This landmark work synthesises the insights of East and West. It includes unique analyses of Yoga and the Chakras as well as discussions of Eastern psycho-therepeutic methods. Of course the main difference between Jung's psychology and Hindu thought is the understanding of psychological problems through dreams. Jung's psychology leans heavily on dreams to understand the problems, and dreams have become a way to experience the whole realm of archetypes.
While there are many psychological monographs on Hinduism, no work has surveyed the history of that tradition in a sustained way. Thus, The Snake and the Rope: A Jungian View of Hinduism breaks new ground both for religious studies and for psychology. Trained on both sides of the argument, the author of this work is uniquely qualified to elucidate what, for example, the Vedic hymns meant to the people who composed them and what they might mean for us today. He shows us what karma means for Hindus and what Jung says it canmean for us. We learn how Jungians use the term "Self" that Jung borrowed from the Upanishads and how it is the same and different in its new, modern context. The reader will witness a red thread of "goddess worship" from earliest India to Classical Hinduism. Jung says the modern equivalent is devotion to the collective unconscious deep within ourselves. Having served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in a Thai village in the late 1960's, George R. Elder returned to the States to earn a Ph. D. in Buddhist Studies from Columbia University. He subsequently taught Comparative Religions at Hunter College (City University of New York) and would co-chair the Religion Program for several years. In 1989, Dr. Elder and his family relocated to Florida. He trained to become a Jungian analyst and maintains a professional relationship with the C.G. Jung Study Center of Southern California. His works include The Body: An Encyclopedia of Archetypal Symbolism in collaboration with ARAS (Shambhala, 1996). He recently co-edited An American Jungian: In Honor of Edward F. Edinger(Inner City, 2009).
In Integrative Spirituality, Patrick J. Mahaffey elucidates spirituality as a developmental process that is enhanced by integrating the teachings and practices of multiple religious traditions, Jungian depth psychology, and contemplative yoga. In the postmodern world of religious pluralism, Mahaffey compellingly argues that each of us must fashion a unique path to wholeness which integrates aspects of life and of the self that have become disconnected and disowned. Integrative Spirituality uniquely conjoins four components: exemplary religious pluralists from three traditions, individuation, the forms of contemplative Hindu yoga that have been successfully transmitted to the West, and a presentation of two models for integrating psychological growth and spiritual awakening. The book presents pioneering practitioners in each field who exemplify how we may fashion our own approach to integrating both spiritual awakening and psychological development and delineates an array of spiritual practices that integrate the somatic, psychological, interpersonal, and spiritual aspects of life. Ultimately, Mahaffey contends that integrative spirituality is a mode of being that fully embraces the divinity inherent in each of us and in the world. Integrative Spirituality will be essential reading for academics and students of Jungian and post-Jungian studies, transpersonal and Jungian psychology, and religious studies and contemplative education. It will also be of interest to analytical and depth psychologists in practice and in training, and to anyone seeking a greater understanding of spirituality, psychological growth, religious traditions, individuation, and contemplative yoga.
Jung and Eastern Thought is an assessment of the impact of the East on Jung's life and teaching. Along with the strong and continuing interest in the psychology of Carl Jung is a growing awareness of the extent to which Eastern thought, especially Indian ideas, influenced his thinking. This book identifies those influences that he found useful and those he rejected. In Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist cultures, yoga is a central conception and practice. Jung was at once fascinated and critical of yoga. Part I of the book examines Jung's encounter with yoga and his strong warning against the uncritical adoption of yoga by the modern West. In Part II Jung's love/hate relationship with Eastern thought is examined in light of his attitude toward karma and rebirth, Kundalini yoga, mysticism, and Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. Coward's observations are rounded out by contributions from J. Borelli and J. Jordens. Dr. Borelli's Annotated Bibliography is an invaluable contribution to bibliographic material on Jung, yoga, and Eastern religion. A special feature is the Introduction by Joseph Henderson, Jung's most senior North American student and one of the few Jungians to have recognized the important influence of the East on Jung's thinking.
The East-West dialogue increasingly seeks to compare and clarify contrasting views on the nature of consciousness. For the Eastern liberatory models, where a nondual view of consciousness is primary, the challenge lies in articulating how consciousness and the manifold contents of consciousness are singular. Western empirical science, on the other hand, must provide a convincing account of how consciousness arises from matter. By placing the theories of Jung and Patañjali in dialogue with one another, Consciousness in Jung and Patañjali illuminates significant differences between dual and nondual psychological theory and teases apart the essential discernments that theoreticians must make between epistemic states and ontic beliefs. Patañjali’s Classical Yoga, one of the six orthodox Hindu philosophies, is a classic of Eastern and world thought. Patañjali teaches that notions of a separate egoic "I" are little more than forms of mistaken identity that we experience in our attempts to take ownership of consciousness. Carl Jung’s depth psychology, which remains deeply influential to psychologists, religious scholars, and artists alike, argues that ego-consciousness developed out of the unconscious over the course of evolution. By exploring the work of key theoreticians from both schools of thought, particularly those whose ideas are derived from an integration of theory and practice, Whitney explores the extent to which the seemingly irremediable split between Jung and Patañjali’s ontological beliefs can in fact be reconciled. This thorough and insightful work will be essential reading for academics, theoreticians, and postgraduate students in the fields of psychology, philosophy of science, and consciousness studies. It will also appeal to those interested in the East–West psychological and philosophical dialogue.
Jung on Astrology brings together C. G. Jung’s thoughts on astrology in a single volume for the first time, significantly adding to our understanding of Jung’s work. Jung’s Collected Works, seminars, and letters contain numerous discussions of this ancient divinatory system, and Jung himself used astrological horoscopes as a diagnostic tool in his analytic practice. Understood in terms of his own psychology as a symbolic representation of the archetypes of the collective unconscious, Jung found in astrology a wealth of spiritual and psychological meaning and suggested it represents the "sum of all the psychological knowledge of antiquity." The selections and editorial introductions by Safron Rossi and Keiron Le Grice address topics that were of critical importance to Jung—such as the archetypal symbolism in astrology, the precession of the equinoxes and astrological ages, astrology as a form of synchronicity and acausal correspondence, the qualitative nature of time, and the experience of astrological fate—allowing readers to assess astrology’s place within the larger corpus of Jung’s work and its value as a source of symbolic meaning for our time. The book will be of great interest to analytical psychologists, Jungian psychotherapists and academics and students of depth psychology, Jungian and post-Jungian studies, as well as to astrologers and therapists of other orientations, especially transpersonal.
The six volume Psychology ann Religion set of the International Library of Psychology explores the interface between psychology and religion, looking at aspects of religious belief and mysticism as related to the study of human consciousness. Hindu Psychology looks at the relevance of Hindu belief systems and theories of perception for the West.
Carl Jung's interest in India, and specifically in Hinduism and Buddhism, will be obvious to anyone who has even superficially read his work. Nevertheless, its significance is often ignored or minimized. This issue of Spring aims to show just how extensive and fraught Jung's ties to India were and to present attempts from a number of directions to plumb the meaning of the relationship and, in the spirit of active imagination, to "dream it onward" into the present and future. In this issue we will focus mostly on Jung's connections with Hindu thought. Buddhism and Hinduism in complex ways grew out of one another, so it is inevitable that there will be some overlap between the two. However, in spite of Jung's professed preference for Buddhism, he made much more use of Hindu (and pre-Hindu and pre-Buddhist Vedic) thought, as will be evident from the papers in this issue. We hope that Jung and India will open channels of thinking and practice with the potential to enrich Jungian understanding of Indian traditions and, equally, to stimulate creative interpretations and extensions of Jungian thought. The papers for this volume fall rather clearly into four categories: (1) historical and comparative work integrating India and Jung (2) papers comparing and contrasting Jungian ideas with specific Indian traditions (3) Jungian interpretations of Hindu myths and rituals, and (4) personal memoirs combining Jungian and Indian themes. Despite the neat taxonomy, many of the papers touch on more than one category, and all in some way broach the fundamental questions that motivated this work in the first place: What unconscious, implied, nascent, or potential dialogue hangs poised in the field of thought and practice between Carl Jung's psychology and the 3500-year-old tradition of Indian thought? And what can we do to help it emerge for the benefit of both?
Miguel Serrano, a Chilean diplomat and writer who has travelled widely in India studying Yoga, had a close friendship with Jung and Hesse at the end of their lives. This book is the outcome of his meetings and correspondence with them. Many letters are reproduced including documents of great importance written to the author by Jung shortly before his death, explaining his ideas about the nature of the world and of his work.
