Only the gods can pass over the rainbow bridge
Doctor, pilot, and unknown woman arc characterized as belonging to the non-ego by the fact that all three of them are strangers.
Therefore the dreamer has retained possession only of the differentiated function, which carries the ego; that is, the unconscious has gained ground considerably.
The croquet ball is part of a game where the ball is driven under a hoop.
Vision 8 of the first series (par. 69) said that people should not go over the rainbow (fly?), but must go under it.
Those who go over it fall to the ground. It looks as though the flight had been too lofty after all. Croquet is played on the ground and not in the air.
We should not rise above the earth with the aid of “spiritual” intuitions and run away from hard reality, as so often happens with people who have brilliant intuitions.
We can never reach the level of our intuitions and should therefore not identify ourselves with them.
Only the gods can pass over the rainbow bridge; mortal men must stick to the earth and are subject to its laws (cf. fig. 16).
In the light of the possibilities revealed by intuition, man’s earthliness is certainly a lamentable imperfection; but this very imperfection is part of his innate being, of his reality.
He is compounded not only of his best intuitions, his highest ideals and aspirations, but also of the odious conditions of his existence, such as heredity and the indelible sequence of memories that shout after him:
“You did it, and that’s what you are!”
Man may have lost his ancient saurian’s tail, but in its stead he has a chain hanging on to his psyche which binds him to the earth—an anything-but-Homeric chain forgiven conditions which weigh so heavy that it is better to remain bound to them, even at the risk of becoming neither a hero nor a saint. (History gives us some justification for not attaching any absolute value to these collective norms.)
That we are bound to the earth does not mean that we cannot grow; on the contrary it is the sine qua non of growth.
No noble, well-grown tree ever disowned its dark roots, for it grows not only upward but downward as well.
The question of where we are going is of course extremely important; but equally important, it seems to me, is the question of who is going where.
The “who” always implies a “whence.”
It takes a certain greatness to gain lasting possession of the heights, but anybody can overreach himself. The difficulty lies in striking the dead centre (cf. dream 8, par. 132).
For this an awareness of the two sides of man’s personality is essential, of their respective aims and origins.
These two aspects must never be separated through arrogance or cowardice. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 148
