Memories, Dreams, Reflections

by C. G. Jung

  The Pueblo Indians are unusually closemouthed, and in matters of their religion absolutely inaccessible. They make it a policy to keep their religious practices a secret, and this secret is so strictly guarded that I abandoned as hopeless any attempt at direct questioning. Never before had I run into such an atmosphere of secrecy; the religions of civilized nations today are all accessible; their sacraments have long ago ceased to be mysteries. Here, however, the air was filled with a secret known to all the communicants, but to which whites could gain no access. This strange situation gave me an inkling of Eleusis, whose secret was known to one nation and yet never betrayed. I understood what Pausanias or Herodotus felt when he wrote: “I am not permitted to name the name of that god.” This was not, I felt, mystification, but a vital mystery whose betrayal might bring about the downfall of the community as well as of the individual. Preservation of the secret gives the Pueblo Indian pride and the power to resist the dominant whites. It gives him cohesion and unity; and I feel sure that the Pueblos as an individual community will continue to exist as long as their mysteries are not desecrated.

  It was astonishing to me to see how the Indian’s emotions change when he speaks of his religious ideas. In ordinary life he shows a degree of self-control and dignity that borders on fatalistic equanimity. But when he speaks of things that pertain to his mysteries, he is in the grip of a surprising emotion which he cannot conceal—a fact which greatly helped to satisfy my curiosity. As I have said, direct questioning led to nothing. When, therefore, I wanted to know about essential matters, I made tentative remarks and observed my interlocutor’s expression for those affective movements which are so very familiar to me. If I had hit on something essential, he remained silent or gave an evasive reply, but with all the signs of profound emotion; frequently tears would fill his eyes. Their religious conceptions are not theories to them (which, indeed, would have to be very curious theories to evoke tears from a man), but facts, as important and moving as the corresponding external realities.

  As I sat with Ochwiay Biano on the roof, the blazing sun rising higher and higher, he said, pointing to the sun, “Is not he who moves there our father? How can anyone say differently? How can there be another god? Nothing can be without the sun.” His excitement, which was already perceptible, mounted still higher; he struggled for words, and exclaimed at last, “What would a man do alone in the mountains? He cannot even build his fire without him.”

  I asked him whether he did not think the sun might be a fiery ball shaped by an invisible god. My question did not even arouse astonishment, let alone anger. Obviously it touched nothing within him; he did not even think my question stupid. It merely left him cold. I had the feeling that I had come upon an insurmountable wall. His only reply was, “The sun is God. Everyone can see that.”

  Although no one can help feeling the tremendous impress of the sun, it was a novel and deeply affecting experience for me to see these mature, dignified men in the grip of an overmastering emotion when they spoke of it.

  Another time I stood by the river and looked up at the mountains, which rise almost another six thousand feet above the plateau. I was just thinking that this was the roof of the American continent, and that people lived here in the face of the sun like the Indians who stood wrapped in blankets on the highest roofs of the pueblo, mute and absorbed in the sight of the sun. Suddenly a deep voice, vibrant with suppressed emotion, spoke from behind me into my left ear: “Do you not think that all life comes from the mountain?” An elderly Indian had come up to me, inaudible in his moccasins, and had asked me this heaven knows how far-reaching question. A glance at the river pouring down from the mountain showed me the outward image that had engendered this conclusion. Obviously all life came from the mountain, for where there is water, there is life. Nothing could be more obvious. In his question I felt a swelling emotion connected with the word “mountain,” and thought of the tale of secret rites celebrated on the mountain. I replied, “Everyone can see that you speak the truth.”

  Unfortunately, the conversation was soon interrupted, and so I did not succeed in attaining any deeper insight into the symbolism of water and mountain.

  I observed that the Pueblo Indians, reluctant as they were to speak about anything concerning their religion, talked with great readiness and intensity about their relations with the Americans. “Why,” Mountain Lake said, “do the Americans not let us alone? Why do they want to forbid our dances? Why do they make difficulties when we want to take our young people from school in order to lead them to the kiva (site of the rituals), and instruct them in our religion? We do nothing to harm the Americans!” After a prolonged silence he continued, “The Americans want to stamp out our religion. Why can they not let us alone? What we do, we do not only for ourselves but for the Americans also. Yes, we do it for the whole world. Everyone benefits by it.”

  I could observe from his excitement that he was alluding to some extremely important element of his religion. I therefore asked him: “You think, then, that what you do in your religion benefits the whole world?” He replied with great animation, “Of course. If we did not do it, what would become of the world?” And with a significant gesture he pointed to the sun.

  I felt that we were approaching extremely delicate ground here, verging on the mysteries of the tribe. “After all,” he said, “we are a people who live on the roof of the world; we are the sons of Father Sun, and with our religion we daily help our father to go across the sky. We do this not only for ourselves, but for the whole world. If we were to cease practicing our religion, in ten years the sun would no longer rise. Then it would be night forever.”

  I then realized on what the “dignity,” the tranquil composure of the individual Indian, was founded. It springs from his being a son of the sun; his life is cosmologically meaningful, for he helps the father and preserver of all life in his daily rise and descent. If we set against this our own self-justifications, the meaning of our own lives as it is formulated by our reason, we cannot help but see our poverty. Out of sheer envy we are obliged to smile at the Indians’ naïveté and to plume ourselves on our cleverness; for otherwise we would discover how impoverished and down at the heels we are. Knowledge does not enrich us; it removes us more and more from the mythic world in which we were once at home by right of birth.

  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 on one side into the broad continental prairies and on the other 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 of 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. He above all others has the Divinity’s ear, and his ritual act will reach the distant sun soonest of all. The holiness of mountains, the revelation of Yahweh upon Sinai, the inspiration that Nietzsche was vouchsafed in the Engadine—all speak the same language. The idea, absurd to us, that a ritual act can magically affect the sun is, upon closer examination, no less irrational but far more familiar to us than might at first be assumed. Our Christian religion—like every other, incidentally—is permeated by the idea that special acts or a special kind of action can influence God—for example, through certain rites or by prayer, or by a morality pleasing to the Divinity.

  The ritual acts of man are an answer and reaction to the action of God upon man; and perhaps they are not only that, but are also intended to be “activating,” a form of magic coercion. That man feels capable of formulating valid replies to the overpowering influence of God, and that he can render back something which is essential even to God, induces pride, for it raises the human individual to the dignity of a metaphysical factor. “God and us”—even if it is only an unconscious sous-entendu—this equation
no doubt underlies that enviable serenity of the Pueblo Indian. Such a man is in the fullest sense of the word in his proper place.

  iii. KENYA AND UGANDA

  Tout est bien sortant des mains de

  l’Auteur des choses—Rousseau.

  When I visited the Wembley Exhibition in London (1925), I was deeply impressed by the excellent survey of the tribes under British rule, and resolved to take a trip to tropical Africa in the near future.

  In the autumn of that year I set out with two friends, an Englishman and an American, for Mombassa. We traveled on a Woerman steamer, together with many young Englishmen going out to posts in various African colonies. It was evident from the atmosphere aboard ship that these passengers were not traveling for pleasure, but were entering upon their destiny. To be sure, there was a good deal of gay exuberance, but the serious undertone was also evident. As a matter of fact, I heard of the fate of several of my fellow voyagers even before my own return trip. Several met death in the tropics in the course of the next two months. They died of tropical malaria, amoebic dysentery, and pneumonia. Among those who died was the young man who sat opposite me at table. Another was Dr. Akley, who had made a name for himself as the founder of the Gorilla Reservation in Central Africa and whom I had met in New York shortly before this voyage.

  Mombassa remains in my memory as a humidly hot, European, Indian, and Negro settlement hidden in a forest of palms and mango trees. It has an extremely picturesque setting, on a natural harbor, with an old Portuguese fort towering over it. We stayed there two days, and left toward evening on a narrow-gauge railroad for Nairobi in the interior, plunging almost immediately into the tropical night.

  Along the coastal strip we passed by numerous Negro villages where the people sat talking around tiny fires. Soon the train began to climb. The settlements ceased, and the night became inky black. Gradually it turned cooler, and I fell asleep. When the first ray of sunlight announced the onset of day, I awoke. The train, swathed in a red cloud of dust, was just making a turn around a steep red cliff. On a jagged rock above us a slim, brownish-black figure stood motionless, leaning on a long spear, looking down at the train. Beside him towered a gigantic candelabrum cactus.

  I was enchanted by this sight—it was a picture of something utterly alien and outside my experience, but on the other hand a most intense sentiment du déjà vu. I had the feeling that I had already experienced this moment and had always known this world which was separated from me only by distance in time. It was as if I were this moment returning to the land of my youth, and as if I knew that dark-skinned man who had been waiting for me for five thousand years.

  The feeling-tone of this curious experience accompanied me throughout my whole journey through savage Africa. I can recall only one other such recognition of the immemorially known. That was when I first observed a parapsychological phenomenon, together with my former chief, Professor Eugen Bleuler. Beforehand I had imagined that I would be dumfounded if I were to see so fantastic a thing. But when it happened, I was not surprised at all; I felt it was perfectly natural, something I could take for granted because I had long since been acquainted with it.

  I could not guess what string within myself was plucked at the sight of that solitary dark hunter. I knew only that his world had been mine for countless millennia.

  Somewhat bemused, I arrived around noon in Nairobi, situated at an altitude of six thousand feet. There was a dazzling plethora of light that reminded me of the glare of sunlight in the Engadine as one comes up out of the winter fogs of the lowlands. To my astonishment the swarm of “boys” assembled at the railroad station wore the old-fashioned gray and white woolen ski caps which I had seen worn or worn myself in the Engadine. They are highly esteemed because the upturned rim can be let down like a visor—in the Alps, good protection against the icy wind; here, against the blazing heat.

  From Nairobi we used a small Ford to visit the Athi Plains, a great game preserve. From a low hill in this broad savanna a magnificent prospect opened out to us. To the very brink of the horizon we saw gigantic herds of animals: gazelle, antelope, gnu, zebra, warthog, and so on. Grazing, heads nodding, the herds moved forward like slow rivers. There was scarcely any sound save the melancholy cry of a bird of prey. This was the stillness of the eternal beginning, the world as it had always been, in the state of non-being; for until then no one had been present to know that it was this world. I walked away from my companions until I had put them out of sight, and savored the feeling of being entirely alone. There I was now, the first human being to recognize that this was the world, but who did not know that in this moment he had first really created it.

  There the cosmic meaning of consciousness became overwhelmingly clear to me. “What nature leaves imperfect, the art perfects,” say the alchemists. Man, I, in an invisible act of creation put the stamp of perfection on the world by giving it objective existence. This act we usually ascribe to the Creator alone, without considering that in so doing we view life as a machine calculated down to the last detail, which, along with the human psyche, runs on senselessly, obeying foreknown and predetermined rules. In such a cheerless clockwork fantasy there is no drama of man, world, and God; there is no “new day” leading to “new shores,” but only the dreariness of calculated processes. My old Pueblo friend came to my mind. He thought that the raison d’être of his pueblo had been to help their father, the sun, to cross the sky each day. I had envied him for the fullness of meaning in that belief, and had been looking about without hope for a myth of our own. Now I knew what it was, and knew even more: that man is indispensable for the completion of creation; that, in fact, he himself is the second creator of the world, who alone has given to the world its objective existence—without which, unheard, unseen, silently eating, giving birth, dying, heads nodding through hundreds of millions of years, it would have gone on in the profoundest night of non-being down to its unknown end. Human consciousness created objective existence and meaning, and man found his indispensable place in the great process of being.

  By the Uganda railroad, which was then being built, we traveled to its provisional terminus, Station Sigistifour (sixty-four). The boys unloaded our quantities of equipment. I sat down on a chop box, a crate containing provisions, each one a man’s head-load, and lit a pipe, meditating on the fact that here we had, as it were, reached the edge of the oikumene, the inhabited earth, from which trails stretched endlessly over the continent. After a while an elderly Englishman, obviously a squatter, joined me, sat down, and likewise took out a pipe. He asked where we were going. When I outlined our various destinations, he asked, “Is this the first time you have been in Africa? I have been here for forty years.”

  “Yes,” I told him. “At least in this part of Africa.”

  “Then may I give you a piece of advice? You know, mister, this here country is not man’s country, it’s God’s country. So if anything should happen, just sit down and don’t worry.” Where-upon he rose and without another word was lost in the horde of Negroes swarming around us.

  His words struck me as somehow significant, and I tried to visualize the psychological state from which they had sprung. Evidently they represented the quintessence of his experience; not man but God was in command here—in other words, not will and intention, but inscrutable design.

  I had not come to the end of my meditation when our two automobiles were ready to set off. Our party piled in with the baggage, eight men strong, and we held on as best we could. The shaking I received for the next several hours left no room for reflection. It was much farther than I had thought to the next settlement; Kakamegas, seat of a D.C. (District Commissioner), headquarters of a small garrison of the African Rifles, and site of a hospital and—fantastically enough—a small insane asylum. Evening approached, and suddenly night had fallen. All at once, a tropical storm came up, with almost incessant flashes of lightning, thunder, and a cloudburst which instantly soaked us from head to foot and made every brook a raging torrent.


  It was half an hour after midnight, with the sky beginning to clear, when we reached Kakamegas. We were exhausted, and the D.C. helpfully received us with whisky in his drawing room. A jolly and oh-so-welcome fire was burning in the fireplace. In the center of the handsome room stood a large table with a display of English journals. The place might easily have been a country house in Sussex. In my tiredness I no longer knew whether I had been transported from reality into a dream, or from a dream to reality. Then we had still to pitch our tents—for the first time. Luckily, nothing was missing.

  Next morning I awoke with a touch of feverish laryngitis, and had to stay in bed for a day. To this circumstance I owe my memorable acquaintanceship with the “brain-fever bird,” a creature remarkable for being able to sing a correct scale, but leaving out the last note and starting again from the beginning. To listen to this when one is down with a fever is to have one’s nerves strained to the breaking point.

  Another feathered inhabitant of the banana plantations has a cry which consists of two of the sweetest and most melodious flute tones with a third, frightful sour note for an ending. “What nature leaves imperfect …” The song of the “bell bird,” however, was one of unalloyed beauty. When it sang, it was as though a bell were drifting along the horizon.