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Overcoming Modernity: Synchronicity and Image-Thinking . # / ) " ) ! % %& !' ( & ! * /0" . + * / ! * . " , ) - ( . # , !" * 1 ! #$ , , " , #$% + & % # * ' ! # ( " " & + 115255-Yuasa CMYK OVERCOMING MODERNITY OVERCOMING MODERNITY Sycnchronicity and Image-Thinking Yuasa Yasuo STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS Published by State University of New York Press Albany © 2008 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu Production by Kelli W. LeRoux Marketing by Michael Campochiaro Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Yuasa, Yasuo. Overcoming modernity : synchronicity and image-thinking / Yasuo Yuasa ; translated by Shigenori Nagatomo and John W. M. Krummel ; with an introduction by Shigenori Nagatomo. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7914-7401-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-7914-7402-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Philosophy, Comparative. 2. Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav), 1875–1961. I. Nagatomo, Shigenori. II. Krummel, John Wesley Megumu, 1965– III. Title. B799.Y79 2008 181'.12—dc22 2007035479 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Translator’s Introduction 1 Preface 27 Part I CHAPTER ONE The Image-Thinking of Ancient People, East and West 39 The Four Archai and the Human Soul 39 A Comparison with the Image-Thinking in Ancient India 41 The Chinese View of Nature Based on Qì-Energy [Jap., Ki: 氣 ] 46 The Study of “That Which Is Above Form” and Metaphysics 49 Logic and Being: “What Is” and “That It Is” 53 The Passive Understanding of “Being” [ari ] 57 The Eternal and the Changing 60 The Future- Direction of Ethics and Physics 63 Translator’s Note 65 CHAPTER TWO Image-Thinking and the Understanding of “Being”: The Psychological Basis of Linguistic Expression 67 Chinese, Japanese, and Western Expressions for “Being” 67 v vi CONTENTS The Characteristics of Expressions in the Chinese Language 71 The Relation between Logic and Psychology in the Linguistic Expressions of the Chinese and Western Languages 76 Logic and Lived Experience 81 The Cognition and Intuition of Living Nature 86 Part II Translator’s Note 95 CHAPTER THREE What Is Synchronicity? 97 Introduction 97 The Overlap between the World of Spirit and the World of Objects 98 Divination of the Yìjīng and Its Worldview 103 Parapsychology and Its Meaning 109 Synchronicity and Contemporary Physics 114 Nature’s Psychoid Nature 119 Synchronicity and the Movement of New Age Science 120 Summary 124 Postscript 127 Translator’s Note 133 CHAPTER FOUR Life and Space-Time: Synchronicity and the Psychology of the Yìjīng 135 Introduction 135 The Divination of the Yìjīng and the Mind-Body Relation 136 The Yìjīng’s Theory of Time 140 The Theory of Time and the View of Nature 144 The Traditional Views of Nature of the East and the West; Are Space and Time Separable? 148 Space and the Energy Immanent in Time 152 CONTENTS vii Translator’s Note 155 CHAPTER FIVE Synchronicity and Spiritualism 157 The Birth of the Theory of Synchronicity 157 A Reexamination of the Parapsychological Disputes 163 “Meaningful Coincidence” and Human Life 165 Conclusion 170 Part III Translator’s Note 177 CHAPTER SIX Space-Time and Mind-Body Integration: The Resurrection of Teleology 179 Contemporary Science and Eastern Thought 179 Einstein and Bergson 181 Is Time an Illusion? 188 Ripening Time 192 Synchronicity and the Collective Unconscious 195 What Is Present: The Problem of Measurement 198 Methodological Reflections on Science 201 Physics and Metaphysics 204 Summary 205 Notes 209 Bibliography 231 Index 239 Translator’s Introduction When one side is illuminated, the other side remains in darkness.” —Dōgen,“Genjōkōan” Yuasa Yasuo’s1 Overcoming Modernity: Synchronicity and Image-Thinking pro- poses a new orientation of thinking, inviting people to reconsider the modern Western paradigm of thinking, particularly concerning its views of nature that were established by natural science in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and of the human being that was advanced, almost in parallel with the former’s rise, by Enlightenment rationalism. In order to overcome these views, he offers an holistic approach by thematizing “synchronicity” and “image-thinking,” while proposing “space-time and mind-body integration” as their philosophical foundation. This holistic perspective, Yuasa maintains, is necessary to overcome the modern rationalistic paradigm of thinking, for the latter has brought about various negative consequences since its declaration despite its “good” intention. Because these four terms, “space-time and mind-body integration,” “syn- chronicity,” and “image-thinking,” are central and hence cardinal ideas that are developed as thematic foci in this volume, it will be helpful at the outset to briefly indicate the relative relationship among them, so that the reader can have a preliminary feel of, and a quick glance of, the present volume, Over- coming Modernity: Synchronicity and Image-Thinking. “Image-thinking” is Yua- sa’s neologism and may for now be understood to mean a mode of thinking that incorporates within it image-experience that is intuitively apprehended from the unconscious. For Yuasa’s project in this volume, it serves as a phil- osophical foundation that underpins Jung’s theory of synchronicity, that is, an overlapping in meaning between physical and psychological phenomenon. Because this overlapping is based on the experiential fact of “space-time and 1 2 OVERCOMING MODERNITY mind-body integration” as its philosophical condition, Yuasa articulates their meaning, and in so doing proposes an holistic worldview. In this introduction, I would like to provide (1) a short introduction of Yuasa Yasuo as a scholar; (2) the general background concern of this volume; (3) an organizational overview to suggest the order in which the parts may be read; (4) the thematic concern of the present volume, which will be discussed under the three headings: image-thinking, synchronicity, and space-time and mind-body integration; (5) the sources out of which the present volume has been gathered together; and (6) the translation process in bringing this proj- ect to completion. YUASA YASUO AS A SCHOLAR As part of introducing the present volume to an English-reading audience, I would like to first make a brief mention of Yuasa Yasuo as a scholar. Onuki Yoshihisa, a Tokyo University professor , describes Yuasa as a scholar who “has an interest in the vast region [of scholarship], and . [whose] inquir- ing mind is inexhaustible. Whenever I attend his study group, I wonder if he might not be an intellectual giant.”2 Intellectual giant he was! The vast region of his scholarly interest is reflected in his prolific writing career that spanned over fifty years, during which period he published fifty books and three hundred articles. And they are now being published as Yuasa Yasuo’s Com- plete Works [Yuasa Yasuo Zenshū] in eighteen volumes, twelve of which have already been made available to the public. If one glances even casually through the table of contents in any of these volumes—they are composed of anywhere between five hundred and eight hundred pages—one will readily discern that Yuasa can indeed cover a “vast region of scholarship” with a wide variety of human and scholarly concerns ranging from topics of both Western and East- ern traditions in philosophy, science, ethics, history, psychology, and religion. And if he/she pages through any one of the pieces contained in his Complete Works, the reader will discover that Yuasa addresses each subject in depth with a comprehensive and balanced treatment. This feature is also apparent in the present volume, though naturally in a much smaller scale than his Com- plete Works. Nevertheless, I hope readers will appreciate the rich, multi-fac- eted and multi-disciplinary content when reading the present volume. While the projected plans for his Complete Works are still under way, Yuasa published several books that are not included in the plans for the first compilation of his Collected Works, as if to announce to the world that these eighteen volumes were not enough to consummate his scholarly accomplish- ments. In May 2004, for example, he published, at the age of seventy-nine, a book, Tetsugaku no tanjō: danseisei to joseisei no shinrigaku [The Birth of TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION 3 Philosophy: The Psychology of Masculinity and Femininity]. It sheds light on the role that the psychology of masculinity and femininity played in the formation of Greek philosophy, for which he spared four hundred and twenty-four pages, by examining the historical, social, and cultural milieu of ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. He wrote this book to assess how philosophical thinking came to be uniquely
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