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Carl Jung on ‘Nirvana” – Anthology
In Buddhism, this return to Nirvana is connected with a complete annihilation of the ego, which, like the world, is only illusion…In Taoism, on the other hand, the goal is to preserve in a transfigured form, the idea of the person, the “traces” left by experience. ~Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 18.
Anyone who has attained this emancipation has reached nirvana and thus made himself unreal. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 444.
If you will conscientiously reread what I have said about individuation you cannot possibly conclude that I mean Nirvana or that I overlook the Resurrection. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 67.
The East tries to identify with this point of view, declares the world to be mere illusion, and seeks liberation from the warring opposites in Nirvana. But Jung thought that in the West we should make every effort to become conscious of the eternal standpoint, then do our best to reconcile it with three-dimensional reality in our actual life, in the here and now. ~Barbara Hannah, Jung: His Life and His Work, Page 192
In Sahasrara there is no difference. The next conclusion could be that there is no object, no God, there is nothing but Brahman. There is no experience because it is One, without a second. It is asleep, it is not, and that is why it is nirvana. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Seminars, Page 59.
Nirvana, for instance is a positive non-being, this is something which you cannot say anything about. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture III, 17May 1935, Pages 210.
The Buddhist idea of nirvana is a nonexistent existence, or an existent nonexistence; it is not merely a nothingness. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 91
It is also the Eastern idea that through understanding one finds the roots of suffering which lie in the fire of desirousness, and if they are denied or uprooted, the world, inasmuch as the individual makes the world, comes to a standstill; if the individual comes to a standstill and recedes into nirvana, the world represented by that individual is at an end. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 524
Therefore Buddhism holds that you can never attain to redemption, whatever you do, you must first grow up to it; even Buddha himself had to go through more than five hundred incarnations in order to attain to nirvana. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 753
Then the same concept, or picture, is used in the wheel of death and birth, the wheel of reincarnation or of illusion-reincarnation being simply another stage of illusion.
So whoever can let go of the revolving wheel will not be reborn, he will be annihilated; as an accomplished one, a perfect one, he will not return, he will extinguish himself utterly in nirvana, in the positive non-being. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 852
Those people who strive after nirvana get into a sort of quietism where they simply vanish; so nothing comes of it.
The life of a Buddhist saint is exceedingly sterile. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1300
Yes, they [Forest Yogins] go into the collective unconscious with great pleasure.
That is just the important argument against Eastern psychology, they simply go into it-as if into nirvana-and I don’t consider that to be real individuation. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1368
Stupas are hemispheric central structures, graves, with three parasols one above the other, representing the three worlds, namely: dharmakâya (i.e., the purely spiritual world, the world of absolute truth), sambhoga kâya (i.e., the intermediate world, the world of subtle bodies) and the nirvana kâya (i.e., the world of objects, the world of created things). One could also describe the three as Self, anima and body. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 52