The Russian space station Mir, photographed from the American shuttle Atlantis on 4 July 1995
(NASA public domain photo) \u00a0Mir\u2019s orbital altitude averaged about 223 miles above Earth\u2019s surface, which, I\u2019m guessing, is closer to Carl Jung\u2019s seeming altitude than his own estimate.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here, I offer two more reports of near-death or out-of-body experiences, both of them taken from\u00a0Pim van Lommel,\u00a0Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience<\/em>\u00a0(New York: HarperCollins, 2010).<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
The first comes from the very famous Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), the founder of analytical psychology. \u00a0In November 1944, he suffered a serious heart attack. \u00a0Here is a portion of his account of what happened at that time:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
It seemed to me that I was high up in space. \u00a0Far below I saw the globe of the earth, bathed in a gloriously blue light. \u00a0I saw the deep blue sea and the continents. \u00a0Far below my feet lay Ceylon, and in the distance ahead of me the subcontinent of India. \u00a0My 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. \u00a0In many places the globe seemed colored, or spotted dark green like oxydized silver. \u00a0Far away to the left lay a broad expanse \u2014 the reddish-yellow desert of Arabia; it was as though the silver of the earth had there assumed a reddish-gold hue. \u00a0Then came the Red Sea, and far, far back \u2014 as if in the upper left of a map \u2014 I could just make out a bit of the Mediterranean. \u00a0My gaze was directed chiefly toward that. \u00a0Everything else appeared indistinct. \u00a0I could also see the snow-covered Himalayas, but in that direction it was foggy or cloudy. \u00a0I did not look to the right at all. \u00a0I knew that I was on the point of departing from the earth.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nLater I discovered how high in space one would have to be to have so extensive a view \u2014 approximately a thousand miles! \u00a0The sight of the earth from this height was the most glorious thing I had ever seen.<\/strong> \u00a0(22-23)<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Please keep in mind that, when Carl Jung died on 6 June 1961, the \u201cspace age\u201d had only barely begun. \u00a0The first artificial satellite, the Soviet Union\u2019s Sputnik 1, had been launched into low Earth orbit in October 1957. \u00a0The first human to journey into\u00a0outer space\u00a0was the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who had\u00a0completed an\u00a0orbit\u00a0of the\u00a0Earth\u00a0on 12 April 1961, less than two months before Jung\u2019s passing. \u00a0Photographs of Earth from space, let alone full color images, weren\u2019t exactly common in June 1961. \u00a0Or in November 1944<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
And now, second, here is the interesting account of someone who was color-blind:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I saw the most dazzling colors, which was all the more surprising because I\u2019m color-blind. \u00a0I can distinguish the primary colors, but pastels all look the same to me. \u00a0But suddenly I could see them, all kinds of different shades. \u00a0Don\u2019t ask me to name them because I lack the necessary experience for that.<\/strong> \u00a0(23)<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 Here, I offer two more reports of near-death or out-of-body experiences, both of them taken from\u00a0Pim van Lommel,\u00a0Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience\u00a0(New York: HarperCollins, 2010). \u00a0 The first comes from the very famous Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), the founder of analytical psychology. \u00a0In November 1944, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1727,1008,1011,900,978],"class_list":["post-65505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-afterlife","tag-immortality","tag-life-after-death","tag-nde","tag-pim-van-lommel"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>