MODERN PSYCHOLOGY OFFERS A POSSIBILITY OF UNDERSTANDING

Just as the human body shows a common anatomy over and above all ethnic differences, so too the human psyche possesses a common basis that transcends cultural differences.  This I have called the collective unconscious.   This unconscious aspect of the human psyche, common to all humankind, does not merely consist of contents capable of becoming conscious, but also of latent dispositions towards certain identical reactions.  This explains the commonality evidenced in the mythic images of different cultures around the globe and provides a means to understand one another’s.  The various lines of psychological development have common roots in the past.  In other words, all of mankind, regardless of ethnicity, has common instincts of imagination and of behavior.  This also explains the psychological parallelisms with animals. 

In human beings, with their more expansive range of consciousness, the opportunity arises for a strongly independent faculty of intellect.  Gaining this kind of freedom enables the human intellect to dislodge itself from the almost entirely instinctive way of living represented in other animals; but finally it can also mean a human life lived deprived of, or contrary to, instinct.  This is like having human consciousness torn from its roots.  From the perspective of yoga, this is one side of the human psyche going too far, creating imbalance, and therefore, an increasing tendency of danger or dysfunction.

A physician is in a position to witness such imbalances actually enacted in daily life.  He sees, for instance, one-sided consciousness pressed so far as to become out of touch with the subconscious that a breakdown follows.  Long before the actual catastrophe the signs of error announce themselves as an absence of instinct, nervousness, disorientation and entanglements in impossible situations and problems.  When the physician investigates he finds a subconscious that is in complete rebellion against the values of the conscious, and which therefore cannot possibly be assimilated to the conscious awareness; while the reverse, of course, is altogether out of the question.  We are then confronted with an apparently irreconcilable conflict with which human reason cannot deal except by sham solutions or dubious compromises.  This prompts us to question what has become of the much-needed unity of personality, as well as the necessity of seeking it.  And here we find ourselves on a path much traveled in the East from time immemorial.  It seems the Eastern yogi owes finding this path to never having been able to completely force human consciousness apart into separate modes.  As is the case with certain aboriginal mentalities, the Eastern consciousness remained inclusive because the instinctive and intellectual aspects remained in their original proximity to a greater rather than a lesser degree.

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[ For a more complete version of the original text refer to The Secret of the Golden Flower, translated and explained by Richard Wilhelm, with a commentary by C.G. Jung, published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, ISBN #0-15-679980. ]