CG JUNG - Countryside Anarchist

INTRODUCTION
Fundamentally, the divergence between indigenous understandings of
Kundalini yoga and Jung’s interpretation of it is that for the former texts
such as the ûa°-cakra-nirÖpaõa primarily depict the profound modifications
of experience and embodiment occasioned by specific ritual practices
rather than the symbolic depiction of a universal process of individuation.
However, the problems that confront Jung’s interpretations at a
more general level apply to other attempts to translate the terms of Kundalini
yoga into modern concepts. 118 In the course of such attempts the
terms became hybridized, and the resultant blend is no longer distinctly
“Eastern” or “Western.” 119 Ultimately, Jung’s seminars should be assessed
in terms of the goal he set forward in the following statements:
Western consciousness is by no means consciousness in general. It
is rather a historically conditioned and geographically confined dimension,
which represents only a part of mankind. 120
The knowledge of Eastern psychology namely forms the indispensable
basis for a critique and an objective consideration of Western
psychology. 121
Thus in Jung’s view the outcome of Western psychology’s encounter
with Eastern thought was by no means a small matter, for on this the very
possibility of a psychology worthy of the name rested. 122 The continued
relevance of this seminar today—in a vastly transformed historical
clime—principally lies in the mode in which it highlights this capital
question and attempts to establish it at the forefront of the psychological
agenda, whether or not one accepts Jung’s provisional solutions to it.
118 Such as Gopi Krishna’s own theoretical attempts to transcribe it in contemporary
post-Darwinian categories, as in the following statement: “In the language of science, Kundalini
represents the mechanism of evolution in human beings.” Gopi Krishna, Kundalini
for the New Age, 87.
119 On the contemporary significance of the notion of hybridity within the postcolonial
context, see Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London, 1993).
120 Jung, “Commentary on the ‘Secret of the Golden Flower’,” in CW, vol. 13, §84; translation
modified.
121 Jung, “Foreword to Abegg: ‘Ostasien Denkt Anders’” (East Asia thinks otherwise), in
CW, vol. 18, §1483; translation modified.
122 On the encounter of Western psychology and Eastern thought, see Eugene Taylor,
“Contemporary Interest in Classical Eastern Psychology,” in Asian Contributions to Psychology,
edited by A. Paranjpe, D. Ho, and R. Rieber (New York, 1988), 79–119.
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