Orientals regard a thought as being composed of thin matter

Orientals regard a thought as being composed of thin matter

Modern Psychology: C. G. Jung’s Lectures at the ETH Zürich, 1933-1941

Psychology did not exist in earlier days, people thought naively, and when they sank into themselves they saw the inside of their own body.

Dr. Kerner reports that the Seherin of Prevorst saw her own optic nerve, we have no reason to doubt this as Dr. Kerner was an exceedingly reliable witness.

Doctors in the East even hold that you can heal diseases by this method and meet with extraordinary success but we rationalists find it very difficult to understand how this is possible.

The Chinese picture represents the circulation of the blood and its course as it flows through the nerve centres .

This is the path which we call the path of phantasy.

It is necessary to overcome our western prejudices before we can understand this.

Thoughts seem to us as thin as air, but for the East they are material beings.

Orientals regard a thought as being composed of thin matter, it is true, yet as a completely tangible thing.

In the East a thought is something that happens and can be felt, so they write lovingly of what these thought beings are doing.

But we talk of manipulating them for we are convinced we make them.

This is nonsense, but sometimes it is useful nonsense for the Westerner would be demoralized by the idea of being the toy of fate which tosses us about.

The East, on the contrary, does not mind this idea at all.

Our conception of anatomy holds at best a pale resemblance to this eastern diagram.

We never perceive any such thing, but the East would say: “But you only look for it with your sun eye, if you look with your moon eye it will become perfectly clear to you”.

We will not attempt, however, to solve the conflict between East and West; but we could imagine a void stretching right through the middle of the earth.

It is not possible to see across this space but by sinking deeply into ourselves and following the serpent path we can form a bridge which will enable us to see the light on the other side of the void. ~Carl Jung, ETH, 14 June 1935