Alan Watts: The Secret of the Golden Flower [CONSCIOUSNESS]
Summary
TLDRThe transcript discusses Carl Jung's commentary on the adoption of Eastern spiritual practices by Westerners, particularly yoga. It critiques Jung's historical theory, influenced by 19th-century Darwinism, which posits a linear progression of human consciousness. The speaker argues that while Eastern disciplines like yoga and Vedanta were designed to liberate individuals from 'social hypnosis' and cultural constructs, Westerners often adopt these practices without understanding their liberating intent. Instead, they embrace the very illusions these practices aim to dispel, such as reincarnation and karma. The summary also touches on the esoteric nature of these Eastern disciplines and the traps set by masters to guide students towards true liberation, which involves seeing through societal constructs and the fundamental unity of opposites.
Takeaways
- 📚 Carl Jung's commentary on 'The Secret of the Golden Flower' discusses the potential dangers of Westerners adopting Eastern spiritual practices like yoga.
- 🧘 Jung suggests that yoga might be unsuitable for Westerners because it is a discipline designed for a much older and more spiritually advanced culture.
- 🤔 The speaker disagrees with Jung's reasons for discouraging yoga, arguing that Jung's historical theory is outdated and rooted in 19th-century Darwinism.
- 🌏 The speaker emphasizes the importance of cultural context, noting that what works for one culture may not be suitable for another, like taking medicine without a prescription.
- 🔄 The concept of 'social hypnosis' is introduced, which refers to the rules and beliefs that hold a society together, akin to the rules of a game.
- 🪄 Eastern disciplines like Buddhism and Daoism are seen as ways to liberate individuals from the confines of 'social hypnosis' and the cultural constructs of their society.
- 🔮 The speaker points out the irony of Westerners adopting Eastern spiritual practices and simultaneously embracing the very cultural constructs (like reincarnation and karma) that these practices aim to transcend.
- 🕉 The esoteric nature of Eastern disciplines is highlighted, with masters using traps and skillful means to guide students towards true liberation, which involves seeing through societal illusions.
- 🌐 The fundamental unity of opposites, such as yin and yang, is discussed, suggesting that societal rules often obscure the underlying interconnectedness of these seemingly opposing principles.
- 🌟 The ultimate goal of spiritual liberation in Eastern traditions is described as the realization of the illusory nature of the ego and the cosmic game of life, leading to a state of being unmotivated by fear, competition, or the need for external validation.
Q & A
What is the main concern expressed by CG Yung regarding Westerners adopting Oriental spiritual practices?
-CG Yung expresses concern about the inherent danger in Westerners adopting Oriental spiritual practices, such as yoga, due to the potential mismatch between the cultural and spiritual development of the East and the West.
How does the speaker critique Jung's theory of history?
-The speaker criticizes Jung's theory of history as a hangover from 19th-century Darwinist ideas, suggesting it implies an orderly progression from primitive to civilized man, which was convenient for Western cultures to justify their dominance over others.
What does the speaker suggest is the real reason Jung discourages Westerners from practicing yoga?
-Jung discourages Westerners from practicing yoga because he believes it is a discipline for a much older culture that has progressed further along certain lines, and Westerners may not have mastered the necessary prerequisites for such practices.
According to the speaker, what is the role of wandering thoughts and imagination in Western culture?
-The speaker suggests that wandering thoughts, imagination, and fantasy are essential for Westerners to get in touch with their unconscious, which is a process that the unconscious will not leave them in peace until achieved.
What does the speaker compare the adoption of Eastern disciplines by Westerners to?
-The speaker compares the adoption of Eastern disciplines by Westerners to taking medicine without a prescription, emphasizing the need for discrimination and caution to ensure the practices align with the Westerner's actual needs.
What is the concept of 'social hypnosis' as mentioned in the script?
-'Social hypnosis' refers to the collective beliefs and rules that a society or culture imposes on its members, which are often internalized as if they were natural laws, even though they are man-made constructs.
How does the speaker describe the function of liberation in Eastern disciplines like Buddhism and Daoism?
-The speaker describes the function of liberation in Eastern disciplines as a means to free individuals from the social hypnosis or the constraints imposed by the cultural rules and beliefs of their society.
What is the concept of Maya as discussed in the script?
-Maya, in the context of the script, is described as a playful construct or a social institution, rather than a mere illusion. It refers to the illusory nature of concepts such as karma, reincarnation, and the individual ego that are part of certain cultural cosmologies.
Why do some Westerners who adopt Eastern spiritual practices also adopt the very concepts those practices aim to liberate from?
-Some Westerners adopt the concepts of reincarnation and karma because they find them consoling, not realizing that these are the illusions that the practices of Buddhism and Vedanta are designed to help one overcome.
What is the role of the teacher in the process of liberation as described in the script?
-The teacher's role in the process of liberation is to guide the student through a series of traps and skillful means (upaya) to help them see through the illusions of the ego and the cultural cosmology, ultimately leading to a realization of the fundamental unity and the illusory nature of societal constructs.
Outlines
🧘♂️ Cultural Appropriation of Eastern Spiritual Practices
The speaker begins by referencing CG Yung's commentary on the potential dangers for Westerners in adopting Eastern spiritual practices like yoga. Yung's ideas are critiqued for being influenced by 19th-century progressive theories of history, which saw Western culture as the pinnacle of human development. The speaker disagrees with Yung's discouragement of yoga for Westerners, arguing that the unconscious mind in Westerners may require different approaches to spiritual exploration compared to Eastern cultures. The speaker suggests that the real issue is not the adoption of practices like yoga but the need for Westerners to exercise caution and discernment when engaging with Eastern disciplines.
💊 Selective Adoption of Eastern Philosophies
The speaker compares the adoption of Eastern spiritual practices to taking medicine without a prescription, emphasizing the need for a tailored approach. Eastern disciplines like Buddhism and Daoism are seen as liberation tools from 'social hypnosis,' or the cultural rules that shape a society's communication and behavior. These practices are designed to free individuals from the confines of their cultural norms, not necessarily to address the same issues faced by Westerners. The speaker argues that Westerners must be cautious and selective in adopting Eastern philosophies to avoid misapplying them to their cultural context.
🔄 The Illusion of Karma and Reincarnation
The speaker delves into the concept of karma and reincarnation as understood in ancient Indian culture, where it was a common belief that one's current life is shaped by actions from past lives. This belief system was used to maintain social order and encourage ethical behavior. However, the speaker points out that some individuals, through disciplines like Buddhism and Vedanta, sought liberation from this cycle of rebirth and the illusion of the separate ego. The ultimate realization for these individuals was that the concepts of karma, reincarnation, and the ego were themselves illusions, or 'Maya,' and not literal truths.
🕉️ The Misunderstanding of Eastern Doctrines by Westerners
The speaker humorously notes the irony of Westerners adopting the very concepts of reincarnation and karma that Eastern spiritual disciplines sought to liberate their practitioners from. This adoption is seen as a misunderstanding of the true purpose of these disciplines, which is liberation from cultural illusions rather than the acceptance of them. The speaker suggests that many practicing Hindus and Buddhists may not take these concepts literally, but Westerners often do, missing the point of the teachings entirely.
🔮 The Esoteric Nature of Eastern Disciplines
The speaker discusses the esoteric nature of Eastern spiritual disciplines, explaining that masters of these traditions made their teachings difficult to understand for outsiders. They used 'skillful means' to guide students through a series of traps and realizations, ultimately leading them to see through the illusions of the ego and the cosmological constructs of their culture. The goal was not to reinforce cultural beliefs but to liberate individuals from them, allowing them to see the interconnectedness and fundamental unity of all things.
🌐 The Interconnectedness of Opposites in Social Constructs
The final paragraph discusses the fundamental unity of opposites, such as 'yes' and 'no,' which are often presented as being in conflict within social constructs. The speaker argues that these opposites are not truly in opposition but are interdependent, like the yin and yang symbols. The realization of this unity is a key aspect of liberation in Eastern spiritual practices. The speaker also touches on the role of conflict and competition in social dynamics, suggesting that the true liberated individual is not driven by these forces but sees through them to the underlying unity of existence.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Oriental spiritual practices
💡Yoga
💡Carl Gustav Jung
💡Social hypnosis
💡Liberation
💡Karma
💡Reincarnation
💡Maya
💡Vedanta
💡Buddhism
💡Cultural appropriation
Highlights
The inherent danger of Westerners adopting Oriental spiritual practices such as yoga is discussed.
Jung's commentary on the adaptation of Eastern ways by Westerners is critiqued for its historical theory.
The 19th-century progressive theory of history, influenced by Darwinism, is mentioned as a cultural bias.
Jung's view that Westerners might not be ready for yoga due to cultural differences is analyzed.
The importance of not forgetting one's cultural background when engaging with foreign philosophies is emphasized.
The idea that Eastern cultures may have progressed further in psychic development is explored.
The caution needed by Westerners in adopting Eastern disciplines is compared to the careful selection of medicine.
The concept of 'social hypnosis' and its role in cultural communication is introduced.
The necessity of cultural rules for societal cohesion, similar to the rules of a game, is discussed.
The liberation from social hypnosis through practices like Buddhism and Daoism is explained.
The illusion of karma and reincarnation in Eastern cultures and its psychological impact is analyzed.
The irony of Westerners adopting the very illusions that Eastern disciplines aim to liberate from is highlighted.
The esoteric nature of Eastern disciplines and the difficulty of initiation for outsiders is discussed.
The use of skillful means (upaya) in Buddhism to guide students through traps is explained.
The realization that the division between the controller and controlled is illusory in the path to liberation.
The fundamental fellowship between opposing principles (Yin and Yang) and its societal implications.
The importance of seeing through societal constructs to achieve a state of liberation.
Transcripts
I suppose that some of you have
read very fascinating work that was
written many years ago by CG Yung a
commentary that he wrote to a
translation of a Chinese classic by
Rickard vilhelm called The Secret of the
Golden
Flower now you may remember that in that
commentary he takes up the very
fascinating
problem of the danger
inherent in the
adoption of uh Oriental ways of life by
westerners but more particularly the
adoption of Oriental spiritual practices
such as
yoga and I remember I learned a great
deal from that essay and appreciated it
very much in ever so many
ways because even in my own f
ination with forms of Oriental
philosophy I've never been tempted to
forget that I'm a
Westerner but as I think this essay
over I'm not sure that Yung
discouraged the practice of yoga by
westerners for quite the right
reasons I find so often the difficulty
in yung's ide
ideas lies in his theory of
History which is I feel a
hangover from 19th century theories of
History uh encouraged by
Darwinism namely that there's a sort of
orderly
progression from the
ape through the
Primitive to the Civil ized man and of
course naturally at that time that was
all hitched in was a theory of
progress and it was highly convenient
for the cultures of Western Europe which
were then a one up on everybody else to
consider themselves in the van of
progress and when they visited the
natives of Borneo and Australia and so
on to be able to feel that they were
perfectly justified in appropriating
their lands and dominating them because
they were giving them the benefits of
the last word in evolution
and uh therefore under the influence of
that sort of theory of History which is
felt in the work of both Freud and
Yung one gets the feeling of there
being a kind of
progressive development of human
consciousness and Yung is charitable
enough to assume that because the
Chinese and Indian civilizations are
immeasurably older than
ours they've had the the possibility of
far more
sophistication in psychic
development even though he feels and
probably rightly that there are things
they can learn from
us but the reason why he discourages the
Westerner from the practice of yoga is
that he says this is a discipline for a
far older culture than
ours which along certain lines has
progressed much further and has learned
certain things that we haven't mastered
at all yet thus he points out that when
somebody Embraces uh vant or theosophy
or any yoga School in the west and tries
to master a discipline of
concentration in
which uh they have to OU from their
Consciousness all wandering thoughts he
says that this for a Westerner may be a
very dangerous thing indeed because just
exactly what the Western may need to do
is to allow free reign to his wandering
thoughts and his imagination and his
fantasy because it's only in this way
that he can get in touch with his
unconscious and uh that his unconscious
will not leave him in peace until he
gets in touch with it he assumes the
members of Oriental cultures have done
this long before they went in for yoga
practice now I don't think this is quite
true but I do think there are other
reasons
why Western
people need to exercise a good deal of
discrimination and
caution in adopting Eastern disciplines
and ways of
life in other words it's rather like the
problem of taking
medicine you know if you don't feel very
well and you go to a friend's medicine
cabinet and you sort of look it over and
see bottles of medicine in there and uh
you say I'm sick I need medicine so you
take some medicine any medicine will do
well it
won't and uh according to what's the
matter with you so the medicine has to
be
prescribed and I don't think that the
things which some of the Eastern
disciplines are designed to cure are
quite the same things that we need
now it's fundamental to my view
of the nature of such forms of
discipline as Buddhism and
Daoism that there are ways of Liberation
from a specific kind of
confinement that is to say their ways of
Liberation from what I've sometimes
called the social hypnosis
in other
words every culture every
society as a group of people in
communication with each
other has certain rules of
communication and from culture to
culture these rules differ in just the
same way that languages
differ and a culture can hold together
on very very different kinds of rules I
won't say any kinds of rules but very
different kinds of rules always provided
that the members agree about them
whether they are forced to agree whether
they agree tacitly or whatever the
reason may
be and these rules are in a way very
much like the rules of a
game in other words uh take a game like
chess you can have the kind of Chess we
play with an eight square board or you
can have a kind of chess that the
Japanese play with a nine square
board uh doesn't make any difference so
long as you both play on the same board
and by the same
rules but since this
is a chess is a
game and in the same way the development
of human cultures is also in a way a
game that is to say it's the elaboration
of a form of
life and the fun of it in a way is the
fun of elaborating it in just some
interesting
form that's the same as the fun of a
game the fun of a game is it has a
certain
interest but it doesn't
follow that the rules of the
game
correspond to the actual structure of
human
nature or to the laws of the
universe but because in every culture
it's necessary to impress Upon a
especially its younger members that
these rules Jolly well have to be
kept they are usually in some way or
other connected with the laws of the
universe and given some sort of divine
sanction and there are indeed cultures
in which the senior members of the group
realize that that's a hoax that that's
as if it's made up and is done to
terrify the young and when they uh
become senior members of the culture
themselves they see through the thing
but they don't uh let on they keep it
quiet they don't let out to those who
are supposed to be impressed that this
was really a hoax to get them to
behave well
anyway after a great deal of careful
study I've come to the
conclusion that the function of these
ways of
Liberation is basically
to make it possible for those who have
the
determination and we'll see why in a
while to make it possible for those who
have the
determination to be free from the social
hypnosis in other words if you were a
member of the culture of
India that almost any time between maybe
900 BC
and 1800
ad it would be for
you a matter of common
sense about which everybody
agreed that you were under the control
of a process called
karma not exactly a law of cause and
effect but a process of cosmic Justice
whereby every fortune that occurred to
you would be the result of some action
in the past that was good and every
Misfortune that occurred to you would be
the result of some action in the past
that was evil and furthermore that this
action in the past might not have been
done in this present life but in a
former life it was simply axiomatic to
those people that they were involved in
a long long process of
reincarnation reaping the rewards and
punishments
and there were not only there was not
only the possibility of being
reincarnated again in the human form but
if you were exceedingly good you might
be born in one of the heavens the
paradises and if you were exceedingly
bad you might be born for an
insufferable period of years not forever
in a purgatory
uh and the purgatories of the Hindus and
Buddhists are just as ingeniously
horrible as those of the
Christians well of course everybody
knows I I mean anybody seems to be
having a sense that all
this uh imagination of postmortem courts
of
justice is a way of telling people well
if the secular police don't catch you
the celestial police will catch you and
therefore you had better behave
and it's an ingenious device for
encouraging ethical
conduct
now but remember that for a person
brought up in that climate of feeling
where everybody believes this to be true
it seems a matter of sheer common sense
that it's
so and it's very difficult for a person
so brought up not to believe that that
is the state of
Affairs take an equivalent situation in
our own
culture it's still enormously difficult
for most people to
believe that space may not be Newtonian
space that is to say a three-dimensional
Continuum which extends indefinitely
forever the idea of a
four-dimensional curved space seems
absolutely fantastic and can't even be
conceived by people un in the
mathematics of modern
physics or again as I've often pointed
out it's very difficult for us to
believe that the forms of nature are not
made of some
stuff uh called
matter uh that's a very unnecessary idea
from a strictly scientific point of view
but it's awfully difficult for us to
believe it believe in other words that
there isn't this underlying stuff
and uh not so long
ago it was practically
impossible for people to
conceive that the planets did not
revolve about the Earth encased in
crystalline
spheres and it took a very considerable
shaking of the
imagination when astronomers began to
point out that this need not necessarily
be so
so all right so now let's go back to the
problem of somebody living in the
culture of ancient India here it is as a
matter of common sense you see that he
is going to be
reborn now there's some perhaps
exceedingly intelligent
person who for one reason or another
discovers that this
idea is not so
after all when uh you get such
disciplines as vanta and Buddhism they
say that the ultimate goal of the
discipline is release from the rounds of
rebirth and incidentally also which is
fundamental to it release from the
illusion that you are a separate
individual confined to this body
but so far as both of these things are
concerned they also say that the person
who is liberated from the round of
rebirth as well as from the illusion of
being an ego sees when he is
liberated that the process of rebirth
and the whole cosmology of reincarnation
and Karma as well as the individual ego
are in a way illusions
that is to say he sees that they are
Maya and I would like to translate Maya
at this moment not so much illusion as a
playful
construct a social
institution so he sees you see that
those things are not
so they are only pretended to be
so and you see he ceases to believe in
karma and reincarnation and all that in
exactly the same way that a modern
agnostic no longer believes in the
resurrection of the body at the day of
judgment I I know this to be so
because although you will get very many
Hindus and Buddhists who say that they
believe in
reincarnation and come over here and
teach it as part of the doctrine of
vanta or Buddhism
the the most sophisticated and the most
profound I'll say perhaps profound
rather than un
sophisticated Buddhists that I have
known have said that they don't believe
in it literally at
all
and so I could say that those who do
believe in it believe in it simply
because it's part of their C culture and
they've not yet been able to be
liberated from
it and so it seems to me very funny
indeed when Western
people who become interested in Vidant
or
Buddhism that is to say in forms of
discipline to liberate Hindus and uh
Chinese people from certain social
institutions
Western people adopt it and then also
adopt the ideas of reincarnation and
Karma from which these systems were
designed to liberate
them h of course they adopt them because
they feel it's consoling that one will
go on living and that wasn't the point
at
all or that it explains something that
why one suffered in this life was not
because the universe was unjust because
you committed some misdeed in the
past and
so westerners who take up the Oriental
doctrines in that
Spirit unfortunately take up the very
Illusions from which these doctrines
were supposed to be ways of
Deliverance now that may be difficult to
see just
because so many practicing Hindus and
Buddhists say they believe in
reincarnation and this whole process of
the cycles of Karma and so
on and
uh they after all are practicing it and
they should
know well now look here there's a
certain good reason why they
shouldn't of course I'm making an
exception of the Indian or Chinese who's
been educated in western
style and he ceases to believe maybe in
the cosmologies of his own culture but
he's not liberated in the Buddhist sense
because in receiving a western education
he's become a victim of our social
institutions instead and me he's just
exchanged as it were one trouble for
another but uh when you
take the situation
as it stands or as it did stand in India
isolated from Western
culture obviously no Society can
tolerate within its own borders the
existence of a way of Liberation a way
of seeing through its
institutions uh without feeling that
such a way constitutes a threat to Law
and Order anybody who sees through the
institutions of society and sees them
for as it were creative fictions in the
same way as a novel or a work of art is
a creative fiction uh anybody who sees
that of course could be regarded by the
society as a potential
Menace
but then you may ask well if if Buddhism
and and Vidant and so on were indeed
ways of Liberation how could Indian or
Chinese Society or Burmese Society have
tolerated their
presence well the answer lies simply in
the much misunderstood esotericism of
these
disciplines in other words that those
who taught them the masters of these
disciplines made it incredibly difficult
for uninitiated people to get in on the
inside
and their method of initiating them in a
way
was to put them through trap after trap
after trap to see if they could find
their way
through in other
words
uh such a master would not dream of
Beginning by
disabusing the neoy and saying well you
know all these things you heard from
your father and mother and teachers and
so on were fairy tales oh no indeed
uh he
would do what is called in
Buddhism exercise the use of upaya it's
the Sanskrit word meaning skillful
devices or skillful means sometimes
described as giving a child a yellow
leaf to stop it crying for
gold after all
when you approach one of these ways of
Liberation from the
outside it looks like
something very very
fantastic here you are
literally going to be
released from a literally true and
physical cycle of endless
incarnations in Heavens and Hells and
all kinds of
States therefore naturally to do that
what an undertaking that must be what a
wonderful extraordinary person you've
got to
become and so the neoy is ready for
almost
anything and the
teacher because the the fundamental
problem in this whole thing is for
him
to get rid of the illusion you see that
he's a separate ego if there's no
separate ego or sort of Soul then
there's nothing to be
reincarnated so all the teacher really
in he has all kinds of complicated ways
of doing it but all that he really says
to him is but now
um if you will look deeply into your
ego you will find out that it is a
non-ego that your self is the universal
self as he might say if he were a
vedantist or if he were a b
he might say if you look for your ego
you won't find it so look for it see and
really go into
it and so he gets the man
meditating and trying by his ego to get
rid of his
ego well that is a beautiful trap it
could last
forever until one sees through
it in other words this is like trying
to uh you know sweep the darkness out of
a room with a
broom or it's like it's worse than that
it LS a drun rather had a nice figure
for it beating a drum in search of a
fugitive that's to say you know when the
police go out because they've had a
telephone call that was a
burglar they uh come racing to the house
with the S full blast and the burglar
hears it and runs
away because of course to try and get
rid of the ego for one's advantage in
some ways an egotistic Enterprise and
you can't do
it so of course the student gets to the
point where he begins to realize that
everything he
does to get rid of his ego is egotistic
and
uh this is the kind of
trap in which the teacher gets
him until of course he comes to the
point of
seeing that uh his supposed division
from himself into say I and me the
controller controlling part of me and
the controlled part of me the knower and
the known and all that is is
phony there is no way of standing aside
from yourself in other words and as it
were changing yourself in that way he
discovers this
finally at the same time he discovers uh
almost at the last minute you might say
the
fallacy or rather the fantasy nature the
game like
nature of the system
of
cosmology which has
existed
to as it were
underpin or give the basic form of the
social institutions of his particular
culture or
Society in other words you may put it in
in in another way one of the basic
things which all social rules of
convention conceal
is what I would call the fundamental
Fellowship between yes and
no say in the Chinese symbolism of the
positive and the negative the Yang and
the yin you know you've seen that symbol
of them together like two interlocked
fishes well the great game I mean the
whole pretense of most socie is that
these two fishes are involved in a
battle there's the up fish and the down
fish the good fish and the bad fish and
there's out for a killing and
white fish is one of these days going to
slay the black
fish but
uh when you see into it clearly you
realize that the white fish and the
black fish go together they're twins
they're really not fighting each other
they're dancing with each
other that you see though is a difficult
thing to
realize in a set of rules in which yes
and no are the basic and formally
opposed terms
when it is explicit in a set of rules
that yes and no are positive and
negative of the fundamental
principles it is implicit but not
explicit that there is this fundamental
bondage or Fellowship between the
two the fear is you see that if people
find that
out they won't play the game anymore I
mean supposing a certain social group
finds out that its enemy group
uh which it's supposed to fight is
really uh symbiotic to it that is to say
the enemy
group Fosters the survival of the group
by pruning its
population we'd never do to admit that
we'd never never do to admit the
advantage of the enemy just as George
Orwell pointed out in his uh fantasy of
the future
1984 that uh
as dictatorial government has to have an
enemy and if there isn't one it has to
invent
one and
uh by this means by having something to
fight you see having something to
compete against the energy of society to
go on doing its job is stirred
up and what the Buddha or bodh SATA type
of person fundamentally is who's one
he's one who's seen through that who
doesn't have to be stirred up by hatred
and fear and competition to go on with a
game of life
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