C Jung on Kundalini some interesting references to tantra

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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

 

 

 

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