To Netnews Homepage Previous Next Index Table of Contents
From Intellect to Intuition - Chapter One - Introductory Thoughts
Dr. Jung, one of the people who is seeking to bring these hitherto discordant elements together, touches on this in the following extract from his Commentary on an ancient Chinese writing. He says: "Western consciousness is by no means consciousness in general, but rather a historically conditioned, and geographically limited, factor, representative of only one part of humanity. The widening of our own consciousness ought not to proceed at the expense of other kinds of consciousness, but ought to take place through the development of those elements of our psyche which are analogous to those of a foreign psyche, just as the East cannot do without our technique, science and industry. The European invasion of the East was a deed of violence on a great scale, and it has left us the duty - noblesse oblige - of understanding the mind of the East. This is perhaps more necessary than we realize at present." - Wilhelm, Richard, and Jung, Dr. C.G., The Secret of the Golden Flower, page 136. Dr. Hocking of Harvard also brings us the same idea when he says: "There seems reason to hope for a better physical future of the race by the aid of a sound mental hygiene. After the era of the charlatans has gone by, and to some extent by their aid, there appears a possibility of steadily enlarging self-mastery, as the spiritual sense of such discipline as the Yoga joins with the sober elements of Western psychology and a sane system of ethics. No one of these is worth much without the others." - Hocking, Wm. E., Self, Its Body and Freedom, page 75. Those who have studied in both schools tell us that the mystical imagery of the East (and also of our Western mystical exponents) is only a veil behind which those gifted with intuitive perception have always been able to penetrate. The science of the West, with its emphasis upon the nature of the form, has also led us into the realm of the intuition and it would seem as if the two ways could blend and that it should be possible for each - discarding the non-essentials - to arrive at a basis of understanding. [7] Thus they work out a new approach to the central mystery of man founded on old and demonstrated truths. Dr. Jung again takes this up as follows: "Science is the best tool of the Western mind and with it more doors can be opened than with bare hands. Thus it is part and parcel of our understanding and only clouds our insight when it lays claim to being the one and only way of comprehending. But it is the East that has taught us another, wider, more profound, and a higher understanding, that is, understanding through life. We know this way only vaguely, as a mere shadowy sentiment culled from religious terminology, and therefore we gladly dispose of Eastern 'wisdom' in quotation marks, and push it away into the obscure territory of faith and superstition. But in this way Eastern 'realism' is completely misunderstood. It does not consist of sentimental, exaggeratedly mystical, intuitions bordering on the pathological and emanating from ascetic recluses and cranks; the wisdom of the East is based on practical knowledge... which we have not the slightest justification for undervaluing." - Wilhelm, Richard, and Jung, Dr. C.G., The Secret of the Golden Flower, page 78.
To Netnews Homepage Previous Next Index Table of Contents
Last updated Monday, July 6, 1998 © 1998 Netnews Association. All rights reserved.