Ma non eran da ciò le proprie penne,
se non che la mia mente fu percossa
da un fulgore, in che sua voglia venne.
All’alta fantasia qui mancò possa;
ma già volgeva il mio disiro e il velle,
sì come rota ch’egualmente è mossa,
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
[But my own wings were not for such a flight—
except that, smiting through the mind of me,
there came fulfilment in a flash of light.
Here vigor failed the lofty fantasy;
but my volition now, and my desires,
were moved like wheel revolving evenly
By Love that moves the sun and starry fires.]
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
1.The Secret of the Golden Flower, Wilhelm and Jung (New York and London, 1931), p. 83.
2.Here and throughout, the word “life” should not be understood simply in its biological sense, as the vital force which imparts movement to organic bodies. Nor should it be understood as a force which pervades things and moves them while remaining essentially different from them. I use the commonplace word because for many people it has more concrete meaning than the word “God.” It should be understood in the same sense as the Chinese word “Tao.” William McDougall once asked a Chinese exactly what he meant by “Tao.” The Chinese took him out to the balcony and asked, “What do you see?” “I see a street and houses and people walking and streetcars passing.” “What more?” “There is a hill.” “What more?” “Trees.” “What more?” “The wind is blowing.” The Chinese extended his arms and exclaimed, “That is Tao!” In other words, life is the whole universe as it is now. In this sense the universe should not be considered as just the sum of all things, but as a whole which is greater than the sum of its parts. That is to say, the universe or life is an organic unity from which all individual things derive their meaning and to which they must be referred if they are to be understood. For individual things can have neither existence nor meaning if they are unrelated. See the section on Taoism in ch. 6, and cf. my Legacy of Asia (Chicago, 1938), pp. 72–75.
3.Mu-mon-kwan, vii. I am indebted for this translation to the Rev. Sokei-an Sasaki. (See note 19, ch. 6.)
CHAPTER ONE
1.Brahman as the Self is not quite the same as the usual concept of a World Soul, for Brahman is not the soul of the universe as opposed to its body or physical form and substance. Brahman is rather the wholeness of the universe from which all its parts are derived, and which indeed is each single part. See the section on Vedanta in ch. 6.
2.See his South American Meditations, ch. 2.
3.Luke 15:11–32.
4.Cf. Gooch and Laski, English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century (New York, 1927).
5.Psychoanalysts have never claimed that the unconscious is anything more than a working hypothesis. They have not insisted on its existence as a particular entity in either the bodily or mental aspects of man. But as a hypothesis it has proved of such value in psychological healing that it seems to matter little whether there is in fact an unconscious or not. It is probable that the unconscious would be described more correctly as a process than as an entity, i.e., the process of not being aware of certain operations, tendencies, and impulses that belong to our nature, revealing themselves in indirect or rationalized forms, or not at all.
6.Jung does not admit that he is a mystic, for he is at pains, and rightly, to emphasize the strictly scientific method of his inquiry—insofar as psychological or any other kind of healing can be a science. For his view of the unconscious see Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (New York, 1928), p. 94 et seq. Also The Integration of Personality (New York, 1939), ch. 1.
7.Maya is often translated incorrectly as “illusion”—a purely negative rendering which does not give the full meaning. Maya is the creative power of Brahman.
8.From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt, E. A. Wallis Budge (London, 1934), p. 15.
9.I follow the translation by H. A. Giles in his Chuang Tzu (Shanghai, 1926), p. 282.
10.An interesting study of some of these figures will be found in Rom Landau’s God Is My Adventure (New York, 1936).
11.Patanjali’s Yogasutra, 2, vi.
CHAPTER TWO
1.A remarkable analysis of this confusion is the first chapter of Nicolas Berdyaev’s Freedom and the Spirit (London, 1935), esp. p. 15. “Spirit,” he writes, “is by no means opposed to flesh; rather, flesh is the incarnation and symbol of spirit.”
2.A refreshingly different interpretation of this doctrine will be found in Berdyaev, ibid., pp. 40–41.
3.Psalm 139:7–12.
4.Mu-mon-kwan, xxvi.
5.See Zimmer, Kunstform und Yoga (Berlin, 1926).
CHAPTER THREE
1.Chapter 5, p. 182. The whole of this chapter is particularly suggestive.
2.Romans 7:5–9.
3.Interpretation of the Bible on these points is not easy because of an inconsistent use of words. Note the apparent contradiction: “For God so loved the world…” (John 3:16) and “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). The Greek άγαπη is used in both instances.
4.Cf. Friedrich Spiegelberg’s Religion of Non-Religion (London, 1938), pp. 14–16.
5.Tathata is usually translated as “Suchness” (Suzuki). Some people might prefer “Reality,” though “Suchness” is rather more demonstrative if less euphonious.
6.Trans. Juan Mascaro, Himalayas of the Souclass="underline" Translations from the Sanskrit of the Principal Upanishads (London and New York, 1938), p. 89.
7.See below, ch. 8.
8.Ibid., p. 183.
9.For a fuller development of this theme see my Legacy of Asia (Chicago, 1938).
10.For a much fuller treatment of this subject see Jung’s commentary to The Secret of the Golden Flower, Wilhelm and Jung (London and New York, 1931).
11.Meister Eckhart’s Sermons, trans. Claud Field (London, n.d.), pp. 19–20.
12.See Asiatic Mythology, J. Hackin and others (London, 1932), facing p. 434. The actual painting is in the Musée Guimet.
13.Theurgia, or the Egyptian Mysteries, Iamblichus, trans. Alexander Wilder (London and New York, 1911), p. 35.
14.Cf. Secret of the Golden Flower, pp. 90–91.
CHAPTER FOUR
1.See Jung’s Integration of Personality, ch. 3, “Archetypes of the Unconscious.” For the mana-personality, see Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, p. 252 et seq. A more popular account will be found in Frances G. Wickes’s Inner World of Man (New York, 1938).
2.Cf. Sigmund Freud, Leonardo da Vinci.
3.See G. R. Heyer, The Organism of the Mind (London, 1933); H. Prinzhorn, Psychotherapie (Leipzig, 1930); J. A. Hadfield, Psychology and Morals (London, 1936); E. Graham Howe, I and Me (London, 1935) and War Dance (London, 1937); Beatrice Hinkle, The Recreating of the Individual (New York, 1923). The Pastoral Psychologists, who have now formed an organization in London known as the Guild of Pastoral Psychology, are chiefly interested in promoting an understanding of psychotherapy among ministers of religion. To date they have done some particularly valuable work, including the publication of the following papers: H. Westmann, The Old Testament and Analytical Psychology; James Kirsch, The Religious Aspect of the Unconscious; W. H. Peacey, Pastoral Psychology and the Gospel; C. G. Jung, The Symbolic Life (for private circulation only). Their headquarters are at St. George’s Institute, Broadbent Street, London, W. 1.