Carl Jung’s work with German author Richard Wilhelm on the Chinese classics, the I Ching, The Secret of the Golden Flower and The Book of Consciousness and Life, brought his considerable intuitive intelligence to bear on the “problem” of time.

Ultimately he believed that every moment has a time-signature, a character that confers a common nature to a time-moment regardless of spacial separation. Compare this with Dogen’s notion of Being-time. (See our Life of Dogen — listed in Archives in the sidebar).

Jung termed this coincidental factor Synchronicity to explain the persistently prophetic nature of the I Ching when used as an oracle.

Japanese Zen master, D. T. Suzuki concurs, “As with Buddhists ‘Here’ is ‘Now’ and ‘Now’ is ‘Here’. The idea developed in regard to time also applies to space.”

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.”

We know that time and space can’t exist without each other, and come into existence together, like Siamese twins. What exists in space also exists in the concurrent segment of time, so can’t be separated.

Dr. D.T. Suzuki (1870-1966), who introduced Zen to the West. He was often accused by his Japanese countrymen of over-stressing the intellect in a distinctly western way. Of course, he was writing for the West so found it easier to slip into Western ways. His dialogue with C.G. Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist who was covering the same ground is informative.

Suzuki has this to say on the matter of the Buddhist Enlightenment, “The idea is to express the unconscious working of the mind, but this unconscious is not to be interpreted psychologically, but on the spiritual plane where all ‘traces’ of discursive or analytical understanding vanish.”

Jung’s view, was “One cannot grasp anything metaphysically, but it can be done psychologically. Therefore I strip things of their metaphysical wrappings in order to make them objects of psychology … if finally there should still be an ineffable metaphysical element, it would have the best opportunity of revealing itself.”

The difference here is no-difference. Suzuki uses “psychological” to describe objects of rational thinking — all else, by implication, is metaphysical. Jung, however, takes a western approach and calls anything capable of being experienced, psychological. Of course, anything which cannot be experienced is of no concern to man, since he could not possibly ever know of its existence. This is not the case with the Buddhist “unborn mind” which is clearly experienced from moment to moment by those attuned to it.

Jung uses “psyche” to embrace all experience, normal and trancendental. Suzuki draws a line at the limits of the intellect, thus creating an enormous “spiritual” domain. Here the divisive nature of words manufactures an East/West chasm that does not really exist. Both are constantly aware of the non-dual totality of things — its “suchness”.

Suzuki’s gave us a graphic description of his own enlightenment. After a period of intense concentration and “samadhi”, Suzuki attains satori: “…this Samadhi alone is not enough. You must come out of that state, be awakened from it, and that awakening is Prajna. That moment of coming out of Samadhi, and seeing it for what it is, that is satori. When I came out of that state of Samadhi I said, ‘I see. This is it.’”

The next day, after the enlightenment was approved by his master, he walked home from the monastery and saw the trees in the moonlight. “They looked transparent, and I was transparent too.” From that moment he was able to answer the apparently nonsensical questions of his master out of a profound insight.

He later wrote that at that point he was not fully conscious of his experience. There was still an element of dream clinging to his consciousness. While working in America a greater depth of realization dawned when contemplating the Zen phrase “the elbow does not bend outwards.” He suddenly saw that the restriction itself was the true freedom.

Later still, and back in Japan working on the records of Bankei, he felt a huge mass of stones “that I had piled up through many years fall away in a moment. I found myself in the unconditionally restful state of mind of…as-it-is-ness (suchness).”

Suzuki compares man with a geometrical point where three dimensions intersect: physical-natural, intellectual-moral and spiritual. Very roughly, the outer world, the inner personal world, and the world where concepts like “outer” and “inner” have vanished.

We may be conscious of all these lines, but usually not to the same extent. Normally, the intellectual-moral is given emphasis over the spiritual. This results in an inability fully to grasp the spiritual side of life — “Doubting” Thomas arises here, as does the “God is dead” tendency of 19th Century materialism.

The intellectual-moral line delivers a dualistic view of life. It carves its way into the soft substance of existence, setting up categories and divisions in the way a sharp stone shatters a car windscreen — the whole view disappears and one is only aware of a spidery network of frosty fragments. However, despite this, there is a “persistent urge impelling the intellect to transcend itself.”

For the intellect to leave its own line and transfer to the spiritual is a kind of suicide, a “losing of life in order to gain it.” Suzuki stresses that there is no gradation here. It is a leap, a letting go as Jung discovered — for the moment one gives up the intellectual, one finds oneself on the spiritual.

This is the point at which one becomes aware that, “what is before you is it!” For western man, the jump has to be made from his intellect instantly to the spiritual; that is the moment of enlightenment. From then on the spiritual world lights up the physical-natural with a numinous glow that transforms everything, as Jung himself found when he let himself go on the 12th of December 1913. However, there is only one world, and when the faculties lose their distinctiveness they are seen to be illusory.

I’ve been researching the posthumously-published aspects of the work of C.G. Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher of mysticism. In particular, the late chapters and appendices of his memoirs, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, which show how far he had progressed beyond the orthodox science of his day.

It’s always interesting to view the private jottings of public people. The enormous lengths they go to in trying to hide their real views from critical gaze is fascinating. In Jung’s case, his belief in the purpose of “Individuation” contrasted starkly with the nihilism of many of his colleagues.

Here’s his personal view of Individuation:

“When the summit of life is reached, when the bud unfolds and from the lesser the greater emerges … and the greater figure, which one always was but which remained invisible, appears to the lesser personality with the force of a revelation, he who is inwardly great will know that the long expected friend of his soul, the immortal one, has now really come.”

C.G. Jung

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