A Letter from C. G.

Jung
Yoga, Zen, and Koestler
19th October, 1960
Dear Mr. Lasky,
I don't feel happy about the reaction to Koestler which you received from Zrich through
the medium of my secretary. I am recovering from a serious illness and I was unable to lake care
of my correspondence for several weeks. The impression you got from my message must have
been confusing. This unfortunate effect can hardly be avoided, when one has to deal with such a
paradoxical phenomenon as Zen (and the less complicated Yoga).
In the main I fully agree with Koestler's rather unfavourable opinion. His is a meritorious
as well as a needful act of debunking, for which he deserves our gratitude. The picture he is
drawing of Yoga and Zen is, as the view of the Western mind, rational, distant, andas it
were unprejudiced and correct. As far as this kind of mind reaches and can be called valid,
Koestler's judgment is true.
But the question, that must be asked, is: Is the Western point of view really unprejudiced?
What about its rationalism and its chief modus of opinionating from without, viz., its
Extraversion? Rationality is only one aspect of the world and does not cover the whole field of
experience. Psychical events are not merely caused from without and mental contents are not
mere derivatives of sense-perceptions. There is an irrational mental life within, a so-called
"spiritual life," of which almost nobody knows or wants to know, except a few "mystics." The
"life within" is generally considered as nonsense and has therefore to be eliminated; curiously
enough in the East as well as in the West. Yet it is the origin and the still flowing source of
Yoga, Zen, and many other spiritual endeavours. not only in the East but also in the West. But
as Buddhism in its many differentiations has overlaid the original spiritual adventure, so
Christian rationalism the medieval alchemistic philosophy which has been forgotten since about
200 years. This Philosophy is as completely lost to us as the I Ching to China. It has also
developed the symbolism of aiming, shooting and hitting the target, though not by the bow, but
by the crossbow, and not as a real practice, but as a purely pictorial metaphor. Alchemy has used
this symbolism in order to express that idea that its procedure had a purpose, a goal, and a target,
though it never concretised the symbol to such an extent as to make a ritual of shooting with
crossbows. It remained a metaphor. But the actual chemistry attempted in Alchemy was an
obvious result of the adepts literal-mindedness, which tried to cook, melt, and distill symbolic
substances.
Even a genuine and original inner life has a tendency to succumb again and again to the
sensualism and the rationalism of consciousness, i.e., to literal-mindedness. The result is that
one tries to repeat a spontaneous irrational event by a purposeful imitatory arrangement of
analogous circumstances, which apparently had led to the original event.
The GREAT question, the immense hope, and the liberating ekstasis of the primordial
experience soon transform into the pertinacity of a mental pursuit, which tries, though the
application of a method, to attain the effect of the primordial experience, namely a certain

spiritual transformation. The depth and intensity of the original emotion becomes a passionate
longing and an enduring effort, which may last for hundreds of years, to restore the original
condition. Curiously enough one does not realize that the original situation had been a
spontaneous natural emotion or ekstasis, and thus the complete opposite of a methodically
constructed imitation.
When the old Chinese master asked the pupil, with whom he walked at the time of the
blossoming laurel: Do you smell it?, and the pupil experienced satori, we can still guess and
understand the beauty and the fullness of the enlightening moment. It is overwhelmingly clear
that such a kairos can never be brought back by an ever so painstaking, methodic, and willful
attempt. There is no doubt, however, that such a patient and pertinacious application produces
effects of a kind, but it is more than doubtful whether they represent the original satori or not.
An even longer distance seems to separate the satori of meaningful koans from Zen
archery. There seems to be a difference comparable to the events depicted in the gospels or the
illumination of St. Paul and the Exercitia Spiritualia of St. Ignatius de Loyola.
The original Gnostic vision of Alchemy is still visible in Zosimos of Panopolis (3rd
century, A.D.) and one can understand from the depth and the power of such thoughts the
subsequent obstinacy of the alchemical pursuit, which for 1,700 years could not give up its hope
to produce the panacea or the artificial gold, in spite of all disenchantments and all debunking
through the centuries.
I QUITE AGREE with Koestler, when he puts his finger on the impressive mass of nonsense in
Zen, as I agree with all the former critiques of Alchemy. But I want to point out at the same
time, that as the obviously absurd chemistry of Alchemy was a half-conscious blind for a very
real spiritual longing, thus the secret passion, which keeps Zen and other spiritual techniques
alive though the centuries, is connected with an original experience of wholeness, perhaps the
most important and unique of all spiritual experiences. As there are apparently no external,
rational, controllable, and repeatable conditions proving or justifying the existence or validity of
inner Life, one is inclined to think that such an unusual amount of absurdities would have killed
a spiritual movement in no time or would kill it at least in our more enlightened days. This very
understandable Western expectation does not come off, because it envisages only the nonessential, but not the essential, which is omitted in our judgment, because our Western ignorance
does not see it or has forgotten it: that man has or is visited by subjective inner experiences of an
irrational nature, which cannot be successfully dealt with by rational arguments, scientific
evidence, and depreciative diagnosis.
BECAUSE THE WEST has deprived itself of its own original irrational methods and yet needs
them badly; because its inner Life can only be repressed, but hot helped, by rationalism, it tries to
adopt Yoga and Zen. It is just pathetic to see a man like Herrigel acquiring the art of Zen
archery, a non-essential, if ever there was one, with the utmost devotion; butthank Godit has
obviously nothing to do with the inner Life of Man!
We are even afraid of admitting the existence of such a thing, as it might be
pathological. This is the poisonous dart in the bow of the sceptic or the suicidal doubt in a
weak mind! Curiously enough one does not realize that the only living existence we
immediately contact, is our spontaneous subjective life and not our opinionated life, which is one
step removed from reality. The latter should perhaps be happy according to our standards, yet it
is not; and vice-versa. We are unexpectedly happy when we are doing uphill work like Till

Eulenspiegel, and should be gloomy, at least by all reasonable expectations. We hate and fear
the irrationality of the things within, and thus never learn the art of living with the things as they
are. We prefer opinions to real life and believe in words rather than facts, with the result that our
existence is rather two-than three-dimensional.
The more this is the case, the more the longing for wholeness intensifies. But instead of
considering ones own irrationality one eagerly studies Zen and Yoga, if possible the more
obvious and tangible parts of both. If one is patient enough (e.g., in spending years and years in
learning Zen archery) one is rewarded, as one always is, when one is doing something
disagreeable with utmost patience and discipline, which are in themselves reward enough, but
not more.
C. G. Jung