While thumbing through Deirdre’s Bair wonderful biography of Jung, I ran across some fascinating insights into Jung, the mystic.
According to Bair, Jung’s interest in psychiatry as a specialty dated from his first year in medical school, when two inexplicable events happened that led him to “read widely about Spiritualism, then considered a related adjunct to psychiatry.” (Spiritualism – communication with spirits – as a related adjunct to psychiatry? Wow. How times have changed!)
One summer afternoon, Jung was studying in his room when he heard a loud noise, like pistol shots, coming from the dining room. He ran out into the dining room, where a 70-year-old walnut table, a family heirloom, had split down the middle. Bair notes that the split had nothing to do with the constructions or the weather.The day was hot and humid – as opposed to a cold, dry, winter day when “such mishaps might be expected.”
A few weeks later, Jung got home to find his mother, sister and the maid in turmoil. There apparently had been another noise, from a “solid piece of Swiss nineteenth century furniture.” The women had been too frightened to look for the cause, so Jung looked. At the side cupboard, where the bread was usually stored, “there lay a bread knife, its blade neatly severed in several places in a manner that could not have occurred naturally.”
Jung took the knife to a cutler, who insisted the knife could only have been broken intentionally. After this, Jung began to read widely about Spiritualism. Emmanuel Kant’s Dreams of a Spirit Seer was one such book. He also read Zollner, Crookes, and Swedenborg.”…the more he read, the more he was convinced that there had to be something to the worldwide coincidences, where the same seemingly unexplainable phenomena kept being reported over and over. He did not surrender entirely to the total authenticity of these views, but they were nonetheless the first sustained accounts he had read of objective psychic phenomena.”
From descriptions in Bair’s biography, it’s apparent that Jung’s mother, Emilie, was probably psychic. As a youngster, she had visions, and she grew up in a large clan of nephews, nieces, and cousins who had similar visions, “believed in ghosts and visits from various spirits, and some even talked in tongues.” It was Emilie, in fact, who after the first incident with the splitting of the dining room table, spoke in her No. 2 voice: “Yes yes, that means something.”
While growing up, Jung attended seances, experimented with “table tilting,” and Ouija boards. Later, his doctoral dissertation was entitled, “On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena.” The dissertation was well-received by the medical community because Jung was fastidious in presenting established case histories from the writings of William James and others. But he also used one of his relatives as a case history, disguising her with initials, which fooled no one in the family. When the dissertation was published, his family was ticked off.
So here was Jung – the man whose explorations gave birth to terms like synchronicity, the collective unconscious, archetypes – who seemed to have been primed from a very young age for his mystical leanings. In his later years, after he began building his “castle” on the shore of Lake Zurich, Jung had several experiences with spirits. In the winter of 1924, Bair writes, “Jung spent long periods alone at the tower, and he too, experienced ghostly presences. He heard music, as if an orchestra were playing; he envisioned a host of young peasant men who seemed to be encircling the tower with music laughter, singing, and roughhousing.” Jung writes about these experiences in his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, and Reflections.
Even in a biography as exhaustive as Bair’s, even with all that has been written about Jung, even in his autobiography, he remains elusive, mysterious, unknowable. Even the best writings don’t really reveal the secrets that lay within Jung’s heart. What did he think and feel when he sat beneath a tree that would, on the day of his death, be split in two by lightning? How did he reconcile his relationship with his mistress, Toni Wolff, with his long marriage to Emma? We have hints, but will never really know.
What we have, though, are the kernels of Jung’s brilliance, his inventiveness, his immersion in the greatest mysteries. He left it to the rest of us to figure out!
– Trish
Debra: So it appears we were both right! It's been so many years since I read either "Memories, Dreams, Reflections" or Stephan's book on the Seven Sermons to the Dead that I completely forgot the part you quoted. It reminds me very much of the circumstances when I first began channeling over 20 years ago. In my case though there were no poltergeist phenomena. That's a damn good thing too–things were in enough of a state of chaos in our house– most of it generated by me or centered around me. Poltergeists banging stuff around would have been absolutely the last straw!
The backstory of that period is a future post for my own blog. I will say however that I was having a terrible problem with insomnia at that time, and I was remembering and writing and thinking about writing not creatively but compulsively. Restlessness and a kind of "haunted" feeling as Jung said are the common denominator here.
The channeling began as a natural development of an automatic writing exercise in a writing workshop I was taking at the time. After my second or third attempt (at home at my kitchen table), and at about the point where I realized I was channeling, I had the first decent night's sleep I'd had in months! At least it felt that way.
I think it may be time for me to re-read both "Seven Sermons to the Dead" and "Memories, Dreams, Reflections." I looked around but haven't been able to locate either book.
I did find the other book by Stephan Hoeller you mentioned, though: Jung and the Lost Gospels. The inscription reads: "For Linda with memories of great times in the past. +Stephan, April 9, 1997."
Given to me on the 30th anniversary of his consecration to the episcopate in 1967, which I also attended. Oh yes, those were the days, all right!
–Linda
Off to see the link! Thanks.
How about a man from Serbia who conducts electricity?
https://purpleslinky.com/offbeat/man-conducts-electricity/
Aleksandar – what a cool story! We saw Uri Geller years ago at a south florida mall. He was bending spoons, metal combs, and I thought the whole thing was amazing.
Debra – I remember that section in his autobiography. It's when I felt he was truly a mystic.
Raksha,
Thanks for clarification. How interesting that Stephan Hoeller was your teacher!
My information on how the Seven Sermons came to be is from Jung's own book "Memories , Dreams Reflections", page 190-191. He describes what happened as he was compelled to write 7 Sermons:
"It began with a restlessness, but I did not know what it meant or what "they" wanted of me. There was an ominous atmosphere around me.I had the strange feeling that the the air was filled with ghostly entities. The it was as if my house began to be haunted."
He then describes phenomena : door bell ringing, blankets yanked off the children.
Then, he writes, "Then I knew something was about to happen. The whole house was filled as if the were a crowd present, crammed full of spirits. They were packed deep right up to the door, and the air was so thick it was scarcely possible to breathe."
He asked:
"For God's sake what in the world is this? Then they cried in out in chorus, "We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not what we sought." That is the beginning of the Septem Sermones."
"As soon as I took up the pen, the whole ghostly assemblage evaporated."
wv = "sweep"
This is the firs time to Publicly write about it – my interest in weird things originates from my teenage years. There was a woman on TV (some kind of Uri Geller from Serbia – I've never seen her again) inviting the audience to try to bend a spoon at the same time she did it. I succeeded. It felt like a piece gum. I was able for about a minute to do with spoons whatever I wanted. Unfortunately, I was both surprised and afraid of my parents' reaction, so I partially returned them (two spoons) in their previous shape.
Wonderful post! It's late so I can't comment on it as extensively as I'd like to, but right now I want to make one brief comment about "The Seven Sermons to the Dead."
Re "In "Seven Sermons", there is a document that Jung transcribed when he was visited by a group of dead people from Jerusalem."
Not exactly. "Seven Sermons" is either channeled from the Gnostic teacher Basilides, or it's Jung writing in the persona of Basilides. I believe it was channeled, since the process of channeling is similar if not identical to what Jung called Active Imagination. "The dead" is a metaphor for the living, specifically for the average unenlightened person or "man in the street."
How I know this: Stephan Hoeller, the author of the book, was my teacher for many years when I lived in Los Angeles, and I used to attend his lectures frequently. His original copy of "The Seven Sermons to the Dead" was given to him by a disciple of Jung's in Austria, before he emigrated to America. Stephan (as I always call him) speaks and reads German fluently so he translated it himself. For many years this translation circulated as a small self-published pamphlet, before the book Debra mentioned was published.
–Linda
Wow! This just proves to me that I really need to read more about Jung! He was truly a fascinating being! I also got several good book suggestions from reading the post and the comments. I am off to the library today!
Trish and Rob – I wish we were neighbors. I have The Red Book – Christmas gift from my daughter. It is not easy to read. Very beautiful. I would happily share it. I saw an ad in The Shambala Sun magazine for a discussion about the Red Book in Berkeley in October. Wish I could go. Maybe Ophra should send us! 🙂
Adele
I would so love to get my hands on the red book! Really intriguing about that connection to Odin and the Norse myths, Debra.
Funny wvs!
Oh gosh, dontcha just love it when a plan comes together!? Minds working in tandem. I often will take one of my texts on Einstein off the shelf and use IT as a guide for answering questions, as we talked about doing a fews days ago. Amazing how beautifully it falls into place when I do that. I'll always remember the line in the movie CLOSE ENCOUNTERS when the technician says, "EINSTEIN WAS PROBABLY ONE OF THEM!" Yes indeedy. Peculiar WV here:
'drampety'. cj
more and more in-depth looks into the jung "man" – so intriguing! and can you even imagine sitting down to dinner with jung and einstein????!!!! be still my heart!!!
and cj – i just yesterday saved both of your first two einstein quotes over into my "to be used" quotes for upcoming posts! why am i not surprised at your mentioning them here? 😉
oh, and my wv is entshawe which, when sorted, becomes "hasten we" among other things – but hasten we seems appropriate here!
Good information, dpage. cj
I love Jung's works.
Unfortunately, the times in lived in were such that he was not able to share all his experiences with the public. He was censured by the academic foundations he was a part of. His own family did not publish his own writings regarding his mystic experiences until last year. "The Red Book" was kept in a vault, so no one could access it.
Glimpses of his unusual mystic experiences are also the focus of Claire Dunne's "Carl Jung, Wounded Healer of the Soul", & two books by Stephen Hoeller: "The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead" and "Jung and the Lost Gospels; Insights into the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library."
In "Seven Sermons", there is a document that Jung transcribed when he was visited by a group of dead people from Jerusalem.
In the Red book are his drawings and commentaries. He had predicted the awful zeitgeist of World War II: he knew it was related to Odin & the Norse myths.
And Professor Einstein was a magnificent violinist whose mind played like the harmony of those celestial strings. Three of his quotations are among my favorites:
"I KNOW NOT WITH WHAT WEAPONS WWIII
WILL BE FOUGHT, BUT WWIV WILL BE FOUGHT WITH STICKS AND STONES."
"IMAGINATION IS MORE IMNPORTANT THAN KNOWLEDGE."
"THE IMPORTANT THING IS TO NOT STOP QUESTIONING. CURIOSITY HAS ITS OWN REASON FOR BEING. ONE CANNOT HELP BUT BE IN AWE WHEN HE CONTEMPLATES THE MYSTERIS OF ETERNITY, OF LIFE, OF THE MARVELOUS STRUCTURE OF REALITY. IT'S ENOUGH IF ONE TRIES MERELY TO CONTEMPLATE A LITTLE OF THIS MYSTERY EVERY DAY. NEVER LOSE A HOLY CURIOSITY."
cj
Einstein had dinner with the Jungs. Jung thought Einstein "was not a man whose thoughts radiated from him. He was like a musician who can be a listless guy, but then, when he makes music, you can see that he himself is the music and therein lies his greatness."
We had to read Boundaries of the Soul – the practice of Jung's psychology in college. I often wonder what human development courses are studying now. It's been about 15 years since I was in school – are they studying all of this new information coming out now about consciousness and spirituality? It surely will define the developing human in the future. Jung was one of the first to bring it mainstream.
Another thing you might not know about Jung was when he died, at the exact moment, a tree in his back yard was split right down the middle by lightning. When you think of the meaning of these events, it seems that he was indeed "plugged in," you might say.
What a great post, some of this I hadn't read before. A Great man and interesting, as you write, that there is much we do not know about him – but maybe this applies to most people. Many of our thoughts remain our own.
Love love LOVE this post!! Now Jung was an individual with genuine insights into the psyche of humanity…an individual whose objective and subjective explorations guided him to certain truths….and to many questions for which he ultimately found valid answers….that have been increasingly supported and sustained throughout the decades. No doubt Jung was Inspired. I put a capital "I" on that word for emphasis. He was apparently the personification of a true Adept, and he gave all of us much credible fodder for thoughts about the nature of realities. My personal hero is Einstein, but Jung runs a very close second! Thanks for a timely dialogue on a great Teacher and a great Man. If we rearrange the letters in my WV, we have the word "Light" or "The Light". Very appropriate. WV:
'ilghthe'. cj