

“Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.” Carl Jung
We recently wrote about Carl Jung’s apocalyptic visions in 1913 that seemed linked to World War I. Now here’s another interesting tale from Jung that dates back to 1916 when he wrote VII SERMONES AD MORTUOS, which basically means “The Seven Sermons to the Dead.”
The material, Jung said, was channeled over three evenings from Basilides in Alexandria. Basilides, a real person, was born in Syria and became a teacher in Alexandria in 133-155 AD.
Within the text, Abraxas (also the name of an album by Santana in the early1970s) is the name used for the Supreme Being that created individuality and mental powers. Upon death, individual human beings maintain the fullness of their human individuality rather than being absorbed into the oneness.
From this experience, Jung formulated the concept of the collective unconscious. He stated, “The collective unconscious is common to all. It is the foundation of what the ancients called the sympathy of all things. It is through the medium of the collective unconscious that information about a particular time and place can be transferred to another individual mind.”
That same year Jung said he was also contacted by a “highly cultivated elderly Indian” who had been a commentator on the Vedas (early Hindu sacred writings) and had died centuries ago. He would become one of Jung’s spirit guides (gurus). Rather than assume he had gone insane, Jung believed he had crossed into the same realm as the ancient priests and others who had experienced the divine.
During this time, Jung experienced hauntings and poltergeist experiences in his house. One day he finally shouted, “For God’s sake, what in the world is this?”
In unison, voices cried out, “We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not what we sought.” The next evening he began automatic writing VII SERMONES AD MORTUOS.
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Although we haven’t seen Jung’s The Red Book yet, it supposedly was written between 1914-1930, so this experience would fall within that time frame. The book is now on display at The Rubin Museum of Art in NYC. We hear that the art alone is worth the price of the book.
(Thanks to Bret Burquest for much of the above.)















