This is a very beautiful last dream, in which Jung’s unity and wholeness are confirmed and shown to him in the symbol of a round stone. The pots in the square to the right are also full of meaning, when we remember that in ancient Egypt some parts of the dismembered corpse of the god Osiris were kept in pots, because it was from these that the resurrection was expected to take place. Moreover, the old Greeks kept pots in their houses full of wheat seeds. The pots and the soil represented the underworld and the seed the dead waiting for resurrection. About the time of All Souls’ Day, the pots were opened and the dead were supposed to join the living. Christ’s saying: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24) belongs in the same connection.
As to the roots, Jung said in Memories: Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away—an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains. Now that the “blossom was passing away” and proving itself, like all mortal life, to be “an ephemeral apparition,” the eternal roots, that were also C. G. Jung, appeared above the surface and spread themselves protectingly over him. This dream tells us with the greatest clearness that Jung was dying at the right time, and was about to be received by that rhizome which he had always known was there as his “true invisible life.” Or, to use the language he used in Memories, his No. 1 personality was dying, but his No. 2 remained unchanged.
Jung died at a quarter to four on Tuesday afternoon, June 6. There were again some synchronistic events, as there had been in 1944. I remember most vividly that when I went to fetch my car, just before he died, I found the battery, which was not old and had never given the slightest trouble before, completely run down. This puzzled me very much at the time; when Ruth telephoned about half an hour later, it seemed quite natural and as if the car had known. There was, however, no thunderstorm at the time Jung died (as has been reported from time to time). That came an hour or two later, at which time lightning struck a tall poplar tree in his garden at the edge of the lake. This is most unusual, for the water attracts the lightning and therefore trees and houses on its banks are usually immune. The tree was not destroyed, only a geat deal of its bark was stripped off. In fact, it was discovered by the family when they found the lawn covered with bits of bark when they went into the garden after the storm was over."
Barbara Hannah, Jung's Life and Work
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