What a human being brings over at the time of his death is so important.
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. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 311.
