A Letter From C. G. Jung-Yoga, Zen, And Koestler

7/23/2019 A Letter From C. G. Jung-Yoga, Zen, And Koestler

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A Letter from C. G. JungYoga, Zen, and Koestler

19

th

October, 1960

Dear Mr. Lasky,

I don't feel happy about the reaction to Koestler which you received from Zrich throughthe medium of my secretary. I am recovering from a serious illness and I was unable to lake care

of my correspondence for several weeks. The impression you got from my message must have

been confusing. This unfortunate effect can hardly be avoided, when one has to deal with such aparadoxical phenomenon as Zen (and the less complicated Yoga).

In the main I fully agree with Koestler's rather unfavourable opinion. His is a meritorious

as well as a needful act of debunking, for which he deserves our gratitude. The picture he is

drawing of Yoga and Zen is, as the view of the Western mind, rational, distant, andas itwere unprejudiced and correct. As far as this kind of mind reaches and can be called valid,

Koestler's judgment is true.

But the question, that must be asked, is: Is the Western point of view really unprejudiced?What about its rationalism and its chief modus of opinionating from without, viz., its

Extraversion? Rationality is only one aspect of the world and does not cover the whole field of

experience. Psychical events are not merely caused from without and mental contents are notmere derivatives of sense-perceptions. There is an irrational mental life within, a so-called

"spiritual life," of which almost nobody knows or wants to know, except a few "mystics." The

"life within" is generally considered as nonsense and has therefore to be eliminated; curiouslyenough in the East as well as in the West. Yet it is the origin and the still flowing source of

Yoga, Zen, and many other spiritual endeavours. not only in the East but also in the West. But

as Buddhism in its many differentiations has overlaid the original spiritual adventure, soChristian rationalism the medieval alchemistic philosophy which has been forgotten since about

200 years. This Philosophy is as completely lost to us as theI Chingto China. It has also

developed the symbolism of aiming, shooting and hitting the target, though not by the bow, but

by the crossbow, and not as a real practice, but as a purely pictorial metaphor. Alchemy has usedthis symbolism in order to express that idea that its procedure had a purpose, a goal, and a target,

though it never concretised the symbol to such an extent as to make a ritual of shooting with

crossbows. It remained a metaphor. But the actual chemistry attempted in Alchemy was anobvious result of the adepts literal-mindedness, which tried to cook, melt, and distill symbolic

substances.

Even a genuine and original inner life has a tendency to succumb again and again to thesensualism and the rationalism of consciousness, i.e., to literal-mindedness. The result is that

one tries to repeat a spontaneous irrational event by a purposeful imitatory arrangement of

analogous circumstances, which apparently had led to the original event.

The GREAT question, the immense hope, and the liberating ekstasis of the primordial

experiencesoon transform into the pertinacity of a mental pursuit, which tries, though the

application of a method, to attain the effect of the primordial experience, namely a certain


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spiritual transformation. The depth and intensity of the original emotion becomes a passionate

longing and an enduring effort, which may last for hundreds of years, to restore the original

condition. Curiously enough one does not realize that the original situation had been aspontaneous natural emotion or ekstasis, and thus the complete opposite of a methodically

constructed imitation.

When the old Chinese master asked the pupil, with whom he walked at the time of theblossoming laurel: Do you smell it?, and the pupil experienced satori, we can still guess and

understand the beauty and the fullness of the enlightening moment. It is overwhelmingly clear

that such a kairoscan never be brought back by an ever so painstaking, methodic, and willful

attempt. There is no doubt, however, that such a patient and pertinacious application produceseffects of a kind, but it is more than doubtful whether they represent the original satorior not.

An even longer distance seems to separate the satoriof meaningful koansfrom Zen

archery. There seems to be a difference comparable to the events depicted in the gospels or theillumination of St. Paul and theExercitia Spiritualiaof St. Ignatius de Loyola.

The original Gnostic vision of Alchemy is still visible in Zosimos of Panopolis (3rd

century, A.D.) and one can understand from the depth and the power of such thoughts the

subsequent obstinacy of the alchemical pursuit, which for 1,700 years could not give up its hopeto produce the panacea or the artificial gold, in spite of all disenchantments and all debunking

through the centuries.

I QUITE AGREE with Koestler, when he puts his finger on the impressive mass of nonsense in

Zen, as I agree with all the former critiques of Alchemy. But I want to point out at the same

time, that as the obviously absurd chemistry of Alchemy was a half-conscious blind for a veryreal spiritual longing, thus the secret passion, which keeps Zen and other spiritual techniques

alive though the centuries, is connected with an original experience of wholeness, perhaps the

most important and unique of all spiritual experiences. As there are apparently no external,rational, controllable, and repeatable conditions proving or justifying the existence or validity of

inner Life, one is inclined to think that such an unusual amount of absurdities would have killed

a spiritual movement in no time or would kill it at least in our more enlightened days. This veryunderstandable Western expectation does not come off, because it envisages only the non-

essential, but not the essential, which is omitted in our judgment, because our Western ignorance

does not see it or has forgotten it: that man has or is visited by subjective inner experiences of an

irrational nature, which cannot be successfully dealt with by rational arguments, scientificevidence, and depreciative diagnosis.

BECAUSE THE WEST has deprived itself of its own original irrational methods and yet needsthem badly; because its inner Life can only be repressed, but hot helped, by rationalism, it tries to

adopt Yoga and Zen. It is just pathetic to see a man like Herrigel acquiring the art of Zen

archery, a non-essential, if ever there was one, with the utmost devotion; butthank Godit hasobviously nothing to do with the inner Life of Man!

We are even afraid of admitting the existence of such a thing, as it might be

pathological. This is the poisonous dart in the bow of the sceptic or the suicidal doubt in a

weak mind! Curiously enough one does not realize that the only living existence weimmediately contact, is our spontaneous subjective life and not our opinionated life, which is one

step removed from reality. The latter should perhaps be happy according to our standards, yet it

is not; and vice-versa. We are unexpectedly happy when we are doing uphill work like Till


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Eulenspiegel, and should be gloomy, at least by all reasonable expectations. We hate and fear

the irrationality of the things within, and thus never learn the art of living with the things as they

are. We prefer opinions to real life and believe in words rather than facts, with the result that ourexistence is rather two-than three-dimensional.

The more this is the case, the more the longing for wholeness intensifies. But instead of

considering ones own irrationality one eagerly studies Zen and Yoga, if possible the moreobvious and tangible parts of both. If one is patient enough (e.g., in spending years and years in

learning Zen archery) one is rewarded, as one always is, when one is doing something

disagreeable with utmost patience and discipline, which are in themselves reward enough, but

not more.

C. G. Jung

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A Letter From C. G. Jung-Yoga, Zen, And Koestler