Posted By Vanessa on March 20, 2010

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve just begun Jung’s Memories, Dreams, ReflectionsMemories, Dreams, Reflections and woven through the first two chapters are images and stories that clearly reflect Jung’s early fascination with Life – both the end of life and the beauty and mystery of nature. His earliest memories contain beautiful images of “golden sunlight darting through green leaves,” the Alps, and looking across an expanse of water which brought him an “inconceivable pleasure” (6,7).

Jung’s strong identification with nature (and perhaps a glimpse of All is One?) is most dramatically shown through his description of a stone he used to sit on that “jutted out” from the hillside. He would, he remembers, sit on this rock for hours on end, playing an “imaginary game” with these two statements: “I am sitting on top of this stone and it is underneath,” but the stone could also say, “I am lying here on this slope and he is sitting on top of me” (20). Eventually, he would rise from the stone, lost as to whether the ‘I’ was the stone or the boy – “the answer remained totally unclear… but there was no doubt whatsoever that this stone stood in some secret relationship to me” (20).

Certainly his early religious experiences were troubled: he had a great fear of Catholic churches, Jesuits, and priests, and a deep distrust of Lord Jesus, though this did not seem to impact his growing trust in God. There was also the dream about the phallus but we’ll leave that alone for now…

Categories: Review As I Read
Tags: God, green, Jung, nature, Nonfiction, Oneness, religion