Vision before death
It was early 1944. I broke my leg and after that I had a heart attack. When I was unconscious, delirious, visions began to come to me. Perhaps this began to happen when I was on the verge of death: I was given oxygen and injected with camphor. The pictures were so terrible that I already began to think that I was dying. The nurse later told me: "You were as if surrounded by light." This kind of phenomenon can sometimes be observed in the dying. As you can see, I have reached a certain limit. I can't tell if it was a dream or ecstasy. However, very strange things began to happen to me.
I had a vision, as if I were high in the sky. In the distance below, the globe shone, illuminated by an amazing blue light. I recognized the continents, which were surrounded by the blue expanse of the ocean, Ceylon lay at my feet, India in front. Not all of the Earth fell into my field of vision, but its spherical shape was clearly visible, and silvery outlines glittered through this amazing blue light. In many places, the ball looked variegated or dark green, like oxidized silver.
On the left side, a wide strip of red and yellow Arabian desert stretched, it seemed as if silver was acquiring a golden-red hue there. Still further I saw the Red Sea, and far, far behind, “in the extreme left corner,” I could make out the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. My gaze was mainly directed there, the rest was not quite clear. I saw the outline of the snowy peaks of the Himalayas, hidden by fog. For some reason I did not look "to the right" at all. I knew that I was going to fly away somewhere far from the earth.
After that, it became known to me how high one must climb to see such a huge space - to a height of 1500 meters! The view of the land from there is the most amazing and amazing sight of all that I have ever seen.
But after a while I turned away, finding myself with my back to the Indian Ocean and facing north. But after it turned out that I turned to the south. Something new appeared in my field of vision. At some distance I saw a huge dark stone, it looks like a meteorite the size of a house, and possibly more. Like me, he was floating in space.
I have seen this kind of stones on the coast of the Bay of Bengal; it was dark granite used in the construction of temples. My stone represented such a granite block. It had an entrance leading to a small hallway. To the right of the entrance, on a stone bench, sat a black Hindu in a lotus position, in white robes. He sat absolutely still, waiting for me. Two steps led up to it. On the left, on the inner wall, the temple gate was visible, surrounded by many tiny holes, recesses. The holes were filled with coconut oil, each with a burning wick. I have already seen this in reality - in the temple of the Holy Tooth, in Kandy (Ceylon), several rows of oil lamps surrounded the door to the temple.
Coming to the steps, I experienced a strange feeling that everything that had happened to me earlier was all thrown off. All that I intended to do, what I wanted and what I thought about - all this phantasmagoria of earthly existence suddenly fell asleep or was thwarted, and it was very painful. But something still remained: everything that I once experienced or did, everything that happened to me - it remained with me. To put it another way, mine stayed with me. What remained was what constituted me - my story, and I felt that this was me. Such an experience brought me a feeling of extreme insignificance and at the same time of great completeness. There were no more needs, no desires - after all, I had already lived everything that I was. At first it seemed to me that something was destroyed in me, something was taken away. But later this feeling disappeared, passed without a trace. I did not regret what was taken away, on the contrary - everything was with me,what constituted me, and I could have nothing else.
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However, I was haunted by another impression: when I approached the temple, I became confident that I would now enter the illuminated room and see there all the people with whom I was actually connected. And then I will finally understand - of this I was also sure - what I am, what my historical context is. I will find out what came before me, why I came and what kind of common stream that my life has merged into. It often seemed to me like a story without beginning and end, I was in it a kind of fragment, a fragment of a text that was not preceded by anything and nothing will follow.
It was as if my life was torn from a single chain, and all my questions remained unanswered. Why did this happen? Why did I have these thoughts and not others? What have I done with them? What follows from all this? I was overwhelmed by the confidence that I would find out everything, just go into the stone temple, find out why everything turned out this way and not otherwise. I will meet people there who know the answer - they know what happened before and what will happen after.
A sudden vision distracted me from my thoughts. Below, from where Europe was, suddenly a certain image appeared. It was my doctor, or rather, his face in a golden halo - as if in a laurel wreath. I instantly recognized him: “Oh, this is my doctor, the one who treated me. Only now he took the form of a basileus - the king of Kos. The familiar image for me was only a temporary shell, but now it appeared as it was originally."
Perhaps I was also in my original form - although I could not see myself from the outside. That it was so, I had no doubts. When he appeared in front of me, there was a silent conversation between us. My doctor was sent from Earth with some message: it was a protest against my departure. I had no right to leave the land and had to return. As soon as I realized this, the vision was gone.
I was seized by a deep despondency: all my efforts were pointless. Unnecessary was the pain that I experienced, freeing myself from my illusions and attachments, the road to the temple is closed for me, and I will never know those with whom I should be.
In fact, it took a full three weeks before I was able to return to life. I didn't even want to look at the food - the body did not take food. The view of the city and mountains from the hospital bed looked like a painted curtain with black holes or scraps of newspaper with photographs that didn't tell me anything. There was no limit to my despair and the thought that “now I’ll have to return to these boxes again” haunted me - from space it seemed to me as if there was an artificial three-dimensional world beyond the horizon, where each person sits separately in his box. Do I really have to convince myself again that such a life is necessary for some reason? This life and this whole world seemed to me like a prison. I could not put up with the fact that I was obliged to perceive this as something absolutely normal. I was so happy to be released, and now it turned out that I, like everyone else,I will live in some kind of box. Soaring in space, I was weightless, and nothing bound me. Now all this is in the past!
Everything in me protested against the doctor who brought me back to life. And at the same time my thoughts were alarming: “God sees that his life is in danger! He appeared before me in his original form! Anyone who is capable of assuming such a form is in danger of death, for he has already left "his circle!" Suddenly I realized a terrible thing: he must die instead of me. But all my attempts to explain this to him were in vain: he stubbornly did not want to understand me. Then I got angry. “Why does he always pretend not to know who he is! He is the basileus Kosa! And already appeared in this guise. He wants to force me to believe that he does not know about it! " My wife reprimanded me for being so unfriendly to him. She was right, but his pretense and ignorance irritated me to the extreme. “Lord, he must beware! He can't be so reckless. I want to tell him to take care of himself. " I was convinced that he was in danger, precisely because I recognized him in the guise of the king of Kos.
In fact, I was his last patient. On April 4, 1944 - I still remember this date - I was allowed to sit in bed for the first time, and on that day my doctor took to his bed and never got up again. I learned that he was tormented by bouts of fever. He soon died of sepsis. He was a good doctor, even brilliant in something, otherwise I would not have seen in him the Basileus Kos.
Then, in those few weeks, I lived in a strange rhythm. During the day, as a rule, depression took possession of me, I was so weak that I almost could not move. I was overwhelmed with self-pity, and I realized that I had returned to this dreary gray world. I knew that by the evening, of course, I would fall asleep, but I would hardly sleep until midnight, then I would wake up and stay awake until one o'clock, but my condition would be different - I would call it a kind of ecstasy: it would seem to me as if I were floating in space, as if I were immersed in the depths of the universe, in perfect emptiness and perfect bliss. “This is eternal bliss,” I thought. - And I cannot express in words how wonderful it is!
Everything around me also seemed enchanted to me. It was at this time that the nurse was preparing some food for me, because only at these moments could I eat and eat with appetite. At first she seemed to me an old Jewess - much older than she was in reality, and that she cooks ritual kosher dishes for me, that her head is tied with a blue scarf. I myself was - so it seemed to me - in Pardes-Rimonim, in the pomegranate garden, where the wedding of Tipheret and Malchut took place. I also imagined myself Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai, whose mystical marriage was being celebrated now. It looked exactly as the Kabbalists portrayed. It is impossible to convey how amazing it was. I just kept repeating to myself: “This is a pomegranate garden! And here, now they celebrate the union of Malchut and Tipheret! What was my role, I don't know for sure, but I felt as if I myself were this celebration,and froze with bliss.
Gradually, the echoes of what was happening in the pomegranate garden subsided. Then I saw the slaughter of the Passover lamb in the festively decorated Jerusalem. It defies description, but it was beautiful. There was light, and there were angels, and I myself was Agnus Dei.
Suddenly all this disappeared and a new image appeared - the last vision. I crossed a wide valley and found myself in front of a range of gentle hills. All together, it was an antique amphitheater that looked great against the backdrop of a green landscape. And here, in this theater, a sacred marriage was also performed. Dancers and dancers came out onto the platform and, on a bed decorated with flowers, they represented the sacred marriage of Zeus and Hera, as it is described in the Iliad.
It was all delightful, I was blissful all night long and not alone, and various images crowded around me. But gradually they mixed and melted. As a rule, the visions lasted no more than an hour, I fell asleep again, and in the morning I opened my eyes with the only thought: “Well, again this gray dawn, again this gray world with its boxes! God, what a nightmare, what madness! Compared to the fantastic nature of my nightlife, this daytime world seemed ridiculously ridiculous. As gradually as life returned to me, my visions faded. Three weeks later, they stopped altogether.
But I could not find words to convey their beauty, strength and brightness, neither then nor now. I have not experienced anything like this either before or since. And what a contrast between night and day! Everything around me was excruciatingly annoying - rough, material, heavy, enclosed in a tight framework everywhere. I could not understand the essence and purpose of these restrictions, but there was a certain hypnotic force in them, making me believe that this is the real world, this is nothing! And even though in some important way my faith in the world was restored, I could no longer get rid of the feeling that this “life” is just a fragment of being, specially defined for me in a three-dimensional, like a hastily put together box, universe.
There was also another distinct memory. When a pomegranate garden appeared in front of me, I asked the nurse for forgiveness, thinking that I was hurting her. The space around me seemed sacred to me, but for others it could be dangerous. She, of course, did not understand me. For me here the very air was filled with mystery, a sacred rite was performed, and I was worried that others would not be able to bear it. So I asked for forgiveness - there was nothing I could do. Then I understood why a certain "fragrance" is associated with the presence of the Holy Spirit. This was exactly the case - for the very air was filled with inexplicable holiness, and everything indicated that the mysterium coniuntionis was happening here.
I never could have imagined that something like this would happen to me, that eternal bliss is possible. But my visions and my experiences were absolutely real, everything in them is completely objective.
We are afraid and avoid any penetration of "eternity" into our everyday life, but I can only describe my experience as a blissful feeling of our own timeless state, when the present, past and future merge together. Everything that happens in time, everything that lasts, suddenly appeared as something whole. There was no more passage of time, and in general nothing could be measured in terms of time. If I could describe this experience, it would be only as a state - a state that can be felt, but cannot be imagined. How can you imagine that I exist simultaneously yesterday, today and tomorrow? Then something will surely appear that has not yet begun, something that is happening now and something already completed. And all this - together, all together. I felt only a certain amount of times, an iris, in which there was immediately both the expectation of the beginning, and the surprise atwhat happens and satisfaction or disappointment with the outcome. I myself was inseparable from this wholeness and yet I observed it quite objectively.
This kind of sense of objectivity I experienced one more time. This happened after the death of his wife. I dreamed about her, and this dream was like a vision. My wife stood in the distance and stared at me. She was in her 30s, her best age, and she was wearing a dress that my medium cousin had made for her many years ago. Perhaps it was the most beautiful dress she ever wore. Her face did not express either joy or sadness, she knew everything and understood everything, without showing the slightest feeling, as if feelings were some kind of veil that had been removed from her. I knew that it was not she herself, but the portrait that she had prepared and handed over for me. There was everything: the beginning of our relationship, 53 years of our life together, its end. Faced with such integrity, a person becomes speechless, because he is hardly able to comprehend it.
The sense of objectivity that was present in this dream and in my visions is a consequence of the accomplished individuation. It means detachment from all kinds of assessments and from what we call emotional attachments. For a person, such attachments mean a lot, but they always contain a projection, a kind of subjective shift in the angle of view, which must be eliminated in order to achieve objectivity and self-sufficiency. Emotional connections are our desires, they carry with them compulsion and lack of freedom. By expecting something from others, we thereby make ourselves dependent on someone else. The bottom line is that objective knowledge is largely hidden behind emotional attitudes. And only objective knowledge opens the way to true spiritual unity.
After my illness, I entered a period of fruitful work. It was then that I wrote a lot of important works for me. Knowledge, or a new vision of things - after I experienced my separation from them, required different formulations. Not trying to prove my own, I surrendered myself entirely to the power of the free flow of thoughts. And problems came to me one after another, putting on a concrete form.
But after the illness I acquired a new quality. I would call it an affirmative attitude toward being, an unconditional "yes" to everything that is, without any subjective protests. I accepted the conditions of existence as I saw and understood them, I also accepted myself as I was destined to be. At the beginning of my illness, it seemed to me that in my relationship with this world, not everything is well and that the responsibility for this to some extent lies with me. But everyone who has chosen this path lives, inevitably making mistakes. No one is immune from mistakes and dangers. You can rely on any path, considering it reliable, and this path will turn out to be the path of death. Nothing will happen on it. For real - nothing! A reliable and proven path is only a path to death.
Only after the illness did I understand how important it is to be sure of the existence of my own destiny. Our "I" usually manifests itself in unexpected, incomprehensible situations. This is "I", able to endure and accept the truth, able to cope with the world and destiny. Only in this case our defeats turn into victories. And then nothing - neither from the outside nor from the inside - can resist us. Then our "I" is able to withstand the stream of life, in the stream of time. But this is true only under the condition that we do not intend and do not try to interfere in the course of our destiny.
I also realized that some of my own thoughts should be taken for granted, their meaning is that they are. The categories of true and false, of course, are always present, but they are not always necessary and not always applicable. The existence of such thoughts is in itself more important than what we think about it. But even this - that is what we think - should not be suppressed, just as any manifestation of one's "I" should not be suppressed.
Carl Jung