Electric Dreams
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Comments From Jung - Review

Sue B 


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B, Sue (1996 May). Comments From Jung - Review. Electric Dreams 3(4). Retrieved from Electric Dreams July 27, 2000 on the World Wide Web: http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams  





I was reading "The Way of the Dream: Conversations on Jungian Dream Interpretation" by Fraser Boa with Marie-Louise von Franz and thought I'd share this passage with you.

Jung had an amazing dream "in which he encountered the Self in the form of a yogi. Jung dreamt he was walking along a little road and came to a small chapel. He entered and was surprised that there was no statue of the Virgin on the altar nor a crucifix either, but only a beautiful flower arrangement. And then he saw on the floor in front of the altar a yogi sitting in lotus posture, in deep meditation.

Jung realized with a shock that this was the yogi who was imagining him, and that in his trance, a kind of active imagination, he was imagining the life of Jung, dreaming him. Jung knew that when the yogi woke up, he, Jung would no longer exist. The ordinary Professor Jung was the dream of that greater
inner figure.

And yet, at the same time, the yogi figure was a dream of Dr. Jung's. This paradox reminds me (M. von Franz) of the dream of Chuang Tzu.

Chuang Tzu said that he once dreamt that he was a butterfly. That dream left him puzzling ever after whether he was a man who dreamt that he was a butterfly or whether he was a butterfly who dreamt that he was a man. A butterfly is a symbol of the Self. Are we the dream of the Self or is the Self our dream? We just don't know."
Sue B.