Below is an excerpt from C. G. Jung’s autobiographical work Memories, Dreams, Reflections, from the chapter “Confrontation with the Unconscious,” in which he describes a vision lasting about an hour, as well as a recurring dream. Both proved to be early premonitions of the events that unfolded a year later with the outbreak of the First World War. I am sharing this passage now because the time we are living in is a time of profound upheaval. And, as Jung himself said, “the unconscious is what must be known.”
“Probably by the autumn of 1913 the tension I had been feeling within myself had begun to project itself outward; something seemed to be in the air—something that actually appeared darker than before. It was as though it concerned not only a psychic situation, but a concrete reality. This feeling grew increasingly intense.
In October, during a solitary journey, I was suddenly seized by an image: I saw a monstrous flood covering entire regions between the North Sea and the Alps. The flood extended from England all the way to Russia, and from the coast of the North Sea almost to the Alps. When it reached Switzerland, I saw that the mountains grew higher and higher, as if to protect our land. A terrible catastrophe was taking place. I saw enormous, powerful yellow waves, amid which floated the wreckage of cultural monuments and countless dead bodies. Then the sea turned to blood. This image persisted for about an hour; it confused me and made me physically ill. I was ashamed of my weakness.
Two weeks later the image reappeared under the same circumstances, only the transformation into blood was even more dreadful. An inner voice said to me: ‘Look at it well; it is completely real. It will be so—there is no doubt about it!’
During the following winter, someone asked me what I thought about the political outlook of the world in the near future. I replied that I thought nothing, but that I saw rivers of blood. The image would not leave me.
I asked myself whether these visions might foretell some kind of revolution, but I could not imagine it clearly. I therefore concluded that all this was personally connected with me and that I was threatened by a psychosis. The thought of war never occurred to me.
Shortly thereafter—in the spring and early summer of 1914—I dreamed the same dream three times: in the middle of summer an Arctic cold descended and froze the land. For example, I saw all of Lorraine with its canals frozen and everything around it deserted, the rivers and lakes locked in ice. This dream first came to me in April, then again in May, and for the last time in June 1914.
In my third dream, the terrible cold again descended from the cosmos. But the ending was unexpected: a barren yet green tree (my tree of life, I thought), whose leaves, under the influence of the cold, turned into sweet grapes filled with healing juice. I picked the grapes and distributed them to a vast waiting crowd.
Toward the end of July 1914, I was invited by the British Medical Association to attend a congress in Aberdeen, where I was to give a lecture entitled ‘The Importance of the Unconscious in Psychopathology.’ I was convinced that something would happen, for such dreams and visions are fateful. In my state at the time, and with these forebodings, even the fact that I was to speak about the unconscious seemed to me like a decree of fate.
On August 1, the world war broke out. Now the task was clear: I had to try to understand what had happened and to what extent my personal experiences were connected with the collective ones. To do this, I first had to explore the depths of my own psyche.”
— C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 169–170∗
In the time we are living in, Jung must be read attentively.
His books are true nourishment for the soul.
- ∗The excerpt is translated from the Bulgarian edition of C. G. Jung’s autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
