“A formative voice sinks back into mind; mind sinks back into vital breath; vital breath to radiance; and radiance to the higher divinity. This is the soul; the Self of all that exists; this is the Real Self; You Are That…” – Chandogya Upanishad IV.8
“How transient are all component things! It is their nature to arise and fall. As soon as they have been formed, they start to decay again … [so] tend to your state of mind with diligence.” – The Buddha’s Final Nirvana VI.7
By Sigurd Arild and Ryan Smith
The Upanishads (ca. 1000-500 BCE) record the spiritual visions of the Vedic seers. They form part of the tradition of Vedanta, which predates Buddhism by some 500 years. Though Vedanta would later be considerably reformed by Shankara (around 800 CE), what interests us here is the earlier, more primordial strands of Vedanta and the bearing they had on the initiate’s self-perception.
In the Upanishads, the self is often likened to something joyous, blissful, and divine. Briefly put, the self (atman) is thought to be eternal, supra-mundane, and synonymous with the absolute (Brahman). As the Chandogya Upanishad says in the passage quoted above, the soul is the self of all that exists; it is what is truly real, the absolute and the whole of the cosmos, and this is what you truly are. Hence the grand pronouncement of Vedanta, “You Are That,” meaning that the true self is not merely that of a mundane human being, but something very special that can be found within.
In technical terms, this type of self-perception, acquired from “looking within” in an attempt to discern one’s innermost self is called devata-knowledge – an experience of “the divine within oneself.” Following the American philosopher of religion Richard D. Jones, we might also say that it is an introvertive stance: Everything that is good about the individual is thought to already “lie within”; the task of the initiate is thus merely to discern it through self-probing.
As said, the Upanishads set out to discover this “inner soul” – the individual’s deepest identity which is at the same time held to be synonymous with the essence of all things. The selfhood of man is thus identified with something divine – something pantheistic, as it were. And the individual’s innermost self is portrayed as being of macro-cosmic importance. This approach bears a certain resemblance to the method of Jung himself.
Jung’s Introvertive Approach
As we have previously covered on the site, Jung was strongly influenced by Indian philosophy, employing a number of its devices for his own ends. Indeed, with both his type theory and his later conception of the archetypes Jung made use of this same introvertive technique, telling his followers that “They Were That” special something and giving them an experience of “the divine within themselves.” Here is one example of Jung using the type theory to such ends:
“[Jung said to me] that it was right for his ideas and his psychology to be translated into feeling … that feeling was in his writings. He added … ‘a thinking-intuitive type … cannot turn my ideas into feeling. [Feeling] is your function. Turn [my] ideas into feeling, into music.’ He put his hand on my shoulder and bade me farewell with his blessing. It made sense to me and I felt somehow comforted.” – Irene Champernowne: A Memoir of Toni Wolff (C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco 1980) p. 8
And of course, with regard to the archetypes, Jung postulated the Self as an archetype, much greater and better and – indeed – more divine than the mere personal ego. As noted in our essay on how Indian philosophy influenced Jung, this duality seems to have been copied over wholesale from Vedanta, equipping it only with the scantiest of Western glossings.
Thus, as said, both the theory of types and the theory of archetypes were used by Jung in ways that aimed to promote devata-knowledge in his followers and give them an experience of “the divine within themselves.” In his own way, this is also what the Jung scholar Richard Noll concluded in his books, The Jung Cult and The Aryan Christ, although Noll traced these similarities to Hellenic Mystery Cults rather than to Vedanta.
The Buddha’s Critique of Early Vedanta
When the Buddha founded his own teaching, he revolted against the early Vedanta view. In fact, the rejection of introvertive ideas such as the ones found in early Vedanta (and Jung) would come to be a cornerstone of the Buddha’s way of life. In his view, all such “fixed,” inner ideas were little more than dogmas and they all had to be rejected as being inconsistent with the facts of introspection.
Being a consummate empiricist, the Buddha rejected unifying concepts such as “Self” or “type” since, as David Hume said, they are entities that the mind “adds” to our experience and not immediately given in what we experience when we introspect. Stripping this glossing of an added “type” or “self” from the domain of pure experience, the Buddha concluded that there is no permanent or substantial entity underneath the apparent conflict and multiplicity that most people experience when they introspect. That chaos and conflict inside you is the real “self”; it is reality itself, compounded into what most people erroneously call a self, and it is compounded for only a very short time before the forces of reality converge to dissolve it again. There is nothing special about it.
From this position, the Buddha saw major problems with the approach of Vedanta (as he would have done with Jung). If we allow ourselves to believe that there is something “special” and “positive” inside of ourselves that is simply there, regardless of what we do, this belief may lead us into complacence and inaction. Such beliefs easily run the risk of becoming a mental clutch that consoles us, telling us that we are already adequate as we are. Indeed, to the Buddha, the realization of one’s own inadequacy is what spurs the individual onwards towards greater deeds. To cling to some special self “inside” is what makes you ignorant: Why learn or better yourself if you already contain something immensely precious? To the Buddha, such beliefs were “doctrines for fools.”
Comparison of Vedanta, Buddhism, and Jung
All three of the approaches described above may be characterized as a response to mankind’s existential challenges and anxieties. All mundane existence is plagued by imperfection and dissatisfaction. In addressing these problems, the Upanishads and Jung speak of their solutions in more positive terms, i.e. in coming to realize the self or “becoming whole,” while the Buddha retains a more negative attitude, stressing that the sorrowless state is only possible through the withdrawal of passions and attachments from this life. Jung, Vedanta, and the Buddha all agree, however, that salvation from phenomenal suffering lies in the realization of what is truly real. Nevertheless, where Jung and Vedata stress the importance of making contact with one’s innermost self, the Buddha denies the self altogether.
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Image in the article commissioned from artist Georgios Magkakis.