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

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

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

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

I had seen similar stones on the coast of the Gulf of Bengal. They were blocks of tawny granite, and some of them had been hollowed out into temples. My stone was one such gigantic dark block. An entrance led into a small antechamber. To the right of the entrance, a black Hindu sat silently in lotus posture upon a stone bench. He wore a white gown, and I knew that he expected me.

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

As I approached the steps leading up to the entrance into the rock, a strange thing happened: I had the feeling that everything was being sloughed away; everything I aimed at or wished for or thought, the whole phantasmagoria of earthly existence, fell away or was stripped from me – an extremely painful process. Nevertheless something remained; it was as if I now carried along with me everything I had ever experienced or done, everything that had happened around me. I might also say: it was with me, and I was it. I consisted of all that, so to speak. I consisted of my own history and I felt with great certainty: this is what I am. I am this bundle of what has been and what has been accomplished.

This experience gave me a feeling of extreme poverty, but at the same time of great fullness. There was no longer anything I wanted or desired. I existed in an objective form; I was what I had been and lived. At first the sense of annihilation predominated, of having been stripped or pillaged; but suddenly that became of no consequence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I recall one time during the Second World War when I was
returning home from Bollingen. I had a book with me, but could not
read, for the moment the train started to move I was overpowered
by the image of someone drowning. This was a memory of an
accident that had happened while I was on military service. During
the entire journey I could not rid myself of it. It struck me as uncanny,
and I thought, "What has happened? Can there have been an
accident?"

I got out at Erlenbach and walked home, still troubled by this memory.
My second daughters children were in the garden. The
family was living with us, having returned to Switzerland from Paris
because of the war. The children stood looking rather upset, and
when I asked, "Why, what is the matter?" they told me that Adrian,
then the youngest of the boys, had fallen into the water in the
boathouse. It is quite deep there, and since he could not really swim
he had almost drowned. His older brother had fished him out. This
had taken place at exactly the time I had been assailed by that memory in
the train. The unconscious had given me a hint. Why should it not be able
to inform me of other things also?

I had a somewhat similar experience before a death in my wife's
family. I dreamed that my wife's bed was a deep pit with stone
walls. It was a grave, and somehow had a suggestion of classical
antiquity about it. Then I heard a deep sigh, as if someone were
giving up the ghost. A figure that resembled my wife sat up in the pit
and floated upward. It wore a white gown into which curious black
symbols were woven. I awoke, roused my wife, and checked the
time. It was three o'clock in the morning. The dream was so curious
that I thought at once that it might signify a death. At seven o'clock
came the news that a cousin of my wife had died at three o'clock in
the morning.

[..]

One night I lay awake thinking of the sudden death of a friend
whose funeral had taken place the day before. I was deeply
concerned. Suddenly I felt that he was in the room. It seemed to me
that he stood at the foot of my bed and was asking me to go with
him. I did not have the feeling of an apparition; rather, it was an
inner visual image of him, which I explained to myself as a fantasy.
But in all honesty I had to ask myself, "Do I have any proof that this
is a fantasy? Suppose it is not a fantasy, suppose my friend is really
here and I decided he was only a fantasy would that not be
abominable of me?" Yet I had equally little proof that he stood
before me as an apparition. Then I said to myself, "Proof is neither
here nor there! Instead of explaining him away as a fantasy, I might
just as well give him the benefit of the doubt and for experiment's
sake credit him with reality." The moment I had that thought, he went
to the door and beckoned me to follow him. So I was going to have
to play along with him! That was something I hadn't bargained for. I
had to repeat my argument to myself once more. Only then did I
follow him in my imagination.

He led me out of the house, into the garden, out to the road, and
finally to his house, (In reality it was several hundred yards away
from mine.) I went in, and he conducted me into his study. He
climbed on a stool and showed me the second of five books with
red bindings which stood on the second shelf from the top. Then the
vision broke off. I was not acquainted with his library and did not
know what books he owned. Certainly I could never have made out
from below the titles of the books he had pointed out to me on the
second shelf from the top.

This experience seemed to me so curious that next morning I went
to his widow and asked whether I could look up something in my
friend's library. Sure enough, there was a stool standing under the
bookcase I had seen in my vision, and even before I came closer I
could see the five books with red bindings. I stepped up on the stool
so as to be able to read the titles. They were translations of the
novels of Emile Zola. The title of the second volume read: "The
Legacy of the Dead." The contents seemed to me of no interest.
Only the title was extremely significant in connection with this
experience.

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