The Dream Book of Self-Knowledge

Cruelty

  • the cruel ritual killing of animals: the contemporary person of the modern age has lost the connection with unconscious content of the mind, has forgotten rituals through which he freed his mind from the prison of the material world and is no longer able to recognize what belongs to the outer world and what to the inner; normal images of ritual acts and ancient practices then seem cruel to him and is unable to understand the inner sense of this act (e.g. the cruel killing of a pregnant sow is a significant act in the Eleusinian Mysteries*15).
  • it will exist and continue to develop among people and therefore in a person's dream until one of the sides is able to find forgiveness; a cruel action causes only cruel revenge and is one of many dependencies that hold a person in the vicious circle of constant reincarnation*75.
  • within the materialistic scheme of a single life, cruelty is an incomprehensible exception that you can never defeat; yet within the principle of constant rebirth, cruelty acquires a dimension that you can effectively fight and even defeat.
  • tyrant: only a bloated ego becomes a tyrant; see Dictator.
  • cruel, absurd and senseless violence in closed spaces: usually consists of a subconscious memory of the birth process and, particularly, its second part in which, through "crazy" visions it brings to mind the senselessness and absurdity of human existence and mixes with ideas of the absurd farce of the world; this dream experience should be understood since it could create unpleasant psychological blocks (see Basic Perinatal Matrix archetype).
  • a person should in his experience and in dreams through infinite compassion forgive images of cruel violence to recognize the essence of his and others' cruelty and ultimately assign a cruel attribute only to the word "dependence".