Carl Jung: Difference between revisions

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John Henshaw
John Henshaw


[the late, and much respected, author was an Australian Sahaja yogi, and noted [http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/OA11.1961  artist] and academic. This piece was written for ''Knowledge of Reality'' magazine in the mid-1990s.]
[the late, and much respected, author was an Australian [https://vimeo.com/97077395 Sahaja yogi], and noted [http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/OA11.1961  artist] and academic. This piece was written for ''Knowledge of Reality'' magazine in the mid-1990s.]


==From [http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/sahajhist  Saints, Sufis, and Yogis]==
==From [http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/sahajhist  Saints, Sufis, and Yogis]==

Revision as of 21:30, 7 August 2016

Excerpts

When you find that it has been proved now, whatever Jung has said can be proved, then you have to accept him as a person who knew quite a lot about Self and about the collectivity. (...)

Now another point I would like to point out from Jung’s point of view that he took to dreams as one of the very big, big experimental truthful manifestation of the unconscious. But what happens, how do you get dreams, let’s see. The dreams come to you from the Kundalini itself, in a way. So what happens the Kundalini is not connected to the central path, but it is the record, is all our past, all our record is in there like a tape recorder has a tape, it is there. And what happens, that when you go very deep into (Sounds like Sushuti ) that’s the stage they call it, very deep into you, then the symbolism comes through that down below and passes through that blue line into your brain and that’s how you start seeing the dreams. But when you are passing through that you see you pass through your all subconscious area, so the dreams get distorted, they get a funny symbolism. (Advice given at C.G. Jung Society’s Hall. American Tour, New York (USA), 16 September 1983.)

See, he (Jung) sought for himself the truth. He didn’t accept Freud. And he thought that there is something wrong with it, then he has spent a lot with philosophy and I think he came to India. And not only that but he got his Realization. And after getting Self Realization he wrote about collective consciousness, he wrote so many things which we can now feel it ourselves. And he was a man who gave him good pictures, what will happen to men when they get self-realization. I should say we should be very obliged to him for doing [UNCLEAR] It was not just a mental projection but it was an actual finding of his own divinity. (TV Interview. Geneva (Switzerland), 10 August 1989.)

Question: Collective unconscious, he is wondering where you got the phrase from.

Shri Mataji: Oh, I have learned it from one of you. Actually, in Sanskrit, it is another word which is called as Viashti, in Sanskrit. You see, I never knew the English language, in this time life I have only picked up this and I read some Jung and I read some things to find out because Jung was a realized soul. And I got it from him that he calls as the collective unconscious, but in the Sanskrit language, it is called as Supta-achitar. There’s a word for it. I mean it is already there, but I do not know where he got it translated, that we should ask Jung about it. But that is the collective unconscious becomes conscious. I am saying collective consciousness, the unconscious becomes the conscious. You see, because he found out these symbols which were universal, so it is he who said that… I mean, by science, we can say by psychology he has proved that there is a collective unconscious, which we have to find out. He prepared the stage, quite all right. But I do not know how many Jungians are going to jump onto the stage. You see, you have to jump onto it, if you just stick on to those ideas, you see he talked of the unconscious, I am talking of the conscious. All right? Jung was great, I must say he was great, but he is not so much respected anywhere as he should be. (Public Program. Vancouver (Canada), 9 October 1981)

Jung has said that you have to become collectively conscious. Now, what is collectively conscious? That is, on your central nervous system, you should be able to feel another person.

Now Jung has said so, it’s a poet. Then you have got other people to quote: William Blake you can quote, you can quote other poets or saints whom you know, it depends on what sort of a person you are dealing with.

But just don’t say "Yes, I am a realized soul". People have been crucified, murdered, poisoned for saying that.

So be careful, put it on somebody else and say “Yes, the signs of a realized soul’s are like this, that he has to be collectively conscious”

First of all that you have read Jung or you know so much about collective consciousness itself will put them right in their own place, to begin with.

Because you have to be knowledgeable in these modern times, and you should be able to communicate. Just by telling them: “I’m a realized soul, I have to awaken your Kundalini”, nobody is going to believe you. (Talk to Sahaja Yogis, with questions/answers. St.Martin’s Lane, London (UK), 8 April 1987)

If you are wise, you will understand that we are not living in a very peaceful world. So first thing happens to you is that you become thoughtlessly aware. When we are thinking, we are thinking of the future or the past, but not of the present. The present is the reality. The Past is finished. Future doesn’t exist. But we can not be in the present, is a fact. So now, one thought rises, falls, another thought rises and falls and we are jumping on the cusp of these thoughts of the past and future. But when Kundalini rises, she elongates these thoughts and there is a space created in-between. That is the present when you don’t have a reflecting mind, you are absolutely at peace with yourself. You’re aware, absolutely aware, but you are thoughtless. Jung has talked about it, Jung, a little bit. I don’t call him a full-fledged Sahaja Yogi, but he did oppose this Freud, horrible fellow. All right, so you become absolutely peaceful and when you get connected with this all-pervading power, which is peace, absolute peace, no conflict. Bliss starts pouring into you and the peace spreads around. (Medical Conference, St. Petersburg (Russia), 20 September 1995)

You have to go to the superconsciousness on top of your head, not on the sides. There are so many other attacks also, like Freud. Freud was another attack, I think. He’s made human beings into nothing but sex-points. Another extreme. Jung talked about it, but he made one mistake – Jung, Jung – that he described the conscious mind, subconscious mind in a layer like this, horizontal. But it is placed vertical, and the central path which is the conscious mind, which is the present, has to be kept open for the kundalini to move. And because of that mistake, many people believe that you have to go to the subconscious to go higher. You don’t have to go to subconscious or to supraconscious. It’s a straightforward march upward like this, and you come out of your fontanel bone area, your attention just comes out, just like this. Like this tent, you see how it is inside, in the same way, your attention is put outside. And then the whole thing breaks and it starts penetrating into subtle, subtle areas of your attention. (Public Program, Garden of Overvoorde mansion house, Overvoorde (Holland), 4 July 1985)

Question: What makes exactly collective consciousness, collective awareness? And what is the connection with the collective unconsciousness, psychologically?

Shri Mataji: Jung has talked. See, the collective unconscious becomes conscious. That becomes conscious. That comes into our conscious mind. That’s it. Jung has talked of it. But Jung, you see, got his Realization, he talked about it and I addressed the Jungian Society in New York. So I’ve not read this, I’ve not read him much. So I just opened the book, like this and there was a diagram that he had made of a human being. What he had done, that he said that the collective unconscious is at the bottom, then the subconscious, then the collective subconscious, then the subconscious, then the conscious mind and then the other things like that. But like – horizontal layers. This was the mistake because your subconscious mind is placed on the periphery. Subconscious is on the left. Subconscious is on the left and then the collective subconscious. Everything that has gone out of the circulation of evolution is in the collective subconscious.

Now, on the right side is the futuristic side. So is the supraconscious, is the collective supraconscious. So all the ambitious people are in supraconscious. Now the superconsciousness [MISSING RECORDING] …and the collective unconscious is the Kundalini. Now, when She rises, She connects you into the superconsciousness. So you become conscious of the collective consciousness.

But the mistake was that it is not horizontal. Because when you say it is horizontal, then people go to the subconscious mind, then through the collective subconscious, then through the collective unconscious, means the movement is descendant. But our Creator is a great organizer. Now, supposing you have to go to the aeroplane and if you have to pass through all the luggage and all everything and then go to the airport, it’s going to be difficult. So He has kept both these things vertical and the central path is there, is clear – is called Brahmanadi, the central path. It is like a spiral. It’s like a spiral and the innermost part of the spiral is the Brahmanadi. (Press Conference. Bucharest (Romania), 17 October 1990)

Now in the center we have another little one, there’s a void in between, but there’s a little one inside the channel which is not yet fully developed ready to receive the Kundalini from down below which we call as Sushumna, Sushumna Nadi. This is the channel by which we ascend. We’ve ascended so far to be a human being, as being told that we came from amoeba to this stage. This ascent came to us because we have this power within us to ascend. We never think how did we become human beings. Even Darwin, I was told, has said that “Now the man has come so far, so he has to go further.” But he has not indicated where he has to go but Jung has very clearly said that if a man has to rise anywhere higher, he’ll become collectively conscious. It is Jung who said that because Jung was the person who got his realization in his lifetime and he was a changed personality and he talked about it. (Public Program Day 2, Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), February 24th, 1983)


Carl Jung and the Kundalini

One enduring statement that C.G. Jung made late in life about not having to be a Jungian reveals much of his attitude towards the psyche. He saw his scientific role as a phenomenologist always open to the ambivalent and many aspected ambiguous intrusions of the unconscious into the ego field of conscious existence. He saw the ego loosely attached to a vast impersonal realm of the Self, which, in his later works he presented as the only objective and fundamental reality human beings could connect with. From this perspective the multi-layered, and to the conscious being, bewildering, complexity of the soul's functions was as fleeting as the Buddhist Maya. The west sees this Maya as the reality, and focusing our civilisation on the mastery of externals has produced its own catastrophic psychic disfunctioning as the values of internal reality have been neglected.

Jung saw the Indian speak not of Personal/Impersonal, Subjective/Objective; but of a personal consciousness and Kundalini. The two were never identified: the Gods were utterly different from humans. It was necessary to live through, and establish, a presence of stable consciousness within the world before it was possible for the detachment to gradually emerge which would permit that other, objective reality to connect with the conscious. Jung's journeys to Africa and India enabled him to confirm his experiences of the unconscious as he saw the visible proof of its functioning in the pre European modes of his own era. His description of how, in the myths of the Pueblo, where the emergence of conscious from a dark and very dim beginning proceeds through a series of caves one above the other to a full awakening on the surface of the earth in the light of the sun and moon, parallels the system of chakras outlined in Kundalini Yoga, as the development of the impersonal life.

Jung was aware of the existent texts on this subject, from Arthur Avalon's translations from Sanskrit to the Chinese 'Secret of the Golden Flower' a Taoist manual translated by Richard Wilhelm, a key figure in Jungian life whose deep knowledge of Chinese esotericism enabled him to formulate a number of basic concepts of psychology, among them the theory of synchronicity -(a concatenation of events linked by a single meaning). Jung's interpretation of the process of Kundalini did not, however, stem from theories. It was the consistent attention he paid to the indications of its movement within the psychic life of his patients that gave the conforming clues to the emergence of the impersonal life of the collective unconscious. He was keenly aware of the dangers of the ego becoming inflated by the stirrings of unconscious contents to the extent of total psychic imbalance. Temporary identifications could make the ego lunatic for a time; prolonged identification could produced schizophrenia. The structure of Indian systems on the other hand drew clear distinctions between the transitory and permanent self which could only be realised in a state of detachment. The gods, in European or modern man so efficiently focussed on outer existence, Jung described as being reduced to mere functions 'neuroses of the stomach, or the colour or the bladder, simply disturbances of the underworld.' The Gods being asleep stir in the bowels of the earth, as the idea of God in conscious life is remote, abstract and to one level of modern theology, effectively dead.

In the ideas of pre-European civilisations is reflected their identification with the various levels of the chakras. However, it was in the careful unravelling of the psychic life of his patients in their journey towards the impersonal self which he described as the process of individuation, that the Kundalini manifested. This gave his statements of the chakras a verification based on real experience. He concluded that the main level of activity of most people was in the lower three centres beginning with the Muladhara (literally, root support), where existence was established, through Swadistana (the manifest creativity in the personality) and to Manipur and Void, centre of emotionality, the Red Sea of the Old Testament whose crossing to the Heart (Anahata) required the discipline of the Guru both individually and collectively. At the heart the first intimations of the Self reach consciousness. The Purusha, whose tiny flame of eternal being establishes the domain of objective reality. If, as Jung suggests, enough people could connect with this level the mass psychoses of out modern era would vanish altogether.

Jung saw each chakra as a whole world in itself. At the level of Muladhara for instance is the earth, our conscious world, but also where instinct and desire is largely unconscious -a state of participation mystique. Reason can do little: storms of emotion or externally, war or revolutions can sweep all away. The bizarre elaboration of weapons in the modern world is nothing more than an attempt to contain or destroy the threat of impulses from the lower centres. Worse, much of it is an expression of them.

Jung found the stages of individuation of his patients elaborated through dream and symbol corresponding with those of old mystery cults. In baptism he saw a reflection of the dangerous journey of analysis itself - baptism being a symbolic drowning to inaugurate a new life.

Jung realised that arousing the activity of Swadistana, the Kundalini itself had to be aroused, but he also realised that such happenings were spontaneous, and not produced through the dangerous practices of Tantrism where the exalted idea of shakti, the pure Kundalini, is degraded into the literalism of a sexual cult. Jung never practised any form of organised meditation but saw the attention itself gathered into deeper levels of being by the motion of the unconscious self through Kundalini awakening. Further, the motion of anima leading into the depths of the unconscious, he recognised as an imaginal figure projected by Kundalini and identified with it.

In the various symbols surrounding the chakras Jung identified with his own system. The Muladhara with its image of the elephant (Hindu Ganesha) has a fourfold structure of psychic functions (the chakra has four petals) and corresponds with the world of consciousness. The heart with its symbolism of the dear projects images of lightness of being, swiftness and elevation. Beyond; Vissuddi, Agnya and Sahasrahra - he said little except that as fully developed centres they were so above ordinary consciousness that not even thought could offer any illumination. Essentially he came to the view that, from the standpoint of the gods, the great archetypal figures, the world is less than child's play, a seed, a mere potentiality for the future. People, and they consist of the vast majority, who pass through life unawakened and unaware, victims of outer circumstances and inner compulsions, have not lived at all and pass back into the universal unconscious, to quote Socrates; 'the unexamined life is not worth living'. To Jung the awakening of Kundalini out of mere potentiality is to 'start a world which is totally different from our world: it is infinity'.

John Henshaw

[the late, and much respected, author was an Australian Sahaja yogi, and noted artist and academic. This piece was written for Knowledge of Reality magazine in the mid-1990s.]

From Saints, Sufis, and Yogis

Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) was a Swiss psychologist and mystic. Founder of the analytical psychology now known as Jungian psychology. Jung emphasized the need to explore the spiritual and religious nature of the human psyche so as to achieve balance and harmony. Throughout his life, he explored the worlds of dreams, art, mythology, Eastern and Western philosophy and religion, as well as alchemy, astrology, sociology, and literature.

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi has mentioned Jung many times in her talks, in particular in a talk to the C.G.Jung Society in New York (1983-0916). She has stated that Jung achieved his realization (1990-1017).

Jung (is) one of the greatest psychologists and I respect him very much. He has done a lot of work on the unconscious and he has taken many years to experiment on thousands and thousands of people to find out how the unconscious works through dreams and symbols. ... He also found out another thing about the Universal Unconscious, that it always gives you a balance, by different experiments. (1976-1222)


Bibliography: The portable Jung, edited by Joseph Campbell (Viking); The Cambridge companion to Jung, edited by Polly Young-Eisendrath and Terence Dawson (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed., 2008); Deirdre Bair, Jung: a biography (London: Little, Brown, 2004); John Henshaw, 'Carl Jung and the Kundalini, Knowledge of Reality, no.12 [1]; Anthony Stevens, On Jung (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, new ed., 1999); Anthony Stevens, Jung. A very short introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)

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