I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family which is passed on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished. (A Quote by Carl Gustav Jung on parents, children, ancestors, karma, and fate)
“It is really a question whether a person affected by such a terrible illness should or may end her life. It is my attitude in such cases not to interfere. I would let things happen as they were so, because I’m convinced that if anybody has it in himself to commit suicide, then practically the whole of his being is going that way. I have seen cases where it would have been something short of criminal to hinder the people because according to all rules it was in accordance with the tendency of their unconscious and thus the basic thing. So I think nothing is really gained by interfering with such an issue. It is presumably to be left to the free choice of the individual. Anything that seems to be wrong to us can be right under certain circumstances over which we have no control and then end of which we do not understand. If Kristine Mann had committed suicide under the stress of unbearable pain, I should have thought that this was the right thing. As it was not the case, I think it was in her stars to undergo such a cruel agony for reasons that escape out understanding. Our life is not made entirely by ourselves. The main bulk of it is brought into existence out of sources that are hidden to us. Even complexes can start a century or more before a man is born. There is something like karma.” (Jung, 1973, pp. 435-436)
Notes on Jung: on rebirth, resurrection, metempsychosis…
Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Resurrection- 1532. US Public Domain.
Carl Jung contemplates the archetype of rebirth and resurrection. It is through metaphorical experiences of death and rebirth that we come to know what is essential within us. His five forms of rebirth are as follows:
1. “Metempsychosis. The first of the five aspects of rebirth to which I should like to draw attention is that of metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls. According to this view, one’s life is prolonged in time by passing through different bodily existences; or, from another point of view, it is a life-sequence interrupted by different reincarnations. Even in Buddhism, where this doctrine is of particular importance– the Buddha himself experienced a very long sequence of such rebirths– it is by no means certain whether continuity of personality is guaranteed or not: there may be only a continuity of karma…
2. Reincarnation. This concept of rebirth necessarily implies the continuity of personality. Here the human personality is regarded as continuous and accessible to memory, so that, when one is incarnated or born, one is able, at least potentially, to remember that one has lived through previous existences and that these existences were one’s own, i.e., that they had the same ego-form as the present life. As a rule, reincarnation means re-birth in a human body…
3. Resurrection. means a reestablishment of human existence after death. A new element enters here: that of the change, transmutation, or transformation of one’s being. The change may be either essential, in the sense that the resurrected being is a different one; or nonessential, in the sense that only the general conditions of existence have changed, as when one finds oneself in a different place or in a body which is differently constituted. It may be a carnal body, as in the Christian assumption that this body will be resurrected. On a higher level, the process is no longer understood in a gross material sense; it is assumed that the resurrection of the dead is the raising up of the corpus glorificationis) “subtle body,” in the state of incorruptibility…
4. Rebirth (renovatio). fourth form concerns rebirth in the strict sense; that is to say, rebirth within the span of individual life. The English word rebirth the exact equivalent of the German Wiedergeburt) the French language seems to lack a term having the peculiar meaning of “rebirth.” This word has a special flavour; its whole atmosphere suggests the idea of renovation , or even of improvement brought about by magical means. Rebirth may be a renewal without any change of being, inasmuch as the personality which is renewed is not changed in its essential nature, but only its functions, or parts of the personality, are subjected to healing, strengthening, or improvement. Thus even bodily ills may be healed through rebirth ceremonies…
Another aspect of this fourth form is essential transformation, i.e., total rebirth of the individual. Here the renewal implies a change of his essential nature, and may be called a transmutation. As examples we may mention the transformation of a mortal into an immortal being, of a corporeal into a spiritual being, and of a human into a divine being. Well-known prototypes of this change are the transfiguration and ascension of Christ, and the assumption of the Mother of God into heaven after her death, together with her body…
5. Participation in the process of transformation. fifth and last form is indirect rebirth. is brought about not directly, by passing through death and re-birth oneself, but indirectly, by participating in a process of transformation which is conceived of as taking place outside the individual. In other words, one has to witness, or take part in, some rite of transformation. This rite may be a ceremony such as the Mass, where there is a transformation of substances.” (Carl Jung, CW 9I, para 200- 205)
Carl Jung on Buddha, Karma, Pali-Canon.
[Carl Jung on Buddha, Karma, Pali-Canon.]
Anonymous
Dear Mrs. N.,
30 March 1960
Thank you very much for your kind attention!
The book will interest me very much, also what you told me about the Buddhist Society came quite a propos, since I have been studying Buddha’s sermons in the Middle Collection of the Pali-Canon for several months.
I am trying to get nearer to the
remarkable psychology of the Buddha himself, or at least of that which his
contemporaries assumed
him to be.
It is chiefly the question of karma and rebirth which has renewed my interest in Buddha.
With my very best thanks I remain,
Yours cordially, c . G. J u N G ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 548.
This entry was posted in Buddha, Carl Jung, Karma, Letters Vol. II on July 18, 2015.
Carl Jung on "Buddha" and "Karma."
Another correlative goal of yoga is to weaken the klesas, the instinctive urges.
These are: avidya (not knowing), egocentricity, sensuality, hatred and compulsive life, clinging to or fearing life.
I will read you some paragraphs:
“Avidya (not knowing) is misunderstanding the temp oral, impure, suffering and the non-s elf as eternal, pure, joy and as the Self.”
This sentence tells us that not knowing is the foundation of all the other klesas.
If we think temporal things are eternal we naturally desire them inordinately, and we have also falsified them in themselves.
These klesas must be overcome through Dhyana because they are the roots of Karma, that remnant of former existences which, according to the eastern belief, outlives our ego and is born again in a corresponding situation.
Curiously enough the Buddhists say that Karma is not personal.
I may pile up merit but my personal existence ceases and only my Karma persists and forms a new existence.
This is very puzzling and the monks asked Buddha about it but he did not reply.
He left the question open.
On the other hand, he spoke freely of his own previous existences, so we might say that he must have existed personally innumerable times before.
Yet it is also possible that he was speaking of Karmic, not of individual, existences.
The idea may be that the personal existence ceases entirely but that the Karma is left as a potential seed which will develop into a wholly separate existence. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Pages 119-120.
This entry was posted in Buddha, Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Karma, Modern Psychology on March 15, 2015.
Carl Jung: "When I was working on the stone tablets…."
When I was working on the stone tablets, I became aware of the fateful links between me and my ancestors.
I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors.
It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family, which is passed on from parents to children.
It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished.
It is difficult to determine whether these questions are more of a personal or more of a general (collective) nature. It seems to me that the latter is the case.
A collective problem, if not recognized as such, always appears as a personal problem, and in individual cases may give the impression that something is out of order in the realm of the personal psyche.
The personal sphere is indeed disturbed, but such disturbances need not be primary; they may well be secondary, the consequence of an insupportable change in the social atmosphere.
The cause of disturbance is, therefore, not to be sought in the personal surroundings, but rather in the collective situation. Psychotherapy has hitherto taken this matter far too little into account. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams, Reflections; Pages 233-234.
This entry was posted in Karma, Stone on May 18, 2014.
[Carl Jung on Life After Death]
One widespread myth of the hereafter is formed by the ideas and images centering on reincarnation.
In one country whose intellectual
culture is highly complex and much older than ours I am, of course,
referring to India the idea of reincarnation is as much taken for granted as,
among us, the idea that God created the world, or that there is a spiritus
rector.
Cultivated Hindus know that we do not share their ideas about this, but that does not trouble them.
In keeping with the spirit of the East, the succession of birth and death is viewed as an endless continuity, as an eternal wheel rolling on forever without a goal, Man lives and attains knowledge and dies and begins again from the beginning.
Only with the Buddha does the idea of a goal emerge, namely, the overcoming of earthly existence.
The mythic needs of the Occidental call for an evolutionary cosmogony with a beginning and a goal.
The Occidental rebels against a cosmogony with a beginning and mere end, just as he cannot accept the idea of a static, self-contained, eternal cycle of events.
The Oriental, on the other hand, seems able to come to terms with this idea.
Apparently there is no unanimous feeling about the nature of the world, any more than there is general agreement among contemporary astronomers on this question.
To Western man, the meaninglessness of a merely static universe is unbearable.
He must assume that it has meaning.
The Oriental does not need to make this assumption; rather, he himself embodies it.
Whereas the Occidental feels the need to complete the meaning of the world, the Oriental strives for the fulfillment of meaning in man, stripping the world and existence from himself (Buddha).
I would say that both are right.
Western man seems predominantly extraverted, Eastern man predominantly introverted.
The former projects the meaning and considers that it exists in objects; the latter feels the meaning in himself. But the meaning is both without and within.
The idea of rebirth is inseparable from that of karma.
The crucial question is whether a man’s karma is personal or not.
If it is, then the preordained destiny with which a man enters life represents an achievement of previous lives, and a personal continuity therefore exists.
If, however, this is not so, and an impersonal karma is seized upon in the act of birth, then that karma is incarnated again without there being any personal continuity.
Buddha was twice asked by his disciples whether man’s karma is personal or not.
Each time he fended off the question, and did not go into the matter; to know this, he said, would not contribute to liberating oneself from the illusion of existence.
Buddha considered it far more useful for his disciples to meditate upon the Nidana chain, that is, upon birth, life, old age, and death, and upon the cause and effect of suffering.
I know no answer to the question of whether the karma which I live is the outcome of my past lives, or whether it is not rather the achievement of my ancestors, whose heritage comes together in me.
Am I a combination of the lives of these ancestors and do I embody these lives again? Have I lived before in the past as a specific personality, and did I progress so far in that life that I am now able to seek a solution? I do not know.
Buddha left the question open, and I like to assume that he himself did not know with certainty.
I could well imagine that I might have
lived in former centuries and there encountered questions I was not yet able to
answer; that I had to be born again because I had not fulfilled the task that
was given
to me.
When I die, my deeds will follow along with me that is how I imagine it.
I will bring with me what I have done.
In the meantime it is important to insure that I do not stand at the end with empty hands.
Buddha, too, seems to have had this thought when he tried to keep his disciples from wasting time on useless speculation.
The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me.
Or, conversely, I myself am a question which is addressed to the world, and I must communicate my answer, for otherwise I am dependent upon the world’s answer.
That is a supra-personal life task, which I accomplish only by effort and with difficulty.
Perhaps it is a question which preoccupied my ancestors, and which they could not answer.
Could that be why I am so impressed by the fact that the conclusion of Faust contains no solution?
Or by the problem on which Nietzsche foundered: the Dionysian side of life, to which the Christian seems to have lost the way?
Or is it the restless Wotan-Hermes of my Alemannic and Prankish ancestors who poses challenging riddles?
What I feel to be the resultant of my ancestors’ lives, or a karma acquired in a previous personal life, might perhaps equally well be an impersonal archetype which today presses hard on everyone and has taken a particular hold upon me an archetype such as, for example, the development over the centuries of the divine triad and its confrontation with the feminine principle; or the still pending answer to the Gnostic question as to the origin of evil, or, to put it another way, the incompleteness of the Christian God-image.
I also think of the possibility that through the achievement of an individual a question enters the world, to which he must provide some kind of answer.
For example, my way of posing the question as well as my answer may be unsatisfactory.
That being so, someone who has my karma or I myself would have to be reborn in order to give a more complete answer.
It might happen that I would not be reborn again so long as the world needed no such answer, and that I would be entitled to several hundred years of peace until someone was once more needed who took an interest in these matters and could profitably tackle the task anew.
I imagine that for a while a period of rest could ensue, until the stint I had done in my lifetime needed to be taken up again.
The question of karma is obscure to me, as is also the problem of personal rebirth or of the transmigration of souls.
“With a free and open mind” I listen attentively to the Indian doctrine of rebirth, and look around in the world of my own experience to see whether somewhere and somehow there is some authentic sign pointing toward reincarnation.
Naturally, I do not count the relatively numerous testimonies, here in the West, to the belief in reincarnation.
A belief proves to me only the phenomenon of belief, not the content of the belief.
This I must see revealed empirically in order to accept it.
Until a few years ago I could not discover anything convincing in this respect, although I kept a sharp lookout for any such signs.
Recently, however, I observed in myself a series of dreams which would seem to describe the process of reincarnation in a deceased person of my acquaintance.
But I have never come across any such dreams in other persons, and therefore have no basis for comparison.
Since this observation is subjective and unique, I prefer only to mention its existence and not to go into it any further.
I must confess, however, that after this experience I view the problem of reincarnation with somewhat different eyes, though without being in a position to assert a definite opinion.
If we assume that life continues “there,” we cannot conceive of any other form of existence except a psychic one; for the life of the psyche requires no space and no time.
Psychic existence, and above all the inner images with which we are here concerned, supply the material for all mythic speculations about a life in the hereafter, and I imagine that life as a continuance in the world of images.
Thus the psyche might be that existence in which the hereafter or the land of the dead is located.
From the psychological point of view, life in the hereafter would seem to be a logical continuation of the psychic life of old age.
With increasing age, contemplation, and reflection, the inner images naturally play an ever greater part in man’s life. “Your old men shall dream dreams”.
That, to be sure, presupposes that the psyches of the old men have not become wooden, or entirely petrified sero medicina paratur cum mala per longas convaluere moras.
In old age one begins to let memories unroll before the mind’s eye and, musing, to recognize oneself in the inner and outer images of the past.
This is like a preparation for an existence in the hereafter, just as, in Plato’s view, philosophy is a preparation for death. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections
This entry was posted in Carl Jung, Karma, Life After Death, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Reincarnation on March 31, 2014.
The question of karma is obscure to me…
“The question of karma is obscure to me, as is also the problem of personal rebirth or of the transmigration of souls. “With a free and open mind” I listen attentively to the Indian doctrine of rebirth, and look around in the world of my own experience to see whether somewhere and somehow there is some authentic sign pointing toward reincarnation.
Naturally, I do not count the relatively numerous testimonies, here in the West, to the belief in reincarnation. A belief proves to me only the phenomenon of belief, not the content of the belief. This I must see revealed empirically in order to accept it. Until a few years ago I could not discover anything convincing in this respect, although I kept a sharp lookout for any such signs.
Recently, however, I observed in myself a series of dreams which would seem to describe the process of reincarnation in a deceased person of my acquaintance. But I have never come across any such dreams in other persons, and therefore have no basis for comparison.
Since this observation is subjective and unique, I prefer only to mention its existence and not to go into it any further. I must confess, however, that after this experience I view the problem of reincarnation with somewhat different eyes, though without being in a position to assert a definite opinion.
If we assume that life continues “there,” we cannot conceive of any other form of existence except a psychic one; for the life of the psyche requires no space and no time. Psychic existence, and above all the inner images with which we are here concerned, supply the material for all mythic speculations about a life in the hereafter, and I imagine that life as a continuance in the world of images. Thus the psyche might be that existence in which the hereafter or the land of the dead is located.
From the psychological point of view, life in the hereafter would seem to be a logical continuation of the psychic life of old age. With increasing age, contemplation, and reflection, the inner images naturally play an ever greater part in man’s life. “Your old men shall dream dreams.”
That, to be sure, presupposes that the psyches of the old men have not become wooden, or entirely petrified. In old age, one begins to let memories unroll before the mind’s eye and, musing, to recognize oneself in the inner and outer images of the past. This is like a preparation for an existence in the hereafter, just as, in Plato’s view, philosophy is a preparation for death.” — Carl Gustav Jung, On Life After Death
This entry was posted in Carl Jung, Karma, Life After Death, Reincarnation, Transmigration on December 3, 2013.
Carl Jung on Sexuality, Erotic Sculptures, Dharma and Karma.
[Carl Jung on Sexuality, Erotic Sculptures, Dharma and Karma.]
When I visited the ancient pagoda at Turukalukundram, southern India, a local pundit explained to me that the old temples were purposely covered on the outside, from top to bottom, with obscene sculptures, in order to remind ordinary people of their sexuality.
The spirit, he said, was a great danger, because Yama, the god of death, would instantly carry off these people (the “imperfecti”) if they trod the spiritual path directly, without preparation.
The erotic sculptures were meant to remind them of their dharma (law), which bids them fulfill their ordinary lives.
Only when they have fulfilled their dharma can they tread the spiritual path.
The obscenities were intended to arouse the erotic curiosity of visitors to the temples, so that they should not forget their dharma; otherwise they would not fulfill it.
Only the man who was qualified by his karma (the fate earned through works in previous existences), and who was destined for the life of the spirit, could ignore this injunction with impunity, for to him these obscenities mean nothing.
That was also why the two seductresses stood at the entrance of the temple, luring the people to fulfill their dharma, because only in this way could the ordinary man attain to higher spiritual development.
And since the temple represented the whole world, all human activities were portrayed in it; and because most people are always thinking of sex anyway, the great majority of the temple sculptures were of an erotic nature.
For this reason too, he said, the lingam (phallus) stands in the sacred cavity of the (Holy of Holies), in the (house of the womb).
This pundit was a Tantrist (scholastic; tantra = ‘book). ~Carl Jung, Aion, Gnostic Symbols of the Self, Paragraph 131.
This entry was posted in Aion, Carl Jung, Erotic, Gnostic, Karma, Sexuality, Symbols on November 3, 2013.
Carl Jung on “Karmic Illusion.”
[Carl Jung on “Karmic Illusion.”]
[Note: Those familiar with “The Red Book” may wish to consider the implications of the statement below which states “The Chonyid state is equivalent to a deliberately induced psychosis” with particular emphasis on the words “deliberately induced psychosis.”]
So far as I know, there is no inheritance of individual prenatal, or pre-uterine, memories, but there are undoubtedly inherited archetypes which are, however, devoid of content, because, to begin with, they contain no personal experiences.
They only emerge into consciousness when personal experiences have rendered them visible. As we have seen, Sidpa psychology consists in wanting to live and to be born. (The Sidpa Bardo is the “Bardo of Seeking Rebirth.”)
Such a state, therefore, precludes any experience of transubjective psychic realities, unless the individual refuses categorically to be born back again into the world of consciousness.
According to the teachings of the Bardo Thodol, it is still possible for him, in each of the Bardo states, to reach the Dharmaya by transcending the four-faced Mount Meru, provided that he does not yield to his desire to follow the “dim lights.”
This is as much as to say that the dead man must desperately resist the dictates of reason, as we understand it, and give up the supremacy of ego-hood, regarded by reason as sacrosanct. What this means in practice is complete capitulation to the objective powers of the psyche, with all that this entails; a kind of symbolical death, corresponding to the Judgment of the Dead in the Sidpa Bardo.
It means the end of all conscious, rational, morally responsible conduct of life, and a voluntary surrender to what the Bardo Thodol calls “karmic illusion.” Karmic illusion springs from belief in a visionary world of an extremely irrational nature, which neither accords with nor derives from our rational judgments but is the exclusive product of uninhibited imagination.
It is sheer dream or “fantasy,” and every well-meaning person will instantly caution us against it; nor indeed can one see at first sight what is the difference between fantasies of this kind and the phantasmagoria of a lunatic. Very often only a slight “abaissement du niveau” mental is needed to unleash this world of illusion.
The terror and darkness of this moment has its equivalent in the experiences described in the opening sections of the Sidpa Bardo. But the contents of this Bardo also reveal the archetypes, the karmic images which appear first in their terrifying form. The Chonyid state is equivalent to a deliberately induced psychosis.~Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion, Psychological Commentary on “The Tibetan Book of the Dead” Pages 519-520; Paragraph 846.
This entry was posted in Bardo, Bardo Thodol, Commentary, Illusion. Chonyid, Karma, Karmic, Rebirth, Tibetan Book of the Dead on October 25, 2013.
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