INTRODUCTION

      During the last fifty years the mental life of Western civilization has been invaded by two forces which are having a profound though gradual influence on our attitude to life. One of these forces has emerged from the West itself, while the other has come from far distant lands. At first sight no one saw that these two influences had anything in common, but with the growth of experience it is becoming clear not only that they are, in spirit, closely bound together, but also that their effects reach far beyond the places where they are professionally studied.

      The first, a product of the West, is the form of scientific psychology associated with the names of Freud and Jung, which bases its research and practice on the idea of the unconscious mind and whose object is the purely practical one of healing the mentally sick. The second force is a product of the Orient, and is the wisdom of ancient India and China which has been revealed to us in its fullness only in comparatively recent years by the labors of scholars in Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, and Japanese. At first it was thought that the wisdom they revealed was of little more than academic interest, and had the misérable vanité des savants had its way the treasures of Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist thought would have remained as much a preserve for the merely erudite as Roman law and Egyptian hieroglyphics. It was soon recognized, however, that this treasure of spiritual literature was not only beautiful to read and consider; it was also seen to be of practical use. The ideas and precepts contained in it were not only as true for our own time and place as for the ancient East; they were also, if not entirely new to us, suggestive of new approaches and new ways of adjustment to problems very close to our hearts, and seemed to offer ways of amplifying the wisdom of the West.

      An inquiry into the relations between Oriental religion and the psychology of the unconscious might be of interest to those who specialize in these things, but the object of this book is much wider. For neither was originally evolved for the express benefit of specialists; their purpose was and is to assist mankind as a whole, and because there are many close likenesses in their method of inquiry they have come to similar conclusions—or perhaps it would be better to say “working hypotheses.” This form of psychology has taught that man’s conscious self and its various faculties of reason and emotion are the outward appearance of a hidden, mental universe in which the true origin of his thoughts and deeds is to be found. In other words, it would say that man’s true self goes a long way beyond his conscious “ego” or “I” which is the unknowing instrument of the unconscious, or of “nature-in-man.” When the ego is unaware of this condition it arrogates to itself powers and capabilities which set it in conflict with the unconscious, and from this conflict arise the greater part of our psychological troubles. But when we become conscious of the limitations of the ego and understand its relation to the unconscious, then there is some chance of true mental health. This is strikingly similar to many Oriental teachings if we can substitute for the term “unconscious” or “nature-in-man” such Oriental terms as “Tao,” “Brahman,” and the like, which mean the (to us) unknown self of both man and life, or nature.

      It will therefore be necessary to explore these similarities to some extent, but it is even more important to consider what the invasion of our civilization by these two forces can mean for ordinary men and women whose interest in such subjects is purely practical. For the number of people who have such an interest in either or both of these things is much greater than is generally realized. Moreover many religious cults of the present day are considerably influenced by Oriental ideas, especially the many forms of theosophy, occultism, and mysticism patronized by so many people whom the ordinary churches fail to satisfy. Therefore we have to ask just what contribution these two forces have to make to the happiness of the average human being who wishes to benefit from them without becoming a psychological or Oriental specialist.

      Many people have tried to answer this question from the standpoint of psychology alone or Oriental philosophy alone. But few attempts have been made to explore the possibilities from the standpoint of both. Why should this be done? Because there are certain elements in Oriental philosophy which are utterly unsuited to Western life and these elements are not easily seen unless brought to the attention by a critical method which only this psychology of the unconscious can provide. Furthermore, psychology has much to gain from the ancient East. In the West psychology is a new science; in the East it is very ancient, and in fact it is not correct to speak of Oriental philosophy at all, for in no sense is it philosophy as we understand it. Essentially it is neither speculative nor academic; it is experimental and practical, and is much closer to psychology than philosophy.

      But the need for a rapprochement between the two has for some time been recognized by the foremost living practitioner of this particular type of psychology—C. G. Jung of Zurich.¹

      My experience in my practice [he writes] has been such as to reveal to me a quite new and unexpected approach to eastern wisdom. But it must be well understood that I did not have as a starting point a more or less adequate knowledge of Chinese philosophy. On the contrary, when I began my life-work in the practice of psychiatry and psychotherapy, I was completely ignorant of Chinese philosophy, and it is only later that my professional experiences have