pondering his words, which evidently he had spoken to the dead, and I was horrified by the atrocities that attend the rebirth of a God. ~Carl Jung; Red Book
http://carljungdepthpsychology.blogspot.com/2013/04/carl-jung-red-book-and-dead.html
http://www.robertoferri.net/
Hillman says that the human soul is “led to a knowledge of itself through . . . death . . . . By beginning with the symptom . . . pathologizing turns the entire psyche upon a new pivot: death becomes the center, and with it fantasies that lead right out of life” (p. 111). He goes on to assert that soul-making is founded upon suffering and death, making it clear that new psycho-spiritual experiences of reality require a psychological dying:
Only when things fall apart do they open up into new meanings; only when an everyday habit turns symptomatic, a natural function becomes an affliction, or the physical body appears in dreams as a pathologized image, does a new significance dawn. . . . an archetypal psychology can never leave its base in pathography. . . . Having forced the reality of the imaginal upon one, pathologizing leaves one marked by its imprint. A piece of the person has been struck by the Gods and drawn into a myth and now cannot let go of its mad requirements (p. 111-12, italics mine).
Hillman emphasizes the role of Psyche as the “enforcer”—one is “struck by the Gods.”
- See more at: http://www.depthinsights.com/Depth-Insights-scholarly-ezine/e-zine-issue-5-fall-2013/fana-and-pathologizing-sufi-ego-annihilation-and-james-hillmans-idea-of-the-suffering-soul-by-michael-bogar/#sthash.XwfoVx4h.dpuf
The spirit of the depths is pregnant with ice, fire, and death. You are right to fear the spirit of the depths, as he is full of horror. You see in these days what the spirit of the depths bore. You did not believe it, but you would have known it if you had taken counsel with your fear. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 238.
Only when things fall apart do they open up into new meanings; only when an everyday habit turns symptomatic, a natural function becomes an affliction, or the physical body appears in dreams as a pathologized image, does a new significance dawn. . . . an archetypal psychology can never leave its base in pathography. . . . Having forced the reality of the imaginal upon one, pathologizing leaves one marked by its imprint. A piece of the person has been struck by the Gods and drawn into a myth and now cannot let go of its mad requirements (p. 111-12, italics mine).
Hillman emphasizes the role of Psyche as the “enforcer”—one is “struck by the Gods.”
- See more at: http://www.depthinsights.com/Depth-Insights-scholarly-ezine/e-zine-issue-5-fall-2013/fana-and-pathologizing-sufi-ego-annihilation-and-james-hillmans-idea-of-the-suffering-soul-by-michael-bogar/#sthash.XwfoVx4h.dpuf
The spirit of the depths is pregnant with ice, fire, and death. You are right to fear the spirit of the depths, as he is full of horror. You see in these days what the spirit of the depths bore. You did not believe it, but you would have known it if you had taken counsel with your fear. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 238.
Antoine Bourdelle -
Turning and Swinging in the Wind, the Wedding of the Corpses, the Dance of the Hanged (ca.1885)
Great is the need of the dead. But the God needs no sacrificial prayer. He has neither goodwill nor ill will. He is kind and fearful, though not actually so, but only seems to you thus. But the dead hear your prayers since they are still of human nature and not free of goodwill and ill will. ~Unknown woman to Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 339
Turning and Swinging in the Wind, the Wedding of the Corpses, the Dance of the Hanged (ca.1885)
Great is the need of the dead. But the God needs no sacrificial prayer. He has neither goodwill nor ill will. He is kind and fearful, though not actually so, but only seems to you thus. But the dead hear your prayers since they are still of human nature and not free of goodwill and ill will. ~Unknown woman to Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 339
Ghosts in the Pleroma by Iona Miller
You may call me death-death that rose with the sun. I come with quiet pain and long peace. I lay the cover of protection on you. In the midst of life begins death. I lay cover upon cover upon you so that your warmth will never cease. ~A Dark Form to Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 355.
Loss means losing what was We want to change but we don't want to lose. Without time for loss, we don't have time for soul. --James Hillman
To interrupt life before its time is to bring to a standstill an experiment
which we have not set up. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 434.
I was grieved for him.
Now he has vanished and stepped outside time, as all of us will do after him.
Life, so-called, is a short episode between two great mysteries, which yet are one.
I cannot mourn the dead.
They endure, but we pass over.
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 485.
As a doctor I am convinced that it is hygienic—if I may use the word—to discover in death a goal towards which one can strive, and that shrinking away from it is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose. ~Jung, CW 8, 399-403.
I saw how we live toward death, how the swaying golden wheat sinks together under the scythe of the reaper, / like a smooth wave on the sea-beach. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 268.
But if you know what the dead demand, temptation will become the wellspring of your best work, indeed of the work of salvation. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 278, Footnote 188.
But if you know what the dead demand, temptation will become the wellspring of your best work, indeed of the work of salvation. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 278, Footnote 188.
In this bloody battle death steps up to you, just like today where mass killing and dying: fill the world. The coldness of death penetrates you. When I froze to death in my solitude, I saw dearly and saw what was to come, as clearly as I could see the stars and the distant mountains on a frosty night. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 73.
Life is an energetic process like any other. But every energetic process is in principle irreversible and therefore unequivocally directed toward a goal, and the goal is the state of rest ... From the middle of life, only he who is willing to die with life remains living.
~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 75.
Since what takes place in the secret hour of life's midday is the reversal of the parabola, the birth of death …Not wanting to live is identical with not wanting to die. Becoming and passing away is the same curve. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 75.
Loss means losing what was We want to change but we don't want to lose. Without time for loss, we don't have time for soul. --James Hillman
To interrupt life before its time is to bring to a standstill an experiment
which we have not set up. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 434.
I was grieved for him.
Now he has vanished and stepped outside time, as all of us will do after him.
Life, so-called, is a short episode between two great mysteries, which yet are one.
I cannot mourn the dead.
They endure, but we pass over.
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 485.
As a doctor I am convinced that it is hygienic—if I may use the word—to discover in death a goal towards which one can strive, and that shrinking away from it is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose. ~Jung, CW 8, 399-403.
I saw how we live toward death, how the swaying golden wheat sinks together under the scythe of the reaper, / like a smooth wave on the sea-beach. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 268.
But if you know what the dead demand, temptation will become the wellspring of your best work, indeed of the work of salvation. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 278, Footnote 188.
But if you know what the dead demand, temptation will become the wellspring of your best work, indeed of the work of salvation. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 278, Footnote 188.
In this bloody battle death steps up to you, just like today where mass killing and dying: fill the world. The coldness of death penetrates you. When I froze to death in my solitude, I saw dearly and saw what was to come, as clearly as I could see the stars and the distant mountains on a frosty night. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 73.
Life is an energetic process like any other. But every energetic process is in principle irreversible and therefore unequivocally directed toward a goal, and the goal is the state of rest ... From the middle of life, only he who is willing to die with life remains living.
~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 75.
Since what takes place in the secret hour of life's midday is the reversal of the parabola, the birth of death …Not wanting to live is identical with not wanting to die. Becoming and passing away is the same curve. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 75.
The idea of death robs inquiry of its passionate vitality and empties our efforts of their purpose by coming to one predestined conclusion, death. Why inquire if you already know the answer? --James Hillman, The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life, Pg. 29
To the psyche death is just as important as birth and, like it, is an integral part of life.
~Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 124
If viewed correctly in the psychological sense, death is not an end but a goal, and therefore life towards death begins as soon as the meridian is passed. ~Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 124.
The Chinese philosophy of yoga is based upon the fact of this instinctive preparation for death as a goal, and, following the analogy with the goal of the first half of life, namely, begetting and reproduction, the means towards perpetuation of physical life, it takes as the purpose of spiritual existence the symbolic begetting and bringing to birth of a psychic spirit body ('subtle body'), which ensures the continuity of the detached co..
If viewed correctly in the psychological sense, death is not an end but a goal, and therefore life towards death begins as soon as the meridian is passed. ~Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 124.
To the psyche death is just as important as birth and, like it, is an integral part of life.
~Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 124
If viewed correctly in the psychological sense, death is not an end but a goal, and therefore life towards death begins as soon as the meridian is passed. ~Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 124.
The Chinese philosophy of yoga is based upon the fact of this instinctive preparation for death as a goal, and, following the analogy with the goal of the first half of life, namely, begetting and reproduction, the means towards perpetuation of physical life, it takes as the purpose of spiritual existence the symbolic begetting and bringing to birth of a psychic spirit body ('subtle body'), which ensures the continuity of the detached co..
If viewed correctly in the psychological sense, death is not an end but a goal, and therefore life towards death begins as soon as the meridian is passed. ~Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 124.
A point exists at about the thirty-fifth year when things begin to change; it is the first moment of the shadow side of life, of the going down to death.
~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 223.
The analysis of older people provides a wealth of dream symbols that psychically prepare the dreams for impending death. It is in fact true, as Jung has emphasized, that the unconscious psyche pays very little attention to the abrupt end of bodily life and behaves as if the psychic life of the individual, that is, the individuation process, will simply continue. … The unconscious “believes” quite obviously in a life after death. ~Marie-Louise von Franz (1987), ix.
Death is psychologically as important as birth, and like it, is an integral part of life. ... As a doctor, I make every effort to strengthen the belief in immortality, especially with older patients when such questions come threateningly close. For, seen in correct psychological perspective, death is not an end but a goal, and life’s inclination towards death begins as soon as the meridian is passed. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para. 68.
… it would seem to be more in accord with the collective psyche of humanity to regard death as the fulfillment of life’s meaning and as its goal in the truest sense, instead of a mere meaningless cessation.
Anyone who cherishes a rationalistic opinion on this score has isolated himself psychologically and stands opposed to his own basic nature. ~Carl Jung, CWs, 8, ¶807.
To the psychotherapist an old man who cannot bid farewell to life appears as feeble and sickly as a young man who is unable to embrace it. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Pages 399-403.
Life's cessation, that is, death, can only be accepted as a reasonable goal either when existence is so wretched that we are only too glad for it to end, or when we are convinced that the sun strives to its setting "to illuminate distant races" with the same logical consistency it showed in rising to the zenith. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Pages 399-403.
A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Pages 399-403.
A child, too, enters into this sublimity, and there detaches himself from this world and his manifold individuations more quickly than the aged.
So easily does he become what you also are that he apparently vanishes.
Sooner or later all the dead become what we also are.
But in this reality we know little or nothing about that mode of being, and what shall we still know of this earth after death? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 343.
As long as it is so difficult for us to understand the secrets of an atom or of the living protoplasm, we are surely not fit to touch upon a question like that of a continuation of life beyond material visibility.
We don't even understand it when it is in matter, how could we hope to have any insight into it without matter? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 241-242.
Evil is one-half of the world, one of the two pans of the scale. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 72.
In this bloody battle death steps up to you, just like today where mass killing and dying: fill the world. The coldness of death penetrates you.
When I froze to death in my solitude, I saw dearly and saw what was to come, as clearly as I could see the stars and the distant mountains on a frosty night". ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 73.
To live what is right and to let what is false die, that is the art of life. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 75.
Life is an energetic process like any other. But every energetic process is in principle irreversible and therefore unequivocally directed toward a goal, and the goal is the state of rest ...
From the middle of life, only he who is willing to die with life remains living. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 75.
Since what takes place in the secret hour of life's midday is the reversal of the parabola, the birth of death . .. Not wanting to live is identical with not wanting to die. Becoming and passing away is the same curve. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 75.
The Chinese philosophy of yoga is based upon the fact of this instinctive preparation for death as a goal, and, following the analogy with the goal of the first half of life, namely, begetting and reproduction, the means towards perpetuation of physical life, it takes as the purpose of spiritual existence the symbolic begetting and bringing to birth of a psychic spirit body ('subtle body'), which ensures the continuity of the detached consciousness.
~Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 124.
The fact that the animus and the anima part after death and go their ways independently shows that, for the Chinese consciousness, they are distinguishable psychic factors which have markedly different effects, and, despite the fact that originally they are united in 'the one effective, true human nature', in the 'house of the Creative,' they are two.
~Carl Jung, Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 114.
'Anima', called p'o, and written with the characters for 'white' and for 'demon', that is, 'white ghost', belongs to the lower, earth-bound, bodily soul, the yin principle, and is therefore feminine. After death, it sinks downward and becomes kuei (demon), often explained as the 'one who returns' (i.e. to earth), a revenant, a ghost. ~Carl Jung, Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 114.
Human nature [hsing] and consciousness [hui] are expressed in light symbolism, and are therefore intensity, while life [ming] would coincide with extensity. The first have the character of the yang principle, the latter of the yin. ~Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 101.
~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 223.
The analysis of older people provides a wealth of dream symbols that psychically prepare the dreams for impending death. It is in fact true, as Jung has emphasized, that the unconscious psyche pays very little attention to the abrupt end of bodily life and behaves as if the psychic life of the individual, that is, the individuation process, will simply continue. … The unconscious “believes” quite obviously in a life after death. ~Marie-Louise von Franz (1987), ix.
Death is psychologically as important as birth, and like it, is an integral part of life. ... As a doctor, I make every effort to strengthen the belief in immortality, especially with older patients when such questions come threateningly close. For, seen in correct psychological perspective, death is not an end but a goal, and life’s inclination towards death begins as soon as the meridian is passed. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para. 68.
… it would seem to be more in accord with the collective psyche of humanity to regard death as the fulfillment of life’s meaning and as its goal in the truest sense, instead of a mere meaningless cessation.
Anyone who cherishes a rationalistic opinion on this score has isolated himself psychologically and stands opposed to his own basic nature. ~Carl Jung, CWs, 8, ¶807.
To the psychotherapist an old man who cannot bid farewell to life appears as feeble and sickly as a young man who is unable to embrace it. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Pages 399-403.
Life's cessation, that is, death, can only be accepted as a reasonable goal either when existence is so wretched that we are only too glad for it to end, or when we are convinced that the sun strives to its setting "to illuminate distant races" with the same logical consistency it showed in rising to the zenith. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Pages 399-403.
A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Pages 399-403.
A child, too, enters into this sublimity, and there detaches himself from this world and his manifold individuations more quickly than the aged.
So easily does he become what you also are that he apparently vanishes.
Sooner or later all the dead become what we also are.
But in this reality we know little or nothing about that mode of being, and what shall we still know of this earth after death? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 343.
As long as it is so difficult for us to understand the secrets of an atom or of the living protoplasm, we are surely not fit to touch upon a question like that of a continuation of life beyond material visibility.
We don't even understand it when it is in matter, how could we hope to have any insight into it without matter? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 241-242.
Evil is one-half of the world, one of the two pans of the scale. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 72.
In this bloody battle death steps up to you, just like today where mass killing and dying: fill the world. The coldness of death penetrates you.
When I froze to death in my solitude, I saw dearly and saw what was to come, as clearly as I could see the stars and the distant mountains on a frosty night". ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 73.
To live what is right and to let what is false die, that is the art of life. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 75.
Life is an energetic process like any other. But every energetic process is in principle irreversible and therefore unequivocally directed toward a goal, and the goal is the state of rest ...
From the middle of life, only he who is willing to die with life remains living. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 75.
Since what takes place in the secret hour of life's midday is the reversal of the parabola, the birth of death . .. Not wanting to live is identical with not wanting to die. Becoming and passing away is the same curve. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 274, Footnote 75.
The Chinese philosophy of yoga is based upon the fact of this instinctive preparation for death as a goal, and, following the analogy with the goal of the first half of life, namely, begetting and reproduction, the means towards perpetuation of physical life, it takes as the purpose of spiritual existence the symbolic begetting and bringing to birth of a psychic spirit body ('subtle body'), which ensures the continuity of the detached consciousness.
~Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 124.
The fact that the animus and the anima part after death and go their ways independently shows that, for the Chinese consciousness, they are distinguishable psychic factors which have markedly different effects, and, despite the fact that originally they are united in 'the one effective, true human nature', in the 'house of the Creative,' they are two.
~Carl Jung, Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 114.
'Anima', called p'o, and written with the characters for 'white' and for 'demon', that is, 'white ghost', belongs to the lower, earth-bound, bodily soul, the yin principle, and is therefore feminine. After death, it sinks downward and becomes kuei (demon), often explained as the 'one who returns' (i.e. to earth), a revenant, a ghost. ~Carl Jung, Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 114.
Human nature [hsing] and consciousness [hui] are expressed in light symbolism, and are therefore intensity, while life [ming] would coincide with extensity. The first have the character of the yang principle, the latter of the yin. ~Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 101.
This article explores death as a field phenomenon with accompanying reverberations that impact the kinship group of the dying person prior to death in myriad ways: as seemingly irrational concerns and fears, unplanned visits to the person, inexplicable utterances, and prescient dreams and visions. The author presents eight cases—sudden and accidental deaths, suicide, murder, near-death, and natural death in old age—and discusses the accompanying reverberations. When the archetypal energy of impending death is contained in a consciously accepted dying process, the field effects on others tend to be milder and easier to comprehend. When death occurs suddenly, its effects can be troubling and/or mystifying. Having the kinship group share experiences arising in the imagination helps make sense of them and deepens the mourning process for all. --Sabini, M. (2010). The mystery of death: Noble and knowable. ReVision, 31(1), 56-62. doi:10.4298/REVN.31.1.56-62
What youth found and must find outside, the man of life's afternoon must find within himself. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Pages 74-75.
A “complete” life does not consist in a theoretical completeness, but in the fact that one accepts, without reservation, the particular fatal tissue in which one finds oneself embedded, and that one tries to make sense of it or to create a cosmos from the chaotic mess into which one is born… ~Carl Jung; Letters Vol. 2; Page 171.
You saw that it was the life of the whole and the death of each individual.
You felt yourself entwined in the collective death, from death to the earth's deepest place, from death in your own strangely breathing depths.
Oh-you long to be beyond; despair and mortal fear seize you in this death that breathes slowly and streams back and forth eternally.
All this light and dark, warm, tepid, and cold water, all these wavy; swaying, twisting plantlike animals and bestial plants, all these nightly wonders become a horror to you, and you long for the sun,
for light dry air, for firm stones, for a fixed place and straight lines, for the motionless and firmly held, for rules and preconceived purpose, for singleness and your own intent.
The knowledge of death came to me that night, from the dying that engulfs the world.
I saw how we live toward death, how the swaying golden wheat sinks together under the scythe of the reaper, / like a smooth wave on the sea-beach.
He who abides in common life becomes aware of death with fear.
Thus the fear of death drives him toward singleness.
He does not live there, but he becomes aware of life and is happy; since in singleness he is one who becomes, and has overcome death.
He overcomes death through overcoming common life.
He does not live his individual being, since he is not what he is, but what he becomes.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 268.
What youth found and must find outside, the man of life's afternoon must find within himself. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Pages 74-75.
A “complete” life does not consist in a theoretical completeness, but in the fact that one accepts, without reservation, the particular fatal tissue in which one finds oneself embedded, and that one tries to make sense of it or to create a cosmos from the chaotic mess into which one is born… ~Carl Jung; Letters Vol. 2; Page 171.
You saw that it was the life of the whole and the death of each individual.
You felt yourself entwined in the collective death, from death to the earth's deepest place, from death in your own strangely breathing depths.
Oh-you long to be beyond; despair and mortal fear seize you in this death that breathes slowly and streams back and forth eternally.
All this light and dark, warm, tepid, and cold water, all these wavy; swaying, twisting plantlike animals and bestial plants, all these nightly wonders become a horror to you, and you long for the sun,
for light dry air, for firm stones, for a fixed place and straight lines, for the motionless and firmly held, for rules and preconceived purpose, for singleness and your own intent.
The knowledge of death came to me that night, from the dying that engulfs the world.
I saw how we live toward death, how the swaying golden wheat sinks together under the scythe of the reaper, / like a smooth wave on the sea-beach.
He who abides in common life becomes aware of death with fear.
Thus the fear of death drives him toward singleness.
He does not live there, but he becomes aware of life and is happy; since in singleness he is one who becomes, and has overcome death.
He overcomes death through overcoming common life.
He does not live his individual being, since he is not what he is, but what he becomes.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 268.
Skulls and bones stacked and arranged at the Catacombs of Paris.
These underground quarries were used to store the remains of generations of Parisians.
Death is the hardest thing from the outside and as long as we are outside of it. But once inside you taste of such completeness and peace and fulfillment that you don't want to return. ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume 1, Pages 355-357.
"I have my dead and I have let them go and was amazed to see them so contented, so at home in being dead, so cheerful, so unlike their reputation. Only you return; brush past me, loiter, try to knock against something, so that the sound reveals your presence. Oh don’t take from me what I am slowly learning. I’m sure you have gone astray if you are moved to homesickness for anything in this dimension. We transform these Things; they aren’t real, they are only the reflections upon the polished surface of our being." --Rainer Maria Rilke
in: "Requiem For a Friend," by Rainer Maria Rilke, Transl. by Stephen Mitchell, written as a tribute to his good friend, the painter Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907)
These underground quarries were used to store the remains of generations of Parisians.
Death is the hardest thing from the outside and as long as we are outside of it. But once inside you taste of such completeness and peace and fulfillment that you don't want to return. ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume 1, Pages 355-357.
"I have my dead and I have let them go and was amazed to see them so contented, so at home in being dead, so cheerful, so unlike their reputation. Only you return; brush past me, loiter, try to knock against something, so that the sound reveals your presence. Oh don’t take from me what I am slowly learning. I’m sure you have gone astray if you are moved to homesickness for anything in this dimension. We transform these Things; they aren’t real, they are only the reflections upon the polished surface of our being." --Rainer Maria Rilke
in: "Requiem For a Friend," by Rainer Maria Rilke, Transl. by Stephen Mitchell, written as a tribute to his good friend, the painter Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Dante's Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice 1871
Take pains to waken the dead.
Dig deep mines and throw in sacrificial gifts, so that they reach the dead.
Reflect in good heart upon evil, this is the way to the ascent.
But before the ascent, everything is night and Hell.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 244.
Psychology is a preparation for death. We have an urge to leave life at a higher level than the one at which we entered. ~Carl Jung; Conversations with C.G. Jung, Psychotherapy, Page 16.
But when you die, nobody else will die for you or instead of you.
It will be entirely and exclusively your own affair. That has been expected of you through your whole life, that you live it as if you were dying.
So it will happen to you as it happens to most people. They die in exactly the same ways as they should have lived.
~Carl Jung to J. Allen Gilbert, Letters Volume 1, Pages 422-423
The knowledge of death came to me that night, from the dying that engulfs the world.
I saw how we live toward death, how the swaying golden wheat sinks together under the scythe of the reaper, like a smooth wave on the sea-beach.
He who abides in common life becomes aware of death with fear. Thus the fear of death drives him toward singleness.
He does not live there, but he becomes aware of life and is happy; since in singleness he is one who becomes, and has overcome death.
He overcomes death through overcoming common life. He does not live his individual being, since he is not what he is, but what he becomes.
--Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 267.
Jung on Post-Mortem contact with the Dead
Dear Pastor Pfaffiin, 10 January 1939
First of all I would like to express my heartfelt sympathy over the heavy loss that has befallen you.
Since you wish to know what I think about such experiences, I would like to point out before anything else that there was a direct connection between the event in Africa and your consciousness.
This is an undeniable fact and in my opinion there is only one explanation, namely that spatial distance is, in the psychic sense, relative.
In other words, physical space is not under all circumstances a definite datum but under certain conditions is also a psychic function.
One might call it psychically contractile.
We must suppose that the distance between your brother's experience and your own was reduced to a minimum.
From similar experiences we must conclude that this nullification of space proceeds with great speed, so that perceptions of this kind occur almost simultaneously with the accident.
We can therefore speak of a psychic nullification of time as well.
We could also suppose that the victim of the accident sent out a kind of radio message.
But this is contradicted by the fact that occasionally details are "transmitted" which occurred only after the death-for instance, the decapitation of the body of one killed by being stabbed with a knife.
In that event there can be no question of a transmission by a dying man.
It is more probable that it is a perception by someone alive and seeing.
Hence the psychic nullification of space and time offers a much better explanation.
Accordingly the capacity to nullify space and time must somehow inhere in the psyche, or, to put it another way, the psyche does not exist wholly in time and space.
It is very probable that only what we call consciousness is contained in space and time, and that the rest of the psyche.
The unconscious, exists in a state of relative spacelessness and timelessness.
For the psyche this means a relative eternality and a relative non-separation from other psyches, or a oneness with them.
It is characteristic that your brother was amazed when you asked him whether he had sent you a message.
Obviously he had not sent a message because the relative non-existence of space and time made it unnecessary. (I have expressed similar thoughts in my essay "Seele und Tod" in Wirklichkeit der Seele.)
Now with regard to the exceedingly interesting conversation you had post mortem with your brother, it has all the characteristic features of these experiences.
For one thing, there is the peculiar preoccupation of the dead with the psychic states of other (dead) persons.
For another, the existence of (psychic) shrines or places of healing.
I have long thought that religious institutions, churches, monasteries, temples, etc. as well as rites and psychotherapeutic attempts at healing were modelled on (transcendental) postmortal psychic states-a real Ecclesia Spiritualis as the prototype of the Una Sancta upon earth.
In the East these ideas would be by no means unheard-of; Buddhist philosophy, for instance, has coined the concept of Sambhoga-Kaya for this psychic existence, namely the world of subtle forms which are to Nirmana-Kaya as the breath-body (subtle body) is to the material body.
The breath-world is thought of as an intermediate state between Nirmana-Kaya and Dharma Kaya.
In Dharma-Kaya, which symbolizes the highest state, the separation of forms is dissolved into absolute unity and formlessness.
These formulations are extremely valuable from the psychological point of view as they provide a fitting terminology for such experiences.
Naturally we can form no conception of a relatively timeless and spaceless existence, but, psychologically and empirically, it results in manifestations of the continual presence of the dead and their influence on our dream life.
I therefore follow up such experiences with the greatest attention, because they show many things we dream about in a very peculiar light, where "psychological" structures appear as existential conditions.
This continual presence is also only relative, since after a few weeks or months the connection becomes indirect or breaks off altogether, although spontaneous re-encounters also appear to be possible later.
But after this period the feeling of the presence of the dead is in fact broken off.
The connection is not without its dangers because it entangles the consciousness of the living too much in that transcendental state, resulting in unconsciousness and dissociation phenomena .
This is reflected in your dream-vision of the path leading down to a lake (the unconscious).
There is an antheap, i.e., the sympathetic nervous system (= deepest unconsciousness and danger of dissolution of psychic elements in the form of milling ants) is becoming activated .
This state takes place in you, consequently the connection is in danger of being broken, hence your brother's admonition : "Always build on the heights!" i.e., on the heights of consciousness.
"For us the depth is doom," i.e., unconsciousness is doom.
Then we get into the "clouds" where one sees nothing more.
The remarkable statement that "Someone was interested in the motor cutting out" could indicate that among the crew there was someone who, through an exteriorization effect, actually caused the motor to cut out and did so because of an unrealized suicide complex.
(I have seen quite a number of such effects in my time.)
With regard to contact with your brother, I would add that this is likely to be possible only as long as the feeling of the presence of the dead continues.
But it should not be experimented with because of the danger of a disintegration of consciousness.
To be on the safe side, one must be content with spontaneous experiences.
Experimenting with this contact regularly leads either to the so-called communications becoming more and more stupid or to a dangerous dissociation of consciousness.
All the signs indicate that your conversation with your brother is a genuine experience which cannot be "psychologized."
The only "psychological" disturbance in it is the lake and the antheap.
That was evidently the moment when, perhaps from both sides, the exceedingly difficult contact between the two forms of existence could no longer be maintained.
There are experiences which show that the dead entangle themselves, so to speak, in the physiology (sympathetic nervous system) of the living.
This would probably result in states of possession.
Again with especial thanks for your extremely interesting letter,
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung [Letters Volume 1, Pages 256-259]
Dig deep mines and throw in sacrificial gifts, so that they reach the dead.
Reflect in good heart upon evil, this is the way to the ascent.
But before the ascent, everything is night and Hell.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 244.
Psychology is a preparation for death. We have an urge to leave life at a higher level than the one at which we entered. ~Carl Jung; Conversations with C.G. Jung, Psychotherapy, Page 16.
But when you die, nobody else will die for you or instead of you.
It will be entirely and exclusively your own affair. That has been expected of you through your whole life, that you live it as if you were dying.
So it will happen to you as it happens to most people. They die in exactly the same ways as they should have lived.
~Carl Jung to J. Allen Gilbert, Letters Volume 1, Pages 422-423
The knowledge of death came to me that night, from the dying that engulfs the world.
I saw how we live toward death, how the swaying golden wheat sinks together under the scythe of the reaper, like a smooth wave on the sea-beach.
He who abides in common life becomes aware of death with fear. Thus the fear of death drives him toward singleness.
He does not live there, but he becomes aware of life and is happy; since in singleness he is one who becomes, and has overcome death.
He overcomes death through overcoming common life. He does not live his individual being, since he is not what he is, but what he becomes.
--Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 267.
Jung on Post-Mortem contact with the Dead
Dear Pastor Pfaffiin, 10 January 1939
First of all I would like to express my heartfelt sympathy over the heavy loss that has befallen you.
Since you wish to know what I think about such experiences, I would like to point out before anything else that there was a direct connection between the event in Africa and your consciousness.
This is an undeniable fact and in my opinion there is only one explanation, namely that spatial distance is, in the psychic sense, relative.
In other words, physical space is not under all circumstances a definite datum but under certain conditions is also a psychic function.
One might call it psychically contractile.
We must suppose that the distance between your brother's experience and your own was reduced to a minimum.
From similar experiences we must conclude that this nullification of space proceeds with great speed, so that perceptions of this kind occur almost simultaneously with the accident.
We can therefore speak of a psychic nullification of time as well.
We could also suppose that the victim of the accident sent out a kind of radio message.
But this is contradicted by the fact that occasionally details are "transmitted" which occurred only after the death-for instance, the decapitation of the body of one killed by being stabbed with a knife.
In that event there can be no question of a transmission by a dying man.
It is more probable that it is a perception by someone alive and seeing.
Hence the psychic nullification of space and time offers a much better explanation.
Accordingly the capacity to nullify space and time must somehow inhere in the psyche, or, to put it another way, the psyche does not exist wholly in time and space.
It is very probable that only what we call consciousness is contained in space and time, and that the rest of the psyche.
The unconscious, exists in a state of relative spacelessness and timelessness.
For the psyche this means a relative eternality and a relative non-separation from other psyches, or a oneness with them.
It is characteristic that your brother was amazed when you asked him whether he had sent you a message.
Obviously he had not sent a message because the relative non-existence of space and time made it unnecessary. (I have expressed similar thoughts in my essay "Seele und Tod" in Wirklichkeit der Seele.)
Now with regard to the exceedingly interesting conversation you had post mortem with your brother, it has all the characteristic features of these experiences.
For one thing, there is the peculiar preoccupation of the dead with the psychic states of other (dead) persons.
For another, the existence of (psychic) shrines or places of healing.
I have long thought that religious institutions, churches, monasteries, temples, etc. as well as rites and psychotherapeutic attempts at healing were modelled on (transcendental) postmortal psychic states-a real Ecclesia Spiritualis as the prototype of the Una Sancta upon earth.
In the East these ideas would be by no means unheard-of; Buddhist philosophy, for instance, has coined the concept of Sambhoga-Kaya for this psychic existence, namely the world of subtle forms which are to Nirmana-Kaya as the breath-body (subtle body) is to the material body.
The breath-world is thought of as an intermediate state between Nirmana-Kaya and Dharma Kaya.
In Dharma-Kaya, which symbolizes the highest state, the separation of forms is dissolved into absolute unity and formlessness.
These formulations are extremely valuable from the psychological point of view as they provide a fitting terminology for such experiences.
Naturally we can form no conception of a relatively timeless and spaceless existence, but, psychologically and empirically, it results in manifestations of the continual presence of the dead and their influence on our dream life.
I therefore follow up such experiences with the greatest attention, because they show many things we dream about in a very peculiar light, where "psychological" structures appear as existential conditions.
This continual presence is also only relative, since after a few weeks or months the connection becomes indirect or breaks off altogether, although spontaneous re-encounters also appear to be possible later.
But after this period the feeling of the presence of the dead is in fact broken off.
The connection is not without its dangers because it entangles the consciousness of the living too much in that transcendental state, resulting in unconsciousness and dissociation phenomena .
This is reflected in your dream-vision of the path leading down to a lake (the unconscious).
There is an antheap, i.e., the sympathetic nervous system (= deepest unconsciousness and danger of dissolution of psychic elements in the form of milling ants) is becoming activated .
This state takes place in you, consequently the connection is in danger of being broken, hence your brother's admonition : "Always build on the heights!" i.e., on the heights of consciousness.
"For us the depth is doom," i.e., unconsciousness is doom.
Then we get into the "clouds" where one sees nothing more.
The remarkable statement that "Someone was interested in the motor cutting out" could indicate that among the crew there was someone who, through an exteriorization effect, actually caused the motor to cut out and did so because of an unrealized suicide complex.
(I have seen quite a number of such effects in my time.)
With regard to contact with your brother, I would add that this is likely to be possible only as long as the feeling of the presence of the dead continues.
But it should not be experimented with because of the danger of a disintegration of consciousness.
To be on the safe side, one must be content with spontaneous experiences.
Experimenting with this contact regularly leads either to the so-called communications becoming more and more stupid or to a dangerous dissociation of consciousness.
All the signs indicate that your conversation with your brother is a genuine experience which cannot be "psychologized."
The only "psychological" disturbance in it is the lake and the antheap.
That was evidently the moment when, perhaps from both sides, the exceedingly difficult contact between the two forms of existence could no longer be maintained.
There are experiences which show that the dead entangle themselves, so to speak, in the physiology (sympathetic nervous system) of the living.
This would probably result in states of possession.
Again with especial thanks for your extremely interesting letter,
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung [Letters Volume 1, Pages 256-259]
Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world.
The forms may change, yet the essence remains the same.
Every wonderful sight will vanish, every sweet word will fade,
But do not be disheartened,
The source they come from is eternal, growing,
Branching out, giving new life and new joy.
Why do you weep?
The source is within you,
And this whole world is springing up from it.
The source is full,
And its waters are ever-flowing,
Do not grieve, drink your fill.
Don't think it will ever run dry, this is the endless ocean.
From the moment you came into this world,
A ladder was placed in front of you,
That you might transcend it.
From earth, you became plant,
From plant you became animal,
Afterwards you became a human being,
Endowed with knowledge, intellect and faith.
Behold the body, born of dust, how perfect it has become.
Why should you fear its end?
When were you made less by dying?
When you pass beyond this human form,
No doubt you will become an angel and soar through the heavens,
But don't stop there, even heavenly bodies grow old.
Pass again from the heavenly realm and
Plunge, plunge into the vast ocean of consciousness,
Let the drop that is you become a hundred mighty seas.
But do not think that the drop alone becomes the ocean.
The ocean, too, becomes the drop.
The Way of Passion: A Celebration of Rumi -
Andrew Harvey, Frog, Ltd, Berkeley, CA, 1994, pp. 189-190.
We need the coldness of death to see clearly. Life wants to live
and to die, to begin and end. --Jung, Red Book, p. 279
The forms may change, yet the essence remains the same.
Every wonderful sight will vanish, every sweet word will fade,
But do not be disheartened,
The source they come from is eternal, growing,
Branching out, giving new life and new joy.
Why do you weep?
The source is within you,
And this whole world is springing up from it.
The source is full,
And its waters are ever-flowing,
Do not grieve, drink your fill.
Don't think it will ever run dry, this is the endless ocean.
From the moment you came into this world,
A ladder was placed in front of you,
That you might transcend it.
From earth, you became plant,
From plant you became animal,
Afterwards you became a human being,
Endowed with knowledge, intellect and faith.
Behold the body, born of dust, how perfect it has become.
Why should you fear its end?
When were you made less by dying?
When you pass beyond this human form,
No doubt you will become an angel and soar through the heavens,
But don't stop there, even heavenly bodies grow old.
Pass again from the heavenly realm and
Plunge, plunge into the vast ocean of consciousness,
Let the drop that is you become a hundred mighty seas.
But do not think that the drop alone becomes the ocean.
The ocean, too, becomes the drop.
The Way of Passion: A Celebration of Rumi -
Andrew Harvey, Frog, Ltd, Berkeley, CA, 1994, pp. 189-190.
We need the coldness of death to see clearly. Life wants to live
and to die, to begin and end. --Jung, Red Book, p. 279
Pierre Cécile Puvis de Chavannes - Death & The Maiden
To J. Heider
Dear Herr Heider, 1 December 1937
As to your question about X., I can only say the following:
It frequently happens that when a person with whom one was intimate dies, either one is oneself drawn into the death, so to speak, or else this burden has the opposite effect of a task that has to be fulfilled in real life.
One could say figuratively that a bit of life has passed over from the dead to the living and compels him towards its realization.
In the case of X. there was probably an unfulfillment of this kind.
This fact, as said, can either hold you back from life or prevail upon you to live.
It is also probable that, if you are not one with yourself anyway, you get into a conflict, because the bit of life taken over from the dead is of a conflicting nature, both dead and living at once.
As a rule the undifferentiated function always lags behind real life a little and is constantly oriented to the past.
In such cases the unconscious sends out compensatory hints which should be heeded if one has a positive attitude to life. If something is then undertaken, what passed over from the dead is realized in this undertaking.
As you know, it need not be anything agreeable, it can also be a great difficulty because it always has to do with the still undifferentiated side of oneself and consequently calls up the inferior function.
With kind regards,
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung [Letters Volume 1, Page 239]
Dear Herr Heider, 1 December 1937
As to your question about X., I can only say the following:
It frequently happens that when a person with whom one was intimate dies, either one is oneself drawn into the death, so to speak, or else this burden has the opposite effect of a task that has to be fulfilled in real life.
One could say figuratively that a bit of life has passed over from the dead to the living and compels him towards its realization.
In the case of X. there was probably an unfulfillment of this kind.
This fact, as said, can either hold you back from life or prevail upon you to live.
It is also probable that, if you are not one with yourself anyway, you get into a conflict, because the bit of life taken over from the dead is of a conflicting nature, both dead and living at once.
As a rule the undifferentiated function always lags behind real life a little and is constantly oriented to the past.
In such cases the unconscious sends out compensatory hints which should be heeded if one has a positive attitude to life. If something is then undertaken, what passed over from the dead is realized in this undertaking.
As you know, it need not be anything agreeable, it can also be a great difficulty because it always has to do with the still undifferentiated side of oneself and consequently calls up the inferior function.
With kind regards,
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung [Letters Volume 1, Page 239]
This suggests the gradual descent from life to death, and the rising significance of the latter -- each potentially framed and enabled by the characteristic metaphors, to different degrees at different times. The central peak reflects the increasing anticipation of (illusory) potential from early life, followed by the increasing significance of deception and mortality -- as "reality sets in".
At any stage the relation between living and dying is governed by a form of uncertainty principle -- with the focus on either precluding focus on the other. Living might even be compared to embodiment of a waveform, with dying associated with any sense of bittiness and disintegration into parts -- reinforced by emergent problematic conditions of the parts so distinguished (Being a Waveform of Potential as an Experiential Choice: emergent dynamic qualities of identity and integrity, 2013; Being Neither a-Waving Nor a-Parting: cognitive implications of wave-particle duality in the light of science and spirituality, 2013).
At any stage the relation between living and dying is governed by a form of uncertainty principle -- with the focus on either precluding focus on the other. Living might even be compared to embodiment of a waveform, with dying associated with any sense of bittiness and disintegration into parts -- reinforced by emergent problematic conditions of the parts so distinguished (Being a Waveform of Potential as an Experiential Choice: emergent dynamic qualities of identity and integrity, 2013; Being Neither a-Waving Nor a-Parting: cognitive implications of wave-particle duality in the light of science and spirituality, 2013).
Egalité devant La Mort ~ William Bouguereau 1848
A journey or a battle? A crossroads or a fight?
A stolen life or a gift?
Illness, emotions, relationships and death are among the experiences for which people use metaphors to express, reflect and shape views, feelings, attitudes and needs. Different metaphors "fit" different people or for the same person at different times.
Metaphors To Die By Correspondences between a collapsing civilization, culture or group,
& a dying person
http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/musings/dying.php
Introduction
Entangling with information overload and explanatory closure
Recognizing the omnipresence of death
Conventional metaphors to die by
Cultures engendering metaphors of death and dying
Art of dying: imagery vs practice
Challenging alternative implications of metaphors for dying
Inner game of dying and its global significance
Renaissance: Twice born, once dead -- Thrice born...?
Mathematical cosmology and death
Mathematical cosmology -- improving the inner game of dying
Flowering of civilization -- Deflowering of culture: a complex dynamic
Renaissance of a brain-dead global civilization?
References
A dead metaphor has lost the original imagery of its meaning owing to extensive, repetitive popular usage. Because dead metaphors have a conventional meaning that differs from the original, they can be understood without knowing their earlier connotation. Dead metaphors are generally the result of a semantic shift in the evolution of a language.[1] A distinction is often made between those dead metaphors whose origins are entirely unknown to the majority of people using them (such as the expression "to kick the bucket") and those whose source is widely known or symbolism easily understood but not often thought about (the idea of "falling in love").
Dying metaphors. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically "dead" (e.g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day,
A stolen life or a gift?
Illness, emotions, relationships and death are among the experiences for which people use metaphors to express, reflect and shape views, feelings, attitudes and needs. Different metaphors "fit" different people or for the same person at different times.
Metaphors To Die By Correspondences between a collapsing civilization, culture or group,
& a dying person
http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/musings/dying.php
Introduction
Entangling with information overload and explanatory closure
Recognizing the omnipresence of death
Conventional metaphors to die by
Cultures engendering metaphors of death and dying
Art of dying: imagery vs practice
Challenging alternative implications of metaphors for dying
Inner game of dying and its global significance
Renaissance: Twice born, once dead -- Thrice born...?
Mathematical cosmology and death
Mathematical cosmology -- improving the inner game of dying
Flowering of civilization -- Deflowering of culture: a complex dynamic
Renaissance of a brain-dead global civilization?
References
A dead metaphor has lost the original imagery of its meaning owing to extensive, repetitive popular usage. Because dead metaphors have a conventional meaning that differs from the original, they can be understood without knowing their earlier connotation. Dead metaphors are generally the result of a semantic shift in the evolution of a language.[1] A distinction is often made between those dead metaphors whose origins are entirely unknown to the majority of people using them (such as the expression "to kick the bucket") and those whose source is widely known or symbolism easily understood but not often thought about (the idea of "falling in love").
Dying metaphors. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically "dead" (e.g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day,
Even though spirit is regarded as essentially alive and enlivening, one cannot really feel nature as unspiritual and dead. We must therefore be dealing here with the (Christian) postulate of a spirit whose life is so vastly superior to the life of nature that in comparison with it the latter is no better than death.
~Carl Jung; CW 9i; Para 390.
If, like Socrates, these dead had sought to have their questions
answered by those already dead, they appear to have been disappointed,
and have had no recourse but to turn to the living,
At first glance, this scene provides a striking reversal of what is usually
found in spiritualism and its literature, where the living seek and receive
instruction from the dead. Whilst quite struck by this, Jung did not consider
it exceptional, To Aniela Jaffe, he noted that it astonished him that the dead
had posed him questions, as one assumes that the dead had greater knowledge
than us. It seemed that the dead only knew what they knew when they died,
hence their tendency to intrude into our lives.
Shamdasani - The Boundless Expanse sm.pdf
In 1947, E. A. Bennet asked Jung about life after death.
He records Jung saying:
"I am absolutely convinced of personal survival, but I do not know how long it persists. I have an idea that it is ( . ) or months—I get this idea from dreams.
My personal experiences are absolutely convincing about survival . . I am absolutely convinced of the survival of the personality—for a time, of the marvelous experience of being dead.
I absolutely hated coming back, I did not want to come. It was much better to die—just marvelous and far surpassing any experience I have ever had." ~E. A. Bennet, notebooks, Bennet papers, ETH-Archive, Zurich.
We cannot slay death, as we have already taken all life from it. If we still want to overcome death, then we must enliven it. Therefore on your journey be sure to take golden cups full of the sweet drink of life, red wine, and give it to dead matter, so that it can win life back. ~Carl Jung; The Red Book; Liber Primus; Page 244
Finally, we come to the question, who are the dead, and what does it mean to answer them?
On June 13, 1958, Jung discussed this issue with Aniela Jaffe. He noted. that one could only find one's myth if one was together with one's dead. He felt that he had given answers to his dead, and had relieved himself of the burden of this responsibility. However, his answers were applicable to his dead.
There was a danger that others would repeat this parrot-fashion to avoid answering their own dead. The question of whether the dead were spiritual or corporeal ancestors was unclear.
In another sense, Freud had left him an inheritance, a question directed towards him, which he had tried to take further. There are several striking things in this discussion.
First, Jung indicates that his finding his myth could only take place in conjunction with his dead.
In this regard, his theology of the dead forms an essential component of his myth and the recuperation of meaning. He draws attention to the fact that the answers that he has provided to his dead, in the form of his work, may not at all be suitable for anyone else's dead, and hence in the elaboration of their myths. Indeed, there is a danger that they would simply borrow his to avoid the difficulty of articulating answers to their own dead.
Finally, there is the question of the identity of the dead. Are Jung's ancestors simply the previous generations of his family, his spiritual ancestry, such as Kant, Goethe, Nietzsche, and Swedenborg, or former associates such as Freud?
This issue of the identity of one's ancestors and the questions that they posed was linked to the question of karma. In this regard, he was particularly interested in Buddhist conceptions of karma. In Memories, he reflected:
“Am I a combination of the lives of these ancestors and I do embody these lives again? Have I lived before as a specific personality, and 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 ... It might happen that I would not need to be reborn again so long as the world needed no such answer, and that I would be entitled to several hundred years of peace until someone was once more needed who took an interest in these matters and could profitably tackle the task anew. I imagine that for a while a period of rest could ensue, until the stint I had done in my lifetime needed to be taken up again. ~The Jung-Jaffe Protocols.
Jung reflected further on this issue after the death of Toni Wolff in 1953 and Emma Jung in 1955.
In the published version of Memories, Jung discussed the issue of reincarnation, and noted that:
"Until a few years ago I could not discover anything convincing in this respect, although I kept a sharp lookout for signs. Recently, however, I observed in myself a series of dreams which would seem to describe the process of reincarnation in a deceased person of my acquaintance."
As ever, Jung's discussions in the protocols were more candid: the person in question turns out to be Toni Wolff.
On September 23, 1957, Jung narrated a dream he had had of her to Aniela Jaffe.
In the dream, she had returned to life, as if there had been a type of misunderstanding that she had died, and she had returned to live a further part of her life. Aniela Jaffe asked Jung if he thought this could indicate a possible.. . who are the dead, and what does it mean to answer them?
Rebirth. Jung replied that with his wife he had a sense of a great detachment or distance. By contrast, he felt that Toni Wolff was close. Jaffé then asked him whether something that one has not completed in one life has to be continued in a next life.
Jung replied that his wife reached something that Toni Wolff didn't reach and that rebirth would constitute a terrible increase of actuality for her.
He had the impression that Toni Wolff was nearer the earth, that she could manifest herself better to him, whilst his wife was on another level where he couldn't reach her.
He concluded that Toni Wolff was in the neighborhood, that she was nearer the sphere of three dimensional existence, and hence had the chance to come into existence again,
He had the impression that for her a continuation of three dimensional existence would not be meaningless.
He felt that higher insight hindered the wish for re-embodiment.
~The Jung-Jaffe Protocols
~Carl Jung; CW 9i; Para 390.
If, like Socrates, these dead had sought to have their questions
answered by those already dead, they appear to have been disappointed,
and have had no recourse but to turn to the living,
At first glance, this scene provides a striking reversal of what is usually
found in spiritualism and its literature, where the living seek and receive
instruction from the dead. Whilst quite struck by this, Jung did not consider
it exceptional, To Aniela Jaffe, he noted that it astonished him that the dead
had posed him questions, as one assumes that the dead had greater knowledge
than us. It seemed that the dead only knew what they knew when they died,
hence their tendency to intrude into our lives.
Shamdasani - The Boundless Expanse sm.pdf
In 1947, E. A. Bennet asked Jung about life after death.
He records Jung saying:
"I am absolutely convinced of personal survival, but I do not know how long it persists. I have an idea that it is ( . ) or months—I get this idea from dreams.
My personal experiences are absolutely convincing about survival . . I am absolutely convinced of the survival of the personality—for a time, of the marvelous experience of being dead.
I absolutely hated coming back, I did not want to come. It was much better to die—just marvelous and far surpassing any experience I have ever had." ~E. A. Bennet, notebooks, Bennet papers, ETH-Archive, Zurich.
We cannot slay death, as we have already taken all life from it. If we still want to overcome death, then we must enliven it. Therefore on your journey be sure to take golden cups full of the sweet drink of life, red wine, and give it to dead matter, so that it can win life back. ~Carl Jung; The Red Book; Liber Primus; Page 244
Finally, we come to the question, who are the dead, and what does it mean to answer them?
On June 13, 1958, Jung discussed this issue with Aniela Jaffe. He noted. that one could only find one's myth if one was together with one's dead. He felt that he had given answers to his dead, and had relieved himself of the burden of this responsibility. However, his answers were applicable to his dead.
There was a danger that others would repeat this parrot-fashion to avoid answering their own dead. The question of whether the dead were spiritual or corporeal ancestors was unclear.
In another sense, Freud had left him an inheritance, a question directed towards him, which he had tried to take further. There are several striking things in this discussion.
First, Jung indicates that his finding his myth could only take place in conjunction with his dead.
In this regard, his theology of the dead forms an essential component of his myth and the recuperation of meaning. He draws attention to the fact that the answers that he has provided to his dead, in the form of his work, may not at all be suitable for anyone else's dead, and hence in the elaboration of their myths. Indeed, there is a danger that they would simply borrow his to avoid the difficulty of articulating answers to their own dead.
Finally, there is the question of the identity of the dead. Are Jung's ancestors simply the previous generations of his family, his spiritual ancestry, such as Kant, Goethe, Nietzsche, and Swedenborg, or former associates such as Freud?
This issue of the identity of one's ancestors and the questions that they posed was linked to the question of karma. In this regard, he was particularly interested in Buddhist conceptions of karma. In Memories, he reflected:
“Am I a combination of the lives of these ancestors and I do embody these lives again? Have I lived before as a specific personality, and 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 ... It might happen that I would not need to be reborn again so long as the world needed no such answer, and that I would be entitled to several hundred years of peace until someone was once more needed who took an interest in these matters and could profitably tackle the task anew. I imagine that for a while a period of rest could ensue, until the stint I had done in my lifetime needed to be taken up again. ~The Jung-Jaffe Protocols.
Jung reflected further on this issue after the death of Toni Wolff in 1953 and Emma Jung in 1955.
In the published version of Memories, Jung discussed the issue of reincarnation, and noted that:
"Until a few years ago I could not discover anything convincing in this respect, although I kept a sharp lookout for signs. Recently, however, I observed in myself a series of dreams which would seem to describe the process of reincarnation in a deceased person of my acquaintance."
As ever, Jung's discussions in the protocols were more candid: the person in question turns out to be Toni Wolff.
On September 23, 1957, Jung narrated a dream he had had of her to Aniela Jaffe.
In the dream, she had returned to life, as if there had been a type of misunderstanding that she had died, and she had returned to live a further part of her life. Aniela Jaffe asked Jung if he thought this could indicate a possible.. . who are the dead, and what does it mean to answer them?
Rebirth. Jung replied that with his wife he had a sense of a great detachment or distance. By contrast, he felt that Toni Wolff was close. Jaffé then asked him whether something that one has not completed in one life has to be continued in a next life.
Jung replied that his wife reached something that Toni Wolff didn't reach and that rebirth would constitute a terrible increase of actuality for her.
He had the impression that Toni Wolff was nearer the earth, that she could manifest herself better to him, whilst his wife was on another level where he couldn't reach her.
He concluded that Toni Wolff was in the neighborhood, that she was nearer the sphere of three dimensional existence, and hence had the chance to come into existence again,
He had the impression that for her a continuation of three dimensional existence would not be meaningless.
He felt that higher insight hindered the wish for re-embodiment.
~The Jung-Jaffe Protocols
Giulio Aristide Sartorio - Diana di Efeso e gli schiavi, 1890-99
“Although the Mass itself is a unique phenomenon in the history of comparative religion, its symbolic content would be profoundly alien to man were it not rooted in the human psyche.
But if it is so rooted, then we may expect to find similar patterns of symbolism both in the earlier history of mankind and in the world of pagan thought contemporary with it. . . .
The liturgy of the Mass contains allusions to the ‘prefigurations’ in the Old Testament, and thus indirectly to ancient sacrificial symbolism in general. It is clear, then, that in Christ’s sacrifice and the Communion one of the deepest chords in the human psyche is struck: human sacrifice and ritual anthropophagy [eating of human flesh]. . . .
I must content myself with mentioning the ritual slaying of the king to promote the fertility of the land and the prosperity of his people, the renewal and revivification of the gods through human sacrifice, and the totem meal, the purpose of which was to reunite the participants with the life of their ancestors.
These hints will suffice to show how the symbols of the Mass penetrate into the deepest layers of the psyche and its history.” - Carl Jung; Psychology and Religion
The Dakini Speaks
by Jennifer Welwood
My friends, let’s grow up.
Let’s stop pretending we don’t know the deal here.
Or if we truly haven’t noticed,
let’s wake up and notice.
Look: Everything that can be lost, will be lost.
It’s simple — how could we have missed it for so long?
Let’s grieve our losses fully, like ripe human beings,
But please, let’s not be so shocked by them.
Let’s not act so betrayed,
As though life had broken her secret promise to us.
Impermanence is life’s only promise to us,
And she keeps it with ruthless impeccability.
To a child she seems cruel, but she is only wild,
And her compassion exquisitely precise:
Brilliantly penetrating, luminous with truth,
She strips away the unreal to show us the real.
This is the true ride — let’s give ourselves to it!
Let’s stop making deals for a safe passage:
There isn’t one anyway, and the cost is too high.
We are not children anymore.
The true human adult gives everything for what cannot be lost.
Let’s dance the wild dance of no hope!
But if it is so rooted, then we may expect to find similar patterns of symbolism both in the earlier history of mankind and in the world of pagan thought contemporary with it. . . .
The liturgy of the Mass contains allusions to the ‘prefigurations’ in the Old Testament, and thus indirectly to ancient sacrificial symbolism in general. It is clear, then, that in Christ’s sacrifice and the Communion one of the deepest chords in the human psyche is struck: human sacrifice and ritual anthropophagy [eating of human flesh]. . . .
I must content myself with mentioning the ritual slaying of the king to promote the fertility of the land and the prosperity of his people, the renewal and revivification of the gods through human sacrifice, and the totem meal, the purpose of which was to reunite the participants with the life of their ancestors.
These hints will suffice to show how the symbols of the Mass penetrate into the deepest layers of the psyche and its history.” - Carl Jung; Psychology and Religion
The Dakini Speaks
by Jennifer Welwood
My friends, let’s grow up.
Let’s stop pretending we don’t know the deal here.
Or if we truly haven’t noticed,
let’s wake up and notice.
Look: Everything that can be lost, will be lost.
It’s simple — how could we have missed it for so long?
Let’s grieve our losses fully, like ripe human beings,
But please, let’s not be so shocked by them.
Let’s not act so betrayed,
As though life had broken her secret promise to us.
Impermanence is life’s only promise to us,
And she keeps it with ruthless impeccability.
To a child she seems cruel, but she is only wild,
And her compassion exquisitely precise:
Brilliantly penetrating, luminous with truth,
She strips away the unreal to show us the real.
This is the true ride — let’s give ourselves to it!
Let’s stop making deals for a safe passage:
There isn’t one anyway, and the cost is too high.
We are not children anymore.
The true human adult gives everything for what cannot be lost.
Let’s dance the wild dance of no hope!
Dying, Alex Grey
Dear Frau N., 11July1944
What happens after death is so unspeakably glorious that our imagination and our feelings do not suffice to form even an approximate conception of it.
A few days before my sister died her face ware an expression of such inhuman sublimity that I was profoundly frightened.
A child, too, enters into this sublimity, and there detaches himself from this world and his manifold individuations more quickly than the aged.
So easily does he become what you also are that he apparently vanishes.
Sooner or later all the dead become what we also are.
But in this reality we know little or nothing about that mode of being, and what shall we still know of this earth after death?
The dissolution of our time-bound form in eternity brings no loss of meaning. Rather does the little finger know itself a member of the hand.
Your devoted,
C.G. Jung
Joy at the smallest things comes to you only when you have accepted death.
But if you look out greedily for all that you could still live, then nothing is great enough for your pleasure, and the smallest things that continue to surround you are no longer a joy. Therefore I behold death, since it teaches me how to live.
If you accept death, it is altogether like a frosty night and an anxious misgiving, but a frosty night in a vineyard full of sweet grapes.
You will soon take pleasure in your wealth. Death ripens. One needs death to be able to harvest the fruit.
Without death, life would be meaningless, since the long-lasting rises again and denies its own meaning.
To be, and to enjoy your being, you need death, and limitation enables you to fulfill your being. ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
Dear Frau N., 11July1944
What happens after death is so unspeakably glorious that our imagination and our feelings do not suffice to form even an approximate conception of it.
A few days before my sister died her face ware an expression of such inhuman sublimity that I was profoundly frightened.
A child, too, enters into this sublimity, and there detaches himself from this world and his manifold individuations more quickly than the aged.
So easily does he become what you also are that he apparently vanishes.
Sooner or later all the dead become what we also are.
But in this reality we know little or nothing about that mode of being, and what shall we still know of this earth after death?
The dissolution of our time-bound form in eternity brings no loss of meaning. Rather does the little finger know itself a member of the hand.
Your devoted,
C.G. Jung
Joy at the smallest things comes to you only when you have accepted death.
But if you look out greedily for all that you could still live, then nothing is great enough for your pleasure, and the smallest things that continue to surround you are no longer a joy. Therefore I behold death, since it teaches me how to live.
If you accept death, it is altogether like a frosty night and an anxious misgiving, but a frosty night in a vineyard full of sweet grapes.
You will soon take pleasure in your wealth. Death ripens. One needs death to be able to harvest the fruit.
Without death, life would be meaningless, since the long-lasting rises again and denies its own meaning.
To be, and to enjoy your being, you need death, and limitation enables you to fulfill your being. ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
If there were to be a conscious existence after death, it would, so it seems to me, have to continue on the level of consciousness attained by humanity, which in any age has an upper though variable limit.
There are many human beings who throughout their lives and at the moment of death lag behind their own potentialities and even more important behind the knowledge which has been brought to consciousness by other human beings during their own lifetimes.
Hence their demand to attain in death that share of awareness which they failed to win in life.
I have come to this conclusion through observation of dreams about the dead. ~Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections.
There are many human beings who throughout their lives and at the moment of death lag behind their own potentialities and even more important behind the knowledge which has been brought to consciousness by other human beings during their own lifetimes.
Hence their demand to attain in death that share of awareness which they failed to win in life.
I have come to this conclusion through observation of dreams about the dead. ~Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections.
Hillman describes two kinds of consciousness exist after birth and continue throughout life. Hillman (1991), in a description of creation myths, discusses a process :
Jung maintained that one type of consciousness (soul) was put aside for the development of the other (ego) and later (midlife) needed to be resumed, facilitating the individuation process. Hillman that two "levels of being and two structures of consciousness" can be lived simultaneously by many people. However, one type of consciousness can be forsaken for the growth of the other, which is Jung's usual description. It is, of course, the later type that one might find in therapy or analysis; sometimes it is not the reclaiming of soul that is necessary, but a higher development of ego consciousness. The psyche could be said to be out of balance in either case.
- The need for a "second beginning" is often put in creation myths. The first start is wiped out, and the world begins again, after the flood. Gods and heroes have a second birth (Osiris, Dionysus) or two tales are told of their origin, and mystical man is born. Psychology has taken this ontological image about two levels of being and two structures of consciousness and laid it out in terms of progressive time: first half and second half of life. But these "halves" are less biological or psychological fact as they are a mythical description of the two levels on which we live. Some men live from a "twice-born" state early in their youth; others go through a midlife crisis moving from one to another; others may repeatedly live now one, now the other in alternations. Firsthalf and second half pertain to kinds of consciousness, not to periods. (emphasis Hillman's, p. 214)
Jung maintained that one type of consciousness (soul) was put aside for the development of the other (ego) and later (midlife) needed to be resumed, facilitating the individuation process. Hillman that two "levels of being and two structures of consciousness" can be lived simultaneously by many people. However, one type of consciousness can be forsaken for the growth of the other, which is Jung's usual description. It is, of course, the later type that one might find in therapy or analysis; sometimes it is not the reclaiming of soul that is necessary, but a higher development of ego consciousness. The psyche could be said to be out of balance in either case.
Metaphors To Die By
Correspondences between a collapsing civilization, culture or group, and a dying person
http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/musings/dying.php
Introduction
Entangling with information overload and explanatory closure
Recognizing the omnipresence of death
Conventional metaphors to die by
Cultures engendering metaphors of death and dying
Art of dying: imagery vs practice
Challenging alternative implications of metaphors for dying
Inner game of dying and its global significance
Renaissance: Twice born, once dead -- Thrice born...?
Mathematical cosmology and death -- improving the inner game
Renaissance of a brain-dead global civilization?
References
Correspondences between a collapsing civilization, culture or group, and a dying person
http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/musings/dying.php
Introduction
Entangling with information overload and explanatory closure
Recognizing the omnipresence of death
Conventional metaphors to die by
Cultures engendering metaphors of death and dying
Art of dying: imagery vs practice
Challenging alternative implications of metaphors for dying
Inner game of dying and its global significance
Renaissance: Twice born, once dead -- Thrice born...?
Mathematical cosmology and death -- improving the inner game
Renaissance of a brain-dead global civilization?
References
Dance of Death by Bernt Notke
Introduction
Person vs. Collective: There is an instructive possibility of exploring correspondences between how individual dying is framed (by those variously faced with it) and how groups and cultures "die" (by those faced with this collective phenomenon). Of necessity, there is much reflection on the first case. The case of groups is now evident in terminal bankruptcies, corporate downsizing and community decline. It is more tragically experienced as the loss of lifelong working relationships, estrangement from relatives and friends, the "death" of a language, or the dissolution of centuries-old cultural identity -- and especially of genocidal massacre. The familiarity with individual death is readily used to provide a metaphorical framework for understanding that of any collective. Much more challenging is how the nature of the "dying" of an empire, or even of a global civilization, is to be sensed, experienced and comprehended. How might a mighty civilization have a "good death", and "die gracefully" -- with dignity?
Dying vs. Living: There is an extensive literature on framing the dying process, whether for those who are dying or for those left to grieve. The much-cited study by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (Metaphors We Live By, 1980) has evoked a wide variety of studies and commentary on "Metaphors We Die By". As with the original study, these focus predominantly on the case of the individual. Jared Diamond has provided several studies of relevance to the collective case (Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed, 2005). The framing adopted (whether unconsciously or not) by those embedded within those collectives, as implied by Diamond's reference to "choice", is necessarily absent from studies about macrohistory. Hence the challenge of deriving meaning from the larger pattern of living and dying, as previously discussed (Engaging Macrohistory through the Present Moment, 2004).
Collective decline: Despite the extent of the phenomenon, there are relatively few studies of the metaphors used by groups, villages and corporations to frame the process of their own demise. Exceptions include Howard F. Stein (Death Imagery and the Experience of Organizational Downsizing: or, is your name on Schindler's List?). Simon Crean, as Australian Trade Minister, gave support to the idea that the Doha Round is on "life support" but not yet as "dead as the dodo" (Aust and US call for revival of Doha Round negotiations, Correspondents Report, 9 March 2000). According to Crean: The metaphors of death and crisis have become central to discussion of the world trade round involving 151 countries.
Sacrifice: More questionable is of course the use of metaphor to enable and facilitate self-sacrifice (suicide missions, self-immolation, etc) or the sacrifice of groups and cultures -- often by those incapable of any sacrifice themselves, as argued by George Lakoff (Metaphor and War: the metaphor system used to justify war in the Gulf, 1991; Metaphors of Terror, 2001). Like jihadi suicide bombers, kamikaze pilots and Christian martyrs have a profound dependence on metaphor in dying for their cause -- or enabling the death of others with detachment, as exemplified by drone pilots and gas over operatives in concentration camps.,
Dying collectivities: The effort here is to switch from the emphasis on the metaphors which already tend to be used by some -- implied by "We Live By" or "We Die By" -- to those unfamiliar metaphors which might be fruitfully used. Hence use of the title "Metaphors To Die By" -- possibly better considered as "Metaphors To Die With", "In", "On", or "Through". This endeavours to extend the range of metaphors which could be of value in the individual case in order to encompass that of the group and civilizational cases. The approach thus challenges the variety of conventional approaches to dying by considering the implications and relevance for collectivities. The emphasis is however especially on the framing that the dying may find fruitful in some way -- rather than that by which others may choose to frame it as "non-participants" in the experience itself ("as lived").
Dying of global civilization: This shift in focus is of course of very particular relevance to the process by which the current global civilization is "dying" as has been variously claimed (notably in the many articles referenced on the "Die Off" website). Many current global initiatives are usefully to be understood as "palliative care" and a form of "life support". The issue has recently been given particular focus by Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich (Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided? Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 7 March 2013) with the introductory comment:
Virtually every past civilization has eventually undergone collapse, a loss of socio-political-economic complexity usually accompanied by a dramatic decline in population size... All those previous collapses were local or regional; elsewhere, other societies and civilizations persisted unaffected... But today, for the first time, humanity's global civilization -- the worldwide, increasingly interconnected, highly technological society in which we all are to one degree or another, embedded -- is threatened with collapse by an array of environmental problems... The human predicament is driven by overpopulation, overconsumption of natural resources and the use of unnecessarily environmentally damaging technologies and socio-economic-political arrangements to service Homo sapiens’ aggregate consumption.
Or, as asked by Rosalie Bertell (The Future of Planet Earth: are we the last surviving generations? Radioactivity and the Gradual Extinction of Life? Global Research, 12 December 2013).
Mapping decline: In exploring this phenomenon, whether framed metaphorically as a "collapse" or not, it could be said that humanity as a whole is effectively threatened by a disempowering "lifestyle disease", as variously argued (Cognitive Implications of Lifestyle Diseases of Rich and Poor: transforming personal entanglement with the natural environment, 2010; Mind Map of Global Civilizational Collapse: why nothing is happening in response to global challenges, 2011; Mapping the Global Underground, 2010; Convergence of 30 Disabling Global Trends: mapping the social climate change engendering a perfect storm, 2012).
The difficulty for "participants" in the process of decline -- possibly framed metaphorically as a "journey" -- is that the "map is not the territory". A "map" is then just one of the metaphors which may be of use. Explanations, from whatever perspective, may not be helpful -- as succinctly framed in the movie As Good as It Gets (1997): I'm drowning here and you're just describing the water.
Global dementia: The preoccupation of this argument acquires a particular focus with the death of Nelson Mandela, following an extended period in intensive care. World leaders assembled to praise his life achievement, notably including the leader of the country that had maintained his status as a terrorist until 2008 -- long after his receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 (US government considered Nelson Mandela a terrorist until 2008, NBC News, 7 December 2013). Leaders travelled from the memorial event to a G8 Summit focused on dementia -- the serious permanent loss of cognitive ability. A briefing by Alzheimer's Disease International to the G8 indicated that global dementia is set to treble by 2050 to affect some 135 million people -- one in three seniors (The Global Impact of Dementia 2013–2050, 2013).
Given its track record, the G8 can however itself be usefully explored as a valuable metaphor for progressive loss of cognitive ability of the "global brain". Those assembled at the Summit focused on remedial research and palliative care to postpone the inevitable -- both metaphors for past strategic failure. Missing is any consideration of the metaphors through which the tragic experience of the dying can be fruitfully reframed -- including that of cultures and civilization itself. As the current enabling metaphor, global sustainability is as illusory as individual immortality (In Quest of Sustainability as Holy Grail of Global Governance, 2011). Ironically it is South Africa that remains the country with the highest mortality rate in the world -- far greater than when it was first the focus of development.
Entangling with information overload and explanatory closure Limits to knowledge processing: A remarkable analysis of the collapsing energy system of the Roman Empire in its final phases has been made by Thomas Homer-Dixon (The Upside of Down: catastrophe, creativity, and the renewal of civilization, 2006). As argued separately with respect to the viability of any system (General systems research and the VSM, 2011), this analysis could be generalized to encompass the capacity of the current "knowledge-based" global civilization to elicit and process the information necessary to its survival -- rather than Homer-Dixon's specific "energy" focus. There is indeed the possibility of a memetic singularity (Emerging Memetic Singularity in the Global Knowledge Society, 2009).
Consistent with Homer-Dixon's argument is the challenge of "bigness", first articulated by Leopold Kohr (The Breakdown of Nations, 1957; Development without Aid, 1973; The Overdeveloped Nations, 1977). As summarized by Paul Kingsnorth (This Economic Collapse is a 'Crisis of Bigness', The Guardian, 26 September 2011), Kohr warned that the gigantist global system would grow until it imploded. Recent history with regard to multinational corporations deemed "too big to fail" offers an indication in this respect. Such arguments are of relevance to the information processing capacity of the individual.
Navigating cycles: Homer-Dixon focuses on achieving the necessary resilience to navigate the adaptive cycle. The nature of information overload as widely experienced, accompanied by hardening of the "arteries" of knowledge (cognitive "arteriosclerosis"?), arguably now precludes appropriate collective engagement with any cycle (Memetic and Information Diseases in a Knowledge Society: speculations towards the development of cures and preventive measures, 2008).
The condition could be reframed metaphorically through arguing that the requisite skills might be compared to those of riding a "monocycle", when the balance required for a "bicycle" is already a challenge in the governance of any collectivity -- suggesting that a "tricycle" or a "quadricycle" might prove more practicable. Separately a case has been made for the relevance of interlinked Borromean rings in three dimensions (Attractive global governance through animation and "special effects", 2013)
Overload and premature closure: Ironically the challenge applies to any exploration of death. This runs the immediate risk of a form of death by explanatory closure -- especially under a high degree of pressure for simplicity (and avoidance of complexity). The large amount of relevant material exemplifies the need for a different approach to its navigation. Metaphorical use of "surf", "skate", "glide" and "skim", with respect to information is suggestive of the need for another kind of cognitive vehicle or modality. Preferences for "tweeting" are indicative (Re-Emergence of the Language of the Birds through Twitter? 2010; Tweeter, Tweeter, Little Star; How I wonder what you are, 2012). Metaphor offers the possibility of highly succinct imagery -- typically readily comprehensible -- consistent with the argument for memory aids (In Quest of Mnemonic Catalysts -- for comprehension of complex psychosocial dynamics, 2007).
Any commentary on dying could best aspire to be its own metaphor -- as with the experiencers of that process. The approach in what follows is therefore to offer pointers and links rather than to engage in extensive elaboration. The many references are suggestive in their own right of valuable insights.
Breakdown of connectivity: Framed in its most general sense, death could be understood as a catastrophic breakdown in connectivity -- itself perhaps best understood as the meta-pattern of which Gregory Bateson declared:
The pattern which connects is a meta-pattern. It is a pattern of patterns. It is that meta-pattern which defines the vast generalization that, indeed, it is patterns which connect. (Mind and Nature: a necessary unity, 1979)
And it is from this perspective that he warns: Break the pattern which connects the items of learning and you necessarily destroy all quality (1979, pp. 8-11). This echoes Christopher Alexander's sense that: in our time the languages have broken down (The Timeless Way of Building, 1979).
Metaphor as meta-pattern: Given the constraint on processing information, there is then a case for considering metaphor as offering a form of (ad hoc) meta-pattern of connectivity. This is consistent with the observation of Bateson in explaining why "we are our own metaphor" to a conference on the effects of conscious purpose on human adaptation:
One reason why poetry is important for finding out about the world is because in poetry a set of relationships get mapped onto a level of diversity in us that we don't ordinarily have access to. We bring it out in poetry. We can give to each other in poetry the access to a set of relationships in the other person and in the world that we're not usually conscious of in ourselves. So we need poetry as knowledge about the world and about ourselves, because of this mapping from complexity to complexity. (Mary Catherine Bateson. Our Own Metaphor, 1972, pp. 288-289)
Governing complexity: Metaphorically, there is some charm to the fact that the human individual is home to a far greater number of living entities than the individuals composing any global civilization, as documented by the Human Microbiome Project (Humans Carry More Bacterial Cells than Human Ones, Scientific American, 30 November 2007). This could well be of significance for the governance of social processes characterized by patterns of relationships normally too complex for the mind to grasp -- or variously threatened by information overload. Of special interest in comprehending non-linear cyclic processes in relation to linear thinking, are the potential insights arising from the relation of rhythm to metre in poetry. In this sense the current "spastic" development of society, as a victim of economic cycles, may be seen as resulting from an a-rhythmic approach to governance.
Interplay of living and dying: The interplay of "Metaphors To Live By" and "Metaphors To Die By" could be represented by the following schematic indicative of the period from birth to death.
Person vs. Collective: There is an instructive possibility of exploring correspondences between how individual dying is framed (by those variously faced with it) and how groups and cultures "die" (by those faced with this collective phenomenon). Of necessity, there is much reflection on the first case. The case of groups is now evident in terminal bankruptcies, corporate downsizing and community decline. It is more tragically experienced as the loss of lifelong working relationships, estrangement from relatives and friends, the "death" of a language, or the dissolution of centuries-old cultural identity -- and especially of genocidal massacre. The familiarity with individual death is readily used to provide a metaphorical framework for understanding that of any collective. Much more challenging is how the nature of the "dying" of an empire, or even of a global civilization, is to be sensed, experienced and comprehended. How might a mighty civilization have a "good death", and "die gracefully" -- with dignity?
Dying vs. Living: There is an extensive literature on framing the dying process, whether for those who are dying or for those left to grieve. The much-cited study by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (Metaphors We Live By, 1980) has evoked a wide variety of studies and commentary on "Metaphors We Die By". As with the original study, these focus predominantly on the case of the individual. Jared Diamond has provided several studies of relevance to the collective case (Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed, 2005). The framing adopted (whether unconsciously or not) by those embedded within those collectives, as implied by Diamond's reference to "choice", is necessarily absent from studies about macrohistory. Hence the challenge of deriving meaning from the larger pattern of living and dying, as previously discussed (Engaging Macrohistory through the Present Moment, 2004).
Collective decline: Despite the extent of the phenomenon, there are relatively few studies of the metaphors used by groups, villages and corporations to frame the process of their own demise. Exceptions include Howard F. Stein (Death Imagery and the Experience of Organizational Downsizing: or, is your name on Schindler's List?). Simon Crean, as Australian Trade Minister, gave support to the idea that the Doha Round is on "life support" but not yet as "dead as the dodo" (Aust and US call for revival of Doha Round negotiations, Correspondents Report, 9 March 2000). According to Crean: The metaphors of death and crisis have become central to discussion of the world trade round involving 151 countries.
Sacrifice: More questionable is of course the use of metaphor to enable and facilitate self-sacrifice (suicide missions, self-immolation, etc) or the sacrifice of groups and cultures -- often by those incapable of any sacrifice themselves, as argued by George Lakoff (Metaphor and War: the metaphor system used to justify war in the Gulf, 1991; Metaphors of Terror, 2001). Like jihadi suicide bombers, kamikaze pilots and Christian martyrs have a profound dependence on metaphor in dying for their cause -- or enabling the death of others with detachment, as exemplified by drone pilots and gas over operatives in concentration camps.,
Dying collectivities: The effort here is to switch from the emphasis on the metaphors which already tend to be used by some -- implied by "We Live By" or "We Die By" -- to those unfamiliar metaphors which might be fruitfully used. Hence use of the title "Metaphors To Die By" -- possibly better considered as "Metaphors To Die With", "In", "On", or "Through". This endeavours to extend the range of metaphors which could be of value in the individual case in order to encompass that of the group and civilizational cases. The approach thus challenges the variety of conventional approaches to dying by considering the implications and relevance for collectivities. The emphasis is however especially on the framing that the dying may find fruitful in some way -- rather than that by which others may choose to frame it as "non-participants" in the experience itself ("as lived").
Dying of global civilization: This shift in focus is of course of very particular relevance to the process by which the current global civilization is "dying" as has been variously claimed (notably in the many articles referenced on the "Die Off" website). Many current global initiatives are usefully to be understood as "palliative care" and a form of "life support". The issue has recently been given particular focus by Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich (Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided? Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 7 March 2013) with the introductory comment:
Virtually every past civilization has eventually undergone collapse, a loss of socio-political-economic complexity usually accompanied by a dramatic decline in population size... All those previous collapses were local or regional; elsewhere, other societies and civilizations persisted unaffected... But today, for the first time, humanity's global civilization -- the worldwide, increasingly interconnected, highly technological society in which we all are to one degree or another, embedded -- is threatened with collapse by an array of environmental problems... The human predicament is driven by overpopulation, overconsumption of natural resources and the use of unnecessarily environmentally damaging technologies and socio-economic-political arrangements to service Homo sapiens’ aggregate consumption.
Or, as asked by Rosalie Bertell (The Future of Planet Earth: are we the last surviving generations? Radioactivity and the Gradual Extinction of Life? Global Research, 12 December 2013).
Mapping decline: In exploring this phenomenon, whether framed metaphorically as a "collapse" or not, it could be said that humanity as a whole is effectively threatened by a disempowering "lifestyle disease", as variously argued (Cognitive Implications of Lifestyle Diseases of Rich and Poor: transforming personal entanglement with the natural environment, 2010; Mind Map of Global Civilizational Collapse: why nothing is happening in response to global challenges, 2011; Mapping the Global Underground, 2010; Convergence of 30 Disabling Global Trends: mapping the social climate change engendering a perfect storm, 2012).
The difficulty for "participants" in the process of decline -- possibly framed metaphorically as a "journey" -- is that the "map is not the territory". A "map" is then just one of the metaphors which may be of use. Explanations, from whatever perspective, may not be helpful -- as succinctly framed in the movie As Good as It Gets (1997): I'm drowning here and you're just describing the water.
Global dementia: The preoccupation of this argument acquires a particular focus with the death of Nelson Mandela, following an extended period in intensive care. World leaders assembled to praise his life achievement, notably including the leader of the country that had maintained his status as a terrorist until 2008 -- long after his receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 (US government considered Nelson Mandela a terrorist until 2008, NBC News, 7 December 2013). Leaders travelled from the memorial event to a G8 Summit focused on dementia -- the serious permanent loss of cognitive ability. A briefing by Alzheimer's Disease International to the G8 indicated that global dementia is set to treble by 2050 to affect some 135 million people -- one in three seniors (The Global Impact of Dementia 2013–2050, 2013).
Given its track record, the G8 can however itself be usefully explored as a valuable metaphor for progressive loss of cognitive ability of the "global brain". Those assembled at the Summit focused on remedial research and palliative care to postpone the inevitable -- both metaphors for past strategic failure. Missing is any consideration of the metaphors through which the tragic experience of the dying can be fruitfully reframed -- including that of cultures and civilization itself. As the current enabling metaphor, global sustainability is as illusory as individual immortality (In Quest of Sustainability as Holy Grail of Global Governance, 2011). Ironically it is South Africa that remains the country with the highest mortality rate in the world -- far greater than when it was first the focus of development.
Entangling with information overload and explanatory closure Limits to knowledge processing: A remarkable analysis of the collapsing energy system of the Roman Empire in its final phases has been made by Thomas Homer-Dixon (The Upside of Down: catastrophe, creativity, and the renewal of civilization, 2006). As argued separately with respect to the viability of any system (General systems research and the VSM, 2011), this analysis could be generalized to encompass the capacity of the current "knowledge-based" global civilization to elicit and process the information necessary to its survival -- rather than Homer-Dixon's specific "energy" focus. There is indeed the possibility of a memetic singularity (Emerging Memetic Singularity in the Global Knowledge Society, 2009).
Consistent with Homer-Dixon's argument is the challenge of "bigness", first articulated by Leopold Kohr (The Breakdown of Nations, 1957; Development without Aid, 1973; The Overdeveloped Nations, 1977). As summarized by Paul Kingsnorth (This Economic Collapse is a 'Crisis of Bigness', The Guardian, 26 September 2011), Kohr warned that the gigantist global system would grow until it imploded. Recent history with regard to multinational corporations deemed "too big to fail" offers an indication in this respect. Such arguments are of relevance to the information processing capacity of the individual.
Navigating cycles: Homer-Dixon focuses on achieving the necessary resilience to navigate the adaptive cycle. The nature of information overload as widely experienced, accompanied by hardening of the "arteries" of knowledge (cognitive "arteriosclerosis"?), arguably now precludes appropriate collective engagement with any cycle (Memetic and Information Diseases in a Knowledge Society: speculations towards the development of cures and preventive measures, 2008).
The condition could be reframed metaphorically through arguing that the requisite skills might be compared to those of riding a "monocycle", when the balance required for a "bicycle" is already a challenge in the governance of any collectivity -- suggesting that a "tricycle" or a "quadricycle" might prove more practicable. Separately a case has been made for the relevance of interlinked Borromean rings in three dimensions (Attractive global governance through animation and "special effects", 2013)
Overload and premature closure: Ironically the challenge applies to any exploration of death. This runs the immediate risk of a form of death by explanatory closure -- especially under a high degree of pressure for simplicity (and avoidance of complexity). The large amount of relevant material exemplifies the need for a different approach to its navigation. Metaphorical use of "surf", "skate", "glide" and "skim", with respect to information is suggestive of the need for another kind of cognitive vehicle or modality. Preferences for "tweeting" are indicative (Re-Emergence of the Language of the Birds through Twitter? 2010; Tweeter, Tweeter, Little Star; How I wonder what you are, 2012). Metaphor offers the possibility of highly succinct imagery -- typically readily comprehensible -- consistent with the argument for memory aids (In Quest of Mnemonic Catalysts -- for comprehension of complex psychosocial dynamics, 2007).
Any commentary on dying could best aspire to be its own metaphor -- as with the experiencers of that process. The approach in what follows is therefore to offer pointers and links rather than to engage in extensive elaboration. The many references are suggestive in their own right of valuable insights.
Breakdown of connectivity: Framed in its most general sense, death could be understood as a catastrophic breakdown in connectivity -- itself perhaps best understood as the meta-pattern of which Gregory Bateson declared:
The pattern which connects is a meta-pattern. It is a pattern of patterns. It is that meta-pattern which defines the vast generalization that, indeed, it is patterns which connect. (Mind and Nature: a necessary unity, 1979)
And it is from this perspective that he warns: Break the pattern which connects the items of learning and you necessarily destroy all quality (1979, pp. 8-11). This echoes Christopher Alexander's sense that: in our time the languages have broken down (The Timeless Way of Building, 1979).
Metaphor as meta-pattern: Given the constraint on processing information, there is then a case for considering metaphor as offering a form of (ad hoc) meta-pattern of connectivity. This is consistent with the observation of Bateson in explaining why "we are our own metaphor" to a conference on the effects of conscious purpose on human adaptation:
One reason why poetry is important for finding out about the world is because in poetry a set of relationships get mapped onto a level of diversity in us that we don't ordinarily have access to. We bring it out in poetry. We can give to each other in poetry the access to a set of relationships in the other person and in the world that we're not usually conscious of in ourselves. So we need poetry as knowledge about the world and about ourselves, because of this mapping from complexity to complexity. (Mary Catherine Bateson. Our Own Metaphor, 1972, pp. 288-289)
Governing complexity: Metaphorically, there is some charm to the fact that the human individual is home to a far greater number of living entities than the individuals composing any global civilization, as documented by the Human Microbiome Project (Humans Carry More Bacterial Cells than Human Ones, Scientific American, 30 November 2007). This could well be of significance for the governance of social processes characterized by patterns of relationships normally too complex for the mind to grasp -- or variously threatened by information overload. Of special interest in comprehending non-linear cyclic processes in relation to linear thinking, are the potential insights arising from the relation of rhythm to metre in poetry. In this sense the current "spastic" development of society, as a victim of economic cycles, may be seen as resulting from an a-rhythmic approach to governance.
Interplay of living and dying: The interplay of "Metaphors To Live By" and "Metaphors To Die By" could be represented by the following schematic indicative of the period from birth to death.
Person vs. Collective: There is an instructive possibility of exploring correspondences between how individual dying is framed (by those variously faced with it) and how groups and cultures "die" (by those faced with this collective phenomenon). Of necessity, there is much reflection on the first case. The case of groups is now evident in terminal bankruptcies, corporate downsizing and community decline. It is more tragically experienced as the loss of lifelong working relationships, estrangement from relatives and friends, the "death" of a language, or the dissolution of centuries-old cultural identity -- and especially of genocidal massacre. The familiarity with individual death is readily used to provide a metaphorical framework for understanding that of any collective. Much more challenging is how the nature of the "dying" of an empire, or even of a global civilization, is to be sensed, experienced and comprehended. How might a mighty civilization have a "good death", and "die gracefully" -- with dignity?
Dying vs. Living: There is an extensive literature on framing the dying process, whether for those who are dying or for those left to grieve. The much-cited study by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (Metaphors We Live By, 1980) has evoked a wide variety of studies and commentary on "Metaphors We Die By". As with the original study, these focus predominantly on the case of the individual. Jared Diamond has provided several studies of relevance to the collective case (Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed, 2005). The framing adopted (whether unconsciously or not) by those embedded within those collectives, as implied by Diamond's reference to "choice", is necessarily absent from studies about macrohistory. Hence the challenge of deriving meaning from the larger pattern of living and dying, as previously discussed (Engaging Macrohistory through the Present Moment, 2004).
Collective decline: Despite the extent of the phenomenon, there are relatively few studies of the metaphors used by groups, villages and corporations to frame the process of their own demise. Exceptions include Howard F. Stein (Death Imagery and the Experience of Organizational Downsizing: or, is your name on Schindler's List?). Simon Crean, as Australian Trade Minister, gave support to the idea that the Doha Round is on "life support" but not yet as "dead as the dodo" (Aust and US call for revival of Doha Round negotiations, Correspondents Report, 9 March 2000). According to Crean: The metaphors of death and crisis have become central to discussion of the world trade round involving 151 countries.
Sacrifice: More questionable is of course the use of metaphor to enable and facilitate self-sacrifice (suicide missions, self-immolation, etc) or the sacrifice of groups and cultures -- often by those incapable of any sacrifice themselves, as argued by George Lakoff (Metaphor and War: the metaphor system used to justify war in the Gulf, 1991; Metaphors of Terror, 2001). Like jihadi suicide bombers, kamikaze pilots and Christian martyrs have a profound dependence on metaphor in dying for their cause -- or enabling the death of others with detachment, as exemplified by drone pilots and gas over operatives in concentration camps.,
Dying collectivities: The effort here is to switch from the emphasis on the metaphors which already tend to be used by some -- implied by "We Live By" or "We Die By" -- to those unfamiliar metaphors which might be fruitfully used. Hence use of the title "Metaphors To Die By" -- possibly better considered as "Metaphors To Die With", "In", "On", or "Through". This endeavours to extend the range of metaphors which could be of value in the individual case in order to encompass that of the group and civilizational cases. The approach thus challenges the variety of conventional approaches to dying by considering the implications and relevance for collectivities. The emphasis is however especially on the framing that the dying may find fruitful in some way -- rather than that by which others may choose to frame it as "non-participants" in the experience itself ("as lived").
Dying of global civilization: This shift in focus is of course of very particular relevance to the process by which the current global civilization is "dying" as has been variously claimed (notably in the many articles referenced on the "Die Off" website). Many current global initiatives are usefully to be understood as "palliative care" and a form of "life support". The issue has recently been given particular focus by Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich (Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided? Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 7 March 2013) with the introductory comment:
Virtually every past civilization has eventually undergone collapse, a loss of socio-political-economic complexity usually accompanied by a dramatic decline in population size... All those previous collapses were local or regional; elsewhere, other societies and civilizations persisted unaffected... But today, for the first time, humanity's global civilization -- the worldwide, increasingly interconnected, highly technological society in which we all are to one degree or another, embedded -- is threatened with collapse by an array of environmental problems... The human predicament is driven by overpopulation, overconsumption of natural resources and the use of unnecessarily environmentally damaging technologies and socio-economic-political arrangements to service Homo sapiens' aggregate consumption.
Or, as asked by Rosalie Bertell (The Future of Planet Earth: are we the last surviving generations? Radioactivity and the Gradual Extinction of Life? Global Research, 12 December 2013).
Dying vs. Living: There is an extensive literature on framing the dying process, whether for those who are dying or for those left to grieve. The much-cited study by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (Metaphors We Live By, 1980) has evoked a wide variety of studies and commentary on "Metaphors We Die By". As with the original study, these focus predominantly on the case of the individual. Jared Diamond has provided several studies of relevance to the collective case (Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed, 2005). The framing adopted (whether unconsciously or not) by those embedded within those collectives, as implied by Diamond's reference to "choice", is necessarily absent from studies about macrohistory. Hence the challenge of deriving meaning from the larger pattern of living and dying, as previously discussed (Engaging Macrohistory through the Present Moment, 2004).
Collective decline: Despite the extent of the phenomenon, there are relatively few studies of the metaphors used by groups, villages and corporations to frame the process of their own demise. Exceptions include Howard F. Stein (Death Imagery and the Experience of Organizational Downsizing: or, is your name on Schindler's List?). Simon Crean, as Australian Trade Minister, gave support to the idea that the Doha Round is on "life support" but not yet as "dead as the dodo" (Aust and US call for revival of Doha Round negotiations, Correspondents Report, 9 March 2000). According to Crean: The metaphors of death and crisis have become central to discussion of the world trade round involving 151 countries.
Sacrifice: More questionable is of course the use of metaphor to enable and facilitate self-sacrifice (suicide missions, self-immolation, etc) or the sacrifice of groups and cultures -- often by those incapable of any sacrifice themselves, as argued by George Lakoff (Metaphor and War: the metaphor system used to justify war in the Gulf, 1991; Metaphors of Terror, 2001). Like jihadi suicide bombers, kamikaze pilots and Christian martyrs have a profound dependence on metaphor in dying for their cause -- or enabling the death of others with detachment, as exemplified by drone pilots and gas over operatives in concentration camps.,
Dying collectivities: The effort here is to switch from the emphasis on the metaphors which already tend to be used by some -- implied by "We Live By" or "We Die By" -- to those unfamiliar metaphors which might be fruitfully used. Hence use of the title "Metaphors To Die By" -- possibly better considered as "Metaphors To Die With", "In", "On", or "Through". This endeavours to extend the range of metaphors which could be of value in the individual case in order to encompass that of the group and civilizational cases. The approach thus challenges the variety of conventional approaches to dying by considering the implications and relevance for collectivities. The emphasis is however especially on the framing that the dying may find fruitful in some way -- rather than that by which others may choose to frame it as "non-participants" in the experience itself ("as lived").
Dying of global civilization: This shift in focus is of course of very particular relevance to the process by which the current global civilization is "dying" as has been variously claimed (notably in the many articles referenced on the "Die Off" website). Many current global initiatives are usefully to be understood as "palliative care" and a form of "life support". The issue has recently been given particular focus by Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich (Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided? Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 7 March 2013) with the introductory comment:
Virtually every past civilization has eventually undergone collapse, a loss of socio-political-economic complexity usually accompanied by a dramatic decline in population size... All those previous collapses were local or regional; elsewhere, other societies and civilizations persisted unaffected... But today, for the first time, humanity's global civilization -- the worldwide, increasingly interconnected, highly technological society in which we all are to one degree or another, embedded -- is threatened with collapse by an array of environmental problems... The human predicament is driven by overpopulation, overconsumption of natural resources and the use of unnecessarily environmentally damaging technologies and socio-economic-political arrangements to service Homo sapiens' aggregate consumption.
Or, as asked by Rosalie Bertell (The Future of Planet Earth: are we the last surviving generations? Radioactivity and the Gradual Extinction of Life? Global Research, 12 December 2013).
On Sunday night's program, George Knapp welcomed clinical psychologist, Dr. Allan Botkin , who discussed how he created Induced After-Death Communication (IADC) therapy while counseling Vietnam veterans in his work at a Chicago area VA hospital. While IADCs, which seem to allow for communication with deceased loved ones, appear to be supernatural, Botkin stressed that he tries to avoid speculating on the nature and veracity of these experiences, since his focus is primarily on facilitating healing and recovery for his patients who are struggling with grief and trauma. "That's the only argument I really want to make: it works," he said, "it heals people to a degree that has not been even thought to be possible."
He explained that, after having great success with a treatment known as "eye movement desensitization and reprocessing ," he began tweaking the technique in the hopes of improving its results. While working with a patient named Sam, who was a Vietnam veteran that had befriended an orphaned girl during the war and witnessed her gruesome death, Botkin tried this new form of therapy and was startled by the results. Toward the end of the session, "a big smile came over Sam's face" and, upon opening his eyes, he reported seeing and talking with the girl, now fully grown, as well as hugging her. The veteran marveled that he could feel the girls arms around him during the hug, which Botkin thought was some form of hallucination. This assessment soon changed when his other patients also began reporting similar ADC experiences as a result of the revised treatment.
Over the course of the evening, Botkin detailed a number of remarkable cases of IADC events that have been experienced by patients in his care. In one unique session, the subject opened his eyes after only five seconds, which made Botkin think the process hadn't worked. However, the man then detailed a lengthy ADC and thought that he'd had his eyes closed for two minutes. Another patient, who was traumatized from being a young child present at the assassination of Martin Luther King, claimed to have actually communicated with the slain civil rights leader during his IADC treatment. Botkin also told the story of a Vietnam vet who was communicating with his best friend that was killed during the war and was delighted to see, seated behind his departed companion, "all the rest of the guys in the company that had died."
Post-Mortem Contact with the Dead
To Pastor Fritz Pfiifflin
Dear Pastor Pfaffiin, 10 January 1939
First of all I would like to express my heartfelt sympathy over the heavy loss that has befallen you.
Since you wish to know what I think about such experiences, I would like to point out before anything else that there was a direct connection between the event in Africa and your consciousness.
This is an undeniable fact and in my opinion there is only one explanation, namely that spatial distance is, in the psychic sense, relative.
In other words, physical space is not under all circumstances a definite datum but under certain conditions is also a psychic function.
One might call it psychically contractile.
We must suppose that the distance between your brother's experience and your own was reduced to a minimum.
From similar experiences we must conclude that this nullification of space proceeds with great speed, so that perceptions of this kind occur almost simultaneously with the accident.
We can therefore speak of a psychic nullification of time as well.
We could also suppose that the victim of the accident sent out a kind of radio message.
But this is contradicted by the fact that occasionally details are "transmitted" which occurred only after the death-for instance, the decapitation of the body of one killed by being stabbed with a knife.
In that event there can be no question of a transmission by a dying man.
It is more probable that it is a perception by someone alive and seeing.
Hence the psychic nullification of space and time offers a much better explanation.
Accordingly the capacity to nullify space and time must somehow inhere in the psyche, or, to put it another way, the psyche does not exist wholly in time and space.
It is very probable that only what we call consciousness is contained in space and time, and that the rest of the psyche.
The unconscious, exists in a state of relative spacelessness and timelessness.
For the psyche this means a relative eternality and a relative non-separation from other psyches, or a oneness with them.
It is characteristic that your brother was amazed when you asked him whether he had sent you a message.
Obviously he had not sent a message because the relative non-existence of space and time made it unnecessary. (I have expressed similar thoughts in my essay "Seele und Tod" in Wirklichkeit der Seele.)
Now with regard to the exceedingly interesting conversation you had post mortem with your brother, it has all the characteristic features of these experiences.
For one thing, there is the peculiar preoccupation of the dead with the psychic states of other (dead) persons.
For another, the existence of (psychic) shrines or places of healing.
I have long thought that religious institutions, churches, monasteries, temples, etc. as well as rites and psychotherapeutic attempts at healing were modelled on (transcendental) postmortal psychic states-a real Ecclesia Spiritualis as the prototype of the Una Sancta upon earth.
In the East these ideas would be by no means unheard-of; Buddhist philosophy, for instance, has coined the concept of Sambhoga-Kaya for this psychic existence, namely the world of subtle forms which are to Nirmana-Kaya as the breath-body (subtle body) is to the material body.
The breath-world is thought of as an intermediate state between Nirmana-Kaya and Dharma Kaya.
In Dharma-Kaya, which symbolizes the highest state, the separation of forms is dissolved into absolute unity and formlessness.
These formulations are extremely valuable from the psychological point of view as they provide a fitting terminology for such experiences.
Naturally we can form no conception of a relatively timeless and spaceless existence, but, psychologically and empirically, it results in manifestations of the continual presence of the dead and their influence on our dream life.
I therefore follow up such experiences with the greatest attention, because they show many things we dream about in a very peculiar light, where "psychological" structures appear as existential conditions.
This continual presence is also only relative, since after a few weeks or months the connection becomes indirect or breaks off altogether, although spontaneous re-encounters also appear to be possible later.
But after this period the feeling of the presence of the dead is in fact broken off.
The connection is not without its dangers because it entangles the consciousness of the living too much in that transcendental state, resulting in unconsciousness and dissociation phenomena .
This is reflected in your dream-vision of the path leading down to a lake (the unconscious).
There is an antheap, i.e., the sympathetic nervous system (= deepest unconsciousness and danger of dissolution of psychic elements in the form of milling ants) is becoming activated .
This state takes place in you, consequently the connection is in danger of being broken, hence your brother's admonition : "Always build on the heights!" i.e., on the heights of consciousness.
"For us the depth is doom," i.e., unconsciousness is doom.
Then we get into the "clouds" where one sees nothing more.
The remarkable statement that "Someone was interested in the motor cutting out" could indicate that among the crew there was someone who, through an exteriorization effect, actually caused the motor to cut out and did so because of an unrealized suicide complex.
(I have seen quite a number of such effects in my time.)
With regard to contact with your brother, I would add that this is likely to be possible only as long as the feeling of the presence of the dead continues.
But it should not be experimented with because of the danger of a disintegration of consciousness.
To be on the safe side, one must be content with spontaneous experiences.
Experimenting with this contact regularly leads either to the so-called communications becoming more and more stupid or to a dangerous dissociation of consciousness.
All the signs indicate that your conversation with your brother is a genuine experience which cannot be "psychologized."
The only "psychological" disturbance in it is the lake and the antheap.
That was evidently the moment when, perhaps from both sides, the exceedingly difficult contact between the two forms of existence could no longer be maintained.
There are experiences which show that the dead entangle themselves, so to speak, in the physiology (sympathetic nervous system) of the living.
This would probably result in states of possession.
Again with especial thanks for your extremely interesting letter,
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung [Letters Volume 1, Pages 256-259]
