In 1937 Carl Jung visited India to indulge in Eastern philosophy. Here are his footnotes
Published ILLUMINATION
Dec 5, 2023 (medium.com)
“India did not pass me by without a trace: it left tracks which lead me from one infinity to another infinity.” — Carl Jung
If you’ve followed me for a while you’ll know that I love two things — the breath and Carl Jung’s brilliant mind.
I first fell in love with the breath when I went scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef back in 2010.
I loved it so much that I became a scuba diving instructor soon after and taught hundreds of students all over the Caribbean for the next five years.
Then, as my attention turned inward, I moved from the oceans to the mountains where I was introduced to breathwork and pranayama exercises.
My first breathwork session changed my life and set me on a whole new trajectory. My love of the breath then deepened further when I became a Soma Breathwork facilitator and started teaching people all over the world.
Somewhere in the middle of that time, my tantra teacher taught me four of Carl Jung’s most profound words: “What you resist, persists.” And ever since then I’ve studied and learned from the great man. So, it’s a joy to see these two worlds collide because I get to explore both with you here.
Where It All Began
Carl Jung first visited India in 1937–38 and upon his return, he wrote many fascinating papers about his time there.
Although he was very skeptical about yoga, especially when it concerned Western individuals torn between science, faith, and money practicing it, he witnessed local people doing extraordinary things, and that cracked his heart and mind open to the potential it could bring to humanity.
Here are Carl Jung’s own words on the matter:
“If I remain so critically averse to yoga, it does not mean that I do not regard this spiritual achievement of the East as one of the greatest things the human mind has ever created.
I hope my exposition makes it sufficiently clear that my criticism is directed solely against the application of yoga to the peoples of the West.
The spiritual development of the West has been along entirely different lines from that of the East and has therefore produced conditions which are the most unfavourable soil one can think of for the application of yoga.
Western civilization is scarcely a thousand years old and must first of all free itself from its barbarous one-sidedness. This means, above all, deeper insight into the nature of man.”
To contextualize this a bit more, Carl Jung famously went on to say:
- “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.”
And:
- “About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives. This can be defined as the general neurosis of our times.”
Yoga and Indian philosophy offer a way out of both but where Carl Jung was wary, especially for Western practitioners, was to use yoga or pranayama exercises as a way of escaping their own psyche.
Not that he didn’t see the healing potential that can come from practicing these 7,000 year old techniques but rather that the Western mind is not yet “open enough” or “liberated enough” to practice it in its purest form.
“And so, from the start the split within the western spirit makes it impossible to properly achieve the purpose of yoga. It turns it into either a strictly religious phenomenon, or a kind of training for mnemonic techniques, respiratory gymnastics and so forth.” — Carl Jung
Having said that, when he spoke about yoga and pranayama exercises outside of his clinical biases, he was a little more upbeat:
“Through exercise, yoga gets the body in touch with the wholeness of the spirit, as it appears from pranayama exercises, in which the prana is at once breath and universal dynamic of the cosmos.
With the word prana, the Yogi means a good deal more than simple breathing… It is the whole metaphysical component… He doesn’t know through intellect, but through his heart, and through his bowels.”
We’ve come a long way since Carl Jung wrote those words so maybe the Western mind is more capable of bridging the gap.
Prominent spiritual leaders since Carl Jung was alive (Ram Dass, Krishna Das, Timothy Leary, Terrence McKenna, etc…) have broken many of Jung’s beliefs as they all went on to live highly spiritual lives rooted in Indian philosophy.
So, Carl Jung wasn’t opposed to being wrong, he just warned:
“The philosophy of the East, although so vastly different from ours, could be an inestimable treasure for us too; but, in order to possess it, we must first earn it”
Coming back to my own journey with yoga and the breath, I can vouch for how much they’ve added extreme value to my life — from healing my chronic mental health condition to opening me up to spirit.
Now, I can’t imagine my life without them.
Closing Thoughts
Carl Jung seemed to dance between a deep hope for humanity and a healthy cynicism.
Hope allowed him to journey into the darkest places of his own mind to liberate himself. But a healthy cynism sent him there with a degree of caution.
Perhaps George Carlin — the late great comedian who I often turn to for a good quip — summed it up best when he said:
“Don’t confuse my point of view with cynicism. The real cynics are the ones who tell you that everything’s gonna be all right”
Carl Jung was one of those rare leaders who wasn’t afraid to express his opinions and concern for emerging trends. So, although I don’t agree with him wholeheartedly on this one, I appreciate that he expressed it here because yoga and pranayama exercises are beautiful techniques that warrant respect and reverence. So, treating them with such can only add to the practice.
The Best of Carl Jung — Condensed Into Tiny Sentences
The old man continues to amaze
Written by Andy Murphy
·Writer for ILLUMINATION
Spreading joy through writing and breathwork https://www.somabreath.com/#a_aid=AndyMurphy