Catherine Ann Jones: Atma, Self and Individuation

Jungian Psychology and the Advaita Vedanta Philosophy
 

 Consciousness going out towards objects is mind.
That which turns towards the Self is pure Satva.
Sri Atmananda [1]

In 1938, C. G. Jung on his only trip to India was scheduled to travel south and meet the great householder sage, Sri Atmananda (Sri Krishna Menon). The trip was arranged by Dr. Roger Godel, a noted heart specialist and friend of Jung's. Alice Godel, his widow, later related this story to me in India. The night before their departure, Jung had a dream which persuaded him to leave India early, thus canceling his trip to south India. If it seems strange to us that a well-educated, professional man such as Jung should take a dream so seriously, we must recall that Jung had grown up in a family of psychics and trained under Sigmund Freud, all of whom paid significant attention to dreams.

Jung was not only disposed to be guided by dreams, but he was already of the opinion that Westerners should retain and adapt their own means of enlightenment, foregoing the ways of the East. The Western mystery cycle of the Holy Grail, which Jung was studying at the time of his Indian trip, is an example of the spiritual tradition that Jung felt Europeans would be safer following.

But why should Jung have made such a strong distinction? Was it because he was a minister's son? Might it be that he could not surrender his own identity as a Westerner? Is it really true that there is such a wide chasm between East and West? Can it not be leaped or bridged? In particular, how does Jung's approach to what he called 'individuation' or finding one's Self, compare to the enlightenment of the East—specifically to Advaita Vedanta?

Advaita is one of the philosophies behind Hinduism. There’s a humorous saying in India: 'It's all right to be born in the temple as long as one does not die there.' Hence, religion is viewed as a stepping stone to higher philosophy. Eventually, one must go beyond all forms. This Vedantic tradition has been kept alive by such great sages as Adi Sankara (ninth century), Sri Ramakrishna, and Swami Vivekananda (who brought Vedanta to America in 1893), and Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950, inspiration for Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge). More recent examples are the householder sages, Sri Atmananda (1883-1959) who inspired Joseph Campbell, and Atmananda's son and successor, Sri Adwayananda (1912-2001), my own teacher for the past thirty years.

The very word 'Advaita', a-dvaita, means 'not double' not two, nondual. It marks the distinction among the three basic philosophies of Vedanta, the other two being Vishistadvaita, modified nondualism (developed by Ramanuja) and Dvaita, dualism (taught by Madhva and others). Nondualism is represented in the West by Neoplatonism, Kabbalah, Meister Eckhart, Ruusbroeck, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, and other mystical traditions.

Although both nondualism and dualism are present in both East and West, it is popular usage to characterize the East as nondualistic and the West as dualistic: for the Advaitist, the world is within; for the Westerner, the world is without, separate from oneself.

Western man is held in thrall by the ten thousand things; he sees only particulars, he is ego-bound and thing-bound, and unaware of the deep root of all being. Eastern man, on the other hand, experiences the world of particulars and even his own ego, as a dream [2].

This deep root of all being is given various names in Advaita: the Background, Pure Consciousness, Brahman, Absolute, or Atma (the real Self). 'Atma is that changeless, one rasa (unbroken peace and harmony), into which thoughts and feelings merge... The light in the perception of sense objects is the changeless Atma, the One without a second, which abides in filling all.' [Atmananda 3] Atma as Self is not to be confused with the individual soul or apparent I, which is called jiva in Sanskrit. Self or Atma stands for the non-dual Absolute itself.

Jung flatly states that the Eastern man's 'relations with the world is often incomprehensible to us.' (Storr, 258) He goes on to describe how the Western attitude, with its emphasis on the object, tends to fix the ideal—Christ—in its outward aspect. This robs it of its mysterious relation to the inner man. Hence, the Protestant interpreters of the Bible refer to the Kingdom of God among you rather than the more linguistically correct within you. (Storr, 258) [4]

One can almost imagine a Janus split with one Western face gazing outwards towards the world while the Eastern opposite turns inward. The Vedantist might say, 'How can you fear a world which you create anew each moment?' To translate from Paramarthasaram, an ancient, authoritative Sanskrit work on Vedanta: 'What is perceived is not different from perception and perception is not different from the Perceiver and... therefore the world is the Perceiver himself.' (Atmananda, 36)

In Jung's Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower, he writes: 'What, on a lower level, had led to the wildest conflicts... from the higher level of personality now looked like a storm in the valley seen from the mountain top... instead of being in it one is above it.' (Storr, 227)

Illustration from The Red Book by Carl Jung, Foundation for the Works of C. G. Jung

This implies a certain detached perspective which seems to align Jung's thinking with that of India. However, Jung continues, 'But since, in a psychic sense, we are both valley and mountain, it might seem a vain illusion to deem oneself beyond what is human.' (Storr, 227) Is it an illusion then to transcend both valley and mountain? The Indian Sage would say that it is not the outer world that holds us, but rather our perspective and consequent attachment to it. All that is needed is to alter one's perspective, to see deeply that one is not the body, not the mind, but rather Atma, the Self. This concept is portrayed over and over again in the Sanskrit texts and rests at the very heart of Vedanta. Here is one sloka (verse) from Shankara's Six Stanzas on Nirvana:

        I am not mind, intellect, thought, or ego;
        Not hearing, taste, smelling or sight;
        Not ether or earth, fire or air
        I am the soul of Knowledge and bliss,
        I am Shiva, I am Shiva (Shankara 81).

Shiva stands here for the Absolute. All that is needed then is to see deeply that one is not the body, not the mind, but Atma, the Self. The method which leads to enlightenment, according to Vedanta, is simply to shift the false identification from the body and mind to Atma. 'It is not the objective world that presents obstacles... but the false stand one has taken up.' (Atmananda, p. 27)

To do this, three yogas are used: jnana (knowledge), karma (action), and bhakti (devotion). This is no mere intellectual knowing: head and the heart must combine to fully understand the Truth. To realize this, the relationship between a living guru and the disciple is paramount. Even a great soul like Sankara said, 'I am the Absolute through the words of my guru.' Unlike other attachments, this relationship only strengthens. One might say that this is the attachment to overcome all other attachments.

Vedanta then offers a final solution as illustrated in the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. The Gita 'points to a path by which man unites his finite self with Infinite Being' as stated by Krishna Prem in The Yoga of the Bhagavad Gita. [5] In the dialogue between guru and disciple, Krishna represents the higher Self or Atma  as it imparts wisdom to Arjuna, the individual soul or jiva.

Hence, these two figures symbolize the human and the divine, man and god, Arjuna and Krishna. Kurushetra is simply the battleground of life wherein the soul struggles to reach the divine. The aim then is not to escape but to see through the battle of life as one engages in it fully. This is the real victory. To do this is to align the lower self of body and mind with the higher self or Atma. It is essential to grasp that true knowledge is to be found within.

Hence, Krishna's work, as indeed that of any great teacher, is to bring to birth that which already exists within. This is echoed in some of our own Western poets. Robert Browning in his poem, 'Paracelsus', reminds:

        Truth lies within ourselves, it takes no rise
        From outward things, what'ere you may believe
        There is an inmost center in us all
        Where Truth abides in fullness... (Prem 24)

Shelley adds, 'The One remains, the Many change and pass.' (Prem 24)

Can we as Westerners totally transcend our personalities? Can we align ourselves with a higher consciousness and be free of any tension of opposites? Jung thinks not. One is shaken by life yet at the same time aware of a higher consciousness looking on. Jung describes 'a necessary polarity inherent in every self-regulating system.' (Storr, 227) As already stated, Jung believes man to be both valley and mountain. The tension of opposites lies at the core of his findings. However, Jung, in sharp contrast to Freud, tells us that the goal towards wholeness or integration is fueled by a religious quest. That individuation is a spiritual journey. (Storr, 229) He does not speak of the Absolute but refers instead to an integrating factor, which guides us through our own unique process of individuation. 

Illustration from The Red Book by Carl Jung, Foundation for the Works of C. G. Jung

This integrating factor Jung calls the Self. Seen as archetype, the Self signifies union between the opposites. (Storr 229) Jung speaks of an 'archetype of wholeness.' (Storr 236). From his own dark inner struggles, he turns to the Eastern tradition of mandala drawing as a tool to guide his way towards wholeness. In sketching the circular drawings, Jung could observe his psychic transformations. (Storr 230)  This area is explored in his Psychology of Kundalini Yoga. [6] Echoing Goethe’s Faust, Jung says: 'Only gradually did I discover what the mandala really is: formation, transformation, eternal mind's eternal re-creation. And that is the self, wholeness of the personality, which if all goes well is harmonious, but which cannot tolerate self-deception.' (Storr 230)

For Jung, however, the self is a part of us rather than a force beyond us as in Vedanta. Yet sometimes Jung seems very close to the Eastern view, as in the following quote: 'If the unconscious can be recognized as a co-determining factor along with consciousness, and if we can live in such a way that conscious and unconscious demands are taken into account... then the center of gravity of the total personality shifts its position. It is then no longer in the ego, which is merely the center of consciousness, but in the hypothetical point between conscious and unconscious. This new center might be called the self.' (Storr 19)

This shift parallels the Vedantic perspective that all that is needed is to shift the false identification with the body and mind to the Atma, the center, as previously discussed. Yet Jung calls the point between conscious and unconscious hypothetical. It is not yet real, only conjectural. To the Vedantist, however, it is the only reality. In India, the space between two thoughts is a pointer towards the Atma, the one Reality. This is the space where there is no mind, no ego, when the mind is dissolved into some larger Self beyond all personality. 'Where are you in this space between two thoughts?' the sage might ask, thus opening the door to pure experience. And in pure experience there is no world. There simply is.

Jung responds: 'But the self comprises infinitely more than a mere ego... It is as much one's self, and all other selves, as the ego. Individuation does not shut one out from the world, but gathers the world to one's self.' (Storr 419)

Jung grants that self is more than mere ego, but by this he refers to the collective or many selves. The purpose of individuation is not to leave the world behind as is the goal of the Eastern mystic, but rather to gather the world to one's self. Here lies the parting of the waves between East and West. Remember the Janus image mentioned earlier? East looks inward while West gazes outward towards the world.    

Certainly there are parallels between Jungian thinking and that of Vedanta. In fact, it is likely Jung took the term, Self, from Indian texts. However, according to Barbara Hannah, Jung felt 'the East was too far above everyday reality for us (Westerners)' (Jung xxiii). In his Kundalini Yoga lectures, Jung speaks of the process of individuation: 'It is the withdrawal from the emotions; you are no longer identical with them. If you succeed in remembering yourself, in making a difference between yourself and that outburst of passion, then you discover the self; you begin to individuate.' (Jung 39)

This, of course, is only the beginning of a long process. Jung is careful to distinguish between, on the one hand, an individualist who becomes the ego, subject to inflation, and, on the other hand, 'individuation as becoming that thing which is not the ego.' (Jung 39) He goes on to speak of the ego as 'a mere appendix of the self in a sort of loose connection.' He asserts that a connection persists, while Advaita Vedanta speaks of ego as mere illusion. The comparison is sometimes given of the rooster with his head chopped off that continues to dance. Hence, thinking ourselves a separate entity or ego, we continue to strut and dance, unconscious of our real Self or even aware that the roots have already been severed. It certainly does feel like this often enough!

In a 1932 lecture, Jung speaks of individuation taking place when you are conscious of it whereas individuality is there from the beginning of one's existence. (Jung 5) In sharp contrast, the enlightenment of the East tends to occur when one is not conscious. It is through the loss or surrender of  the conscious self that the light of Self shines. From the Upanishads:

        When I think of myself as an embodied being,
        I am your servant;
        When I think of myself as an individual soul,
        I am a part of You;
        but when I realize I am Atma,
        I am one with you. [7]

The final goal then is to get beyond the individual self to the greater Self. Meister Eckhart echoes this: 'The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.' (Jones 5) So inner experience rather than inner thought is desired; not theories but nothing less than direct revelation:

        The fact is the world exists;
        The Truth is it does not.
        One lies in the realm of mind,
        the other in the pure experience of Self. (Jones 31)

So I wrote during a two-year sadhana period in south India under the guidance of Sri Adwayananda, the son and successor of the great sage Sri Atmananda, whom Jung almost met in 1938. Perhaps it is of some interest that Joseph Campbell, who was so influenced by Jung, did actually meet Sri Atmananda. Campbell spoke to me in New York of his great respect for the Indian sage and later publicly acknowledged his influence on him in the Bill Moyers television interviews (The Power of Myth series).

For over thirty years, I have had the good fortune to study Advaita Vedanta under Sri Adwayananda. Yet, for over thirty years, I struggled as a Westerner to transcend the illusive ego. Jungian psychology and Advaita Vedanta have been for decades my unresolved opposite poles of influence. Jung rightly pronounces the importance of waiting until late thirties-early forties to undertake serious inner work. When first living in India with the householder sage and his family, I was but twenty-three. Though it was an amazing time and will no doubt remain the most important years of my life, it was an arduous and confusing time as well. 

Later I compared myself to one who had built a penthouse before establishing a foundation or lower floor. Granted, there were various  impressive mystical experiences due to the powerful atmosphere which surrounds the sage. Yet after years of denying both body and mind, I had eventually to confront both. Jung understood this from his own experience as he writes in his autobiography: 'Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force.' (Jung 277)

The danger of engaging higher states of consciousness before sufficient ego development is evident in the occurrence of inflation or shadow. Disregard of the body in prolonged meditations can certainly invite serious physical problems that remind us we are also body. Similarly, years of prolonged separation from the world as in ashram life can give birth to shadowy confusions. However, I do not in any way suggest that such great souls as Sri Adwayananda or Ramana Maharshi, who meditated without speaking for many years, had any such problem. The danger most likely lies in lesser souls such as the writer of this paper. The question remains, can Westerners achieve enlightenment through Eastern traditional methods?

Perhaps one of the difficulties of religious or spiritual writings is that the reader takes them literally rather than symbolically. There is all too often an unfortunate insistence on literal interpretations of religious and spiritual texts leading to both war and mayhem, from the Crusades of the Middle Ages to Waco, Texas in our own time. 

A great contribution of Jung's thinking has been his insistence on the symbolic meaning of experience both in waking and dream state. These symbols may draw our attention to aspects of ourselves that we have overlooked, which are hidden in what he calls the 'shadow' outside the light of our usual consciousness. Jung urges us to look to our own shadow projections and claim them in order to integrate all the contradictory parts of the psyche. Similarly, this shadow side may also be the undeveloped talents and virtues, the good we do not suspect we may do. Jung's program for individuation urges us to integrate all the various parts of our personality. This leads to individuation, not to separation from the world. 

Are the world and its perceiver but a dream? Or is the dream part of the individual's world? In Jung's lectures on Kundalini Yoga, he states: 'It appears to us as though India were fascinated by the background of consciousness, because we ourselves are entirely identified with our foreground, with the conscious...' (Jung 61)

This Background seen from the Vedantic perspective is the Reality, the Atma, while the perceived or foreground is witnessed as the illusion. Jung goes on to say how the psyche is alive yet so obscure and 'so difficult to access that we are first forced to represent it symbolically.' (Jung 62) Sri Atmananda in Atmananda Tattwa Samhita states that 'words are only pointers to the Absolute.' (Atmananda 22) And what are words if they be not symbols? If the Absolute lies beyond the mind, then how can it be grasped by the mind?

Yet being human, we cannot help ourselves. We continue to seek to contain what lies beyond our grasp. Jung sees that certain 'dreams, visions, and mystical experiences suggest the existence of a consciousness in the unconscious... no consciousness can exist without a subject, that is, an ego to which the contents are related... We know of no other kind of consciousness, nor can we imagine a consciousness without an ego.' (Storr 219)

Jung admits that 'in our (Western) world... our consciousness is localized in the head.' (Jung 62) It is after all in the mind, in thought, where the opposites live. 'All the opposites meet at the Absolute,' resounds the sage Adwayananda.

Illustration from The Red Book by Carl Jung, Foundation for the Works of C. G. Jung

Perhaps if we could see our limited selves as no more than metaphors or symbols reaching for the Absolute or Self, the journey would be not only richer but require less angst. The focus would then be not so much on what we think but rather on the inner experience where our thoughts lead. For this to occur, space must be allowed for thoughts to sink more deeply into dissolution, for the identified mind/body to disappear. Jung compares the relationship of the soul to the Divine to 'the relationship of a drop of water to the sea.'

The drop would seem to be lost in the magnitude that is the sea, yet 'that sea would not exist but for the multitude of drops' of which the sea itself is composed (Storr 259). Here Jung’s emphasis remains on the drops or individuals. The Indian sage, however, dismisses both wave (individual soul) and sea (the Divine), leaving in their stead pure experience: 'Waves are nothing but water. So is the sea.' (Atmananda 8)

Could we say that Jung and Advaita Vedanta are complementary? Here doubt arises. I remember an example from the ancient Sanskrit texts my teacher would use. It went something like this: 'Logical thinking is merely the stick used for keeping the funeral pyre burning. The pyre is for the ego. Once the body—or ego—is burnt, there is no need to take the stick home with you. No. You toss it into the fire as well.' (Jones 48)

To conclude in Eastern, cyclic fashion by returning to the beginning, to the first quote, we might ask ourselves which path more deeply calls?

        Consciousness going out towards objects is mind.
        That which turns towards the Self is pure Satva. (Atmananda 9)

[First published American Vedantist, v. 9 Spring 2003, New York, New York]
 
FOOTNOTES
1. Atmananda, ed. by Adwayananda, Atma Darshan/Atma Nirvriti. (Austin: Advaita Publishers, 1983), p. 9.
2. Jung, C.G. The Essential Jung, Ed. Anthony Storr. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 257.
3. Atmananda. Atma Darshan/Atma Nirvriti, Ed. Atwayananda (Austin: Advaita Publishers, 1983) p. 12.
4. Liddell & Scott give 'in, within, inside' for enros. Oxford Annotated RSV translates 'among.' Ref. Is to Luke 17:21.
5. (Waiting for publisher, city, date, etc.)
6. Jung, C. G., The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 10.
7. Jones, Cathrine Ann, 'Cathrine Ann Jones.'' Dodge Days, Eds. Edmund and Pamela McIlhenny. (Avery Island, 2000), pp. 109-112.

Catherine Ann Jones holds a graduate degree in Depth Psychology and Archetypal Mythology from Pacifica Graduate Institute where she has also taught. After playing major roles in over fifty plays, she became disappointed by the lack of good roles for women and wrote a play about Virginia Woolf (On the Edge) and her struggle with madness in a world gone mad, i.e., WWII. The play won a National Endowment for the Arts Award.

Ten of her plays, including Calamity Jane (both play and musical) and The Women of Cedar Creek, have won multiple awards and are produced both in and out of New York. Her films include The Christmas Wife (Jason Robards & Julie Harris), Unlikely Angel (Dolly Parton), and the popular TV series, Touched by an Angel.

A Fulbright Research Scholar to India studying shamanism, she has taught at The New School University, University of Southern California, Pacifica Graduate Institute, and the Esalen and the Omega Institutes. Ms. Jones is often invited as a keynote speaker to various conferences as Women, Wealth, & Wisdom Conference at UCLA. Her book, The Way of Story: the craft & soul of writing, is used in many schools, including New York University writing programs. Ms. Jones lives in Ojai, California, and leads The Way of Story and Heal Yourself with Writing workshops throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia.

For online courses visit dailyom.com. For blog, workshops, and consultant services please visit wayofstory.com. 

Catherine Ann Jones will be one of the main presenters at the forthcoming GATE Transformational Story Conference in Los Angeles; tickets to the event and more information can be found at GATEcommunity.org.

For more information on purchasing The Way of Story by Catherine Ann Jones and Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C G Jung, visit the StillnessSpeaks online store.