[27] The great difficulty in interpreting this and similar texts1 for the European is that the author always starts from the central point, from the point we would call the goal, the highest and ultimate insight he has attained. Thus our Chinese author begins with ideas that demand such a comprehensive understanding that a person of discriminating mind has the feeling he would be guilty of ridiculous pretension, or even of talking utter nonsense, if he should embark on an intellectual discourse on the subtle psychic experiences of the greatest minds of the East. Our text, for example, begins: “That which exists through itself is called the Way.” The Hui Ming Ching begins with the words: “The subtlest secret of the Tao is human nature and life.”
[28] It is characteristic of the Western mind that it has no word for Tao. The Chinese character is made up of the sign for “head” and the sign for “going.” Wilhelm translates Tao by Sinn (Meaning). Others translate it as “way,” “providence,” or even as “God,” as the Jesuits do. This illustrates our difficulty. “Head” can be taken as consciousness,2 and “going” as travelling a way, and the idea would then be: to go consciously, or the conscious way. This is borne out by the fact that the “light of heaven” which “dwells between the eyes” as the “heart of heaven” is used synonymously with Tao. Human nature and life are contained in the “light of heaven” and, according to the Hui Ming Ching, are the most important secrets of the Tao. “Light” is the symbolical equivalent of consciousness, and the nature of consciousness is expressed by analogies with light. The Hui Ming Ching is introduced with the verses:
If thou wouldst complete the diamond body with no outflowing,
Diligently heat the roots of consciousness3 and life.
Kindle light in the blessed country ever close at hand,
And there hidden, let thy true self always dwell.
[29] These verses contain a sort of alchemical instruction as to the method or way of producing the “diamond body,” which is also mentioned in our text. “Heating” is necessary; that is, there must be an intensification of consciousness in order that light may be kindled in the dwelling place of the true self. Not only consciousness, but life itself must be intensified: the union of these two produces conscious life. According to the Hui Ming Ching, the ancient sages knew how to bridge the gap between consciousness and life because they cultivated both. In this way the sheli, the immortal body, is “melted out” and the “great Tao is completed.”4
[30] If we take the Tao to be the method or conscious way by which to unite what is separated, we have probably come close to the psychological meaning of the concept. At all events, the separation of consciousness and life cannot very well be understood as anything else than what I described earlier as an aberration or uprooting of consciousness. There can be no doubt, either, that the realization of the opposite hidden in the unconscious—the process of “reversal”—signifies reunion with the unconscious laws of our being, and the purpose of this reunion is the attainment of conscious life or, expressed in Chinese terms, the realization of the Tao.
[31] As I have pointed out, the union of opposites5 on a higher level of consciousness is not a rational thing, nor is it a matter of will; it is a process of psychic development that expresses itself in symbols. Historically, this process has always been represented in symbols, and today the development of personality is still depicted in symbolic form. I discovered this fact in the following way. The spontaneous fantasy products I discussed earlier become more profound and gradually concentrate into abstract structures that apparently represent “principles” in the sense of Gnostic archai. When the fantasies take the form chiefly of thoughts, intuitive formulations of dimly felt laws or principles emerge, which at first tend to be dramatized or personified. (We shall come back to these again later.) If the fantasies are drawn, symbols appear that are chiefly of the mandala6 type. Mandala means “circle,” more especially a magic circle. Mandalas are found not only throughout the East but also among us. The early Middle Ages are especially rich in Christian mandalas; most of them show Christ in the centre, with the four evangelists, or their symbols, at the cardinal points. This conception must be a very ancient one, because Horus and his four sons were represented in the same way by the Egyptians.7 It is known that Horus with his four sons has close connections with Christ and the four evangelists. An unmistakable and very interesting mandala can be found in Jakob Böhme’s book XL Questions concerning the Soule.8 It is clear that this mandala represents a psychocosmic system strongly coloured by Christian ideas. Böhme calls it the “Philosophical Eye”9 or the “Mirror of Wisdom,” by which is obviously meant a summa of secret knowledge. Most mandalas take the form of a flower, cross, or wheel, and show a distinct tendency towards a quaternary structure reminiscent of the Pythagorean tetraktys, the basic number. Mandalas of this sort also occur as sand paintings in the religious ceremonies of the Pueblo and Navaho Indians.10 But the most beautiful mandalas are, of course, those of the East, especially the ones found in Tibetan Buddhism, which also contain the symbols mentioned in our text. Mandala drawings are often produced by the mentally ill, among them persons who certainly did not have the least idea of any of the connections we have discussed.11
[32] Among my patients I have come across cases of women who did not draw mandalas but danced them instead. In India there is a special name for this: mandala nrithya, the mandala dance. The dance figures express the same meanings as the drawings. My patients can say very little about the meaning of the symbols but are fascinated by them and find that they somehow express and have an effect on their subjective psychic state.
[33] Our text promises to “reveal the secret of the Golden Flower of the great One.” The golden flower is the light, and the light of heaven is the Tao. The golden flower is a mandala symbol I have often met with in the material brought me by my patients. It is drawn either seen from above as a regular geometric pattern, or in profile as a blossom growing from a plant. The plant is frequently a structure in brilliant fiery colours growing out of a bed of darkness, and carrying the blossom of light at the top, a symbol recalling the Christmas tree. Such drawings also suggest the origin of the golden flower, for according to the Hui Ming Ching the “germinal vesicle” is the “dragon castle at the bottom of the sea.”12 Other synonyms are the “yellow castle,” the “heavenly heart,” the “terrace of living,” the “square inch field of the square foot house,” the “purple hall of the city of jade,” the “dark pass,” the “space of former heaven.”13 It is also called the “boundary region of the snow mountains,” the “primordial pass,” the “kingdom of greatest joy,” the “boundless country,” the “altar upon which consciousness and life are made.” “If a dying man does not know this germinal vesicle,” says the Hui Ming Ching, “he will not find the unity of consciousness and life in a thousand births, nor in ten thousand aeons.”14
[34] The beginning, where everything is still one, and which therefore appears as the highest goal, lies at the bottom of the sea, in the darkness of the unconscious. In the germinal vesicle, consciousness and life (or human nature and life, hsing-ming) are still a “unity, inseparably mixed like the sparks in the refining furnace.” “Within the germinal vesicle is the fire of the ruler.” “All the sages began their work at the germinal vesicle.”15 Note the fire analogies. I know a series of European mandala drawings in which something like a plant seed surrounded by membranes is shown floating in the water. Then, from the depths below, fire penetrates the seed and makes it grow, causing a great golden flower to unfold from the germinal vesicle.
[35] This symbolism refers to a quasi-alchemical process of refining and ennobling. Darkness gives birth to light; out of the “lead of the water region” grows the noble gold; what is unconscious becomes conscious in the form of a living process of growth. (Indian Kundalini yoga offers a perfect analogy.16) In this way the union of consciousness and life takes place.
[36] When my patients produce these mandala pictures, it is naturally not the result of suggestion; similar pictures were being made long before I knew their meaning or their connection with the practices of the East, which, at that time, were wholly unknown to me. The pictures arise quite spontaneously, and from two sources. One source is the unconscious, which spontaneously produces fantasies of this kind; the other is life, which, if lived with utter devotion, brings an intuition of the self, of one’s own individual being. When the self finds expression in such drawings, the unconscious reacts by enforcing an attitude of devotion to life. For in complete agreement with the Eastern view, the mandala is not only a means of expression but also produces an effect. It reacts upon its maker. Age-old magical effects lie hidden in this symbol, for it is derived from the “protective circle” or “charmed circle,” whose magic has been preserved in countless folk customs.17 It has the obvious purpose of drawing a sulcus primigenius, a magical furrow around the centre, the temple or temenos (sacred precinct), of the innermost personality, in order to prevent an “outflowing” or to guard by apotropaic means against distracting influences from outside. Magical practices are nothing but projections of psychic events, which then exert a counter-influence on the psyche and put a kind of spell upon the personality. Through the ritual action, attention and interest are led back to the inner, sacred precinct, which is the source and goal of the psyche and contains the unity of life and consciousness. The unity once possessed has been lost, and must now be found again.
[37] The unity of the two, life and consciousness, is the Tao, whose symbol would be the central white light, also mentioned in the Bardo Thödol.18 This light dwells in the “square inch” or in the “face,” that is, between the eyes. It is a visualization of the “creative point,” of that which has intensity without extension, in conjunction with the “field of the square inch,” the symbol for that which has extension. The two together make the Tao. Human nature (hsing) and consciousness (hui) are expressed in light symbolism, and therefore have the quality of intensity, while life (ming) would coincide with extensity. The one is yang-like, the other yin-like. The afore-mentioned mandala of a somnambulist girl, aged fifteen and a half, whom I had under observation some thirty years ago, shows in its centre a spring of “Primary Force,” or life energy without extension, whose emanations clash with a contrary spatial principle—in complete analogy with the basic idea of our Chinese text.
[38] The “enclosure,” or circumambulatio, is expressed in our text by the idea of “circulation.” The circulation is not merely movement in a circle, but means, on the one hand, the marking off of the sacred precinct and, on the other, fixation and concentration. The sun-wheel begins to turn; the sun is activated and begins its course—in other words, the Tao begins to work and takes the lead. Action is reversed into non-action; everything peripheral is subordinated to the command of the centre. Therefore it is said: “Movement is only another name for mastery.” Psychologically, this circulation would be the “movement in a circle around oneself,” so that all sides of the personality become involved. “The poles of light and darkness are made to rotate,” that is, there is an alternation of day and night.
[39] The circular movement thus has the moral significance of activating the light and dark forces of human nature, and together with them all psychological opposites of whatever kind they may be. It is nothing less than self-knowledge by means of self-brooding (Sanskrit tapas). A similar archetypal concept of a perfect being is that of the Platonic man, round on all sides and uniting within himself the two sexes.
[40] One of the best modern parallels is the description which Edward Maitland, the biographer of Anna Kingsford,19 gave of his central experience. He had discovered that when reflecting on an idea, related ideas became visible, so to speak, in a long series apparently reaching back to their source, which to him was the divine spirit. By concentrating on this series, he tried to penetrate to their origin. He writes:
I was absolutely without knowledge or expectation when I yielded to the impulse to make the attempt. I simply experimented on a faculty . . . being seated at my writing-table the while in order to record the results as they came, and resolved to retain my hold on my outer and circumferential consciousness, no matter how far towards my inner and central consciousness I might go. For I knew not whether I should be able to regain the former if I once quitted my hold of it, or to recollect the facts of the experience. At length I achieved my object, though only by a strong effort, the tension occasioned by the endeavour to keep both extremes of the consciousness in view at once being very great.
Once well started on my quest, I found myself traversing a succession of spheres or belts . . . the impression produced being that of mounting a vast ladder stretching from the circumference towards the centre of a system, which was at once my own system, the solar system, the universal system, the three systems being at once diverse and identical.. . . . Presently, by a supreme, and what I felt must be a final effort . . . I succeeded in polarizing the whole of the convergent rays of my consciousness into the desired focus. And at the same instant, as if through the sudden ignition of the rays thus fused into a unity, I found myself confronted with a glory of unspeakable whiteness and brightness, and of a lustre so intense as well-nigh to beat me back. . . . But though feeling that I had to explore further, I resolved to make assurance doubly sure by piercing if I could the almost blinding lustre, and seeing what it enshrined. With a great effort I succeeded, and the glance revealed to me that which I had felt must be there. . . . It was the dual form of the Son . . . the unmanifest made manifest, the unformulate formulate, the unindividuate individuate, God as the Lord, proving through His duality that God is Substance as well as Force, Love as well as Will, Feminine as well as Masculine, Mother as well as Father.
[41] He found that God is two in one, like man. Besides this he noticed something that our text also emphasizes, namely “suspension of breathing.” He says ordinary breathing stopped and was replaced by an internal respiration, “as if by breathing of a distinct personality within and other than the physical organism.” He took this being to be the “entelechy” of Aristotle and the “inner Christ” of the apostle Paul, the “spiritual and substantial individuality engendered within the physical and phenomenal personality, and representing, therefore, the rebirth of man on a plane transcending the material.”
[42] This genuine20 experience contains all the essential symbols of our text. The phenomenon itself, the vision of light, is an experience common to many mystics, and one that is undoubtedly of the greatest significance, because at all times and places it proves to be something unconditioned and absolute, a combination of supreme power and profound meaning. Hildegard of Bingen, an outstanding personality quite apart from her mysticism, writes in much the same way about her central vision:
Since my childhood I have always seen a light in my soul, but not with the outer eyes, nor through the thoughts of my heart; neither do the five outer senses take part in this vision. . . . The light I perceive is not of a local kind, but is much brighter than the cloud which supports the sun. I cannot distinguish height, breadth, or length in it. . . . What I see or learn in such a vision stays long in my memory. I see, hear, and know in the same moment. . . . I cannot recognize any sort of form in this light, although I sometimes see in it another light that is known to me as the living light. . . . While I am enjoying the spectacle of this light, all sadness and sorrow vanish from my memory.21
[43] I myself know a few individuals who have had personal experience of this phenomenon. So far as I have been able to understand it, it seems to have to do with an acute state of consciousness, as intense as it is abstract, a “detached” consciousness (see infra, pars. 64ff.), which, as Hildegard implies, brings into awareness areas of psychic happenings ordinarily covered in darkness. The fact that the general bodily sensations disappear during the experience suggests that their specific energy has been withdrawn and has apparently gone towards heightening the clarity of consciousness. As a rule, the phenomenon is spontaneous, coming and going on its own initiative. Its effect is astonishing in that it almost always brings about a solution of psychic complications and frees the inner personality from emotional and intellectual entanglements, thus creating a unity of being which is universally felt as “liberation.”
[44] Such a symbolic unity cannot be attained by the conscious will because consciousness is always partisan. Its opponent is the collective unconscious, which does not understand the language of the conscious mind. Therefore it is necessary to have the magic of the symbol which contains those primitive analogies that speak to the unconscious. The unconscious can be reached and expressed only by symbols, and for this reason the process of individuation can never do without the symbol. The symbol is the primitive exponent of the unconscious, but at the same time an idea that corresponds to the highest intuitions of the conscious mind.
[45] The oldest mandala drawing known to me is a palaeolithic “sun-wheel,” recently discovered in Rhodesia. It, too, is based on the quaternary principle. Things reaching so far back into human history naturally touch upon the deepest layers of the unconscious, and can have a powerful effect on it even when our conscious language proves itself to be quite impotent. Such things cannot be thought up but must grow again from the forgotten depths if they are to express the supreme insights of consciousness and the loftiest intuitions of the spirit, and in this way fuse the uniqueness of present-day consciousness with the age-old past of life.