My (Carl Jung’s) Most Difficult Experiment [P. 1]

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Regarding foresight, few individuals possess this ability, or perhaps it exists in everyone, yet most fail to recognise it. I knew some of my relatives, and one of my aunts had mastered it. She had seen ghosts in her large, old house, conversed with them, and could perceive events (in dreams) before they occurred. My brother Al also possessed such a gift, particularly in the final years of his life when he underwent surgery on his head to remove a tumour. I do not know if it is a gift, a curse, or a blessing; nonetheless, I would treasure that.

I, myself, have a small example: I had a dream in which one of my customers, an elderly woman I had driven to the doctor for many years but could no longer assist because she needed special transport, urgently called me to ask if I could pick her up and take her to her doctor. I wondered why I had dreamt of her after all this time. Two days after my dream, while driving a guest from her neighbourhood, she told me she recognised me as the person who had driven her friend from next door for a long time and asked if I knew she had passed away. I said no and asked when it had happened. She replied it was the night before last, the same night I had dreamt of her!

Dream analysis stands or falls with [the hypothesis of the unconscious]. Without it, the dream appears to be merely a freak of nature, a meaningless conglomerate of memory fragments left over from the day’s happenings.
~Carl Jung
“Modern Man in Search of a Soul”, p.2, Psychology Press

Now, let us read about one of the great minds in this field: Carl Gustav Jung. He was among the most sensitive and intuitive visionaries of all time. Here, he talks about his dreams, odd and extraordinary dreams. Once, he was even afraid that he had schizophrenia.

<Although it is from The Red Book, which everyone might have or may have even read, I believe many still do not notice the fineness in the “Introduction” at the beginning of the book, as I find it fascinating.>

From Carl Jung’s “The Red Book, Liber Novus: A Reader’s Edition,” by Sonu Shamdasani. (Introduction)

In 1912, Jung had some significant dreams that he did not understand. He gave particular importance to two of these, which, as he felt, showed the limitations of Freud’s conceptions of dreams. The first follows:

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 armour. He looks solid and inscrutable, and nothing impresses him. On his back, he carries a red Maltese cross. He has continued to exist since the 12th century, and he takes the same route daily between 12 and 1 o’clock midday. No one marvelled 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. (Black Book 2, pp. 25-26)

Jung found this dream oppressive and bewildering, and Freud was unable to interpret it.

(In 1925, he gave the following interpretation to this dream: “The meaning of the dream lies in the principle of the ancestral figure: not the Austrian officer – obviously he stood for the Freudian theory – but the other, the Crusader, is an archetypal figure, a Christian symbol living for the twelfth century, a symbol that does not really live today, but on the other hand in not wholly dead either. It comes out of the time of Meister Eckhart, the time of the culture of the Knights, when many ideas blossomed, only to be killed again, but they are coming to life again now. However, when I had this dream, I did not know this interpretation” (Introduction to Jungian Psychology, p. 42).

Around half a year later, Jung had another dream:

I dreamt at that time (it was shortly after Christmas 1912) that I was sitting with my children in a marvellous and richly furnished castle apartment – an open columned hall – we were sitting at a round table, whose top was a marvellous dark green stone. Suddenly, a gull or a dove flew in and sprang lightly onto the table. I admonished the children to be quiet so they would not scare away the beautiful white bird. Suddenly, this bird turned into a child of eight years, a small blond child, and ran around playing with my children in the marvellous columned colonnades. Then, the child suddenly turned into the gull or dove. She said the following to me: “Only in the first hour of the night can I become human while the male dove is busy with the twelve dead.” With these words, the bird flew away, and I awoke. (Black Book 2, pp. 17-18)

In Black Book 2, Jung noted that it was this dream that made him decide to embark on a relationship with a woman he had met three years earlier (Toni Wolff, Ibid., p. 17). In 1925, he remarked that this dream “was the beginning of a conviction that the unconscious did not consist of inert material only, but that there was something living down there (Introduction to Jungian Psychology, p. 42). He added that he thought of the story of the Tabula Smaragdina (emerald tablet), the twelve apostles, the signs of the Zodiac, and so on, but that he “could make nothing out of the dream except that there was a tremendous animation of the unconscious. I knew no technique for getting to the bottom of this activity; all I could do was just wait, keep on living, and watch the fantasies.”

I include this footnote to highlight his insatiable greed and relentless pursuit to decipher the meaning behind his dream and how he developed the interpretation.

Ibid., pp. 40-41. E. A. Benner noted Jung’s comments on this dream: “At first, he thought ‘twelve dead men’ referred to the twelve days before Christmas, for that is the dark time of the year, when traditionally witches are about. To say ‘before Christmas’ is to say before the sun lives again, for Christmas day is at the turning point of the year when the sun’s birth was celebrated in the Mithraic religion… Only much later did he relate the dream to Hermes and the twelve doves” (Meeting with Jung: Conversations recorded by E.A. Brenner during the years 1946-1961 [London: Anchor Press,1982; Zürich, Daimon Verlag, 1985], p. 93). In 1951, in “The Psychological Aspects of the Kore”, Jung presented some material from Liber Novus (describing them all as part of a dream series) in an anonymous form (“case Z.”), tracing the transformations of the anima. He noted that this dream “shows the anima as a elflike, i.e., only partially human. She can just as well be a bird, which means that she may belong wholly to nature and can vanish (i.e., become unconscious) from the human sphere (i.e., consciousness)” (CW9, I, § 371). See also Memories, pp. 195-96.

These dreams led him to analyse his childhood memories, but this did not resolve anything. He realised that he needed to recover the emotional tone of childhood. He recalled that as a child, he used to like to build houses and other structures, and he took this up again.

While he was engaged in this self-analytic activity, he continued to develop his theoretical work. At the Munich Psycho-Analytical Congress in September 1913, he spoke on psychological types. He argued that there were two basic movements of the libido: extraversion, in which the subject’s interest was oriented towards the outer world, and introversion, in which the subject’s interest was directed inward. Following from this, he posited two types of people, characterised by the predominance of one of these tendencies. The psychologies of Freud and Adler were examples of the fact that psychologies often took what was true of their type as generally valid. Hence, what was required was a psychology that did justice to both of these types (“On the question of psychological types,” CW 6).

Although this captivating story continues, I will share it in parts to facilitate understanding and enjoyment. Thank you for taking the time to read!

PS: In case someone interested, I will try to write about my new condition in a separate post. 🙏💖

23 thoughts on “My (Carl Jung’s) Most Difficult Experiment [P. 1]”

  3. Fascinating, Aladin.

    Honestly, most of what I know of Jung is what I have read on this blog.

    It is always beyond interesting and fascinating. Thank you for taking the time.

    So, dear Aladin, have you been having uninterpretable dreams over the last few months?

    Or perhaps you have been having heady dreams, and you know their meanings?

    Considering all you have been and are going through, it is a valid thing for me to ponder.

    Nonetheless, an answer is desired, but not required.

    Sending all the best get wells !

    ❦❦💙🤗💜❦❦

    Like

    • My dear Resa, thank you so much for the prize you gave me for my blog. It means a lot and is very encouraging! However, I must admit that I often struggle to remember my dreams. I can only rarely bring them into my waking life. I hope that one day I can improve on this!

      Sending best regards and thanks again.

      🤗🙏🌻❤️

      Liked by 1 person

      • Interesting that you don’t remember many of your dreams.

        I remember many, the first one being from when I was about 3- 4 years old, but for sure not older.

        There is an adventure that I remember well, all very thrilling. Skipping the details of the adventure; upon returning home there was a war blocking me from our apartment building.

        Skipping ahead, when I got inside the apartment, my parents and sister were all dead.

        It was terrifying. The noise of the war drowned out everything. Then the black and white kitchen tiles began to melt/meld and reformed as nuns who rose up off the floor and then sank back down. Up and down over and over, and while they rose they sang “Allelujah”. It was so loud, they drowned out the sounds of the war. Then as they sank back to the floor, the singing became quieter and was drowned out by the sounds of the war.

        I woke up screaming. I will never forget that dream!

        xo🌹💙🌟🤗

        Like

      • Wow! A child aged 3 to 4 dreams of war. That is quite intriguing. As you know, I am not particularly adept at interpretation, but to interpret a dream, one must consider the circumstances, the environment, and the background. Have you ever heard of any war at that age, or did your parents discuss one? Nevertheless, witnessing such a scene in dreams is dramatic for a child. Thank you for sharing this with me. 🙏❤️🥰

        Liked by 1 person

  5. The unconscious seems especially attuned to Death. Which helps to explain your dream/premonition. Death distorts the fabric of the collective consciousness. In present tense! Your dream occurred at the same time of her death… When my uncle died a few weeks ago I had taken LSD in the morning (for health / therapy. I do this once per month or at least once per quarter or semester now) LSD of course makes the unconscious go WILD! I soon suffered an unusual panic attack which caused me to reach out to family. As a result I learned my Uncle had died the same morning. And my panic suddenly made sense. I grieved for him the rest of the day. So this was not a premonition, it was actually Love occurring across space time!.. Different but similar. So back to premonitions…

    I believe I have experienced foresight, but very weakly. It’s impossible for me to predict to anyone what will occur. Just like your dream, I realize only once the future event occurs that my subconscious had prior revealed that the event would take place. But I’m never confident enough to predict! I believe we are both INFJ (or at least introverts) psychological types. We are the most likely of all the types to have pre-cognitive ability because of the way our brains work, and because we pay careful attention to our inner worlds, whereas extraverted types mostly dismiss their inner world.

    “The Unconscious is constantly dreaming.” I must renew my dream diary! I have lost touch with my unconscious lately. Would love to hear more about your dreams and premonitions… And you know I won’t call you crazy!😉🧞👏🖖

    Liked by 1 person

    • BTW I previously mentioned this on your UFO post, but I think it’s awesome how you posted about seeing UFO with your brother when you lived in Iran. People called you crazy. And since that time, now in very recent years UFO’s (UAP’s) have become mainstream!

      Liked by 1 person

      • Thanks a lot, brother, for this extraordinary comment with that remarkable dream. I believe foresight is a hidden power of which we are often unaware. Our unconscious is a mysterious software with massive storage capacity, and all these occurrences are being saved within it. Taking LSD, of course (a good one, because I have also used some rubbish those days), greatly helps to open that box! However, from my experiences (I have once written about my experiences on LSD), I noticed that the situation in which one takes LSD is very influential.
        A tragic event can bring a negative atmosphere and may even pose dangers.

        And your fascinating comments on my UFO article—thank you for reminding me back to that one. During my recent difficult times with my troubles, I tried many times to reopen my third eye, but there was no chance! So, let’s hope it returns one day.
        Take care, my wise friend!

        🙏👍🌻🤗🖖🖖

        Like

  6. Hi,
    Thanks for this, I should read Jung, I wish I had more time, and for dreaming….

    I found my way here through a small add in the Whitechapel Whelk. I read of your surgery, glad you’re improved!

    I was widowed at 46 years of age, and now, nearly two years later, I am become some sort of fool action man, but I’m creaking at the seams. I’m fitter than I’ve ever been, but I bleed easily, I can’t use a hanky any more, because whenever I blow my nose there are spots of blood. I should probably go and bother a doctor, but like you, I don’t want to live a long miserable life, and I take this increased fragility as a decline that will gradually make me dependent on care, of which, with my dear wife gone, there is none.

    Dreams, and writing are both things that shouldn’t make me bleed, so perhaps I should give up work, and my mania for getting to it, and squeezing in other activities, and stay at home with pen and pillow??

    I don’t know whether to wind down work gradually or to go cold turkey, so I do neither and carry on my manic self.

    There probably is no cure for stupidity, but I enjoyed your post.

    Thanks Aladdin.

    S.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Thank you very much for sharing an honest and open short story about your life. I am sorry to hear about the issue with your blood. It is either Haemophilia or Coagulopathy, which, as I know from some friends and colleagues, can improve through various therapies. It is certainly not as severe as undergoing dialysis! Writing is always a good aid for clearing the soul. However, I genuinely appreciate your kind words and your interest in observing my littleness. Take care and look after yourself.
      Sincerely, Aladin.

      Like

  9. Pingback: My (Carl Jung’s) Most Difficult Experiment [P. 3] – lampmagician

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