Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)

[KALKI]

Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) studied Indic traditions, taught summer institutes on yoga philosophy and kundalini in Zurich for a few years. A student of Sigmund Freud, psychiatrist, interpreted Hinduism in terms of his psychological system, and pointed out the great significance of Indian thought for the modern West:

"We do not yet realize that while we are turning upside down the material world of the East with our technical proficiency, the East with its psychic proficiency, is throwing our spiritual world into confusion. We have never yet hit upon the thought that while we are overpowering the Orient from without, it may be fastening its hold upon us from within."

Jung found out in 1909 that myth and dream were linked, but it had been well known in India forever. It is implicit in the syllable OM, or A-U-M according to Mandukya Upanishad.

(source: A Joseph Campbell Companion - Selected and edited by Diane K. Osborn p. 122)

No system of thought or body control is more widely known today than Yoga. "When a religious method recommends itself as 'scientific', it can be certain of its public in the West. Yoga fulfills this expectation. "Quite apart from the charm of the new and the fascination of the half-understood, there is good cause for Yoga to have many adherents. It offers the possibility of controllable experience and thus satisfies the scientific need for 'facts'; and, besides this, by reason of its breadth and depth, its venerable age, its doctrine and method which include every phase of life, it promises undreamed of possibilities."

(source: Let's regain our lost soul - By Nani A Palkhivala - Tapovan Prasad - Chinmaya Mission vol. 39 #2 February 2001p 29-30).

Jung says: "The Christian West considers man to be wholly dependent upon the grace of God, or at least upon the Church as the exclusive and divinely sanctioned earthly instrument of man's redemption. The East (India), however, insists that man is the sole cause of his higher development, for it believes in "self- liberation."

"While we are overpowering the Orient from without, it may be fastening its hold upon us from within."

(source: In Search Of The Cradle of Civilization: New Light on Ancient India - By Georg Feurerstein, Subhash Kak & David Frawley p. 267).

"The idea that man is like unto an inverted tree seems to have been current in by gone ages. The link with Vedic conceptions is provided by Plato in his Timaeus in which it states..." behold we are not an earthly but a heavenly plant."

What is of special interest to us is the surprising affinity between Jung’s conclusions and Hindu thought. He himself was aware of it. He thought that it was no mere accident that soon after the French Revolution the Frenchman Anquetil du Perron brought to Europe a translation of the Upanishads “which gave the Western world its first deep insight into the baffling mind of the East.”

He says, “To the historian this is mere chance without any factors of cause and effect. But in view of my medical experience I cannot take it as an accident…In the crowds that poured into the Notre Dame, bent on destruction, dark and nameless forces were at work that swept the individual off his feet; these forces worked also upon Anquetil du Perron and provoked an answer which has come down in history. For he brought the Eastern mind to the West, and its influence upon us we cannot measure. Let us beware of under-estimating it!” He had a great respect for the Eastern civilizations which had discovered and learnt to use the resources of the subliminal mind. In his own words, “Great and enduring civilizations like those of the Hindus and the Chinese were built upon this foundation and developed from it a discipline of self-knowledge which they brought to a high pitch of refinement both in philosophy and practice.”

As the Upanishad describes it, the Self is that which being known all else becomes known.

(source: Hindu Culture - By K. Guru Dutt - With a foreword by Sir C.Ramaswami Aiyar p. 227-228).

He admired Hinduism. He said if Rama can cry in the forest when he lost Sita and if still Rama could be an altar of worship, that is why Hindu society is a sane society. He said the Hindu society legitimised sorrow, while other religions do not do that.

(source: 'There is reverse discrimination against Hindus' - T R Jawahar - newstodaynet.com).

Jung says: “We have not yet clearly grasped the fact that Western Theosophy is an amateurish imitation of the East.” Our studies of sexual life, originating in Vienna and England, are matched or surpassed by Hindu teachings on the subject, Oriental texts ten centuries introduce us to philosophical relativism."

(source: The Wisdom of China and India - By Lin Yutang p. 118).

Jung in Psychological Types examines Indian Philosophy from a psychological perspective in glowing terms. His theories have some intuitively and aesthetically resonant qualities. Simple but precise and partially derived from Indian Thought:

"If the attainment of the middle path consisted in a mere surrender to instinct, as the bewailers of “naturalism” suppose, the profoundest philosophical speculation that the human mind has ever known would have no raison d’être. But, as we study the philosophy of the Upanishads, the impression grows on us that the attainment of this path is not exactly the simplest of tasks. Our Western superciliousness in the face of these Indian insights is a mark of our barbarian nature, which has not the remotest inkling of their extraordinary depth and astonishing psychological accuracy. We are still so uneducated that we actually need laws from without, and a task-master or Father above, to show us what is good and the right thing to do. And because we are still such barbarians, any trust in human nature seems to us a dangerous and unethical naturalism. Why is this? Because under the barbarian’s thin veneer of culture the wild beast lurks in readiness, amply justifying his fear. But the beast is not tamed by locking it up in cage. There is no morality without freedom. When the barbarian lets loose the beast within him, that is not freedom but bondage. Barbarism must first be vanquished before freedom can be won. This happens, in principle, when the basic root and driving force of morality are felt by the individual as constituents of his own nature and not as external restrictions. How else is man to attain this realization but through the conflicts of opposites?"

(source: Psychological Types – By C G Jung p. 213 – Routledge 1971 Reprinted 1999. This quote has been contributed to this site by a visitor).