Jung and Oriental Philosophy

Abstract

The development of this work focuses on the study of the Second Part of Volume II of Jung’s Complete Works, titled “About the Psychology of Western Religion and Eastern Religion”, published in its Spanish translation in 2008. This volume gathers together six interesting studies by Jung on some texts and traditions of India and China, which representing an exceptional example of the encounter of a Westerner withthe wisdom of the East. In particular, reading oriental texts offers Jung the support of millenarian traditions, of very subtle and elaborate doctrines, and of privileged methods of awareness. Thousands and thousands of individuals have tried, over the centuries, to use these methods to reach an ever greater knowledge of themselves and achieves states in which they increasingly surpass their material and ordinary limitations, in contrast to the different psychological, psychoanalytical and spiritual methods that have been typical of the Western tradition.