New Mexico mountain range
Carl Jung travelled to the United States to New Mexico to visit the Pueblo Indians, where he writes how fortunate he was to speak with the chief of the Taos Pueblos whose name was Ochwiay Biano (Mountain Lake). Jung writes how he was able to talk with him in a way that had been rarely possible with a European. Whilst accepting that the chief was inevitably as caught up in his world as any European is caught up in theirs, Jung marvels at what a world the Pueblo Indians inhabited; speaking with a European, Jung writes, one would be constantly running up against long known but never understood things, but with Ochwiay Biano the conversation was like a vessel ‘floating freely on deep, alien seas’. The chief explained that unlike the cruel white people, the Indians spoke with their heart not their head.
Later, as Jung stood deep in meditation looking up at the mountains an elderly Indian came up to him speaking into his left ear: ‘Do you not think that all life comes from the mountain?’ Seeing the water pouring down from the mountains and remembering secret rites celebrated on the mountain, Jung felt ‘a swelling emotion connected with the word “mountain”. I replied, “Everyone can see that you speak the truth”’.
‘If for a moment we put away all European rationalism and transport ourselves into the clear mountain air of that solitary plateau, which drops off one side into the broad continental prairies and on the other side into the Pacific Ocean; if we also set aside our intimate knowledge of the world and exchange it for a horizon that seems immeasurable, and an ignorance of what lies beyond it, we will begin to achieve an inner comprehension pf the Pueblo Indian’s point of view. “All life comes from the mountain” is immediately convincing to him, and he is equally certain that he lives upon the roof of an immeasurable world closest to God.’
Jung links the holiness of the mountains to the revelation of Yahweh upon Sinai, and the inspiration the philosopher Nietzsche was given in the mountain range at Engadine of the idea of the ‘eternal recurrence’, and we might add the transfiguration of Christ that took place on a mountain.