/lit/ - Literature

>>21301733
Yep. In a way, this is a good point (the beautiful and profound heritage of the West should not be thrown out, and we’re intimately tied up in it anyway if we’re Westerners, even in trying to revolt or break away from it — Orientalist chauvinism, that anything of worth is only or mainly to be found in the East, is just as bad as Western chauvinism), but I also see this as a subtle blindspot of Jung’s, and in a way have to give at least one point to the Traditionalists on this. Vedantic emancipation is not “psychological” or “psychic” (as Jung’s work is) in the sense of delving into the subconscious and analyzing the contents of the psyche, but rather about stilling and transcending the psyche (as in Patanjali’s systematization of yoga in his Yoga Sutras, in which the deliberate cessation of cognitive functions will immediately reveal the nature of the Purusha, or Self). Jung avoided meeting with Ramana Maharshi in his travels in India perhaps intuitively/subconsciously because he sensed how explosively different it was from his life’s work, and consciously he claimed in a letter to an acquaintance who highly respected R.M. that it was because Vedantic emancipation/moksha, as exemplified by Maharshi, seemed “inhuman” to him.

>I was very much interested in your news about the Maharshi. I’m well aware of the fact that my very Western criticism of such a phenomenon of the Maharshi was rather upsetting to you. I consider a man’s life lived for 65 years in perfect balance as most unfortunate. I’m glad I haven’t chosen to live such a miracle. It is so utterly inhuman that I can’t see for the life of me any fun in it. It is surely very wonderful but think of being wonderful year in year out! Moreover I think it generally much more advisable not to identify with the self. I quite appreciate the fact that such a model is of high pedagogical value to India.

https://carljungdepthpsychologysite.blog/2020/04/12/carl-jung-and-ramana-maharshi/amp/

However, both Jung and Traditionalists would agree there’s a sort of psychic fissure in the modern West represented by the “New Age”, or indiscriminately, naively believed watered-down popularizations of Eastern doctrines and following of fraudulent gurus. Jung would probably have had some interesting things to say on his concept of “inflation” as applied to, say, grandiose Eastern teachers or New Age gurus intoxicated by their fame in the West, figures like Rajneesh or Adi Da, their ego inflated by an identification of themselves with the archetype of the enlightened sage or wise old man.

>A state of mind characterized by an exaggerated sense of self-importance ... Inflation, whether negative or positive, is a symptom of psychological possession, indicating the need to assimilate unconscious complexes or disidentify from the self.