C.G.Jung

The vision of light Hildegard von Bingen

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The vision of light, is an experience common to many mystics, and one that is undoubtedly of the greatest significance, because in all times and places it appears as the unconditional thing, which unites in itself the greatest energy and the profoundest meaning. Hildegarde of Bingen, an outstanding personality quite apart from her mysticism, expresses herself about her central vision in a similar way. ‘Since my childhood,’ she says, ‘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 bears 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…’

egg_of_the_UniversThe Egg of the Universe

I know a few individuals who are familiar with this phenomenon from personal experience. As far as I have been able to understand it, the phenomenon seems to have to do with an acute state of consciousness, as intensive as it is abstract, a ‘detached’ consciousness, which, as Hildegarde pertinently remarks, brings up to consciousness regions of psychic events ordinarily covered with darkness. The fact that the general bodily sensations disappear during such an experience suggests that their specific energy has been withdrawn from them, and apparently gone towards heightening the clarity of consciousness.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 thereby frees the inner personality from emotional and intellectual entanglements, creating thus a unity of being which is universally felt as ‘liberation’.
 C. G. Jung, Commentary to “The Secret of the Golden Flower”

Hildegard's mandalas

Possibility of Understanding C. G. Jung

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The greatest and most important problems of life are all in a certain sense insoluble. They must be so because they express the necessary polarity inherent in every self-regulating system. They can never be solved, but only outgrown.

I have often seen individuals simply outgrow a problem which had destroyed others. This ‘outgrowing’, as I formerly called it, on further experience was seen to consist in a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest arose on the person’s horizon, and through this widening of his view the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms, but faded out when confronted with a new and stronger life-tendency. It was not repressed and made unconscious, but merely appeared in a different light, and so did indeed become different. What, on a lower level, had led to the wildest conflicts and to panicky outbursts of emotion, viewed from the higher level of the personality, now seemed like a storm in the valley seen from a high mountain-top. […] One certainly does feel the affect and is shaken and tormented by it, yet at the same time one is aware of a higher consciousness, which prevents one from becoming identical with the affect, a consciousness which takes the affect objectively, and can say, ‘I know that I suffer.’ What our text 1)↓ says of indolence: ‘Indolence of which a man is conscious and indolence of which he is unconscious are a thousand miles apart’, holds true in the highest degree of affect also…

It would be simple enough, if only simplicity were not the most difficult of all things.

What did these people do in order to achieve the development that liberated them? As far as I could see they did nothing wu wei 2)↓ but let things happen. As Master Lü-tsu teaches in our text, the light rotates according to its own law, if one does not give up one’s ordinary occupation. The art of letting things happen, action through non-action, letting go of oneself, as taught by Meister Eckhart, became for me the key opening the door to the way. We must be able to let things happen in the psyche. For us, this actually is an art of which few people know anything. Consciousness is forever interfering, helping, correcting, and negating 3)↓, and never leaving the simple growth of the psychic processes in peace. It would be simple enough, if only simplicity were not the most difficult of all things…
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1. ↑ The Secret of the Golden Flower
2. ↑ Action through non-action. [C. F. B.]
3. ↑ Often a veritable cramp of consciousness exists.

The Secret of the Golden Flower Richard Wilhelm & C. G. Jung

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The Golden Flower is the Elixir of Life (Chin-tan; literally, golden ball, golden pill). All changes of spiritual consciousness depend upon the heart. There is a secret charm which, although it works very accurately, is yet so fluid that it needs extreme intelligence and clarity, and the most complete absorption and tranquillity. People without this highest degree of intelligence and understanding do not find the way to apply the charm; people without this utmost capacity for absorption and tranquillity cannot keep fast hold of it.
 The Secret of the Golden Flower

The Tai I Chin Hua Tsung Chih 1)↓ can be traced back to the seventeenth century as having been printed from wooden tablets. The editor describes having found an incomplete copy dating from that time in the Liu-li-ch’ang, the old street of dealers in books and antiquities in Peking, and tells how he filled it out later from a friend’s book. But the oral tradition goes back even further than that, to the Religion of the Golden Elixir of Life (Chin-tan-chiao), which developed in the T’ang period in the eighth century. The founder is said to have been the well-known Taoist adept, Lü Yen 2)↓ (Lü Tung-pin), counted later by folklore as one of the eight immortals, about whom in the course of time a rich store of myths has gathered…

golden_flower

This sect 3)↓, like all religions, native and foreign, met with tolerance and favour in the T’ang period and spread widely, but, as it was always an esoteric and secret religion, in the course of time it began to suffer persecution because of members being suspected of political intrigues. Again and again its adherents were persecuted by a hostile government, lastly, in an extremely cruel way by the Manchus, just before their own fall 4)↓. Many members have turned to the Christian religion, and all, even if they have not actually entered the church, are very friendly towards it.
 Our book gives the best available account of the religion of the Golden Elixir of Life. The sayings are attributed to Lü Yen, whose other name was Lü Tung-pin, or Lü, the Guest of the Cavern. In the book he is introduced as the patriarch Lü, Lü-tsu. He lived at the end of the eighth and at the beginning of the ninth century. A later commentary on his sayings has been added, but it springs from the same tradition.
 Whence did Lü get his esoteric, secret lore? He himself attributes its origin to Kuan Yin-hsi, the Master Yin-hsi of the Pass (Kuan, i.e. Han-ku Pass), for whom, according to tradition, Lao-tse wrote down his Tao Te Ching…
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1. ↑ The Secret of the Golden Flower (Tai I Chin Hua Tsung Chih), the title of which was changed to Cttang Sheng Shu (The Art of Prolonging Human Life) by the Chinese publisher of the edition used here.
2. ↑ Born circa A.D. 796. [H. W.]
3. ↑ Chin-tan-chiao, The Golden Elixir of Life
4. ↑ In the year 1891, 15,000 members were killed by Manchu hirelings.

The Book of Changes Foreword by C. G. Jung (excerpts)

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Even to the most biased eye it is obvious that this book represents one long admonition to careful scrutiny of one’s own character, attitude, and motives.

Since I am not a sinologue, a foreword to the Book of Changes from my hand must be a testimonial of my individual experience with this great and singular book. It also affords me a welcome opportunity to pay tribute again to the memory of my late friend, Richard Wilhelm. He himself was profoundly aware of the cultural significance of his translation of the I Ching, a version unrivaled in the West. […]
 Wilhelm has made every effort to open the way to an understanding of the symbolism of the text. He was in a position to do this because he himself was taught the philosophy and the use of the I Ching by the venerable sage Lao Nai-hsüan; moreover, he had over a period of many years put the peculiar technique of the oracle into practice. His grasp of the living meaning of the text gives his version of the I Ching a depth of perspective that an exclusively academic knowledge of Chinese philosophy could never provide. […]

One cannot easily disregard such great minds as Confucius and Lao-tse, if one is at all able to appreciate the quality of the thoughts they represent; much less can one overlook the fact that the I Ching was their main source of inspiration.

I do not know Chinese and have never been in China. I can assure my reader that it is not altogether easy to find the right access to this monument of Chinese thought, which departs so completely from our ways of thinking. In order to understand what such a book is all about, it is imperative to cast off certain prejudices of the Western mind. It is a curious fact that such a gifted and intelligent people as the Chinese has never developed what we call science. Our science, however, is based upon the principle of causality, and causality is considered to be an axiomatic truth. But a great change in our standpoint is setting in. What Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason failed to do, is being accomplished by modern physics. The axioms of causality are being shaken to their foundations: we know now that what we term natural laws are merely statistical truths and thus must necessarily allow for exceptions. We have not sufficiently taken into account as yet that we need the laboratory with its incisive restrictions in order to demonstrate the invariable validity of natural law. If we leave things to nature, we see a very different picture: every process is partially or totally interfered with by chance 1)↓, so much so that under natural circumstances a course of events absolutely conforming to specific laws is almost an exception.

ichingThe Chinese mind, as I see it at work in the I Ching, seems to be exclusively preoccupied with the chance aspect of events. What we call coincidence seems to be the chief concern of this peculiar mind, and what we worship as causality passes almost unnoticed. We must admit that there is something to be said for the immense importance of chance. An incalculable amount of human effort is directed to combating and restricting the nuisance or danger represented by chance. Theoretical considerations of cause and effect often look pale and dusty in comparison to the practical results of chance. It is all very well to say that the crystal of quartz is a hexagonal prism. The statement is quite true in so far as an ideal crystal is envisaged. But in nature one finds no two crystals exactly alike, although all are unmistakably hexagonal. The actual form, however, seems to appeal more to the Chinese sage than the ideal one. The jumble of natural laws constituting empirical reality holds more significance for him than a causal explanation of events that, moreover, must usually be separated from one another in order to be properly dealt with.
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1. ↑ Epicurus’s clinamen – przyp Amin

Memories, Dreams, Reflections Carl Gustav Jung

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Al­though we hu­man be­ings have our own per­sonal life, we are yet in large mea­sure the rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the vic­tims and pro­mot­ers of a col­lec­tive spirit whose years are counted in cen­turies.

The col­lec­tive un­con­scious is com­mon to all; it is the foun­da­tion of what the an­cients called the “sym­pa­thy of all things.”

The psy­che is dis­tinctly more com­pli­cated and in­ac­ces­si­ble than the body. It is, so to speak, the half of the world which comes into ex­is­tence only when we be­come con­scious of it. For that rea­son the psy­che is not only a per­sonal but a world prob­lem, and the psy­chi­a­trist has to deal with an en­tire world.
 Nowa­days we can see as never be­fore that the peril which threat­ens all of us comes not from na­ture, but from man, from the psy­ches of the in­di­vid­ual and the mass. The psy­chic aber­ra­tion of man is the dan­ger. Ev­ery­thing de­pends upon whether or not our psy­che func­tions prop­erly. If cer­tain per­sons lose their heads nowa­days, a hy­dro­gen bomb will go off.

Ide­al­ism had to be aban­doned, for there are higher things than the ego’s will, and to these one must bow.

I have fre­quently seen peo­ple be­come neu­rotic when they con­tent them­selves with in­ad­e­quate or wrong an­swers to the ques­tions of life. They seek po­si­tion, mar­riage, rep­u­ta­tion, out­ward suc­cess or money, and re­main un­happy and neu­rotic even when they have at­tained what they were seek­ing. Such peo­ple are usu­ally con­fined within too nar­row a spir­i­tual hori­zon. Their life has not suf­fi­cient con­tent, suf­fi­cient mean­ing. If they are en­abled to de­velop into more spa­cious per­son­al­i­ties, the neu­ro­sis gen­er­ally dis­ap­pears. For that rea­son the idea of de­vel­op­ment was al­ways of the high­est im­por­tance to me.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections carl jung

Among the so-called neu­rotics of our day there are a good many who in other ages would not have been neu­rotic — that is, di­vided against them­selves. If they had lived in a pe­riod and in a mi­lieu in which man was still linked by myth with the world of the an­ces­tors, and thus with na­ture truly ex­pe­ri­enced and not merely seen from out­side, they would have been spared this di­vi­sion with them­selves. I am speak­ing of those who can­not tol­er­ate the loss of myth and who can nei­ther find a way to a merely ex­te­rior world, to the world as seen by sci­ence, nor rest sat­is­fied with an in­tel­lec­tual jug­gling with words, which has noth­ing what­so­ever to do with wis­dom.

“The stone has no un­cer­tain­ties, no urge to com­mu­ni­cate, and is eter­nally the same for thou­sands of years,” I would think, “while I am only a pass­ing phe­nom­e­non which bursts into all kinds of emo­tions, like a flame that flares up quickly and then goes out.” I was but the sum of my emo­tions, and the Other in me was the time­less, im­per­ish­able stone.

Carl G. Jung yoga ex­er­cises

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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; VI. Con­fronta­tion with the Un­con­scious

I Ching or the Book of Changes by Richard Wilhelm

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May the same joy in pure wisdom be the part of those who read the translation as was mine while I worked upon it.
 RICHARD WILHELM, Peking, in the summer of 1923

The Book of Changes—I Ching in Chinese—is unquestionably one of the most important books in the world’s literature. Its origin goes back to mythical antiquity, and it has occupied the attention of the most eminent scholars of China down to the present day. Nearly all that is greatest and most significant in the three thousand years of Chinese cultural history has either taken its inspiration from this book, or has exerted an influence on the interpretation of its text. Therefore it may safely be said that the seasoned wisdom of thousands of years has gone into the making of the I Ching. Small wonder then that both of the two branches of Chinese philosophy, Confucianism and Taoism, have their common roots here. The book sheds new light on many a secret hidden in the often puzzling modes of thought of that mysterious sage, Lao-tse, and of his pupils, as well as on many ideas that appear in the Confucian tradition as axioms, accepted without further examination.iching
 Indeed, not only the philosophy of China but its science and statecraft as well have never ceased to draw from the spring of wisdom in the I Ching, and it is not surprising that this alone, among all the Confucian classics, escaped the great burning of the books under Ch’in Shih Huang Ti 1)↓. Even the commonplaces of everyday life in China are saturated with its influence. In going through the streets of a Chinese city, one will find, here and there at a street corner, a fortune teller sitting behind a neatly covered table, brush and tablet at hand, ready to draw from the ancient book of wisdom pertinent counsel and information on life’s minor perplexities. […]

Yet we must not overlook the fact that apart from this mechanistic number mysticism, a living stream of deep human wisdom was constantly flowing through the channel of this book into everyday life, giving to China’s great civilization that ripeness of wisdom, distilled through the ages, which we wistfully admire in the remnants of this last truly autochthonous culture.
 What is the Book of Changes actually? In order to arrive at an understanding of the book and its teachings, we must first of all boldly strip away the dense overgrowth of interpretations that have read into it all sorts of extraneous ideas. […]

We must hold here to the fundamental principle that the Book of Changes is to be explained in the light of its own content and of the era to which it belongs. With this the darkness lightens perceptibly and we realize that this book, though a very profound work, does not offer greater difficulties to our understanding than any other book that has come down through a long history from antiquity to our time.

Richard Wilhelm

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1. ↑ 213 B.C.