Carl Jung on “Purusha” – Anthology

India honored me with three doctorates, from Allahabad, Benares, and Calcutta representatives of Islam, of Hinduism, and of British-Indian medicine and science. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 280

Purusha is evidently a sort of Platonic world-soul who surrounds the earth from outside: “Being born he overtopped the world before, behind, and in all places” (Rig-Veda) ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 649

As the all-encompassing world-soul Purusha has a maternal character, for he represents the original “dawn state” of the psyche: he is the encompasser and the encompassed, mother and unborn child, an undifferentiated, unconscious state of primal being ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 650

But if this primal being [Purusha] means the great mystery of the original psychic state, then everything becomes clear: ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 651

This paradox appears to be very ancient, for the Shvetashvatara Upanishad (9, 20) goes on to say of the dwarf-god, the cosmic purusha: ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 182

It is a figure comparable to Hiranyagarbha, Purusha, Atman, and the mystic Buddha. For this reason I have elected to call it the “self,” by which I understand a psychic totality and at the same time a centre, neither of which coincides with the ego but includes it, just as a larger circle encloses a smaller one. ~Carl Jung, CW 9I, 247.

Psychologically, however, the idea of God’s[unknownness], or of the [inconceivable god or god without conception], is of the utmost importance, because it identifies the Deity with the numinosity of the unconscious. The atman / purusha philosophy of the East and, as we have seen, Meister Eckhart in the West both bear witness to this ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 303

This corresponds to what the Indian calls Atman that which, figuratively speaking, “breathes through” me. Not through me alone, but through all; for it is not only the individual Atman but Atman-Purusha, the universal Atman, the pneuma, who breathes through all ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 873

This was the time when the Greeks started criticizing the world, the time of “gnosis” in its widest sense, which ultimately gave birth to Christianity. The archetype of the redeemer-god and Original Man is age-old we simply do not know how old. The Son, the revealed god, who voluntarily or involuntarily offers himself for sacrifice as a man, in order to create the world or redeem it from evil, can be traced back to the Purusha of Indian philosophy, and is also found in the Persian conception of the Original Man, Gayomart. Gayomart, son of the god of light, falls victim to the darkness, from which he must be set free in order to redeem the world. He is the prototype of the Gnostic redeemer-figures and of the teachings concerning Christ, redeemer of mankind ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 202

In the West the archetype is filled out with the dogmatic figure of Christ; in the East, with Purusha, the Atman, Hiranyagarbha, the Buddha, and so on. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 17.

There is no reason whatsoever why you should or should not call the beyond-self Christ or Buddha or Purusha or Tao or Khidr or Tifereth. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 1672

In any serious case the choice is limited by the kind of revealed image one has received. Yahweh and Allah are monads, the Christian God a triad (historically), the modern experience presumably a tetrad, the early Persian deity a dyad. In the East you have the dyadic monad Tao and the monadic Anthropos (purusha), Buddha, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 1611

The “Christ archetype” is a false concept, as you say. Christ is not an archetype but a personification of the archetype. This is reflected in the idea of the Anthropos, the homo maximus or Primordial Man (Adam Kadmon). In India it is Purusha, and in China Chên-jên (the whole or true man) as a goal to be attained. Purusha as creator sacrifices himself in order to bring the world into being: God dissolves in his own creation. (This thought occurs in a modern dream.) The Incarnation results from Christ “emptying himself of divinity” and taking the form of a slave. Thus he is in bondage to man as the demiurge is in bondage to the world. (Concerning the bondage of the creator to his creature, cf. Answer to Job, his identification with the two monsters and his inability to understand man). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 304

Only my intellect has anything to do with purusha-atman or Tao, but not my living thralldom.  This is local, barbaric, infantile, and abysmally unscientific. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 33

Purusha as creator sacrifices himself in order to bring the world into being: God dissolves in his own creation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 304.

The figure of Christ has, as you have already heard, its counterpart In the East, in the figure of the Purusha, of the Atman or of Mahasukha. ~ Carl Jung, ETH, Page 28.

These various formulations indicate the same being that we find in the Gnosis as the ethereal man, light and diaphanous, identical with gold, diamond, carbuncle, the Grail, and, in Indian philosophy, with the Purusha or personified as Christ or Buddha. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 118.

We saw that Christ is the western parallel to the eastern Atman or Purusha, and the search for both is the search for the Self, though the paths are utterly different. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 189.

Plato’s idea is identical with the eastern idea of the Atman or Purusha. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 70.

The microcosm is a small edition of the macrocosm, the anima mundi. They both have the same round form. Plato’s idea is identical with the eastern idea of the Atman or Purusha. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3 Feb 1939

For the scientist this has nothing to do with the theological question of God’s existence, as he is concerned simply and solely with the phenomenology of psychic dominants, whether they be called God, Allah, Buddha, Purusha, Zeus, planets, zodia, or sex ( as Philippians 3:19, “whose God is their belly,” rightly says). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 361

I do not go in for religious philosophy, but am held in thrall, almost crushed, and defend myself as best I can. There is no place for Gnosis or the Midrashim in this image, for there is nothing of them in it. Only my intellect has anything to do with purusha-atman or Tao, but not my living thraldom.  ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 33

You proceed beyond the ego to ever-widening horizon~, where the atman gradually reveals its universal aspect. You integrate your animal, your parents, all the people you love ( they all live in you and you are no more separated from them). This is the secret of John XVII: 20 sq. and at the same time the essential Hindu doctrine of the atman-purusha. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 146

This is reflected in the idea of the Anthropos, the homo maximus or Primordial Man (Adam Kadmon) . In India it is Purusha, and in China Chen-jen ( the whole or true man) as a goal to be attained. Purusha as creator sacrifices himself in order to bring the world into being: God dissolves in his own creation.  ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 304

Thus, starting from the principle unus est lapis, the medieval alchemists inferred the unity of human nature, and for them the synthesis of the stone harmonized with the synthesis of our human components; hence they equated the Vir Unus with the Unus Mundus. (Microcosm== macrocosm. In India: personal atman-purusha == suprapersonal atman-purusha.) ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 449

Behind these attributes we can discern the All-Creator, and behind him the sun, who is winged and scans the world with a thousand eyes. This is confirmed by the following passages, which bring out the important point that God is contained in the individual creature:

“Beyond this is Brahma, the highest, hidden in the bodies of all, encompassing all. Those who know him as the Lord become immortal. I know this mighty Person (purusha), who is like to the sun, transcendent over darkness. Those who know him truly pass beyond death; by no other road can they go. He is the face, the head, the neck of all, he dwells in the heart of all things, all-pervading, bountiful, omnipresent, kindly.”  ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 177

A mighty Lord is Purusha, spurring on the highest in us to purest attainment, inexhaustible light. That Person, no bigger than a thumb, the inner Self, seated forever in the heart of man, is revealed by the heart, the thought, the mind. They who know That, become immortal. Thousand-headed, thousand-eyed, thousand-footed is Purusha. He encompasses the earth on every side and rules over the ten-finger space. That Person is this whole world, whatever has been and what will be. He is Lord of immortality, he is whatever grows by food.  ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 178

This paradox appears to be very ancient, for the Shvetashvatara Upanishad (19, 20) goes on to say of the dwarf-god, the cosmic purusha:

Without feet, without hands, he moves, he grasps; eyeless he sees, earless he hears; he knows all that is to be known, yet there is no knower of him. Men call him the Primordial Person, the Cosmic Man. Smaller than small, greater than great.…  ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 182

The Aitareya Upanishad says: Then he drew forth a Person (purusha) from the waters and shaped him. He brooded upon him, and when he had brooded him forth, a mouth split open like an egg. From the mouth came speech, and from speech fire.37 [Cf. pl. XIIIb.]  ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 229

The Rig-Veda proceeds to answer these questions:

Purusha (Man, Anthropos) was the primal being who Encompassed the earth on all sides

And ruled over the ten-finger place

(the highest point of heaven).

[649] Purusha is evidently a sort of Platonic world-soul who surrounds the

earth from outside:

Being born he overtopped the world

Before, behind, and in all places.

As the all-encompassing world-soul Purusha has a maternal character, for he represents the original “dawn state” of the psyche: he is the encompasser and the encompassed, mother and unborn child, an undifferentiated, unconscious state of primal being. As such a condition must be terminated, and as it is at the same time an object of regressive longing, it must be sacrificed in order that discriminated entities—i.e., conscious contents—may come into being:

Him, Purusha, born at the beginning, they besprinkled on the straw; the gods sacrificed with him, and the saints and the sages.  ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 648-650

“This Purusha, of the size of a thumb, is of a clear luminosity like a smokeless fire; it is the Lord of the past and of the future; it is today, and it will be tomorrow, such as it is.”   ~Editor, CW 5, Page 124 Fn4

That Self, smaller than small, greater than great, is hidden in the heart of this creature here. Man becomes free from desire and free from sorrow when by the grace of the Creator he beholds the glory of the Self. Sitting still he walks afar; lying down he goes every where. Who but I can know the God who rejoices and rejoices not? Unmoving, the One is swifter than the mind. Speeding ahead, it outruns the gods of the senses. Past others running, it goes standing. Just as a falcon or an eagle, after flying to and fro in space, wearies, and folds its wings, and drops down to its eyrie, so this Person (purusha) hastens to that state where, asleep, he desires no desires and sees no dream.

…

It moves. It moves not.

Far, yet near.

Within all,

Outside all.  ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para Para 329

But, as a matter of fact, Ignatius was not so very wide of the mark, for multiple eyes are also a characteristic of Purusha, the Hindu Cosmic Man. The Rig-Veda (10. 90) says: “Thousand-headed is Purusha, thousand-eyed, thousand-footed. He encompasses the earth on every side and rules over the ten-finger space. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 395

Monoimos bases himself here mainly on the prologue to the Gospel of St. John! Like Purusha, his First Man is the universe (νθρωπος είναι τò πãν). 3~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 95

“I therefore consider it shown that what RV 10. 90. 1 … means is that Purusha, making the whole earth his footstool, fills the entire universe, and rules over it by means of the powers of vision, etc., that proceed from his face, and to which man’s own powers of vision, etc., are analogous; this face, whether of God or man, being … itself an image of the whole threefold universe.”  ~Editor, CW 8, Citing Coomaraswamy, Page 199, Fn 106

The special feature of the philosophical myth, which shows Prakti dancing before Purusha in order to remind him of “discriminating knowledge,” does not belong to the mother archetype but to the archetype of the anima, which in a man’s psychology invariably appears, at first, mingled with the mother-image.  158

It is a figure comparable to Hiranyagarbha, Purusha, Atman, and the mystic Buddha. For this reason I have elected to call it the “self,” by which I understand a psychic totality and at the same time a centre, neither of which coincides with the ego but includes it, just as a larger circle encloses a smaller one.  ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 248

The impossibility of distinguishing empirically between “self” and “God” leads, in Indian theosophy, to the identity of the personal and suprapersonal Purusha-Atman. In ecclesiastical as in alchemical literature the saying is often quoted: “God is an infinite circle (or sphere) whose centre is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.”  ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 572

This is not a matter of chance, for Indian philosophy, which developed the idea of the self, Atman or Purusha, to the highest degree, makes no distinction in principle between the human essence and the divine. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 717

The self does not become conscious by itself, but has always been taught, if at all, through a tradition of knowing (the purusha/atman teaching, for instance).  ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 157

Psychologically, however, the idea of God’s ἀγνωσία, or of the ἀνεννóητος θεóς, is of the utmost importance, because it identifies the Deity with the numinosity of the unconscious. The atman / purusha philosophy of the East and, as we have seen, Meister Eckhart in the West both bear witness to this.  Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 303

This corresponds to what the Indian calls Atman—that which, figuratively speaking, “breathes through” me. Not through me alone, but through all; for it is not only the individual Atman but Atman-Purusha, the universal Atman, the pneuma, who breathes through all. We use the word “self” for this, contrasting it with the little ego.  ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 873

The Son, the revealed god, who voluntarily or involuntarily offers himself for sacrifice as a man, in order to create the world or redeem it from evil, can be traced back to the Purusha of Indian philosophy, and is also found in the Persian conception of the Original Man, Gayomart. Gayomart, son of the god of light, falls victim to the darkness, from which he must be set free in order to redeem the world. He is the prototype of the Gnostic redeemer-figures and of the teachings concerning Christ, redeemer of mankind. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 202

As a result, it continually creates that ubiquitous participation mystique which is the unity of many, the one man in all men. This psychological fact forms the basis for the archetype of the άνθρωπος, the Son of Man, the homo maximus, the vir unus, purusha, etc.  ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 419

In India, a more or less simultaneous symptom of the same tendency was Gautama the Buddha (b. 562 B.C), who gave the maximum differentiation of consciousness supremacy even over the highest Brahman gods. This development was a logical consequence of the purusha-atman doctrine and derived from the inner experience of yoga practice.  ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 666

It is this fact which also makes it possible to say that whoever believes in Christ is not only contained in him, but that Christ then dwells in the believer as the perfect man formed in the image of God, the second Adam. Psychologically, it is the same relationship as that in Indian philosophy between man’s ego-consciousness and purusha, or atman. It is the ascendency of the “complete”— —or total human being, consisting of the totality of the psyche, of conscious and unconscious, over the ego, which represents only consciousness and its contents and knows nothing of the unconscious, although in many respects it is dependent on the unconscious and is often decisively influenced by it. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 713

But the statement entirely ignores the possible transcendent reality of the physical world as such, a problem not unknown to Sankhva philosophy, where prakriti and purusha—so far as they are a polarization of Universal Being—form a cosmic dualism that can hardly be circumvented. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 798

In Indian philosophy we find a parallel in Prajapati and Purusha Narayana Purusha sacrifices himself at the command of Prajapati, but at bottom the two are identical. Cf. the Shatapatha-Brahmana (Sacred Books of the East, XLIV, pp. 172ff.); also the Rig-Veda, X, 90 (trans. by Macnicol, pp. 28–29).  ~Editors, CW 11, Page 261, Fn 17

Nobody can prevent the believer from accepting God, Purusha, the Atman, or Tao as the Prime Cause and thus putting an end to the fundamental disquiet of man.  ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 16

From these hints it can easily be seen who the philosophical man is: he is the androgynous original man or Anthropos of Gnosticism 4 (cf. figs. 64, 82, 117, 195), whose parallel in India is purusha. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 210

In India he is Prajapati or Purusha, who is also “the size of a thumb” and dwells in the heart of every man, like the Iliaster of Paracelsus. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 167

Nevertheless, I would like to emphasize once again that the Anthropos idea coincides with the psychological concept of the self. The atman and purusha doctrine as well as alchemy give clear proofs of this. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 268

The Eastern ide a of atman-purusha corresponds psychologically to the Western figure of Christ, who is the second Person of the Trinity and God himself, but, so far as his human existence is concerned, conforms exactly to the suffering servant of God in Isaiah. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 145

The outward fact of the dogmatic Christ was answered from within by that inner primordial image which had produced a Purusha or a Gayomart long before the Christian era and made the assimilation of the Christian revelation possible. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 488

Among the pagan sources we must distinguish an Egyptian one, concerned with the very ancient tradition of the God-man Osiris and the theology of kingship; a Persian one, derived from Gayomart; and an Indian one, derived from Purusha. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 595

In contradistinction to the modern prejudice that self-knowledge is nothing but a knowledge of the ego, the alchemists regarded the self as a substance incommensurable with the ego, hidden in the body, and identical with the image of God. This view fully accords with the Indian idea of purusha-atman.  ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 711