Status
Available
Call number
Call number
APJ
Publication
Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c1996.
Original publication date
1933
Physical description
xlvi, 128 p.; 24 cm
Local notes
Jung's seminar on Kundalini yoga, presented to the Psychological Club in Zurich in 1932, has been widely regarded as a milestone in the psychological understanding of Eastern thought and of the symbolic transformations of inner experience. Kundalini yoga presented Jung with a model for the developmental phases of higher consciousness, and he interpreted its symbols in terms of the process of individuation. With sensitivity toward a new generation's interest in alternative religions and psychological exploration, Sonu Shamdasani has brought together the lectures and discussions from this seminar. In this volume, he re-creates for today's reader the fascination with which many intellectuals of prewar Europe regarded Eastern spirituality as they discovered more and more of its resources, from yoga to tantric texts. Reconstructing this seminar through new documentation, Shamdasani explains, in his introduction, why Jung thought that the comprehension of Eastern thought was essential if Western psychology was to develop. He goes on to orient today's audience toward an appreciation of some of the questions that stirred the minds of Jung and his seminar group: What is the relation between Eastern schools of liberation and Western psychotherapy? What connection is there between esoteric religious traditions and spontaneous individual experience? What light do the symbols of Kundalini yoga shed on conditions diagnosed as psychotic? Not only were these questions important to analysts in the 1930s but, as Shamdasani stresses, they continue to have psychological relevance for readers on the threshold of the twenty-first century. This volume also offers newly translated material from Jung's German language seminars, a seminar by the indologist Wilhelm Hauer presented in conjunction with that of Jung, illustrations of the cakras, and Sir John Woodroffe's classic translation of the tantric text, the Sat-cakra Nirupana.
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User reviews
LibraryThing member Tobias.Bruell
The book consists of three part, roughly equal in size, although the second part is somewhat larger.
The first part (written by the Editor) provides a historical background for the second part; this second part contains four lectures of Jung about Tantra Yoga. The third part (Appendix) contains
This first part is understandable/readable and deserves a higher rating. The second part is very unintelligible and I could not make much sense of the words in there. This part deserves a lower rating. I stopped reading it after 7 pages. I did then not look at the third part.
The first part (written by the Editor) provides a historical background for the second part; this second part contains four lectures of Jung about Tantra Yoga. The third part (Appendix) contains
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further material from Jung.This first part is understandable/readable and deserves a higher rating. The second part is very unintelligible and I could not make much sense of the words in there. This part deserves a lower rating. I stopped reading it after 7 pages. I did then not look at the third part.
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