I’m away on a trip somewhere with a group of people. For some reason, I must leave early, travel back. I really don’t want cut my stay short and go off alone at night, but I can’t stay with them. I must be on the train back by 8 o’clock that evening. It would be very easy to miss this train, and I’m worried about it. I’ve got to go somewhere, go back, so I have to be careful not to miss the train.

I’m supposed to eat a meal before I go, but there doesn’t seem to be enough food around. Some people want to help me. There’s a feeling of feminine support. Yet my situation still feels difficult: I can’t stay. I do have to pack up my things and make the 8 o’clock train back, but I’ve got to eat before I do this. The problem is that I can’t eat. There’s just not enough food.

*          *         *

This dream saddens me, makes me weep. I deeply regret having to break away from the people I came with, abort my trip and leave alone in darkness. There’s a sense of deprivation, of being exiled from the light. But it can’t be avoided. Does leaving alone in darkness mean dying?

Why must I make the 8 o’clock train in particular? Why would it be “so easy to miss”? Why am I so anxious to avoid that? And why is there not enough food to bolster me for the journey back?

To repeat what von Franz said after describing her dream of “Tram No. 8” and associating it with death: “eight represents timelessness and eternity….In alchemy eight is the number of completion.” Though death is inescapable, not every death entails alchemical completion. In fact, an alchemical death, one involving a realization of the infinite, is indeed very easy to miss. So perhaps the “8-o’clock train” signifies for me the infinite Self to which I want to return, though I may need special nourishment for the task. Perhaps consciously realizing the Self by fleshing out the subtle body requires that I feed myself in the fashion of the uroboros: I must nourish myself on myself. That is, I must “swallow” myself in the sense of moving backward into myself with awareness, until the Self per se awakens in me to Proprioceptively withdraw the Projection of the finite being that I am. This is how I make the “8-o’clock train”: I die consciously as a finite being and am reborn as the Self.

The dream then seems to echo the central theme of this whole book.

(back to chapter 2)