‘Here’s something interesting about Carl Jung,’ said Mumford.
‘The collective unconscious.’
‘No. Well, yes, but this is another thing. When he was in his eighties he wrote a book of memoir, with the help of an old friend.’
‘It reminds me a bit of Lao Tzu and the butterflly.
‘It seems Jung had ideas about existence and eternity, even as a young boy. At the age of seven or eight, he often played alone, and in his garden in Switzerland there was there was a stone that he thought of as his stone.
Often when I was alone I sat down on this stone and then began an imaginary game that went something like this: I am sitting on top of this stone and it is underneath.’
But the stone also could say ‘I’ and think: ‘I am lying here on this slope and he is sitting on top of me.’
The question then arose: ‘Am I the one who is sitting on the stone, or am I the stone on which he is sitting?’ This question always perplexed me, and I would stand up, wondering who was what now. The answer remained totally unclear
and my uncertainty was accompanied by a feeling of curious and fascinated darkness. But there was no doubt whatsoever that this stone stood in some secret relationship to me.
Jung, C. G. (1963) Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Aniela Jaffe (Editor), Clara Winston (Translator). New York. Pantheon, p326.
The Absent Answer 