Alok, It makes no sense to compare one path to another, and even less to compare a specific psychological path to a specific yogic path. Let’s give to Jung what belongs to Jung – and to Sri Aurobindo what belongs to Sri Aurobindo, in fairness and dispassion. Jung’s main concern was that the Western consciousness has been uprooted from its foundations; and not just spiritually, but in every sense. Having abandoned/vilified/emptied its tradition the contemporary Westerner is left wandering in a no man’s land; eventually, imitating from outside eastern models that, having no roots in the collective Western psyche, lead nowhere. This is Jung’s main operation theatre. Having been brought up in the West and, because of my family and early teachers, in a spiritual and mystical environment, I do know, out of personal experience, that Jung is absolutely right in exhorting the West to find back its soul that, in its full light and stature, is as bright as that of the East, as Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have also pointed out. From whatever spot we start the ascent, the summit is one. I am also fully aware of how serious are the consequences for giving up one’s heritage, and I fully agree with Jung that, before trying the most glittering adventure, the first thing to do is doing order at home, in one’s personal psyche, while a similar process should start simultaneously at a collective and racial level. Rediscovering our roots and ancestral heritage – what Sri Aurobindo calls the soul and genius of the nation, whatever the nation is – is a foremost necessity; and not for the West only, but for the East and India as well. I have mentioned Jung. But doesn’t Sri Aurobindo say the same regarding India, as a nationalist fighter but also afterward, as a yogi and master? Pointing out that India has to make a synthesis of the best that the Indian and the Western spirit have expressed, and on that basis recover its true stature and mission? And is not RY Deshpande consistently appealing to the lost heritage of India, over and again, in so many articles? Whether Easterners or Westerners, there is nowhere to go if first we don’t trace back our roots and, on such foundations, start to build our own cathedral. What shape this will take depends on our svabhava and adhikara. And if that path is Jung’s, this too is a path and, according to Indra Sen and Satya Prakash Singh (two aurobindonian university professors), a path from which aurobindonians too can usefully draw. The sad truth is that, whether Westerners or Indians, along with our heritage we have also lost track of the ultimate goal: Self realization. As long as we don’t recover such awareness there is no Integral Yoga, and no Supramental Yoga – whatever our birth place, environment and education are. As it also emerges from the ignited discussion on the article “India’s Independence and Spiritual Destiny”, in Mirror of Tomorrow, contemporary India has picked up a trend of modernization and development that, if it keeps disregarding its ancestral heritage – the sanatana dharma in all its multifarious expressions – may result in India turning into a new super power, but at what cost? Nor has the prevailing trend, devoid of humanities and the ontological quest, spared psychology, more and more oriented towards American behaviorism; as if the human psyche could be instructed like a tamed horse or a pet dog, in complete ignorance of the personal and collective unconscious! In the USA this goes hand in hand will all sort of “new age” surface injunctions, its supermarket spirituality and paraphernalia; making a soup of everything, down to Jung himself and, of course, yoga. Is the Indian model compatible with such things, down to how psychology is being taught? Let’s now go back to the main contention. Within their own yogic path Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have charted a psychological path. The first one pointing at certain common links with aspects of the personal unconscious of Freud and, furthermore, not only the collective unconscious Jung had discovered, but even Jung’s Self, is the late Prof. Indra Sen, a professor of Psychology at Delhi University who gave up a most promising career to become a full time disciple of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. I wrote in “Becoming One – The Psychology of Integral Yoga”: “In India Professor Sen was considered the leading authority on Jung, whom he met in 1938 on the occasion of celebrations for the 25th anniversary of the University of Calcutta, organised by the Indian Science Congress, when Jung was honoured with a doctorate. In a private interview Jung unveiled to Sen delicate matters that were to be kept secret for years, on Jung’s request. Sen started visiting the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1939, spending most of his time there; he settled permanently in Pondicherry in 1945. While he was still a professor at the University of Delhi, reading the works of Sri Aurobindo he discovered that here was a new psychological system whose perfection he had not found anywhere else; the only term for it was Integral Psychology. Sen referred this to Sri Aurobindo. This was accepted by Sri Aurobindo and Sen was asked to write articles on the subject to present the system of Integral Psychology. All his articles, on any subject, were read to Sri Aurobindo until 1950, when the Master left the body – and afterwards to the Mother – before being published in the journals of the country.” In the light of the unique position he had vis-à-vis our Masters, Prof. Sen’s assessments on Jung carry a special weight. He wrote in “Integral Psychology: The Psychological System of Sri Aurobindo”, Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry, 1st edition 1986, which I also reproduce from “Becoming One”: “Freud has added a completely new dimension, that of the subconscious, to Western psychology; and between psychoanalysis and yoga there are many interesting points of contact, though the fundamental approaches are, in fact, opposed. The psychoanalytic doctrine that the symptoms of the disease are willed by the patient is matched to the yogic principle that nothing happens to a person unless there is a basis for it in his will. Again, the principle that the psycho-analyst must first be himself psycho-analysed before trying to psycho-analyse others is parallel to the yogic ideal that one who is not himself liberated should not try to liberate others. The opposition in the basic standpoints too is as strong as the similarity in the above points.” [p.92] Referring to the Jungian self the professor continued, “It is, however, in Jung that Western psychology comes nearest to yogic psychology. His affirmation of a ‘centre’ of personality on the basis of dream analysis, particularly what he calls the Mandala dreams and certain other facts, is strikingly similar to the yogic conception of the central psychic or spiritual personality. This ‘centre’, Jung affirms, is other than the normal ego-personality and its various dualities.”” [Ibid.] Furthermore, ““[Psychoanalysis] is a powerful movement of thought, ever throwing up new ideas” Sen observed. “But it has not had an impact on Yoga. Jung’s Analytic Psychology has had that impact and of deeper spiritual experiences expressed in religious life and otherwise, as his thought and the work of the Jungian analysts show.”” [p.255] Sen specifies, “In Western psychology, Jung, on purely empirical grounds through a study of the dreams of normal persons and a survey of religious experience, has come to affirm that there is a ‘centre’ behind the apparent dualisms of mental life. This ‘centre’ is comparable to the ‘Atman’ of Indian psychological systems, with the difference that in yoga it must be made, at the end, a fact of experience and not retained as an inference.” [p.115] He went on writing, “If we take the two bodies of knowledge, Western psychologi¬cal knowledge of personality and Indian yogic knowledge of personality, do they not fall into a coherent form, yielding a surer feeling as to what personality is and what its outer form and reactions are ? Indian psychology, as it were, fulfils Western psychology and Indian psychology gets a fuller and detailed knowledge of the outer form of personality. The knowledge of the essential part is indispensable. That is what lends uni¬queness and wholeness to personality and is, therefore, most important for educational and therapeutic purposes.” [Ibid.] At last, referring to Yoga, Prof. Sen stated, ““The objective of the realisation of ‘a unique, indivisible unit’ or ‘whole man’, that ideal of personality as Jung puts it, can be, on the whole, accepted on behalf of yoga.”” [p.130] And he concluded, ““Integral Psycho¬logy appreciates the general findings of Jungian psychology. But it asks: “How are these findings going to be put into prac¬tice?’ Integral Psychology has an Integral Yoga for its actualisation. Does Jungian psychology not need a Jungian Yoga?”” [p.141] Prof. Satya Prakash Singh, who in his youth had studied under Sen, and who is the author of “Sri Aurobindo and Carl Jung”, later reprinted with a section on the Vedas as “Sri Aurobindo, Jung and Vedic Yoga” goes even further, as I am going to quote next. Paulette