Carl Jung Depth Psychology Facebook Group
26 Nov. 1913
In which underworld am I? It is dark and black as death! Everything deceives.
“Don’t let yourself be distracted from what you have to do,” the voice says.
What is it I shall do? Tell you more about my inner matters? Shall I overcome the daimon of my interior? Is it the hundred-headed dragon?
I have to bid silence to all these voices that want to hinder me, that want to block the way with painful mockery.
Despite the tiresome toil of doubt the mountain shall be climbed, despite the conviction, near conviction, of the worthlessness of the undertaking, faith shall triumph-without the quietest, the supremely quiet proof of the correctness and the value of my action.
My pen bristles-regardless. Oh what impotence of the intellect! Life pushes me beyond criticism.
You, my soul, you alone know that it is not hypocritical self-admiration, not hubris, that drives me forth to talk to you about me.
You want it-I cannot resist you. .
Hence I set about speaking again to you about things of which I have spoken before, about my dreams. (Shut up, disgust!)
Half a year or so before I had that dream about the white bird I dreamed the following:
I was in a southern town, on a rising street with narrow half-landings. It was twelve o’clock midday-bright sunshine.
An old Austrian customs guard or someone similar passes by me, lost in thought. Someone says: That is one who cannot die.
He died already 30-40 years ago, but has not yet managed to decompose.
I was very surprised. Here a striking figure came, a knight of powerful build, clad in yellowish armor.
He looks solid and inscrutable and nothing impresses him. On his back he carried a red Maltese cross.
He has continued to exist from the 12th century and daily between 12 and r o’clock midday he takes the same route.
No one marvels at these two apparitions, but I was extremely surprised. I hold back my interpretive skills.
As regards the old Austrian, Freud occurred to me; as regards the knight, I myself.Inside, a voice calls:
“It is all empty and disgusting”. I must bear it. After that I had this dream around l V2 years ago:
I am lying on a bed with my wife in a chamber with an open ceiling (similar to the roofless houses of Pompeii.)
All at once my wife startles and climbs the wall rapidly and disappears upward.
She wears a long white dress with mystical figures, such as witches or heretics, who are burnt at the stake.
At that moment I was woken in reality by a strong noise from the window shutter, as if pebbles are thrown against it. In the room something strange trips on the floor, something like a larger bird. I rush to make light.
Outside the moon shines bright, everything is still. Inside nothing. I look at my watch: 3 o’clock.
The next morning at 7am a telegram that Hedwig Sturzenegger has died suddenly and unexpectedly.
Retrospective investigations revealed that she had died at 3 o’clock at night. Why is that? I have to be patient.
My God, how difficult! But you want me to go, even when I am blind.
On 3rd Aug. 1913 on my journey to England, I had a dream:
I am sitting opposite to an elderly lady and admire how quickly she has grasped the analysis; suddenly there appears a little child’s hand, it turns my head around and I see the little blond girl with ineffable delight, she kisses me and I wake up with tears of emotion.
This dream provided me with great assurance for the time in London (congress).Three weeks ago I had a long dream:
Middle Ages: I am together with peasants who want to plunder a monastery. At nightfall the monastery ought to be captured.
We hide ourselves in the shadow of the wall. But the leader, a bad fellow, gets frightened and retreats with his gang. I stay.
fragmentary intermezzo:
My mother-in-law has brought home with her an interesting book from Munich entitled: The Spread of Buddhism in England.
There it is shown that Buddhist monasteries spread all over England in a dangerous way.
It comes with depictions of monasteries in medieval form, circumvallated twice, with big cannons.
The book contains texts translated from the Sanskrit. Uncle and Aunt Bendel (the biggest philistines!) have read it.
She has not understood an expression, “masturbationis causa,” uncle explains it to her. I am very interested in the book.
The monastery was destroyed a long time ago. Grass grows on the ruins. I am sitting at a derelict well in a courtyard.
From the well grows a tripartite tree, with a delightful green shade.
I look down and remember the monks, and it seems to me as if they had sat on this place the same way. In the depths of the well I can see delicate wire meshes, each of them representing an underground floor, where the monks used to walk.
On the uppermost mesh lie small, pea-sized red pellets. These are falling into the depths and get caught in certain meshes.
This way the upper meditating monk can indicate to the observers below what [29/30 J thoughts he has.
The monastery is in existence again, I am in the past. A mighty corridor.
I see lay brothers, strong men in different costumes (furs, white pleated clothes, mediaeval to ancient).
Then I am in the refectory, a hall as big as a church with 3 mighty arched windows, renaissance style, gray marble columns, everything is mighty and beautiful and wide. A long laid table below the windows.
The abbot sits in the middle, lost in thoughts, disheveled hair (ideas: a lunatic, Dionysus) .
Not far away from him sits someone with a female face. Colorful groups of young men with beautiful, spiritual eyes.
I leave and suddenly an old college friend is standing in front of me ( an unstable, insignificant person, a chatterer),
I ask him: “Do you still remember how we were together in the monastery of Eschenbach 90 years ago?
Was this a men’s or women’s cloister?” He says with a distinctive smile: “Of course a women’s cloister.”
I thought after waking: a men’s cloister. Ever since then many new thoughts about new forms of society. ~The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 163