[Carl Jung and Dreams as premonitions of a Death.]
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.
Frequently foreknowledge is there, but not recognition.
Thus I once had a dream in which I was attending a garden party.
I saw my sister there, and that greatly surprised me, for she had died some years before.
A deceased friend of mine was also present. The rest were people who were still alive. Presently I saw that my sister was accompanied by a lady I knew well.
Even in the dream I had drawn the conclusion that the lady was going to die. “She is already marked,” I thought. In the dream I knew exactly who she was. I knew also that she lived in Basel.
But as soon as I woke up I could no longer, with the best will in the world, recall who she was, although the whole dream was still vivid in my mind. I pictured all my acquaintances in Basel to see whether the memory images would ring a bell. Nothing!
A few weeks later I received news that a friend of mine had had a fatal accident. I knew at once that she was the person I had seen in the dream but had been unable to identify.
My recollection of her was perfectly clear and richly detailed, since she had been my patient for a considerable time up to a year before her death. In my attempt to recall the person in my dream, however, hers was the one picture which did not appear in my portrait gallery of Basel acquaintances, although by rights it should have been one of the first.
One has such experiences and I will tell of others like them one acquires a certain respect for the potentialities and arts of the unconscious.
Only, one must remain critical and be aware that such communications may have a subjective meaning as well.
They may be in accord with reality, and then again they may not. I have, however, learned that the views I have been able to form on the basis of such hints from the unconscious have been most rewarding.
Naturally, I am not going to write a book of revelations about them, but I will acknowledge that I have a “myth” which encourages me to look deeper into this whole realm.
Myths are the earliest form of science.
When I speak of things after death, I am speaking out of inner prompting, and can go no farther than to tell you dreams and myths that relate to this subject. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections.