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East and West

The book on types yielded the insight that every judgment made by an individual is conditioned by his personality type and that every point of view is necessarily relative. This raised the question of the unity which must compensate this diversity, and it led me directly to the Chinese concept of Tao.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962), pp. 207–8.

The East teaches us another, broader, more profound, and higher understanding—understanding through life.

“Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower” (1929), CW 13, § 2.

The Western mind can never accept the possibility that the unconscious can do anything but cause a stomach neurosis, or a heart neurosis, or bad dreams, or some other nuisance. People think that anything entrusted to the unconscious is either nonsense or a terrible nuisance. They never assume that the unconscious might behave intelligently. And the East is convinced that the unconscious consists of nothing but sense, which is going a bit too far in the other direction. Therefore they have to work for consciousness, while with us it is just the reverse. For it is really true that if one creates a better relation to the unconscious, it proves to be a helpful power, it then has an activity of its own, it produces helpful dreams, and at times it really produces little miracles.

Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. I (24 February 1932), p. 604.

[W]hen you step out of this world, you withdraw and think you are alone with yourself, but the East says: “You forget the old man that is dwelling in your heart and sees everything.” Then, alone, you come to the critical point, to your personal unconscious. Extraverts, and all people who are identified with their persona, hate to be alone because they begin to see themselves. Our own society is always the worst: when we are alone with ourselves things get very disagreeable.

Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928–1930 (12 December 1928), p. 75.

In India everything spiritual has grown out of nature. The unconscious flows absolutely freely into consciousness. Indians have no thoughts that would prevent consciousness from functioning, no devils that could devastate consciousness.

Children’s Dreams: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936–1940, p. 409.

I was frequently so wrought up that I had to do certain yoga exercises in order to hold my emotions in check. But since it was my purpose to know what was going on within myself, I would do these exercises only until I had calmed myself enough to resume my work with the unconscious. As soon as I had the feeling that I was myself again, I abandoned this restraint upon the emotions and allowed the images and inner voices to speak afresh. The Indian, on the other hand, does yoga exercises in order to obliterate completely the multitude of psychic contents and images.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962), p. 177.

In India I was principally concerned with the question of the psychological nature of evil. I had been very much impressed by the way this problem is integrated in Indian spiritual life, and I saw it in a new light. In a conversation with a cultivated Chinese I was also impressed, again and again, by the fact that these people are able to integrate so-called “evil” without “losing face.” In the West we cannot do this. For the Oriental the problem of morality does not appear to take first place, as it does for us. To the Oriental, good and evil are meaningfully contained in nature, and are merely varying degrees of the same thing.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962), pp. 275–76.

[T]he best cure for anybody is when the one who thinks about curing has cured himself; inasmuch as he cures himself it is a cure. If he is in Tao, he has established Tao, and whoever beholds him beholds Tao and enters Tao. This is a very Eastern idea.

Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Vol. II (12 February 1936), p. 825.

As I have had the good fortune to go more closely into the psychology of the Orientals, it has become clear to me that anything like a question of the unconscious—a quite notorious question for us—simply doesn’t exist for these people. In the case of the Indians and Chinese, for instance, it is overwhelmingly clear that their whole spiritual attitude is based on what with us is profoundly unconscious.

Letter to B. Milt, 8 June 1942, Letters, Vol. I, p. 318.

I am alone, but I fill my solitariness with my life. I am man enough. I am noise, conversation, comfort, and help enough unto myself. And so I wander to the far East. Not that I know anything about what my distant goal might be. I see blue horizons before me: they suffice as a goal. I hurry toward the East and my rising—I will my rising.

The Red Book (1915/2009), p. 277.

That tiny thing, that unique individual, that Self, is small as the point of a needle, yet because it is so small it is also greater than great. There again is the Eastern formula, and it is of tremendous importance.

Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. I (21 May 1931), pp. 358–59.

Science is the tool of the Western mind, and with it one can open more doors than with bare hands. It is part and parcel of our understanding, and it obscures our insight only when it claims that the understanding it conveys is the only kind there is. The East teaches us another, broader, more profound, and higher understanding—understanding through life.

“Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower” (1929), CW 13, § 2.

Even a superficial acquaintance with Eastern thought is sufficient to show that a fundamental difference divides East and West. The East bases itself upon psychic reality, that is, upon the psyche as the main and unique condition of existence. It seems as if this Eastern recognition were a psychological or temperamental fact rather than a result of philosophical reasoning. It is a typically introverted point of view, contrasted with the equally typical extraverted point of view of the West.

“Psychological Commentary on The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation” (1939/1954), CW 11, § 770.

The experience of Tao can happen at any time. If you are in the psychology of the first part of life—it is not necessarily a matter of years—if you fulfill the personal ends of your existence and it is the right moment, you may have such an experience. For it is quite understood that a young animal still in the process of maturation is just as much a fulfillment of the totality of nature as one that is dying, who, if dying properly, is also fulfilling life because the idea of life includes death, it is a cycle. There is the same possibility at any moment of life. You probably experienced Tao when you were a child, when you woke up in your little bed in the morning with the sun shining into your room. That would be an experience of Tao inasmuch as your parents had not twisted you. But it is quite possible that your parents put dirt on your nose, and then, even as a child, you could only experience a twisted feeling. Or you might experience it at fifteen or twenty if you fulfill your own personal and individual expectations which are then valid. And you can experience the same when you are fading away, dying, if you do it properly, as that fulfillment which is in accordance with the laws of nature. Just that is demanded and nothing else. Many people have never in their whole lives felt such a natural fulfillment because they were completely twisted. But they would experience it in the moment when they were able to liberate themselves from the twist—in that moment they would experience Tao.

Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. II (22 June, 1932), p. 761.

The West is always seeking uplift, but the East seeks a sinking or deepening. Outer reality, with its bodiliness and weight, appears to make a much stronger and sharper impression on the European than it does on the Indian. The European seeks to raise himself above this world, while the Indian likes to turn back into the maternal depths of Nature.

“The Psychology of Eastern Meditation” (1943), CW 11, § 936.

The fact that the East can dispose so easily of the ego seems to point to a mind that is not to be identified with our “mind.” Certainly the ego does not play the same role in Eastern thought as it does with us. It seems as if the Eastern mind were less egocentric, as if its contents were more loosely connected with the subject, and as if greater stress were laid on mental states which include a depotentiated ego.

“Psychological Commentary on The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation” (1939/1954), CW 11, § 775.

A growing familiarity with the spirit of the East should be taken merely as a sign that we are beginning to relate to the alien elements within ourselves. Denial of our historical foundations would be sheer folly and would be the best way to bring about another uprooting of consciousness. Only by standing firmly on our own soil can we assimilate the spirit of the East.

“Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower” (1938), CW 13, § 72.

[T]he day comes when you are outgrown and then you are approaching the void, which seems to me to be the most desirable thing, the thing which contains the most meaning. And you end where you started. This is the philosophy of the East.

Visions: Notes of a Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. II (31 May 1933), p. 1026.

In the East philosophy is not an intellectual business at all; it is not an attempt at producing a logical system consisting of many concepts. The Eastern philosophy is a sort of yoga, it is alive, it is an art, the art of making something of oneself.

Visions: Notes of a Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. II (31 May 1933), p. 1024.

The great asset of the East is that they are based on instinct.

Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. II (21 June 1933), p. 1066.

[W]e must have a concept that covers both functions, consciousness and unconsciousness, and we call this the Self. You can choose any other name if you please, it does not matter. I have chosen the term which has been used since time immemorial in Eastern philosophy to designate this fact, the union of our psychological system; it is the term by which the total of the phenomenon, man, has been expressed.

Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. II (31 January 1934), p. 1270.

In the East the idea prevails that life is only relatively valuable, and if destroyed not much has been lost; so they lose their lives more easily than we do.

Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. II (14 June 1933), p. 1058.

It is also the Eastern idea that through understanding one finds the roots of suffering.

Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. I (20 January 1932), p. 524.

My God, I love you as a mother loves the unborn whom she carries in her heart. Grow in the egg of the East, nourish yourself from my love, drink the juice of my life so that you will become a radiant God. We need your light, Oh Child. Since we go in darkness, light up our paths. May your light shine before us, may your fire warm the coldness of our life. We do not need your power

but life.

The Red Book (1915/2009), p. 286.

[E]astern yoga is based upon man as he really is.

Letter to Mr. N., 5 July 1932, Letters, Vol. I, p. 97.

[N]owadays far too many Europeans are inclined to accept Oriental ideas and methods uncritically and to translate them into the mental language of the Occident. In my view this is detrimental both to ourselves and to those ideas. The products of the Oriental mind are based on its own peculiar history, which is radically different from ours. Those peoples have gone through an uninterrupted development from the primitive state of natural polydemonism to polytheism at its most splendid, and beyond that to a religion of ideas within which the originally magical practices could evolve into a method of self-improvement. These antecedents do not apply to us.

Letter to Oskar A. H. Schmitz, 26 May 1923, Letters, Vol. I, p. 39.

[T]he patient knows that the main idea in Chinese philosophy is the union of the pairs of opposites.

Visions: Notes of a Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. I (16 March 1932), p. 647.

Among the great religious problems of the present is one which has received scant attention, but which is in fact the main problem of our day: the evolution of the religious spirit. If we are to discuss it, we must emphasize the difference between East and West in their treatment of the “jewel,” the central symbol. The West lays stress on the human incarnation, and even on the personality and historicity of Christ, whereas the East says: “Without beginning, without end, without past, without future.” The Christian subordinates himself to the superior divine person in expectation of his grace; but the Oriental knows that redemption depends on the work he does on himself. The Tao grows out of the individual.

“Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower” (1929), CW 13, § 80.

Western psychology knows the mind as the mental functioning of a psyche. It is the “mentality” of an individual. An impersonal Universal Mind is still to be met with in the sphere of philosophy, where it seems to be a relic of the original human “soul.” This picture of our Western outlook may seem a little drastic, but I do not think it is far from the truth. At all events, something of the kind presents itself as soon as we are confronted with the Eastern mentality. In the East, mind is a cosmic factor, the very essence of existence; while in the West we have just begun to understand that it is the essential condition of cognition, and hence of the cognitive existence of the world. There is no conflict between religion and science in the East, because no science is there based upon the passion for facts, and no religion upon mere faith; there is religious cognition and cognitive religion. With us, man is incommensurably small and the grace of God is everything; but in the East, man is God and he redeems himself.

“Psychological Commentary on The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation” (1954), CW 11, § 768.

As long as the opposites are apart there is desire, the longing of the separated heart, but when they are together there is rest, there is perfection. Therefore the East always represents the perfect condition by the union of opposites. That is nirvana, the void, absolute peace.

Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, Vol. I (3 March 1931), p. 261.

Everything requires for its existence its own opposite, or else it fades into nothingness. The ego needs the self and vice versa. The changing relations between these two entities constitute a field of experience which Eastern introspection has exploited to a degree almost unattainable to Western man. The philosophy of the East, although so vastly different from ours, could be an inestimable treasure for us too; but, in order to process it, we must first earn it.

“The Holy Men of India” (1944), CW 11, § 961.

I no longer think that you come from the blessed Western lands. Your country must be desolate, full of paralysis and renunciation. I yearn for the East, where the pure source of our live-giving wisdom flows.

The Red Book (1915/2009), p. 279.

[A]ny Eastern philosophy—or Yoga, rather, for it is not philosophy in the Western sense—begins with the question, “Who am I? Who are you?” That is the philosophic question par excellence which the Yogin asks his disciples. For the goal, and the purpose of Eastern philosophy is that complete realization of the thing which lives, the thing which is. And they have that idea because they are aware of the fact that man’s consciousness is always behind the facts; it never keeps up with the flux of life. Life is in a way too rich, too quick, to be realized fully, and they know that one only lives completely when one’s mind really accompanies one’s life, when one lives no more than one can reflect upon with one’s thought, and when one thinks no further than one is able to live. If one could say that of oneself, it would be a guarantee that one really was living.

Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Vol. II (30 November 1938), pp. 1425–26.

Observations made in my practical work have opened out to me a quite new and unexpected approach to Eastern wisdom. In saying this I should like to emphasize that I did not have any knowledge, however inadequate, of Chinese philosophy as a starting point. On the contrary, when I began my career as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, I was completely ignorant of Chinese philosophy, and only later did my professional experience show me that in my technique I had been unconsciously following that secret way which for centuries had been the preoccupation of the best minds of the East. This could be taken for a subjective fancy—which was one reason for my previous reluctance to publish anything on the subject—but Richard Wilhelm, that great interpreter of the soul of China, enthusiastically confirmed the parallel and thus gave me the courage to write about a Chinese text that belongs entirely to the mysterious shadowland of the Eastern mind. At the same time—and this is the extraordinary thing—its content forms a living parallel to what takes place in the psychic development of my patients, none of whom is Chinese.

“Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower” (1929), CW 13, § 10.

If I understand anything of the I Ching, then I should say it is the book that teaches you your own way and the all-importance of it. Not in vain has the book been the secret treasure of the sages.

Letter to Mr. N., 25 October 1935, Letters, Vol. I, p. 201.

It may be said in passing that Chinese science is based on the principle of synchronicity, or parallelism in time, which is naturally regarded by us as superstition. The standard work on this subject is the I Ching, of which Richard Wilhelm brought out a translation with an excellent commentary.

Letter to Pascual Jordan, 10 November 1934, Letters, Vol. I, p. 178.

The I Ching does not offer itself with proofs and results; it does not vaunt itself, nor is it easy to approach. Like a part of nature, it waits until it is discovered. It offers neither facts nor power, but for lovers of self-knowledge, of wisdom—if there be such—it seems to be the right book. To one person its spirit appears as clear as day; to another, shadowy as twilight; to a third, dark as night. He who is not pleased by it does not have to use it, and he who is against it is not obliged to find it true. Let it go forth into the world for the benefit of those who can discern its meaning.

“Foreword to the I Ching” (1950), CW 11, § 1018.

The manner in which the I Ching tends to look upon reality seems to disfavor our causal procedures. The moment under actual observation appears to the ancient Chinese view more of a chance hit than a clearly defined result of concurrent causal chains. The matter of interest seems to be the configuration formed by chance events at the moment of observation, and not at all the hypothetical reasons that seemingly account for the coincidence. While the Western mind carefully sifts, weighs, selects, classifies, isolates, the Chinese picture of the moment encompasses everything down to the minutest nonsensical detail, because all of the ingredients make up the observed moment.

“Foreword to the I Ching” (1950), CW 11, § 969.

The strange antithesis between East and West is expressed most clearly in religious practice. We speak of religious uplift and exaltation; for us God is the Lord of the universe, we have a religion of brotherly love, and in our heaven-aspiring churches there is a high altar. The Indian, on the other hand, speaks of dhyana, of self-immersion, and of sinking into meditation; God is within all things and especially within man, and one turns away from the outer world to the inner. In the old Indian temples the altar is sunk six to eight feet deep in the earth, and what we hide most shamefacedly is the holiest symbol to the Indian. We believe in doing, the Indian in impassive being. Our religious exercises consist of prayer, worship, and singing hymns. The Indian’s most important exercise is yoga, an immersion in what we would call an unconscious state, but which he praises as the highest consciousness. Yoga is the most eloquent expression of the Indian mind and at the same time the instrument continually used to produce this peculiar attitude of mind.

“The Psychology of Eastern Meditation” (1943), CW 11, § 911.

The goal of Eastern religious practice is the same as that of Western mysticism: the shifting of the center of gravity from the ego to the self, from man to God. This means that the ego disappears in the self, and man in God.

“The Holy Men of India” (1944), CW 11, § 958.

That an atheist is particularly concerned with God is not understood with us because we are still unspeakably barbarous in that respect, but the East is a bit more differentiated in such matters. They have the saying that a man who loves God needs seven rebirths in order to be redeemed or to reach Nirvana, but a man who hates God needs only three. And why? Because a man who hates God will think of him much oftener than a man who loves God. So the atheist hates God, but he is in a way a better Christian than the man who loves him.

Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Vol. I (6 June 1934), pp. 72–73.