Here are some observations pertaining to Jung which can bring their own nuances to the discussion. In the following let me just reproduce them without any comment. ~ RYD Sri Aurobindo in a letter to Dilip Kumar Roy in 1932 Krishnaprem's letter is as refreshing as its predecessors; he always takes things by the right end. And his way of putting them is delightfully pointed and downright, as is natural to one who has got to the root of the matter. But I find it difficult to take Jung and the psychologists very seriously [when they try to scrutinise spiritual experience by the flicker of their torch-lights], though perhaps one ought to, for half-knowledge is a powerful thing and can be a great obstacle to the coming in front of the true Truth. No doubt, they are very remarkable men in their own field, but this new psychology looks to me very much like children learning some summary and not very adequate alphabet, exulting in putting their a-b-c-d of the subconscient and the mysterious underground super-ego together and imagining that their first book of obscure beginnings (c-a-t = cat, t-r-e-e = tree) is the foundation of all knowledge. They look from down up and explain the higher lights by the lower obscurities; but the foundation of things is above and not below, uparibudhna esām [their foundation is above]. The superconscient, not the subconscient, is the true foundation of things. The significance of the lotus is not to be found by analysing the secrets of the mud from which it grows here; its secret is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms for ever in the Light above. The self-chosen field of these psychologists is besides poor and dark and limited; you must know the whole before you can know the part and the highest before you can truly understand the lowest. That is the province of the greater psychology awaiting its hour before which these poor gropings will disappear and come to nothing. Talks with Sri Aurobindo recorded by Nirodbaran December 1940 Sri Aurobindo (laughing): Not at all. It explains Freud. (Laughter) He himself had so many complexes that he couldn't find any other theory than that for every human action. He says that the sense of injustice in children is born from their inability to retain their excrement. (Laughter) And what is surprising is that everybody in Europe believes it. His real contribution is about the subconscient. Even there some of his disciples, such as Jung, are throwing out many things. Evening Talks Second Series recored by AB Purani Jung has admitted that there is an element of mystery, something that baffles the reason, in human personality. One finds that the greater the personality the greater is the complexity. And this is especially so with regard to spiritual personalities,—what the Gita calls "Vibhutis" and "Avatars". Rishabhachand in his biography of Sri Aurobindo Kant's mind sought to reach after intuition, but could not cut its moorings in reason. The same dread is discernible in Jung, the leading psychologist, who, at times, appears to be almost touching the fringes of the psychic and the spiritual, and then recoiling in sudden alarm lest he should lose the safe anchorage of reason and find himself floundering in the uncharted unknown. It must be borne in mind that an endeavour of our consciousness to transcend reason does not mean surrendering our reason to the sub-rational forces of our nature. Transcendence is the law of all earthly beings. Not to aspire and strive for self-transcendence is to obstruct the onward march of evolution. The present impasse is partly due to this evolutionary bottleneck. ... P Marudanayagam—Poet and Critic celebrating Amal Kiran’s 90th birthday One is reminded of the warning given to literary historians and critics by Jung himself against the possible abuse of psychology in his essay. On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry: "A slight whiff of scandal often lends spice to a biography, but a little more becomes a nasty inquisitiveness - bad taste masquerading as science. Our interest is insidiously deflected from the work of art and gets lost in the labyrinth of psychic determinants, the poet becomes a clinical case and, very likely, yet another addition to the curiosa of psychopathia sexualis." Amal Kiran in Science-Materialism-Mysticism We may affirm that under the circumstances the sense of self, which is implied in the "self- awareness" which is one of our mental differentia from the other organisms, need not be an illusion as materialism, whether one-sided or Huxleyan or any other, would think, but has every chance of being the positive sign of an immortal individual entity. This entity would not be the "capsulated ego" (Jung's phrase) which is our surface self-hood: it would be something that is both projected into that ego and continuous beyond it, something that in spite of individuality can partake of universality, the "open" subliminal and whatever is even greater, for its profoundest urge struggling through the ego capsule is to overflow to all beings, to comprehend all existence, to be world-wide, and even world-transcendent. In Jungian language, we may say that it is that part of the individual consciousness which is the outward crest of the "individual unconscious" and, through the latter, a participant in the "collective unconscious". It is what Jung considers the "inner core" of our individuation, the inmost "Self" which he calls "a magnitude superordinate to the conscious ego", "a mid-point stretched between two worlds... strange to us and yet so near," taking in both consciousness and the unconscious, "the centre of the psychic totality, as the ego is the centre of consciousness." Unlike the capsulated ego which is mostly bound up with the physical-vital-mental surface, this soul which is a depth-phenomenon peeping out would survive that surface's disintegration. And in its final essence it would be a spark of the Divine Spirit originating the universe.