Carl Jung on "Yoga" - Anthology

Small children are very old; later on we soon grow younger. In our middle age we are youngest, precisely at the time when we have completely or almost completely lost contact with the collective unconscious, the samskaras. We grow older again only as with the mounting years we remember the samskaras anew. ~Carl Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, Appendix 1, Page 74.

Without personal life, without the here and now, we cannot attain to the supra-personal. Personal life must first be fulfilled in order that the process of the supra-personal side of the psyche can be introduced. ~Carl Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, Page 66.

Individuation is not that you become an ego—you would then become an individualist. You know, an individualist is a man who did not succeed in individuating; he is a philosophically distilled egotist. ~Carl Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, Pages 39-40.

If you succeed in remembering yourself, if you succeed in making a difference between yourself and that outburst of passion, then you discover the self; you begin to individuate. ~~Carl Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, Pages 39-40.

In contrast to the meditation found in yoga practice, the psychoanalytic aim is to observe the shadowy presentation — whether in the form of images or of feelings — that are spontaneously evolved in the unconscious psyche and appear without his bidding to the man who looks within. In this way we find once more things that we have repressed or forgotten. Painful though it may be, this is in itself a gain — for what is inferior or even worthless belongs to me as my Shadow and gives me substance and mass. How can I be substantial if I fail to cast a Shadow? I must have a dark side also if I am to be whole; and inasmuch as I become conscious of my Shadow I also remember that I am a human being like any other. ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Page 35.

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn theosophy by heart, or mechanically repeat mystic text from the literature of the whole world - all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls. Thus the soul has been turned into a Nazareth Gradually from which nothing good can come. Therefore let us fetch it from the four corners of the earth - the more far-fetched and bizarre it is the better. ~ Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 99 .

Yoga in Mayfair or Fifth Avenue, or in any other place which is on the telephone, is a spiritual fake. ~Carl Jung; CW 11; Page 500; Para 802.

One of the aims of some kinds of Yoga is to understand the voice of all animals, but we are not convinced in the West that horses and dogs have such important thoughts. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Vol. 2, Page 17.

Concerning your view about Hatha-Yoga I can confirm your ideas entirely. Yoga as well as other "mystical" practices imitate nature and that explains their efficacy. Yoga postures are imitations of catatonic gestures, postures and mannerisms. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 497-498.

One could say that the classical catatonic condition is a fixed or congealed Yoga mechanism, i.e., a natural tendency released under pathological circumstances. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 497-498.

This [Hatha Yoga] is to be interpreted as a teleological attempt at self-cure, as it is a compensatory process produced under the stress of the schizophrenic dissociation of the mind. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 497-498.

You see, in spite of being a man in advanced age, you still have a young soul, a lovely anima, and she is confronted with the dangerous lizard. In other words, your soul is threatened by' chthonic poison. Now this is exactly the situation of our Western mind. We think we can deal with such problems in an almost rationalistic way, by conscious attempts and efforts, imitating Yoga methods and such dangerous stuff, but we forget entirely that first of all we should establish a connection between the higher and the lower regions of our psyche ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 95-97.

We think we can deal with such problems in an almost rationalistic way, by conscious attempts and efforts, imitating Yoga methods and such dangerous stuff, but we forget entirely that first of all we should establish a connection between the higher and the lower regions of our psyche. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 95-97.

You can protect your anima by Yoga exercises which only procure a conscious thrill, but you can protect her by catching the unconscious contents that well up from the depths of yourself. Try to see your fantasies are, no matter how disreputable they seem to be; that is your blackness, your shadow that ought to be swallowed. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 95-97.

You know, Eastern Yoga is based upon man as he really is, but we have a conscious imagination about ourselves and think this is our Self, which is an appalling mistake. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 95-97.

…I have been working for many years on the psychology of the unconscious, and it was the enigmatical and puzzling structure of the unconscious which brought me to alchemy, as well as to the study of Yoga and of the Ignatian exercises. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture 10, Page 81.

The purpose of the meditation of the alchemists is also spiritualis, but in contrast to the other methods of meditation which we studied here - those of Yoga, Mahayana Buddhism and the Ignatian excercises - the subject of meditation in alchemy is something unknown, and not a known dogmatic formula. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 174.

The Chinese philosophy of yoga is based upon the fact of this instinctive preparation for death as a goal, and, following the analogy with the goal of the first half of life, namely, begetting and reproduction, the means towards perpetuation of physical life, it takes as the purpose of spiritual existence the symbolic begetting and bringing to birth of a psychic spirit body ('subtle body'), which ensures the continuity of the detached consciousness. ~Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 124.

Yoga does not lead to the ego but to the knowledge that the ego is only a phenomenon, it is the face, skin or symptom of an incomprehensible being. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 136.

In the East the Void represents a psychic emptying of all conscious contents through the practice of Yoga. In the western series the chaos, or nigredo, is not thought of as a psychic condition but as a condition of the materia. This is the great difference between the East and the West. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 175.

Every profound student of alchemy knows that the making of gold was not the real purpose and that the process was a western form of Yoga. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Page 107.

If you want to know how the body can be experienced psychically you must turn to eastern Yoga; medieval philosophy also knew something of the matter. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture X, Page 225.

The European who practises Yoga does not know what he is doing. It has a bad effect upon him, sooner or later he gets afraid and sometimes it even leads him over the edge into madness. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 71.

Women played a considerable part in alchemy, and worked at it themselves. This is not the case in Indian Yoga, with the exception of Tantrism. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 24Feb1939, Pages 92.

The official example of Yoga in the West is the exercitia spiritualia of St. Ignatius of Loyola. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 98.

Miracles are symbols for a heightened understanding of life; learning to fly without wings, telepathy, Yoga practices, etc., all belong psychologically to this heightened consciousness. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 1May1935, Pages 203.

Our method aims at allowing the complex to express itself and reveal its structure, but Yoga aims at fettering it in dogma. This is almost universally the case in Indian Yoga. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture III, 17May 1935, Pages 208

Taoism has also a kind of Yoga but it is less well known than the Indian. The Chinese Yoga is very much less founded on dogma, the Yogin is left to find his own way through his difficult experiences. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture III, 17May 1935, Pages 209.

These "centres" are the so-called chakras? and you not only find them in the teachings of yoga but can discover the same idea in old German alchemical books, which surely do not derive from a knowledge of yoga. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 16.

What, then, is yoga? The word means literally "yoking," i.e., the disciplining of the instinctual forces of the psyche, which in Sanskrit are called kleshas. The yoking aims at controlling these forces that fetter human beings to the world. The kleshas would correspond, in the language of St. Augustine, to superhia and concupiscentia. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 912.

I have just said that we have developed nothing that could be compared with yoga. This is not entirely correct. True to our European bias, we have evolved a medical psychology dealing specifically with the kleshas. We call it the "psychology of the unconscious." ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 941.

In alchemy there lies concealed a Western system of yoga meditation, but it was kept a carefully guarded secret from fear of heresy and its painful consequences. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 219.

For the practising psychologist, however, alchemy has one inestimable advantage over Indian yoga its ideas are expressed almost entirely in an extraordinarily rich symbolism, the very symbolism we still find in our patients today. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 219.

If you look long enough into a dark hole you perceive what is looking in. This is also the principle of cognition in yoga, which derives all cognition from the absolute emptiness of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 174-175.

In Sahasrara there is no difference. The next conclusion could be that there is no object, no God, there is nothing but Brahman. There is no experience because it is One, without a second. It is asleep, it is not, and that is why it is nirvana. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga, p. 59.

Much as I can go along with you in the process of "becoming whole and holy," or individuation, I cannot subscribe to your statements about the "ego in complete possession of itself" and unrelated universal love, although they bring you perilously close to the ideal of Yoga: nirdvandva (free from the opposites). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 235-238.

Tantra Yoga gives the classic localizations of thought: anahata, thinking (or localization of consciousness) in the chest region (phrenes); visuddha (localized in the larynx), verbal thinking; and ajna, vision, symbolized by an eye in the forehead, which is attained only when verbal image and object are no longer identical, i.e., when their participation mystique is abolished. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 257-264.

You are naturally reaching back to Yoga in the proper understanding that it has once been the right way which should still be the right way for our time. But the world has become wrong and nobody listens to the old ways any more, in spite of the fact that the underlying truth is still true. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 385-386.

The Eastern philosophy is a sort of yoga, it is alive, it is an art, the art of making something of oneself. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1024

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. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 911.

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. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 911.

Eastern yoga is based upon man as he really is. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 97.

Alchemy began at latest in the first century A. D. and is really a curious process of initiation, a sort of practical Yoga. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 24 Feb 1939

Alchemy works as a sort of chemistry on actual matter and yet it is essentially Yoga and the symbols which arise in both are very similar. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 24 Feb 1939

Carl Jung's warning on Chinese Yoga

Our text is concerned with this way, and this same problem comes up with my patients also.

There could be no greater mistake than for a Westerner to take up the direct practice of Chinese yoga, for it would be a matter of his will and his consciousness, and would only strengthen the latter against the unconscious, bringing about the very effect to be avoided.

The neurosis would then simply be intensified. It cannot be sufficiently strongly emphasized that we are not Orientals, and therefore have an entirely different point of departure in these things.

It would also be a great mistake to assume that this is the path every neurotic must travel, or that it is the solution to be sought at every stage of the neurotic problem.

It is appropriate only in those cases where the conscious has reached an abnormal degree of development, and has therefore
diverged too far from the unconscious.

This high degree of consciousness is the conditio sine qua non. Nothing would be more wrong than to wish to open this way to neurotics who are ill on account of an undue predominance of the unconscious.

For the same reason, this way of development has scarcely any meaning before the middle of life (normally between the ages of
thirty-five and forty); in fact, if entered upon too soon, it can be decidedly injurious. ~Carl Jung, Secret of the Golden Flower Commentary.

Carl Jung: Study yoga you will learn an infinite amount from it but do not try to apply

The power of the yogi operates within limits acceptable to his environment.

The European, on the other hand, can blow up mountains, and the World War has given us a bitter foretaste of what he is capable of when free rein is given to an intellect that has grown estranged from human nature.

As a European, I cannot wish the European more “control” and more power over the nature within and around us.

Indeed, I must confess to my shame that I owe my best insights (and there are some quite good ones among them) to the circumstance that I have always done just the opposite of what the rules of yoga prescribe.

Through his historical development, the European has become so far removed from his roots that his mind was finally split into faith and knowledge, in the same way that every psychological exaggeration breaks up into its inherent opposites.

He needs to return, not to Nature in the manner of Rousseau, but to his own nature. His task is to find the natural man again.

Instead of this, there is nothing he likes better than systems and methods by which he can repress the natural man who is everywhere at cross purposes with him.

He will infallibly make a wrong use of yoga because his psychic disposition is quite different from that of the Oriental.

I say to whomsoever I can:

“Study yoga you will learn an infinite amount from it but do not try to apply it, for we Europeans are not so constituted that we apply these methods correctly, just like that.

An Indian guru can explain everything and you can imitate everything. But do you know who is applying the yoga? In other words, do you know
who you are and how you are constituted?” ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion, Page 234

Carl Jung: What is the use of imitating yoga if your dark side remains as good a medieval Christian as ever?

The grasping of “the whole essence of these teachings” seems also to be the whole essence of “self-liberation.”

The Westerner would take this to mean: “Learn your lesson and repeat it, and then you will be self-liberated.”

That, indeed, is precisely what happens with most Western practitioners of yoga.

They are very apt to “do” it in an extroverted fashion, oblivious of the in-turning of the mind which is the essence of such teachings.

In the East, the “truths” are so much a part of the collective consciousness that they are at least intuitively grasped by the pupil.

If the European could turn himself inside out and live as an Oriental, with all the social, moral, religious, intellectual, and aesthetic obligations which such a course would involve, he might be able to benefit by these teachings.

But you cannot be a good Christian, either in your faith or in your morality or in your intellectual make-up, and practice genuine yoga at the same time.

I have seen too many cases that have made me skeptical in the highest degree.

The trouble is that Western man cannot get rid of his history as easily as his short-legged memory can.

History, one might say, is written in the blood.

I would not advise anyone to touch yoga without a careful analysis of his unconscious reactions.

What is the use of imitating yoga if your dark side remains as good a medieval Christian as ever?

If you can afford to seat yourself on a gazelle skin under a Bo-tree or in the cell of a gompa for the rest of your life without being troubled by politics or the collapse of your securities, I will look favourably upon your case. But yoga in Mayfair or Fifth Avenue, or in any other place which is on the telephone, is a spiritual fake. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion, Page 802.

Carl Jung on "Eastern Philosophy - or Yoga

Any 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. Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 1425-1426