In the fall of 1913, Jung was going though a very difficult period in his life. Having broken off professionally with Freud, he felt uncertain about the theoretical premises of psychology he had been working with. He fell into a state of depression that was marked by unusually vivid visions and dreams of death.
First Vision of Death
In one vision, Jung saw himself entering a dark cave, wading in icy water until he came upon a red crystal which he seized. At the same time, the dead body of a blond-haired youth with a wound in the head floated by. Trying to replace the red crystal, he was startled by a thick jet of blood that squirted from its base.
Jung and the Dream of Death
Six days later, he dreamt he was with a brown-skinned man, dressed like a savage, in a rocky mountain landscape. They were both armed with rifles, lying in wait for Siegfried, the golden, solar hero. As Siegfried turned the corner, Jung and the savage shot and killed him. Filled with disgust at himself and sympathy for the victim, Jung tried to flee.
Awakening from this dream of death, Jung attempted to understand its psychology. He recognized that Siegfried represented the heroic imperative in him—the ego's will—and that the savage was his shadow self asking to be reclaimed. The unconscious was telling him that the ego had to step aside (be killed) if Jung wanted to arrive at self-knowledge.
Second Vision of Death
Not long after, another figure sprouted from his vision. Jung saw an old man with the wings of a kingfisher sailing across the sky. Not understanding this image, Jung decided to paint it. One day, while he was hard at work on the painting, he stumbled upon a dead kingfisher in his garden. The discovery astounded him as kingfishers were not known to be seen in Zurich.
The Seven Sermons to the Dead
This synchronicity of image and fact brought home to Jung that his visions were real. They were not hallucinations, but based on the reality of the psyche. He came to understand the existence of an unseen dimension, a cosmic consciousness that needs to bring itself to bear on visible reality. He realized that unless he could give credence to this dimension, he was living only on the surface.
Three years later, the urge to give shape to this unseen dimension became so strong it was transmuted into a haunting. Jung felt his house filled with ghostly entities; both his daughters were disturbed by phantoms. One Sunday afternoon, the doorbell rang frantically; yet there was no one outside. Jung felt a deluge of spirits passing though his door into his living quarters. The phantoms cried in chorus, "We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not what we sought" (191).
Words began to flow through Jung. He grasped his pen and began to write. Almost immediately, the apparitions vanished. Within three days, Jung completed his treatise, "The Seven Sermons to the Dead."
After his encounter with the Unconscious, Jung recognized that the dead were the voices of the inner world, an invisible realm the mind must integrate as part of human consciousness. It was after this encounter with the dead that Jung dedicated his life to the psychology of the Unconscious.
Source
Jung, Carl G. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Recorded and edited by Aniela Jaffe. Translated by Richard and Clara Winston. New York: Vintage B
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