CG JUNG - Countryside Anarchist

APPENDIX 1
INDIAN PARALLELS 1
11 October 1930
On this last seminar day a concept will be given of what the seen means,
of how it is to be understood. This series of pictures has not been shown
as a model. We must not bypass the European world and our own preconditions
in order to create a therapeutic method out of such a process.
The revival of inner images must develop organically.
Here one could field the objection whether this case would also have
developed in this way if Dr. Jung, who himself knew about these things,
had not been present. In other words: whether some kind of thought
transmission or influence of the most subtle kind did not take place. To
this one may only respond that, as is known, one cannot experiment with
fate. It is impossible to determine how an event would have played itself
out had this or that moment been different. In the case of spiritual development
it is possible to exclude the subjective factor only through finding
out whether things have taken place in the same way at other times
and at different places. Dr. Jung tried to seek out such parallels. They
can be demonstrated in the literature of all periods. Besides, Dr. Jung
has in his possession various series of corresponding imaginal developments
that originate from human beings of other parts of the world. This
would constitute proof. But there is still another much more striking
proof: a great culture has held these matters and symbols as its religious
and philosophical teachings for more than two thousand years—namely
India. Here we find the historical parallels to the series of images which
1 For the source of this lecture, see the preface, p. xi. Jung’s manuscripts headed “Tantrism”
and “Chakras” closely correspond to the report of this seminar. The first page of the
first manuscript consists of a list of Woodroffe’s publications, and references and citations
from Zimmer’s Artistic Form and Yoga in the Sacred Images of India, translated by G. Chapple
and J. Lawson (Princeton, 1984), 26–62. This suggests that these works formed Jung’s
main source for his general conception of tantric yoga. 2 and 3 closely correspond to the
opening sections of this seminar. In a few places the terminology in this seminar has been
made consistent with that used in the preceding seminars.
71