extinguishing this light, the world would sink into nothingness.
Schopenhauer's great achievement lay in his also recognizing this,
or rediscovering it independently.
Christ like Buddha is an embodiment of the self, but in an altogether
different sense. Both stood for an overcoming of the world: Buddha
out of rational insight; Christ as a foredoomed sacrifice. In
Christianity more is suffered, in Buddhism more is seen and done.
Both paths are right, but in the Indian sense Buddha is the more
complete human being. He is a historical personality, and therefore
easier for men to understand. Christ is at once a historical man and
God, and therefore much more difficult to comprehend. At bottom
he was not comprehensible even to himself; he knew only that he
had to sacrifice himself, that this course was imposed upon him
from within. His sacrifice happened to him like an act of destiny.
Buddha lived out his life and died at an advanced age, whereas
Christ's activity as Christ probably lasted no more than a year.
Later, Buddhism underwent the same transformation as
Christianity: Buddha became, as it were, the image of the
development of the self; he became a model for men to imitate,
whereas actual y he had preached that by overcoming the Nidana-
chain every human being could become an il uminate, a buddha.
Similarly, in Christianity, Christ is an exemplar who dwel s in every
Christian as his integral personality. But historical trends led to the
imitatio Christi, whereby the individual does not pursue his own
destined road to wholeness, but attempts to imitate the way taken
by Christ. Similarly in the East, historical trends led to a devout
imitation of the Buddha. That Buddha should have become a model
to be imitated was in itself a weakening of his idea, just as the
imitatio Christi was a forerunner of the fateful stasis in the evolution
of the Christian idea. As Buddha, by virtue of his insight, was far in
advance of the Brahma gods, so Christ cried out to the Jews, "You
are gods" (John 10:34) ; but men were incapable of understanding
what he meant. Instead we find that the so-cal ed Christian West, far
from creating a new world, is moving with giant strides toward the
possibility of destroying the world we have. [3]
India honored me with three doctorates, from Al ahabad, Benares,
and Calcutta representatives of Islam, of Hinduism, and of British-
Indian medicine and science. It was a little too much of a good
thing, and I needed a retreat. A ten-day spel in the hospital offered
it to me, for in Calcutta I final y came down with dysentery. This was
a blessed island in the wild sea of new impressions, and I found a
place to stand on from which I could contemplate the ten thousand
things and their bewildering turmoil.
When I returned to the hotel, in tolerably good health, I had a dream
so characteristic that I wish to set it down here. I found myself, with a
large number of my Zurich friends and acquaintances, on an
unknown island, presumably situated not far off the coast of
southern England. It was smal and almost uninhabited. The island
was narrow, a strip of land about twenty miles long, running in a
north-south direction. On the rocky coast at the southern end of the
island was a medieval castle.
3 On the problem of the imitatio, cf. Psychology and Alchemy, Part I (CW
12).
We stood in its courtyard, a group of sightseeing tourists. Before us
rose an imposing 'belfroi', through whose gate a wide stone
staircase was visible. We could just manage to see that it
terminated above in a columned hal . This hal was dimly il uminated
by candlelight. I understood that this was the castle of the Grail, and
that this evening there would be a "celebration of the Grail" here.
This information seemed to be of a secret character, for a German
professor among us, who strikingly resembled old Mommsen, knew
nothing about it. I talked most animatedly with him, and was
impressed by his learning and sparkling intel igence. Only one thing
disturbed me: he spoke constantly about a dead past and lectured
very learnedly on the relationship of the British to the French
sources of the Grail story. Apparently he was not conscious of the
meaning of the legend, nor of its living presentness, whereas I was
intensely aware of both. Also, he did not seem to perceive our
immediate, actual surroundings, for he behaved as though he were
in a classroom, lecturing to his students. In vain I tried to cal his
attention to the peculiarity of the situation. He did not see the stairs
or the festive glow in the hal .
I looked around somewhat helplessly, and discovered that I was
standing by the wal of a tal castle; the lower portion of the wal was
covered by a kind of trel is, not made of the usual wood, but of black
iron artful y formed into a grapevine com- plete with leaves, twining
tendrils, and grapes. At intervals of six feet on the horizontal
branches were tiny houses, likewise of iron, like birdhouses.
Suddenly I saw a movement in the foliage; at first it seemed to be
that of a mouse, but then I saw distinctly a tiny, iron, hooded gnome,
a cucul atus, scurrying from one little house to the next. "Wel ," I
exclaimed in astonishment to the professor, "now look at that, wil
you..."
At that moment a hiatus occurred, and the dream changed. We--the
same company as before, but without the professor-- were outside
the castle, in a treeless, rocky landscape. I knew that something
had to happen, for the Grail was not yet in the castle and stil had to
be celebrated that same evening. It was said to be in the northern
part of the island, hidden in a smal , uninhabited house, the only
house there. I knew that it was our task to bring the Grail to the
castle. There were about six of us who set out and tramped
northward.
After several hours of strenuous hiking, we reached the narrowest
part of the island, and I discovered that the island was actual y
divided into two halves by an arm of the sea. At the smal est part of
this strait the width of the water was about a hundred yards. The sun
had set, and night descended. Wearily, we camped on the ground.
The region was unpopulated and desolate; far and wide there was
not a tree or shrub, nothing but grass and rocks. There was no
bridge, no boat. It was very cold; my companions fel asleep, one
after the other. I considered what could be done, and came to the
conclusion that I alone must swim across the channel and fetch the
Grail. I took off my clothes. At that point I awoke.
Here was this essential y European dream emerging when I had
barely worked my way out of the overwhelming mass of Indian
impressions. Some ten years before, I had discovered that in many
places in England the myth of the Grail was stil a living thing, in
spite of al the scholarship that has accumulated around this
tradition. This fact had impressed me al the more when I realized
the concordance between this poetic myth and what alchemy had to
say about the unum vas, the una medicina, and the unus lapis.
Myths which day has forgotten continue to be told by night, and
powerful figures which consciousness has reduced to banality and
ridiculous triviality are recognized again by poets and prophetical y
revived; therefore they can also be recognized "in changed form" by
the thoughtful person. The great ones of the past have not died, as
we think; they have merely changed their names. "Smal and slight,
but great in might," the veiled Kabir enters a new house.
Imperiously, the dream wiped away al the intense impressions of
India and swept me back to the too-long-neglected concerns of the
Occident, which had formerly been expressed in the quest for the
Holy Grail as wel as in the search for the philosophers' stone. I was
taken out of the world of India, and reminded that India was not my
task, but only a part of the way --admittedly a significant one which
should carry me closer to my goal. It was as though the dream were
asking me, "What are you doing in India? Rather seek for yourself
and your fel ows the healing vessel, the servator mundi, which you
urgently need. For your state is perilous; you are al in imminent
danger of destroying al that centuries have built up."
Ceylon, the last stage of my journey, struck me as no longer India;
there is already something of the South Seas about it, and a touch
of paradise, in which one cannot linger too long. Colombo is a busy
international port where every day between five and six o'clock a
massive downpour descends from a clear sky. We soon left it
behind and headed for the hil y country of the interior. There Kandy,
the old royal city, is swathed in a fine mist whose tepid humidity
sustains a luxuriant vegetation. The Dalada-Maligawa Temple,
which contains the relic of the Holy Tooth (of Buddha), is smal , but
radiates a special charm. I spent a considerable time in its library,
talking with the monks, and looking at the texts of the Buddhist
canon engraved on silver leaves.
There I witnessed a memorable evening ceremony. Young men and
girls poured out enormous mounds of jasmine flowers in front of the
altars, at the same time singing a prayer under their breath: a
mantram. I thought they were praying to Buddha, but the monk who
was guiding me explained, "No, Buddha is no more; He is in
nirvana; we cannot pray to him. They are singing: 'This life is
transitory as the beauty of these flowers. May my God [4] share with
me the merit of this offering.' "
As a prelude to the ceremony a one-hour drum concert was
performed in the mandapam, or what in Indian temples is cal ed the
hal of waiting. There were five drummers; one stood in each corner
of the square hal , and the fifth, a young man, stood in the middle.
He was the soloist, and a very fine drummer. Naked to the waist, his
dark-brown trunk glistening, with a red girdle, white shoka (a long
skirt reaching to the feet), and white turban, arms covered with
shining bracelets, he stepped up to the golden Buddha, bearing a
double drum, "to sacrifice the music." There, with beautiful
movements of body and arms, he drummed alone a strange
melody, artistical y perfect. I watched
4 God = deva = guardian angel.
him from behind; he stood in front of the entrance to the mandapam,
which was covered with little oil lamps. The drum speaks the
ancient language of the bel y and solar plexus; the bel y does not
"pray" but engenders the "meritorious" mantram or meditative
utterance. It is therefore not adoration of a non-existent Buddha, but
one of the many acts of self-redemption performed by the
awakened human being.
Toward the beginning of spring I set out on my homeward voyage,
with such a plethora of impressions that I did not have any desire to
leave the ship to see Bombay. Instead, I buried myself in my Latin
alchemical texts. But India did not pass me by without a trace; it left
tracks which lead from one infinity into another infinity.
v. Ravenna And Rome
Even on the occasion of my first visit to Ravenna in 1913, the tomb
of Gal a Placidia seemed to me significant and unusual y
fascinating. The second time, twenty years later, I had the same
feeling. Once more I fel into a strange mood in the tomb of Gal a
Placidia; once more I was deeply stirred. I was there with an
acquaintance, and we went directly from the tomb into the
Baptistery of the Orthodox.
Here, what struck me first was the mild blue light that fil ed the room;
yet I did not wonder about this at al . I did not try to account for its
source, and so the wonder of this light without any visible source did
not trouble me. I was somewhat amazed because, in place of the
windows I remembered having seen on my first visit, there were
now four great mosaic frescoes of incredible beauty which, it
seemed, I had entirely forgotten. I was vexed to find my memory so
unreliable. The mosaic on the south side represented the baptism
in the Jordan; the second picture, on the north, was of the passage
of the Children of Israel through the Red Sea; the third, on the east,
soon faded from my memory. It might have shown Naaman being
cleansed of leprosy in the Jordan; there was a picture on this theme
in the old Merian Bible in my library, which was much like the
mosaic.
The fourth mosaic, on the west side of the baptistery, was the most
impressive of al . We looked at this one last. It represented Christ
holding out his hand to Peter, who was sinking beneath the waves.
We stopped in front of this mosaic for at least twenty minutes and
discussed the original ritual of baptism, especial y the curious
archaic conception of it as an initiation connected with real peril of
death. Such initiations were often connected with the peril of death
and so served to express the archetypal idea of death and rebirth.
Baptism had original y been a real submersion which at least
suggested the danger of drowning.
I retained the most distinct memory of the mosaic of Peter sinking,
and to this day can see every detail before my eyes: the blue of the
sea, individual chips of the mosaic, the inscribed scrol s
proceeding from the mouths of Peter and Christ, which I attempted
to decipher. After we left the baptistery, I went promptly to Alinari to
buy photographs of the mosaics, but could not find any. Time was
pressing this was only a short visit and so I postponed the purchase
until later. I thought I might order the pictures from Zurich.
When I was back home, I asked an acquaintance who was going to
Ravenna to obtain the pictures for me. He could not locate them, for
he discovered that the mosaics I had described did not exist.
Meanwhile, I had already spoken at a seminar about the original
conception of baptism, and on this occasion had also mentioned
the mosaics that I had seen in the Baptistery of the Orthodox. [5]
The memory of those pictures is stil vivid to me. The lady who had
been there with me long refused to believe that what she had "seen
with her own eyes" had not existed.
As we know, it is very difficult to determine whether, and to what
extent, two persons simultaneously see the same thing. In this case,
however, I was able to ascertain that at least the main features of
what we both saw had been the same.
This experience in Ravenna is among the most curious events in
my life. It can scarcely be explained. A certain light may possibly be
cast on it by an incident in the story of Empress
5 Tantra Yoga Seminar, 1932.
Gal a Placidia (d. 450). During a stormy crossing from Byzantium to
Ravenna in the worst of winter, she made a vow that if she came
through safely, she would build a church and have the perils of the
sea represented in it. She kept this vow by building the basilica of
San Giovanni in Ravenna and having it adorned with mosaics. In
the early Middle Ages, San Giovanni, together with its mosaics,
was destroyed by fire; but in the Ambrosiana in Milan is stil to be
found a sketch representing Gal a Placidia in a boat.
I had, from the first visit, been personal y affected by the figure of
Gal a Placidia, and had often wondered how it must have been for
this highly cultivated, fastidious woman to live at the side of a
barbarian prince. Her tomb seemed to me a final legacy through
which I might reach her personality. Her fate and her whole being
were vivid presences to me; with her intense nature, she was a
suitable embodiment for my anima. [6]
The anima of a man has a strongly historical character. As a
personification of the unconscious she goes back into prehistory,
and embodies the contents of the past. She provides the individual
with those elements that he ought to know about his pre-history. To
the individual, the anima is al life that has been in the past and is
stil alive in him. In comparison to her I have always felt myself to be
a barbarian who real y has no history like a creature just sprung out
of nothingness, with neither a past nor a future.
In the course of my confrontation with the anima I had actual y had a
brush with those perils which I saw represented in the mosaics. I
had come close to drowning. The same thing happened to me as to
Peter, who cried for help and was rescued by Jesus. What had
been the fate of Pharaoh's army could have been mine. Like Peter
and like Naaman, I came away unscathed, and the integration of the
unconscious contents made an essential contribution to the
completion of my personality.
6 Jung himself explained the vision as a momentary new creation
by the unconscious, arising out of his thoughts about archetypal
initiation. The immediate cause of the concretization lay, in his
opinion, in a projection of his anima upon Gal a Placidia. A. J.
What happens within oneself when one integrates previously
unconscious contents with the consciousness is something which
can scarcely be described in words. It can only be experienced. It is
a subjective affair quite beyond discussion; we have a particular
feeling about ourselves, about the way we are, and that is a fact
which it is neither possible nor meaningful to doubt. Similarly, we
convey a particular feeling to others, and that too is a fact that
cannot be doubted. So far as we know, there is no higher authority
which could eliminate the probable discrepancies between al these
impressions and opinions. Whether a change has taken place as
the result of integration, and what the nature of that change is,
remains a matter of subjective conviction. To be sure, it is not a fact
which can be scientifical y verified and therefore finds no place in
an official view of the world. Yet it nevertheless remains a fact which
is in practice uncommonly important and fraught with
consequences. Realistic psychotherapists, at any rate, and
psychologists interested in therapy, can scarcely afford to overlook
facts of this sort.
Since my experience in the baptistery in Ravenna, I know with
certainty that something interior can seem to be exterior, and that
something exterior can appear to be interior. The actual wal s of the
baptistery, though they must have been seen by my physical eyes,
were covered over by a vision of some altogether different sight
which was as completely real as the unchanged baptismal font.
Which was real at that moment?
My case is by no means the only one of its kind. But when that sort
of thing happens to oneself, one cannot help taking it more
seriously than something heard or read about. In general, with
anecdotes of that kind, one is quick to think of al sorts of
explanations which dispose of the mystery. I have come to the
conclusion that before we settle upon any theories in regard to the
unconscious, we require many, many more experiences of it.
I have traveled a great deal in my life, and I should very much have
liked to go to Rome, but I felt that I was not real y up to the
impression the city would have made upon me. Pompeii alone was
more than enough; the impressions very nearly exceeded my
powers of receptivity. I was able to visit Pompeii only after I had
acquired, through my studies of 1910 to 1912, some insight into the
psychology of classical antiquity. In 1912 I was on a ship sailing
from Genoa to Naples. As the vessel neared the latitude of Rome, I
stood at the railing. Out there lay Rome, the stil smoking and fiery
hearth from which ancient cultures had spread, enclosed in the
tangled rootwork of the Christian and Occidental Middle Ages.
There classical antiquity stil lived in al its splendor and
ruthlessness.
I always wonder about people who go to Rome as they might go, for
example, to Paris or to London. Certainly Rome as wel as these
other cities can be enjoyed esthetical y; but if you are affected to the
depths of your being at every step by the spirit that broods there, if
a remnant of a wal here and a column there gaze upon you with a
face instantly recognized, then it becomes another matter entirely.
Even in Pompeii unforeseen vistas opened, unexpected things
became conscious, and questions were posed which were beyond
my powers to handle.
In my old age in 1949 I wished to repair this omission, but was
stricken with a faint while I was buying tickets. After that, the plans
for a trip to Rome were once and for al laid aside.
X
Visions
A THE BEGINNING of 1944 I broke my foot, and this misadventure
was fol owed by a heart attack. In a state of unconsciousness I
experienced deliriums and visions which must have begun when I
hung on the edge of death and was being given oxygen and
camphor injections. The images were so tremendous that I myself
concluded that I was close to death. My nurse afterward told me, "It
was as if you were surrounded by a bright glow" That was a
phenomenon she had sometimes observed in the dying, she
added. I had reached the outermost limit, and do not know whether I
was in a dream or an ecstasy. At any rate, extremely strange things
began to happen to me.
It seemed to me that I was high up in space. Far below I saw the
globe of the earth, bathed in a gloriously blue light. I saw the deep
blue sea and the continents. Far below my feet lay Ceylon, and in
the distance ahead of me the subcontinent of India. My field of
vision did not include the whole earth, but its global shape was
plainly distinguishable and its outlines shone with a silvery gleam
through that wonderful blue light. In many places the globe seemed
colored, or spotted dark green like oxydized silver. Far away to the
left lay a broad expanse the reddish-yel ow 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 al . 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. Th