1: 4/4/44

On September 8, 2008, I woke up very early with a recollection of a novel I read 25 years ago, The world is made of glass by Morris West, in which Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) is the main character. In the French translation (I'm French), he was given a wrong birthday, actually same as mine, July 6.
I'll come back to this book in post 3, where I'll study too the novels I was reading the previous days. Jung was too a character in one of them, and something reminded me of the very schematic date 4/4/44 Jung mentioned in his kind of autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (MDR).
It was still dark on this Sep 8. My mind wandered about the mistake in West's novel, wondering how it could reappear after so many years, while it would have been useful for me to remember it in previous occasions. I tried to go back to sleep, but a strange idea invaded my mind, until it kept me wide awake: the date 4/4/44 should be at four fifths of Jung's life, exactly at the 4/5ths, drawing a 4-1 pattern in the life of a man whose essential concept was quaternity, the Unity of the Four.
I happen to have such ideas on my mind when I wake up, most of the times it's just nuts, but sometimes it's a real step forward in my research. As what I could remember of Jung's dates - birth in July 1875, death in 1961 - could fit with the pattern, I raised up and went to my computer to get Jung's exact dates (here on the wall of his birthhouse in Kesswil), then I did a first calculation.
It seemed to work!!!! Yet the exact day depended on more precision. I'll explain further on how I came to choose time 20:00 for the birth and time 16:00 for the death, local time, which are anyhow exact within 30'. This gives a total duration of 31360 days and 20 hours, of which 4/5ths are 25088 days and 16 hours.
From Jung's birth it leads to 4/4/44, noon.

I'll explain too how to check easily these calculations, but what happened on 4/4/44?
Quite a strange thing according to Jung's report in MDR, even stranger according to his disciples. Jung was a very healthy man, but he suffered a severe heart attack in Feb 44. He was several weeks between life and death, and probably owed his survival to Swiss greatest heart specialist, Theodor Haemmerli (called Dr H. in MDR).
Jung had visions during his illness, and an experience in which we recognize now a NDE. The testimony he gives in MDR might be the first NDE case fully published.
Jung flew away high up in space, seeing far below the earth, bathed in a gloriously blue light. Then he saw a tremendous dark block of stone, floating in space, ant it was a temple, and he knew he would receive there all the answers to all his questions, but before he could enter the temple he met Dr H., delegated from the earth to tell him there was a protest against his going away. He had to return.
The moment Jung heard that, the vision ceased, and he was profoundly disappointed.
I have shortened the report. Jung couldn't know in 44 a basic NDE case, where the subject meets on the other side dead members of his family who tell him the time is not yet come, but he was surprised to have met Dr H., a living person, in the other world:

I felt violent resistance to my doctor because he had brought me back to life. At the same time, I was worried about him. "His life is in danger, for heaven's sake! He has appeared to me in his primal form! When anybody attains this form it means he is going to die, for already he belongs to the 'greater company'!"
Suddenly the terrifying thought came to me that Dr H. would have to die in my stead.

He tried to warn him, but the doctor didn't care, taking Jung's visions as pure delirium. Maybe Dr H. was wrong, as

I was his last patient. On 4 April 1944 - I still remember the exact date - I was allowed to sit up on the edge of my bed for the first time since the beginning of my illness, and on this same day Dr H. took to his bed and did not leave it again. Soon afterward he died of septicemia.
(MDR, Visions)

There is a graphic biography, Introducing Jung, where Maggie Hyde and Michael McGuinness did not forget the episode, emphasizing upon the date, the only precise date Jung gives in his report.
Other sources, notably Barbara Hannah's biography, add striking information. There was clearly a 'Jung before 44', and a 'Jung after 44'. He said his illness meant he had a wrong attitude dealing with archetypes as intellectual concepts, while they where "living gods".
With reference to Dr H.'s death, Jung commented "that Zeus himself was said to have killed Aesculapius by a thunderbolt because he had brought back patients from death."
The bios I read don't seem to have enquired tightly upon the case, as they all say Dr H. died a few days after 4/4/44. I found here he died on June 30, aged 60. That sure is not "a few days", while not contradictory with Jung's "soon afterward" (bald daraus).
Anyhow it could be more striking than "a few days after", as June 30 is about the day Jung left the hospital to his home, "in the last days of June" (Bair), "in the beginning of July" (Hannah). It would be amazing to compare the two men's health bulletins, maybe in two narrow rooms of the hospital, from 4/4/44 to 6/30/44:
↗ Jung begins his recovery, gets better and better, until his release.
↘ Dr H. begins his illness, gets worse and worse, until his death.

One might think Jung embellished the story, and that maybe Dr Haemmerli's disease started later than 4/4/44. It has to be thought this was first discussed soon after the facts among Jung's disciples, and it happened in the confined Zürich area where all the people in the medicine field knew each other. Haemmerli was a big shot, as well as his wife. Later, but before writing MDR, Jung wrote about exactly the same story to Haemmerli's brother, Armin, in Oct 1955, ending with:

On Apr 4, 1944 I was for the first time allowed to sit up on the edge of my bed, and on this same day your brother took to his bed and did not leave it again.
CG Jung Letters, Volume 2: 1951-1961

It's hard to imagine Jung writing cracks to Haemmerli's brother, but beyond the accuracy of Jung's tellings, it's a doubtless fact he pointed on 4/4/44 long before his death. Reasonably he didn't foresee the exact day of his death, which would complete an exact 4-1 pattern around 4/4/44.

I'll give in next post more information about Quaternity concept. Now I wish to explore a bit deeper the question of my half-awake intuition on the 4-1 pattern around 4/4/44, which might look very weird, and it did look weird to me in the days and weeks and months following my finding, so weird that I won't have expected people to believe me, if the evidence of the result were not there to invite to pay attention to how it was obtained.
Now I think it is not so weird. I first have to say I always had a great easiness with numbers, and with logic games. To elaborate just a bit, when I'm in front of a calculation when most people would need paper and pen, often the result flows naturally from my unconscious. This was very useful when I started a personal research involving numbers, but probably I did it because of that gift. Several times my research led me to calculate durations in days between two dates. If I don't remember any striking intuition, I'm trained to such a calculation and its little tricks.
Since my youth too I've been dealing with strange coincidences. That made me read Jung when I learnt he had a theory about meaningful coincidences, or synchronicities. Reading Jung made me discover his quaternity concept, which I immediately shared.
I read much Jung around 1982-1990, and books about Jung too. I'm not sure I first read carefully MDR which has an horrible title in French - Ma vie (My life) - so maybe I missed in this big book the important date April 4, 1944.
I read in its time (1985 for the French translation) C. G. Jung: Lord of the underworld, by Colin Wilson, in which first sentences are:

Jung was sixty-eight years old when, taking his daily walk, he slipped on an icy road and broke his ankle. A few days later he suffered a severe heart attack.

Wilson relates the story, and ends with

Jung was to live on for another seventeen years.

If I can't say I remember my feelings when reading this, my friendness with numbers was already such that it's very likely I noticed these numbers 68-17. I don't need any calculation to know 68 is 4 times 17, and to recognize a 4-1 pattern, which was already prominent to me, and that I already associated with Jung.
Wilson gives the quotation by Jung with the date April 4, 1944, but I have absolutely no remembrance I saw its schematism, while I almost remember myself noticing the 68-17 pattern. Anyhow I had in my head everything needed to find Jung's life pattern, as I deeply believe everything we see is kept somewhere in our brain, and I know by experience my unconscious can do sophisticated calculations. The recollection of the mistake in West's novel might have been a part of this process, as it stroke me then to learn Jung was born on a July, 6. I felt proud to share my birthday with someone I most admired, until I checked it was wrong.
As I'm keeping e-mail archives since 2000, I easily found in which occasion I first shared with some friends something about 4/4/44. It was while reading a French book by Paul Misraki, Les raisons de l'irrationnel, where there was a chapter about NDEs. He reported too Jung's case, with the quotation about "le 4 avril 1944", and this time I saw the schematism of the date, 4/4/44.

I cannot be sure I never realized that before, but it stroke me much on that day, for that day was 4/4/4 (April 4, 2004).

When later I did a Google search about "4/4/44", I found the first results concerned 4-4-44, a song by Youssou N'Dour composed for 4/4/4, which was 44th anniversary of Senegal's Independence on 4/4/60.


Doing this Google search in English to write this post, I found Four fours is a mathematical puzzle, the goal of which is to find the simplest mathematical expression for every whole number from 0 to some maximum, using only four common mathematical symbols and four digits four.

Now the boring details about dates, numbers, and how to check all of it.
I found several hours for Jung's birth, between 19:30 and 19:45, on astrology sites. Birth certificate gives no hour, and the only clue was given by Jung himself:

He told a member of the association that he was born when the last rays of the setting sun lit the room.
Carl Gustav Jung: Leben, Werk, Wirkung, by Gerhard Wehr

I chose 20:00 to have a round hour, and round results then. Anyway any hour on 7/26/1875 would fit with the 4/5th of Jung's life falling on 4/4/44 (if he had been born at 0:00, then the 4/5ths would be on 4/4/44, 8:00).
Jung's death certificate gives 16:00, a round hour which suited me. Ruth Bailey, who was living with him in Küsnacht, declared he died at 15:45.

I had to do a calculation a bit intricated to find Jung lived 31360 days and 20 hours, or five times 6272 days, 4 hours.
The same result can be obtained easily with online tools like this one, calculating durations between two dates. As it's a dynamic page, if you're too lazy to enter the datas, just check by clicking here, and you should obtain this:
From Monday July 26, 1875, 20:00:00
To Tuesday April 4, 1944, 12:00:00
The duration is 25 088 days, 16 hours, 0 minutes and 0 seconds
Or 68 years, 8 months, 8 days, 16 hours

Now here's the link to the other calculation from 4/4/44 to 6/6/61
From Tuesday April 4, 1944, 12:00:00
To Tuesday June 6, 1966, 16:00:00
The duration is 6272 days, 4 hours, 0 minutes and 0 seconds
Or 17 years, 2 months, 2 days, 4 hours