Jung’s enlightenment was a western one, though inspired by a deep understanding of eastern, particularly Chinese, thought patterns. He stressed, over and over again, that the ego was not to be given up lightly. His experience had taught him that many disturbed people crowding the mental hospitals lacked a coherent conscious ego and were swamped by the symbolic contents of the collective unconscious, which they were unprepared by their culture and education either to combat or assimilate. Such was the extent of the conscious development of the western mind, that an abyss of the greatest proportions separates us from our natural selves and the wholeness of our being.

Enlightenment for him was the unconscious made conscious in a kind of partnership with the differentiated ego which, at this point, relinquishes its total domination over the stultifyingly intellectualized mind of western man.

Jung was aware that the East had a much better relationship with the symbology of the collective unconscious and could handle its intrusions without losing control. He felt that the West no longer lived a symbolic life, largely because of the failure of the churches, and therefore had no psychological immunity against the deeper contents of the psyche.

He emphasized a western way to enlightenment. A way of balance and proportion. And he called it by the very western name of Individuation. For Jung believed that, “The sole and natural carrier of life is the individual, and this holds true throughout nature.” It is only the individual who can sacrifice his ego, and it is the individual who is called to do so. It is only from the enlightened Absolute viewpoint that this so real individual is seen to be illusory and empty.

It is clear that Jung’s mental furniture comprised all the elements necessary for a full participation in the rich philosophies of the East, with their almost total concentration on the path to spiritual enlightenment.

At his home in Switzerland, Jung carved the following words on a block of stone: “Time is a child — playing like a child — playing a board game — the kingdom of the child.”

John M Evans