Carl Gustav Jung and India S Bhagavata

Carl Gustav Jung and India’s Bhagavata (rev. 131221)

“... if you go to other races, to India or China, for example, you discover that these people are conscious of things for which the psychoanalyst in our countries has to dig for months.”1

“ We Europeans are not the only people on the earth. We are just a peninsula of Asia, and on that continent there are old civilizations where people have trained their minds in introspective psychology for thousands of years, whereas we began with our psychology not even yesterday but only this morning. These people have an insight that is simply fabulous...”2

Preface The authors of this humble article have had the fortune to be involved with psychology, psychiatry, the rigorous and cultural disciplines of Yoga and Indian culture, both academically, professionally and socially for many decades. This has matured into an appreciation that Professor Carl Gustav Jung may very well be best footing on which to attempt to build a bridge between Oriental and Occidental heritage. What is the world? How should we live in it? Especially, how does the psychological aspect of reality control our lives? We feel that these difficult questions can benefit from a shared perspective of East and West, something which still has not been done to practical depth. Taking impetus from strong remarks from learned scholars we have begun to carefully investigate Professor Jung’s ideas, perspectives, character and those of his followers. This investigation has included the famous Tavistock Lectures, documentary videos, organizing seminars at different universities and especially Professor Jung’s own autobiography, Memories, Dreams and Reflections. The first result of this work is a very solid realization that Professor Carl Gustav Jung stands as one of the greatest geniuses of the 20th-century. The depth, breadth and quality of his investigations are astonishing. Some points that contrast strongly with Indian classical thought are obvious, and we have commented on those elsewhere. The question remains, however, where to catch hold of this congenial elephant. From one side he feels like a gigantic snake, from another a tree, from another a rope, a giant leaf, a wall. After letting the idea run around in our pre-conscious mind for several weeks we have really been hit with the idea of starting with what interests us the most: Dr. Jung in India. With this mercy from our sub-conscious workers, our lot becomes much simpler. Besides odd citations that we have gleaned here and there, we will begin this bridge building effort by systematically reading and discussing Dr. Jung’s visit to India in 1938, and his visions of India during his heart attack of 1944. Our aim in this will be to introduce our project clearly in both the professional and popular communities, with a demonstration of both our expertise and ignorance and thereby develop relations with those whom we can serve as teachers, and those who can help us as our teachers.

Travels

1 Jung, C. G.; Analytical Psychology, Its Theory & Practice; Vintage Books, 1970, page 48

2 Ibid, pg.74 1 In Memories, Dreams and Reflections3 Professor Jung comments that his journey to India in 1938 arose from an invitation from the British government of India to participate in the 25th anniversary celebration of the University of Calcutta. This strikes us in two three ways: o Professor Jung went to India in 1938. Oh, how things have changed in many ways, and, Oh, how things have not changed in many ways. o The fame of Professor Jung might be declared, that although a citizen of Switzerland, he was invited by the British government to visit India. o One of our principal advisors has been Professor Samaresh Bandyopadhyay, a highly lauded historian of the current age and formerly Head of the Department of Ancient Indian Culture and History at the University of Calcutta. Through him we might look to see if any written record of Professor Jung’s visit to and addresses at the University of Calcutta still survives. 1938 to 2013 is seventy-five years. India has changed, we are sure Professor Jung would also have changed. As we continue this project then we must meet people who have taken Jung’s ideas forward for him. Now we can look at the more durable principles of the Bhagavata and Professor Jung’s philosophy that would not have changed in a mere seventy-five years.

“When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet, I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains”4 Dedicated to looking at that which is perennial in Professor Jung’s philosophy, we must also introduce our Oriental contrast. That will principally be the Bhagavata-purana, the ripend fruit of the tree of Vedic literature. Professor George L. Harte, University of California, in the Preface to his A Rapid Sanskrit Method comments:

“It [Sanskrit] is, like Chinese, Arabic, Greek and Latin, one of the few languages which has been a carrier of a culture over a long period of time. Thus, the variety of writings in it, and the quantity of those writings are staggering. An incomplete list of subjects treated in Sanskrit, usually with great prolixity, is as follows:  The four Vedas  The Brahmanas and Aranyakas  The Upanisads  Grammar  Epic, puranic, literature - Including 18 major puranas, 18 minor puranas, and hundred of sthalapuranas.  Works on Medicine  Logic  Astronomy & Astrology  Mathematics

3 Jung, C. G.; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Vintage Books, New York, 1989, pg. 274

4 Ibid, p. 4 2  Lawbooks  Architecture  Music… On most of these subjects, there is an immense literature still extant. Indeed, a rough estimate of the works which will be listed in The New Catalogus Catalogorum yields a total of about 160,000 works… many so difficult that it would take years of study to properly understand them.

…Sanskrit does have its share of great writers: Kalidasa ranks with the greatest poets, Panini is without question the greatest pre-modern grammarian, the Mahabharata ranks with the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the Bhagavata-purana is among the finest works of devotion every written, being equaled in my opinion only by other works in Indian languages.” [Emphasis ours]5.

5 Professor George L. Harte (Motilal Banarsidass, Dehli, 1989) 3