Carl Jung Depth Psychology Facebook Group
In the East, “emptiness” means the mental discarding of thoughts.
The training that leads to that is yoga training, which is done together with all kinds of physical exercises that are intended to lead to an emptying of the conscious mind.
In contrast, in the West the “chaos” or “nigredo” is not thought of as a mental state, but as a material state.
That is the big difference: Eastern mysticism is driven by the soul, while in the West it is matter.
The Westerner sees all psychological experience first in matter.
That is the initial state in Genesis: “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” That is this chaos.
A state of deepest unconsciousness, devoid of thoughts, which is equivalent to the very origins of the world. Why is it like this in the West?
It is actually a curious fact that in the West, a soul secret or soul state is discovered in matter.
That shows you the extraordinary extraversion of the Western spirit toward the matter of the world.
We see it in things, Eastern people see it inside, in the soul.
The Easterner does not explain the chaotic state with something external. ~Carl Jung, The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola, Page 53-54