I knew that I was on the point of departing from the Earth. I could also see the snow-covered Himalayas, but in that direction it was foggy or cloudy. My gaze was directed chiefly toward that. Then came the Red Sea, and far, far back – as if in the upper left of a map – I could just make out a bit of the Mediterranean. Far away to the left lay a broad expanse – the reddish-yellow desert of Arabia it was as though the silver of the Earth had there assumed a reddish-gold hue. In many places the globe seemed colored, or spotted dark green like oxidized silver. My field of vision did not include the whole Earth, but its global shape was plainly distinguishable and its outlines shone with a silvery gleam through that wonderful blue light.

Far below my feet lay Ceylon, and in the distance ahead of me the subcontinent of India. I saw the deep blue sea and the continents. Far below I saw the globe of the Earth, bathed in a gloriously blue light. It seemed to me that I was high up in space. The following is an excerpt from his autobiography entitled Memories, Dreams, Reflections describing his near-death experience. Carl Jung, who founded analytical psychology, centered on the archetypes of the collective unconscious. Subsequently, as he reflected on life after death, Jung recalled the meditating Hindu from his near-death experience and read it as a parable of the archetypal Higher Self, the God-image within. His incredibly accurate view of the Earth from outer space was described about two decades before astronauts in space first described it. Jung’s experience is unique in that he saw the Earth from a vantage point of about a thousand miles above it.

His vivid encounter with the light, plus the intensely meaningful insights led Jung to conclude that his experience came from something real and eternal. Jung, had a heart attack and then a near-death experience. In a hospital in Switzerland in 1944, the world-renowned psychiatrist Carl G. Memories, Dreams, Reflections Publisher: Vintage Revised Edition edition

Carl jung memories dreams reflections