Death
Transcript from CG Jung on Death
Q. Well now, you told us that we should regard death as being a goal and that to shrink away from it is to evade life and life purposes. What advice would you give to people in their later life to enable them to do this when most of them must, in fact, believe that death is the end of everything?
‘Full circle from the tomb of
the womb to the womb of the tomb’
There are more people alive today than have ever died.
"Beyond the grave" or "on the other side of death" means psychologically,
"beyond consciousness." There is positively nothing else it could mean,
since statements about immortality can only be made by the living, who, as such,
are not exactly in a position to pontificate about conditions "beyond the
grave." BW 165
Leaving aside the rational arguments
against any certainty in these matters, we must not forget that for most people
it means a great deal to assume that their lives will have an indefinite
continuity beyond their present existence.
They live more sensibly, feel better, and are more at peace.
One has centuries, one has an inconceivable period of time at one’s
disposal.
What then is the point of
this senseless mad rush?
MDR
301
A man should be able to say he has done
his best to form a conception of life after death, or to create some image of it
– even if he must confess his failure.
Not to have done so is a vital loss.
For the question that is posed to him is the age-old heritage of
humanity: an archetype, rich in secret life, which seeks to add itself to our
own individual life in order to make it whole.
Reason sets the boundaries far too narrowly for us, and would have us
accept only the known -
…. Cont’d
MDR 302
If there were to be a conscious
existence after death, it would, so it seems to me, have to continue on the
level of consciousness attained by humanity, which in any age has an upper
though variable limit.
There are
many human beings who throughout their lives and at the moment of death lag
behind their own potentialities and – even more important – behind the knowledge
which has been brought to consciousness by other human beings during their own
lifetimes.
Hence their demand to
attain in death that share of awareness which they failed to win in life.
MDR 309
And so it is – death is indeed a fearful
piece of brutality; there is no sense pretending otherwise.
It is brutal not only as a physical event, but far more so psychically: a
human being is torn away from us, and what remains is the icy stillness of
death.
There no longer exists any
hope of a relationship, for all the bridges have been smashed at one blow.
Those who deserve a long life are cut off in the prime of their years,
and good-for-nothings live to a ripe old age.
This is a cruel reality which we have no right to sidestep.
The actual experience of the cruelty and wantonness of death can so
embitter us that we conclude there is no merciful God, no justice, and no
kindness.
MDR 314
From another point of view, however,
death appears as a joyful event.
In
the light of eternity, it is a wedding, a
mysterium coniunctionis.
The soul attains, as it were, its missing half, it achieves wholeness.
MDR 314
One widespread myth of the hereafter is
formed by the ideas and images centering on reincarnation. In
one country whose intellectual culture is highly complex and much older than
ours – I am, of course, referring to
does the idea of a goal emerge, namely, the
overcoming of earthly existence.