Psychology of Yoga and Meditation

This is a further volume (6) in the remarkable series of public lectures given by Jung at ETH Zurich between 1933 and 1941 – there was often standing room only. They are extraordinary in their depth of analysis and engagement with the classic texts of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, the Amitayurdhyana-Sutra from Chinese Pure Land Buddhism, and the Shri-chakra-samhbhara Tantra. Very few scholars were engaged with these texts in the 1930s, and Jung was unique among psychologists in his interest and in drawing parallels with his own idea of active imagination. The book provides a fascinating chronology of the turbulent period during which these lectures were delivered, detailing his own considerable activities. The extensive introduction provides a thematic and contextual overview, including his collaboration with Heinrich Zimmer. The tone of the lectures is informal, and indeed the text has been reconstructed from stenographic notes. Jung observes a radical difference between Eastern and Western approaches to consciousness where we take for granted what for the East 'is the absolute centre of the world: that which light is outwardly, consciousness is inwardly. There you have a fundamental concept of the East' (p. 59) where 'enlightened consciousness is the inner sun' corresponding respectively to the Buddha and Christ. Elsewhere he remarks that the East thinks from inside out, not from outside in as we do, prioritising respectively first- and third-person perspectives.

Jung draws comparisons between Tantra and alchemy, and often returns to contrasting ideas of the self and its development in pursuit of liberation and salvation, beginning with unconsciousness and ending in what we would call cosmic consciousness while also including the coniunctio of masculine and feminine. He draws on a number of commentators in elaborating his own understanding and proceeds carefully in his analysis. Fascinatingly, he brings in Eckhart to his discussion of emptiness, humility, self-naughting and the I-consciousness, relating this to detachment. He quotes him as saying that 'it is far better for God to be in the soul than for the soul to be in God.' (p. 243) Then he brings in some remarkable parallel passages from Angelus Silesius and the Upanishads. He also mentions The Secret of the Golden Flower, commenting that 'at the moment China must practise modern methods of war and has no time to meditate.' As Jung also said in his famous interview with John Freeman: 'Either I know something or I don't know it. A religious factor must be an experience; belief is not an experience… either it bridges lived experience, or it is absolutely nothing. I stand for the perspective of lived experience' (p. 260) – this is gnosis. As you can gather, there are some remarkable and penetrating insights in this volume that still speak to our time.