DR. JUNG’S IMPRESS ON MY PROFESSION
The first teaching which I personally received from Dr. Jung was conveyed by the pictorial script of a mere gesture after the famous manner of the masters of Zen Buddhism, who prefer to teach without words. It was a gesture of both his hands and in one of them he held a bottle of gin.
Just as Zen doctrine tells that the Buddhe once taught the whole essence of the transcendental wisdom on reality by lifting a lotus flower above his head, so Dr. Jung taught me by pouring gin into the glass of lemon squash which I had in my hand. I had just finished lecturing on Hindu Yoga and I was excited to meet the man who, after my opinion, knew more about the human psyche than other men alive. So I was eager to get his criticism and asked him naively what was his opinion about the Hindu idea of the transcendental Self, etc., etc. … But he, without so much as disclosing his lips, while from the bottle in his right hand he poured the gin, with the forefinger of his left, persistently pointed to the rising level of the liquid in the glass, until I hastily said, “Stop, stop, thank you.” It was the gentle and inspiringly indirect way of the Zen master to make me say “stop, stop” to my own talking, to make me abandon the speculative flight to transcendental spheres, which can’t be reached by mere words.
I found my way to Dr. Jung, like Richard Wilhelm, as an Oriental scholar interested in Hindu symbolism, mythology, and psychology of Yoga. I had tried to decipher the pictorial script of Hindu idols through their function of guiding the soul in rituals and yoga practices and I was struck with the fact that Indian philology, at large, had dealt with mythology in a purely positivistic, unimaginative way with no sense for its secret meaning, whereas one has to use one’s intuition in deciphering these dreams of the collective genius of a civilization.
There are many keys to unlock the mysteries of symbolism, but for each period seldom more than one or two are available. In reading Dr. Jung’s writings, I felt that this men had found a new one, fit for our own period, and I was delighted. Before meeting Dr. Jung I had come across another master, Johann Jacob Backofen, the author of Das Mutterrecht. With him I learned to read mythology as expressing in its symbols the rise and decline of social and religious orders. Backofen, however, was now dead, and the major task to decipher mythology as the everlasting romance of the soul was left for Dr. Jung.
In him, I felt, I had met the master magician alive, whom I had never hoped to encounter in the flesh. I realized the unique chance to be privileged to offer him the results of my research. In fact, I had done so already without knowing. For six years before I met him, I had published my first book which dealing with Hindu art was the first to pay attention to mandalas and similar drawings and to point out that Hindu idols should be interpreted on their lines. Therefore in meeting Dr. Jung I felt a happy union was about to be accomplished between different lines of research.
The animal, I have been told, which constitutes the totemistic symbol of Dr. Jung’s personality, is the bear. Like a bear collecting honey, he collects the various gifts we may offer him in the way of dreams, tales, and mythologies. When you offer him something he likes, he takes it as a matter of course. You will get it back somehow unawares, transformed and enhanced.
The most essential among the lessons he bestows, are imparted without much talking. He knows one cannot teach very much to anybody which he is not yet able to grasp by himself. He watches you and leaves you to your own way, and guides you, as far as possible, by silently and involuntarily, like Nature herself, exhibiting his own way. The Chinese followers of Taoism know how to make sense of the continuous revelation of nature’s wisdom by conforming to it. In the same way the wisdom of life is taught by Dr. Jung continuously through the way in which he deals with persons, things, and situations which are at hand.
We need not go far to reach the threshold of initiations. We carry it in ourselves and may behold it in every object. The gift, however, which is bestowed on us in crossing this threshold is the intuitive art of deciphering the hidden script inherent in things and traditions. It is the very boon which Analytical Psychology and its master bestow on us and our professions.
NOTES
This paper was read at the dinner meeting of the Analytical Psychology Club of New York City, October 18, 1940.
Spring: Contributions to Jungian Thought (1941): 104–5
© Copyright 1941 The Analytical Psychology Club of New York, Inc.