Carl Jung warns Westerners not to practice Yoga
I know that yoga prides itself on being able to control even the unconscious processes, so that nothing can happen in the psyche as a whole that is not ruled by a supreme consciousness.
I have not the slightest doubt that such a condition is more or less possible.
But it is possible only at the price of becoming identical with the unconscious.
Such an identity is the Eastern equivalent of our Western fetish of ”complete objectivity,” the machine-like subservience to one goal, to one idea or cause, at the cost of losing every trace of inner life.
From the Eastern point of view this complete objectivity is appalling, for it amounts to complete identity with the samsara; to the West, on the other hand, samadhi is nothing but a meaningless dream-state.
In the East, the inner man has always had such a firm hold on the outer man that the world had no chance of tearing him away from his inner roots; in the West, the outer man gained the ascendancy to such an extent that he was alienated from his innermost being.
The One Mind, Oneness, indefiniteness, and eternity remained the prerogative of the One God. Man became small, futile, and essentially in
the wrong. Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion, Pages 492-493.
