C.G. Jung and Heinrich Zimmer: On Dreams and the East
Jung’s landmark seminar on the symbolism of yoga and its applications to dream analysis
In the summer of 1933, C. G. Jung conducted a seminar in Berlin attended by a large audience of some 150 people, including several Jewish Jungians who would soon leave Germany.
H1tler had begun consolidating his position as dictator and these students were distressed at Jung’s recent decision to accept the presidency of a German professional psychotherapy society that was rapidly becoming Nazified and purged of Jews.
On Dreams and the East makes these seminar sessions widely available for the first time, offering tantalizing insights into Jung’s evolving understanding of yoga and the realization of the self.
The seminar commences with a presentation on the psychology of yoga by noted Indologist and linguist Heinrich Zimmer, whose collaboration in these talks reflects Jung’s growing engagement with the Hindu tradition, particularly Tantric yoga. Jung analyzes a series of dreams of a middle-aged male patient, focusing on mandalas and the centering process. He reflects on related motifs in alchemical symbolism, Navaho healing drawings, Mithraism, baptism symbolism, the foundation of Rome, ecclesiastic dances, and labyrinths, drawing connections with the symbolism of yoga and Tantra.
Featuring a richly documented introduction by Giovanni Sorge, On Dreams and the East opens a window on Jung’s deepening exploration of Eastern thought and the comparative study of the individuation process at a critical juncture in his life and work.
C.G. Jung and Heinrich Zimmer – Dreams of the East
The mythological motifs whose presence has been demonstrated by the exploration of the unconscious form in themselves a multiplicity, but this culminates in a concentric or radial order which constitutes the true centre or essence of the collective unconscious.
On account of the remarkable agreement between the insights of yoga and the results of psychological research, I have chosen the Sanskrit term mandala for this central symbol. . ~Carl Jung, On Dreams and the East, Page 37
008 When a Taoist priest meditates on a mandala and gradually concentrates his libido on the center, what is the meaning of the center?
The center of consciousness is the ego, but the center represented in the mandala is not identical with the ego.
It is outside of consciousness, it is another center.
The naive man projects it into space; he would say it is outside somewhere in the world.
The aim of the exercise is to shift the guiding factor away from the ego to a non-ego center in the unconscious, and this is also the general aim of analytical procedure. . ~Carl Jung, On Dreams and the East, Page 38
By b Europe’s smoldering cauldron.
In Germany, we are currently experiencing an eruption of the puer aeternus that is truly unforeseeable.
The new regime’s foreign policy antics would be pretty amusing if they weren’t fueled by quite so much dangerous enthusiasm. Sometimes it almost feels as if preparations were underway for a new Blood Wedding [Bluthochzeit]. ~Carl Jung to Jacobi ,On Dreams and the East, Page 12.
The analytic process thus occasions a broadening of consciousness, but the relation of the ego to its objects still remains [. . .].
Only in the continuation of the analysis does the analogy with yoga set in, in that consciousness is severed from its objects (Secret of the Golden Flower).
This process is linked up with the process of individuation, which begins with the self severing itself as unique from the objects and the ego.
It is as if consciousness separated from the objects and from the ego and emigrated to the non-ego—to the other center, to the foreign yet originally own [. . .].
It is a psychical experience, which in practice is expressed as a feeling of deliverance [. . .].
One does not become apathetic but is freed from entanglement. Consciousness is removed to a sphere of objectlessness. ~Carl Jung, On Dreams and the East, Page 44
The products of the Oriental mind are based on its own peculiar history, which is radically different from ours.
Those peoples have gone through an uninterrupted development from the primitive state of natural
polydemonism to polytheism at its most splendid, and beyond that to a religion of ideas within which the originally magical practices could evolve into a method of self-improvement.
These antecedents do not apply to us. ~Carl Jung, On Dreams and the East, Page 44-45
Times of mass movement are always times of leadership [Führertum].
Every movement culminates organically in a leader [gipfelt organisch im Führer], who embodies in his whole being the meaning and purpose of the popular movement. [. . .]
At that time, in Germany as well as in Italy, there were not a few things that appeared plausible and seemed to speak in favor of the regime.
An undeniable piece of evidence in this respect was the disappearance of the unemployed, who used to tramp the German highroads in their hundreds of thousands.
And after the stagnation and decay of the post-war years, the refreshing wind that blew through the two countries was a tempting sign of hope. ]. ~Carl Jung, On Dreams and the East, Page 23
it always seems to me quite extraordinary with what precision the unconscious anticipates events and you really have to ask yourself what degree of consciousness should be attributed to anticipations of this nature. Sometimes one cannot avoid the impression that a superior agency [überlegene Regie] is at work.
Our immanent causality then seems to me like a tissue of deception, a reckoning we make without our host. ~Carl Jung, On Dreams and the East, Page 33
it always seems to me quite extraordinary with what precision the unconscious anticipates events and you really
have to ask yourself what degree of consciousness should be attributed to anticipations of this nature. Sometimes one cannot avoid the impression that a superior agency [überlegene Regie] is at work.
Our immanent causality then seems to me like a tissue of deception, a reckoning we make without our host. ~Carl Jung, On Dreams and the East, Page 33
For me it is wholly self-evident that a dominating political movement pulls everything into its sphere.
It is completely senseless for individuals to resist, I wish to say, this metereological condition.
Just as psychotherapy must prove itself worthy of all different kinds of patients, so must it also rise to all outward realities. ~Carl Jung, On Dreams and the East, Page 26
It is part of the doctor’s professional equipment to be able to summon up a certain amount of optimism even in the most unlikely circumstances, with a view to saving everything that it is still possible to save.
He cannot afford to let himself be too much impressed by the real or apparent hopelessness of a situation, even if this means exposing himself to danger. ~Carl Jung, On Dreams and the East, Page 24
The need of the whole always calls forth a leader regardless of the form a state may take. ~Carl Jung, On Dreams and the East, Page 21.
010 Only in times of aimless quiescence does the aimless conversation of parliamentary deliberations [ziellose Konversation parlamentarischer Beratungen] drone on, which always demonstrates the absence of a stirring in the depths or of a definite emergency. ~Carl Jung, On Dreams and the East, Page 21
Only in times of aimless quiescence does the aimless conversation of parliamentary deliberations [ziellose Konversation parlamentarischer Beratungen] drone on, which always demonstrates the absence of a stirring in the depths or of a definite emergency. ~Carl Jung, On Dreams and the East, Page 21
The products of the Oriental mind are based on its own peculiar history, which is radically different from ours.
Those peoples have gone through an uninterrupted development from the primitive state of natural
polydemonism to polytheism at its most splendid, and beyond that to a religion of ideas within which the originally magical practices could evolve into a method of self-improvement.
These antecedents do not apply to us. ~Carl Jung, On Dreams and the East, Page 44-45
Through his historical development, the European has become so far removed from his roots that his mind was finally split into faith and knowledge, in the same way that every psychological exaggeration breaks up into its inherent opposites.
He needs to return, not to Nature in the manner of Rousseau, but to his own nature.
His task is to find the natural man again. ~Carl Jung, On Dreams and the East, Page 45-46
Zimmer? Oh my, who could ever forget him! He was ‘come una fontana che sprizza parole’ [like a fountain spouting words].
His manuscripts Were built just like a musician’s score, marked up in different colors, red and green and “crescendo” everywhere, etcetera.
And he also spoke in the same way. He was fabulous. He was a thrilling lecturer.
The tragic thing was that he was an Indologist who never had a penny, he never got to India. It was terrible. ~Cary F. Baynes. On Dreams and the East, Page 51
Only when you sense that everything that happens to you, and is somehow connected with you, is something that really belongs to you as a unified whole—only then can you understand your own fate and sense its meaning; that is amor fati.
A fate we cannot transform into meaning will crush us. ~Herbert Nette, On Dreams and the East, Page 52
Zimmer’s lectures were more than a translation from Sanskrit.
These lively stories suddenly became our own life, our essence and passion.
We could not discern how brilliantly the language became living speech, and mythical story turned into visible action. These fabulous experiences flowed over us in vivid colors, becoming intelligible to our European outlook [. . .]. Afterwards as usual one of the members had us join Zimmer for discussion over wine and a buffet until the wee hours.
In Zimmer’s presence everything turns light and lively. ~Kathe Bulger, On Dreams and the East, Page 56
Barbara Hannah found it [Berlin Seminar] a masterpiece. “Zimmer held the audience spellbound, a feat, since he was little known at that time and the large audience, which had collected from all over Germany and abroad, had come primarily to hear Jung and were disappointed that he was not lecturing that first Sunday evening.
But Zimmer had not only an excellent knowledge and grasp of his subject but also a very creative mind and an extremely lively delivery: in short, he was one of the best lecturers I have ever heard. ~Barbara Hannah, On Dreams and the East, Page 56
Zimmer chose, loved, illuminated, and compared in detail a number of great myths that continue to inform our appreciation of Indian mythology.
He resurrected undeservedly neglected texts and
provided us with a basic corpus of myths chosen with an unfailing eye for a truly wonderful story, impeccably translated, and wisely glossed. ~Wendy Doninger, On Dreams and the East, Page 58
He preferred to ignore the usual star players: the Rigveda, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and the much overcited and overrated Bhagavad Gita, or even the slightly less clichéd Brahmanas and Upanishads. Instead, indulging in a kind of literary affirmative action, he rescued from academic obscurity the Puranas, more particularly
the late (and therefore devalued) Puranas. ~Wendy Doninger, On Dreams and the East, Page 58
For instance, in 1932 he pointed out in relation to the Jaina-Yoga that “unlike our psychotherapy, which seeks to establish a healing balance between the realms of the ego and the unconscious, this yoga embraces both spheres and sets them apart.
It separates a person’s individual husks from our supra-individual core, that is, life itself within us.
It teaches us to realize that their exposure to involuntary participation is an outward process, one that does not touch the core of our essence. A person’s full sacrifice gives us an anonymous, sovereign Self.” ~Heinrich Zimmer, On Dreams and the East, Page 59
Yoga is actually about the reduction of individuation and its unconscious “willingness,” whose tangibility is steadily made to dwindle; it is a matter of laying bare and empowering an anonymous person-in-depth, which in many ways resembles Jung’s mana personality.
The goal of classical yoga kaivalya in the individual, that is, totality and integration as opposed to particularity and differentiation, is a magical life from the collective unconscious, in which space and time, individual memory and character, have been overcome or are felt to be a quantité négligeable, as a mask for the world which no longer sticks to the wearer, having lost its suggestive power to convince him that he is really the figure of that mask. ~Heinrich Zimmer, On Dreams and the East, Page 59
What depth psychology establishes as a generic heritage, engrams of mythical-magical states of thought and being, is at the same time reproduced individually by every human being.
This view coincides with the Indian notion that while self-fashioned heredity is individual for and in each of us, possessing it constitutes the most universal phenomenon of all: namely, the very circumstance that creates individuation. ~Heinrich Zimmer, On Dreams and the East, Page 60-61
If we cannot raise our spiritual eye and find our regent in the heavens,
we can discern it in inward voices and signs, as [did] Socrates; and, after all, is its situation in space anything more than imagery, a metaphoric visualization?
What is the deeper relation of outward to inward, of macrocosm to microcosm?
The merit of the new depth psychology is that it unearths that which is timeless in us, in a form appropriate to our time, so that we can comprehend it and live by it. ~Heinrich Zimmer, On Dreams and the East, Page 60-61
Borobudur must be regarded as the most impressive mandala the art of Buddhism has ever created in the visible world as a symbol of its truth [. . .].
The purpose of Borobudur is to release a spiritual process in the pilgrim during his ascent through sculpture-embellished terraces to the unadorned summit, to bring about a complete transformation of his sense of being, a transformation by nature related to the activity of meditation as practiced by the adept of the Tibetan mandala. ~Heinrich Zimmer, On Dreams and the East, Page 68
The mandala really is an effect of some fundamental idea in man for which I find no explanation. [. . .] So this machine represents an underlying fact of an ideal nature and is the means by which he can transform himself. ~Heinrich Zimmer, On Dreams and the East, Page 69
As you know, I [. . .] don’t quite share Jung’s views, although I consider his notion of aggregation suitable for merely private-personal orientation and communication.
The fact that he only saw a copy of my old book [Artistic Form and Yoga] so late explains why he didn’t mention it in The Golden Flower; at the time, I did feel somewhat o ffended, just as that circumstance troubled him.
Naturally, R. Wilhelm was familiar with it, and I never quite understood why he never mentioned the sheer fact that the technique, structure, and material of the Chinese treatise can be understood only as a special Buddhist form of general-Indian Tantrism in a blended late-Buddhist, and Chinese Taoist atmosphere.
Besides, Jung, notwithstanding his many great aspects, is probably a power-happy fox, inflated by a warranted self-assurance about his intellect, his vigor, and the adoration he has received from solvent and devoted females.
Which is not meant as an objection.
Someone who no longer fears his godlikeness can be quite a respectable fellow, as matters stand nowadays. ~Heinrich Zimmer to Herbert Nette, On Dreams and the East, Page 53
eing identical with the machine he would arrive at his goal.
The Eastern idea is demonstrated by its chiefly circular character, in which the cross is not so obviously represented; the idea is that man should enter the centre, and there he should become identical with the god that occupies it. Our Western mandalas on the other side show a tendency to represent the cross in the center in the following fashion:
⊕ This would mean a differentiation of the most central thing and that does not exist in the East.
It is probably what they criticize in us because it is missing in themselves, and that is why the East is coming to the West. ~Heinrich Zimmer, On Dreams and the East, Page 69-70
AAA 025 026 Dante climbs up to the heavens that, in the cosmic architectonics of his vision, correspond to the ever more spiritual heavenly worlds experienced in Indian yoga, although the names and the numbers in his vision are indebted to classical astronomy.
Passing beyond the spheres of the sun, moon, and the five planets, beyond the heaven above them that rotates most quickly of all around the earth, he enters the empyrean.
There, transformed by the fountain of divine light that floods his sight, he beholds the rose of Heaven, a perfect replica of those many-petaled lotuses—here reshaped by the Christian tradition—that form the center of so many mandalas and purely linear yantras, are the symbolic dwelling place of the Absolute, and serve as a frame for Its unfoldings into the world of illusion.
The Holy Trinity floats above the center of this infinitely great flower, but each of its petals, in ring upon ring, serves as the seat for a saint or a blessèd soul. ~Heinrich Zimmer, On Dreams and the East, Page 65-66
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