15th Century depiction of the Marriage supper of the Lamb

In his letter to the Swiss Pastor Bernet, discussed in the previous post, Jung insists that using mythological statements can never express or capture who or what God is: ‘I know that none of them expresses or captures the immeasurable Other, even if I were to assert it did.’ This, he states, is what makes theological assumptions mere words, and Jung derides those who think whenever they say “God” then God is. Ascribing human forms or attributes to an experience that is ineffable and indefinable is anthropomorphism. So why was Jung so clear about this?

From his student days until his death in 1961, Jung experienced, observed, and studied an astonishing range of paranormal and mystical phenomena. Perhaps, though it is his near-death experience that offers us one of his most powerful religious experiences. In February 1944, at the age of 69 Jung broke his foot, and, while recovering in hospital, suffered a heart attack. He then had a near-death experience, during which he found himself to be floating a thousand miles above the earth (over Ceylon, now Sri Lanka).

In his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections Jung describes a painful process in which he was stripped of all his earthly attachments:

I had the feeling that everything was being sloughed away; everything I aimed at or wished for or thought, the whole phantasmagoria of earthly existence, fell away or was stripped from me – an extremely painful process. Nevertheless, something remained; it was as if I now carried along with me everything I had ever experienced or done, everything that had happened around me … I consisted of my own history, and I felt with great certainty: this is what I am … This experience gave me a feeling of extreme poverty, but at the same time of great fullness.

In the experience, Jung was about to enter a stone temple on a meteorite where he would discover the meaning of his life, when he was called back to the earth by the spirit of his doctor. For the next few nights, he experienced a series of further visions. Jung relates how while in hospital he would wake up each night around midnight “in an utterly transformed state”.

I felt as though I were floating in space, as though I were safe in the womb of the universe – in a tremendous void, but filled with the highest possible feeling of happiness. “This is eternal bliss,” I thought … Everything around me seemed enchanted.

One vision was of a mystic marriage in the Cabbalistic tradition; another of ‘The marriage of the Lamb’ with ‘ineffable states of joy’; the final vision was of the mystical marriage described in the Iliad. He describes the feeling of inexpressible sanctity in his room with the “sweet smell” of “the Holy Ghost”. ‘I would never have imagined any such experience was possible. It was not a product of imagination. The visions and experiences were utterly real.’

We shy away from the word “eternal,” but I can describe the experience only as the ecstasy of a non-temporal state in which present, past, and future are one. Everything that happens in time had been brought together into a concrete whole. Nothing was distributed over time, nothing could be measured by temporal concepts. …One is interwoven into an indescribable whole.

Finally, Jung acknowledged the ineffability of his experience: he reported thinking during the experience itself that “This cannot be described; it is far too wonderful!”, and he reflected afterwards that “It is impossible to convey the beauty and intensity of emotion during those visions”.