Carl Jung On Yoga In the West

Today I speak again with Tim Kenty, whom you may remember from the episode about spiritual bypassing. This time, we discuss an intriguing quote from Carl Jung about the practice of yoga in the western world. It may sound controversial to western yogis, but Carl Jung was not someone whose words are to be taken lightly.

Get ready for a plunge in the ocean of wisdom, as Tim Kenty unpacks Jung’s statement, and travels back in time to the pre-Socratic philosophers who communed with Mother Nature.

Transcript

In this episode I speak again with Tim Kente. Do you remember him? And this time we will speak about the practice of yoga in the Western world. Hello, Yogi. Welcome to my podcast. I'm Aiko. And on this show, We explore ways to put spiritual theory into sustainable practice. So welcome again, Tim Kente, To this show. I'm super happy you're here again. Oh, Thanks. Me too. Thank you. So I wanted to discuss this quote from Carl Jung that came across some weeks ago. And it made me think of you because I think this word will spark a response from you that will be helpful to modern yoga practitioners. I'm sure that you will both probably agree and disagree with the statement, But let's see. So this word was spoken in 1936, So 85 years ago from Carl Jung. I will now read his statement. He's saying, My criticism is directed solely against the application of yoga to the people of the West. The spiritual development of the West has been along entirely different lines from that of the East and has therefore produced conditions which are the most unfavorable soil one can think of for the application of yoga. Western civilization is scarcely a thousand years old and must first of all free itself from its barbarous one-sidedness. This means above all deeper insight into the nature of man. But no insight is gained by repressing and controlling the unconscious and least of all by imitating methods which have grown up under totally different psychological conditions. In the course of the centuries the West will produce its own yoga. So I think are very strong words and very impressive to me and I would like to know what you think about it. Yeah, Well I guess we're just going to think about it out loud. Right away I get what you mean by, Oh I think you'll agree and disagree. So I definitely agree and disagree. So that's excellent ground for a conversation. But you know I can't presume to propose a thesis response to this vision of Koryoung but we can like I said just think out loud about it and kind of start walking that collective self-reflection. You know I appreciate Koryoung quite a lot. I felt really inspired by him and his work particularly his mystical writings of his personal process. You know there's a book that's now famous as the Red Book that he forbid it to be published during his lifetime. And it came out decades and decades and decades after he had died. And he wrote his personal journal of himself unmasked. Because he was you know some people they kind of see Koryoung as this sort of prophet for the Western psyche. Because he was able not just to research different mythological we'll say mythology you know the image language of different sacred cultures around the world. He couldn't just he didn't just research it through the lens of the Western superiority. But he really was able to subjectively appreciate you know it's like can you speak different languages can you speak French and Italian and some Latin. And he could speak with these things you know which is very different from analyzing them from the language of the Western mind. But then he would step forward and he would speak in the Western language. He was speaking to the Western world to the evolving like adolescent collective Western psyche. He was speaking to it in its own language. So he was very expert to personally have the liberalness of mind. You know the flexibility of mind to subjectively access things outside of the language of the culture. The like paradigm also the mysticism of the culture he was born in. He was able to go outside of that and really subjectively grasp at a certain level what these other mystical cultures are talking about. And then he could make that relevant and translate it to the Western mind. So he's a very interesting person in that way. I think he was capable of things that he knew most of his clan the Western humanity were not capable of. As in general. I think some individuals but his level of kind of if you say spiritual maturity was uncommon. And he was speaking in a way to children. And you know some things are true. You know when you're in school and you're in second grade and you start learning math. Well first grade you'll learn like addition and subtraction and then second grade you'll learn multiplication. Eventually you start learning division and fractions division. So when you're first learning division the teacher will say okay class one two three four five six seven eight nine ten. Which of these numbers that I've written on the board is divisible by two. To see if you get the concept of division. And the kids who know that what she's asking they'll say oh I know it's two four six eight ten. And she's like very good and she puts a gold star on his paper. And you know you that was the right answer in second grade. But in third grade he finds out that all of those numbers are divisible by two. Because you start getting fractions. So I think what Carl Jung is saying just my like opening comments you know to what we've raised. What he's saying here about the inappropriateness of Western persons taking up Eastern yoga. I think this is like the second grade version you know he's saying there's so much room for repressing the unconscious and escapism. And exacerbating the division between the ego and the shadow. Like exacerbating the psychic conflict that you're already in as a conditioned soul. You know his whole philosophy was that the purpose of human life is to individuate and integrate. It's shadow it's like mommy and daddy they come together and they create a child. Well your daylight ego and your night shadow if they would actually reconcile together they would produce your individuality. The reconciliation of those two your dark and light would produce you the real you. And he's like that's the purpose of human life is to individuate. And I think what he's first the first layer of what he's saying in his like what he says my only criticism about it is how it's applied in the West. Or would be applied as a theory this is before it even really started happening yoga in the West so much. He's saying I just see way too much opportunity for exacerbating the psychic division that goes against the purpose of human life which is individuation. There's way too much room to escape into a fantasy that you just drop all your Western baggage. And all the archetypes that you're born into and start you know playing like cosplay you know cosplay. You just dress up like you're an Indian like you know like you're something that you're not. And he's definitely was wise enough and sensitive enough to know that it's you're not the body. He's the psyche in Greek means the soul. So he's like a soulless a psychologist is a soulless you know his level of integrity with psychology was this is about the being the person. So he's definitely not saying like you're the body and don't pretend to be of a race that you're not or a culture that you're not. I think he's saying like don't pretend to put on another mask on top of your mask. I think that's what I feel is his preliminary warning here. So there are many important points in what he's writing here in what he's saying here. But the main two things I see is Jung's assessment that the West is spiritually unfavorable soul for yoga practice. But that in time the West will produce its own yoga. So what do you think about it? What do you think he could see at that time that the West didn't have what was unfavorable for yoga? Because you know the philosophy and the practice of yoga very very nice. So what do you think he meant by that? I mean anyone who has studied yoga any school of yoga hatha yoga bhakti yoga even like Advaita Vedanta. I bet anybody who has studied those things seriously who's felt a calling to spend years of their life studying and practicing those ideals and concepts. I think anybody who has practiced any form of yoga seriously will feel a difference when they do so in India. You can feel the soil you know like for bhakti yogi to practice yoga while immersed bhakti yoga while immersed up to the heart in the Ganga. It's very different from trying to scrape together some devotional meditation while living in your New York City apartment. Yeah I totally agree. And of course wherever you are like that's the principle of the true mystic is like you will make it work for you. You know if life gives you lemons make lemonade you know like you make it work for you if you really want it you'll be able to transmute what the ingredients you have. You'll be able to by the brilliance of your desire for higher consciousness you'll be able to work with whatever life gives you wherever you are. But still if you've done it sincerely you will feel the difference in India. There's a reason that there are serious yoga teachers who will go to get even hatha yoga teachers will go to get training in India. It's just more favorable soil for many reasons but without even getting into the reasons why analyzing why it's more favorable it's just immediately evident that there's a different kind of energy in the culture in the people in the soil. You know thousands of years of bare feet of sadhus who are immersed in the principles of yoga they put bare feet over every inch of India probably and the dust and the earth and that land. You know this is a really interesting thing actually that's coming up is the problem with colonization. You know if I can go on a little tangent if we have time I'll just go and tell a little story. So I don't want to break anybody's appreciation for Socrates or Plato but I want to say something that's just one angle of vision. There's a writer called Peter Kingsley and he wrote a book called In the Dark Places of Wisdom which wisdom is Sophia which comes from Persephone the goddess of the underworld. So he traces out Peter Kingsley traces out in his book the origins of Western thought Western philosophy not just it used to be a serious thing Western philosophy but now there's like Western philosophy just like what is the West's like ethical relationship with life. Which is pretty polluting and exploiting and unsustainable self-destructive it's sick and it's you know a lot of people in every generation have thought yeah the end is nigh but our generation has like you know the science is also holding a sign on the street the end is nigh you know things are heating up so to speak. And because of a sick philosophy of life and Peter Kingsley traces out this is before Plato and Socrates before them that actually Western thought Greek philosophy was much more of a shamanic process. And he speaks a lot about Parmenides if I'm saying it correctly Parmenides was a philosopher just prior in the like parampara and at the time of Parmenides and in the culture of his age of philosophers. There would be for example like a temple of Apollo the masculine sun god of clarity and light you know knowledge and intellect the true human intellect radiant at its best and next to the temple of Apollo there'd be a hole in the ground you know like a yin yang above the earth is a masculine yang Sun temple and below the earth was like an inversion. There would be like Akiva you know the Hopi the Navajo Akiva is like a temple in the ground it's a hole in the ground and inside there a philosopher someone who has Philos for Sophia who's basically a devotee of wisdom the goddess of wisdom so like Saraswati Bhakta someone who's a devotee of the goddess of wisdom. The personification of wisdom would enter into that hole and fast in what they called incubate for four days or so much like a like a Native American vision quest you go and you fast and you wait for a vision to come and give you a medicine for your people. So the philosophers would go into the ground you know after being duly initiated in mystical ways and prepared psychologically and spiritually they were transmissions you know initiatic transmissions to prepare a person and a qualified person. Who's also has the vocation or is called to be consecrated to Davey to the goddess of the below of the mysteries the dark places of wisdom means like wisdom grows out of mystery it doesn't go out of just. Parroting what you've heard what other traditions are teachers have said that's knowledge wisdom grows out of the darkness of facing mystery and discovering something there. So the initiated philosopher would enter into that place in a mood of devotion and wait just laying still. For the goddess to come for Sophia for Persephone the goddess of the underworld the personified darkness of the mystery. To come and teach him what real wisdom is and when he came out of that hole a few days later he would know not just principles of thought like what to talk about in the next discourse with the other you know. Intellectualist oh this is this interesting thought that came up let's sit around our armchairs and discuss this thought no what he would come out with was nature's design. Nature Davey nature underneath would teach him the roots of understanding and harmony and he would come out with knowledge of medicine for one thing so philosophers with the healers. Because nature herself her wisdom aspect was teaching them the order of things and how to correct disorder so that health manifest. And not just physical health but social health they were also the lawmakers they would come out and they would organize society. You know like varna shram system of giving everybody according to their nature engagement in what they're going to be attracted to and good at where they can contribute in a symbiotic. Human environment it's it's based on the principles of nature so the philosophers were actually healers and social visionaries originally. They were just sitting around and talking about like what is rhetoric you know what is a real question what is a real answer no they were going and they were asking. The divine feminine the mystery personified as their guru please teach us and they were building society Greek society following the like under the invisible queen so she was actually in charge. And so what happens is that at the time of Socrates and Plato there was an aristocracy arises and I'm almost done with this long tangent don't worry. I really like it don't worry it's worth it to take a little time because it'll give some background I think to young stocks and feelings to. About the soil the soil of the West so about this time after Parmenides he's the last in the line that was holding the integrity of this shamanic that's the origins of like real Western philosophy was. Sun you know the upper world and underworld the union the polarity of masculine and feminine and revering the Earth and nature and the mystery and the feminine as guru. Not doing anything without her guidance you're not doing anything without asking her first like really that's the ethic. That may be surprising for Westerners because we think of like the pagans you know or the Hindus or the natives who all have their like many gods and things and like the Western mind is more advanced. But the roots of Western mind with the same thing roots of the Western mind were inquiring of the gods you know that's where. It starts but then an aristocracy started arising in Athens you know a small group what we call nowadays the 1%. These guys who were born into wealth inheriting greater and greater wealth they came together and they wanted to. Maximize their egocentric benefit and they saw that there was a problem with this philosophy that was being transmitted down from Parmenides which is that we don't do anything without asking. Mother first and she was giving perfect principles that she's given to all cultures all shamanic cultures and integral holistic spiritual cultures of all time. She is always allowed for permaculture from a culture isn't just farming permaculture is a culture that will last. For thousands of years like indigenous cultures and Vedic culture because they're sustainable. And these guys this aristocracy arose and they just wanted to capitalize so they created something called democracy. Which is instead of having a qualified consecrated of Saraswati of Sophia instead of having someone who is given their heart sacrifice their independence as a student. And you know a love slave to the feet of the goddess instead of that going through all the labor to raise people like that who can actually converse with her. Let's just us sit around in a circle and talk about among ourselves the new authority is now the circle it's not the goddess anymore it's not wisdom herself. It's us let's talk as a circle and decide what's best and so it's democracy let's vote but who's having that democracy is the guys who all have. Like economic gain and so they stop consulting they stop putting themselves at the feet of Devi they stopped caring about her being leader. And they started humble right well they cut the masculine from the feminine they just took the intellect part because if you take the intellect part part. Then you can exploit the feminine you can exploit the earth you can exploit the lands you can exploit the people. Because Devi mother she serves all the children that means all human beings of all classes of all races all beings of all species in all lands and rivers and everything like mother nature mother wisdom. As mother she's the best servant she feeds everyone so someone who follows her their heart will be a servant to all life. And someone who separates her they just buried her basically they close the hole in the ground nobody's going down there to fast and put themselves in any inconvenience on behalf of. Asking her opinion who cares we want to get more rich and we don't care about the other classes of people we don't care about society being harmonious in the land with nature we don't care about. You know starting to create bigger minds and exploit the earth and slowly that evolves or devolves into gross pollution to the point that it will kill. The species the human species would speak of thousands of other species and what it is is that you've separated the polarity of life the masculine feminine you denied the feminine. And merge in the masculine where we're the rich men so we're going to merge with the masculine principle of intellect without the feminine wisdom. And just exploit their exploiting the feminine but they're just as much exploiting the masculine exploiting the intellect. And from that rift that divorce of masculine feminine of heaven and earth from that moment those guys the democratic mind they think that they're evolving now. And that western society is expanding but all that they created was colonialism where you can get on a ship and you can sail across the ocean to a sacred land like the sacred valley of Peru to the Andes or something where people have this exquisite heaven and earth culture. And they don't care at all about what that land the soil of that land has spoken about spirit to those people they come with their book from their land. And they're bulldozing you know paving over all the identity of the feminine of all the lands and of all the cultures that are diverse of all the different lands all the different sacred traditions are just paved over. And like Roman Christianity for example just paves over everything because they don't care about feminine they don't care about the people who are born from this lands they don't care about the sacred vision that was born from this land the voice of this land they don't care about the voice of Davey. And they don't care therefore about her children. And so this is how death spreads like a cancer around the world by cutting off cutting father and mother apart. That's super sad and I was just watching with Shamananda my husband the documentary is conspiracy I don't know if you saw that. Yeah and I was just thinking like that's so terribly sad like can't we just work together with mother nature like we are walking on mother nature you know it's just we are just surrounded we live because of mother nature and you're just destroying it for the sake of what fame money. Everyone's gonna die you know then what you what you live to your to your kids to your niece and nephews it's just so bad. So it's it's very very thoughtful what you just said and share you know because anyway there are people like native Americans or other also here in Sweden there are some Nazis I don't remember how they called but they also live actually with. You saw me. I think so I'm not sure I can say that but they live in the very north and and they really live with mother nature is just so beautiful it's so fascinating to me. I think we have so much to learn from them so would you say that Jung is proven right wrong or something in between and do you think we can be part of producing our own yoga now in the west what do you think about it. Well I mean I respect you more than as a psychotherapist I really think he's one of the best spiritualists mystical thinkers most in touch with truth and truth also that you can tell the symptoms of someone who's in touch with truth because they're interested in healing. Not just interested in being right or knowing interested in reconciling you know in healing and causing the benefit of others and so I really respect if he says something I'm going to think about it carefully before I'm just like I don't think so it's like. What's he talking about it's it's I mean I love that you shared this quote that we're talking about it because I'm learning a lot just by you know I just recited this you know something I read before but even as it's coming out of my mouth and as you reflect on it afterwards. It's many new things are coming in things I never thought about before and you know so I take it that the spirit of Jung is sitting with us and happy that we're having this conversation and he's still involved you know the good people the great ones who care about the future they never leave us you know. So we have many many invisible friends that want us to get through our troubled adolescence as a Western collective so I think that's what he's talking about is some troubled adolescence. Because yeah it's on what's there's a wound it's not just that Western people are wicked you know or like the white man is the cancer of the earth. Maybe thousands and thousands of years ago other cultures that are more established in their sacred ways and ancestral wisdom now maybe they went through their own difficult adolescence is you know I don't know I can't it's really hard for me to imagine that. European culture alone is like suddenly new and all other ancestral cultures were always there you know but maybe we're just like the late bloomers. And yeah it's very complex to speak about humanity in general as a diverse family in a collective process and then zoom in on this like Western group specifically speaking about Western soil so that's what we're talking about. And I think that the soil you know with this example of cutting off from the tradition coming down to Parmenides you know to to satisfy. I mean that's that's what I want to say about Socrates and Plato and this might really upset some people but this is Kingsley's argument anyway is that to be part of to be on the payroll of that 1% of Athens the great philosophers kind of sold out. And they started to bend started to speak according to the whims of the rich so that they could get the crumbs from the table and so they started taking apart their own ancestral wisdom like they started arguing with Parmenides and like created with their intellectual gifts. Arguments that you know undermined the wisdom of reconciliation of heaven and earth of masculine feminine and it just became masculine democracy humans ruling and colonizing and. Yeah I think that what young is saying about why yoga particularly it's interesting what he meant by yoga was probably not just half a yoga starting about Indian mysticism. And yoga it means literally reconciliation like linking together which curiously the word for reconcile curiously we might have talked about this in our last conversation is shaman in Sanskrit shaman means reconcile. And until the time of this break from the original heaven and earth masculine feminine mysticism of the West until that break like I said they were it was basically a shamanic culture the roots of Western. Wisdom is actually shamanism of their own cultural kind Greek shamanism but you know it becomes a divorce divorce the records masculine feminine mommy and daddy heaven and earth are cut apart. You know around the time of this Athenian aristocracy and the birth of the exploitative upper class. And so it's very hard to practice yoga reconciliation in a soil means also in your unconscious in your roots in your blood in your DNA you're born into a lineage in a culture that is fundamentally. Ashaman yoga it's like anti yoga it's born from the modern Western civilization philosophically is born from the division of masculine feminine. Which means it's at its roots it is unhealthy it is destructive it is against life you know at its roots. Here young is saying like the Western should must first of all free itself from its barbarous one sadness and it's just right. This is barbarous this is barbarous there's no reconciling it's like it's so terrible it's so brutish you know like you said you're watching the sea spirit sea with someone under and it's just like it breaks your heart like how can people be so brutish. Yeah I even cried at the end to start sure I mean we should be crying a lot if we're paying attention to what's going on it's really grievous. And I think that the danger is like well it looks like well then maybe we really should be humble enough as a culture or at least as an individual born in the West maybe it's a sign of humility that I'm like yeah I don't think that this capitalist dream is all in all. Maybe I can be humble enough to think that the brown people of India or like you know someone outside of my cultural. You know paradigm might be smarter and might be wiser and might be able to help me if not help save my culture save my own psyche in my life maybe that's a humble thing you know. But you're saying it's not going to work I mean that's at least this is one clip of you know a conversation he probably had for years and years and years. It has many facets but saying it's not going to work what is his point about someone who's in a barber is one sided fractured wounded situation why wouldn't it be favorable for them to take shelter of holistic yoga unity. Why would that not be exactly what the Western mind needs and I think what he's saying is speaking to the maturity level of Western culture was like yeah this is just going to actually exacerbate your internal division because now. You're identified with this one sided thing and then that's not you know you're like the real being the self is inside but you're identified with a fractured psyche that's one sided you know how to get mine this egocentric not the mothering like feeding of life. Just the consuming side you just one sided you actually identify with that and you haven't reconciled that thing so your tendency as a colonist is to pave over you know to like cover up other things you know cover up the indigenous cultures with your churches and your systems of government and your property rights and just pave over the whole world if you could. With your own little you know egocentric view and you're going to do the same if that's the function that's going on inside of you you will do the same thing to yourself. You will just pave over that you are a colonist you will colonize yourself with Indian mysticism instead of actually. Milking the science like a factually successfully milking the science of yoga and reconciling yourself to wholeness you probably not going to do that because you have this Western wound that makes you a one sided barbarous. Colonist internally and you're probably just going to colonize yourself with this new thing that you identify with now I'm a yogi I'm going to grow my dreadlocks. Or I'm going to you know I just going to start I get this like special earring in one year for the guys and you know there's all these things that I need to start dressing up and covering over I mean get this loose flowing pants and I'm going to. Talk a different way and you know I'm going to basically instead of dealing with the. The mess of the wound that I have inherited which is a big wound it's not just like me and my childhood traumas it's. You know condensed generations and generations and generations and generations and generations hundreds of years thousand years of sickness. You know re just I forget the word. Compounding of compounding upon compounding upon compounding until it's like so egocentric that you think it's all about you and like your experience with your father as a child and it's like that's the smallest thing that you're actually dealing with you know and that's the farthest you've got away from like the feminine side of caring about the collective. And the symbiotic wholeness of life you're so far away from that mother's view that it's all about you and your trauma and your journey of healing and it's like. And then you're just going to go to like probably a debate to be done to so that you can be God like well this my record to escape this very difficult reality of a fractured. One sided ness I'm going to pave it over with a mask of yoga that suddenly I'm a very peaceful reconciled yogi. And if I go really far I'm going to go all the way just to absolute one this not one sided anymore there's no duality because she will hum I am she will humber must me I am God. I mean that's people are just like you know like lemmings running off the cliff you know you heard they just like mass suicide. It's like that I think is what you're saying is like the Western collective psyche is in a troubled adolescence right now and adolescence are often like so emotionally perturbed that they cut themselves you know they go to drugs and this often their suicide and there's like serious depression. And I think that the collective Western being as a collective mind is in a very troubled adolescence and this suicidal is addicted to drugs and self harm and lashing out at mommy and daddy know I know there's like you need to be an atheist now if you're a. Progressive thinker contemporary thinker lashing out at daddy and you know you want to capitalism is like yeah I want to be a good person I want to recycle but I'm going to create my own business in your own business is still producing tons and tons and tons of garbage and tons of petroleum and like people can justify like. Rejecting the higher what's higher than you God and nature are higher than you you should follow them but they just justify it because it's like the adolescent who's in the house like I don't listen to you I'm my own person but it's like yeah but you're living in my house and you're eating my food and you have no job and you depend for your life on me and it's not very impressive you're like loud. Affirmation of your individuality when you're totally dependent it's like super hypocritical but the parents tolerated because what you're immature you're a crazy teenager. I think you're saying like Western culture is like. Psycho emotionally in an extremely volatile state of adolescent turbulence and is self harm and it's not really going to help to pretend that's not going on and put on a mask of suddenly being shanti shanti. Yeah I think that's what he's saying not that yoga itself is inaccessible but I think for him I think he gets it and I think he's speaking from the perspective of a yogi exactly so he's not excluding all people in the West but he's speaking to the collective mind like. We are not able to digest this because at this point we would just be escaping our own serious issues and the real dirty work of our healing. And one last question now do you think that now the West is producing its own yoga right now is this what is happening now because now everyone somehow at least heard about yoga but so many people are doing yoga what do you think about it. Well just to follow young's thought you know his like we said in the beginning his whole vision of human purpose is individuation and. There's a thesis of who you are is like the daylight ego who you look at yourself in the mirror who you want to see yourself as I'm a good person who you want others to see you as this is like the thesis of who I am who you show others and who like even when you're alone in your mind you're trying to be. Because you feel like you should be it's not really necessarily who you are it's who you feel like you should be. That's the thesis and then all the parts of you the feelings and memories and dreams and occurrences and incongruities that don't match your proposal of who you are you have no choice but to repress them if you identify with the proposal it's one sided. No that's what he's talking about it's the ego daylight ego is one sided and all the other stuff the other content. That doesn't match that becomes a shadow and it's repressed and that's the anti thesis well I'm a good person and I care about the environment and I'm spiritual and I'm compassionate and. You know all the things that I think I should be I'm independent and I'm successful and I have integrity and all these things in all the millions of things that are going on in me that have happened that are. Stay with me like memories or that are still going on or that I have tendencies to do in the future all of that doesn't match my like. Goodie my good picture of myself that becomes the anti thesis I propose that I'm this and then. Your psyche says and but what about this anti thesis shadow and young says the only way that you can individual a real individual is if you can sit down and have the thesis and the antithesis. Look at each other face to face and have a conversation if they remain split apart where one denies the other know the thesis. The good ego denies the shadow no no I'm good person but the shadow in reaction sometimes it comes bursting out like this gargoyle and you just suddenly. Fall down into lower tendencies or you binge or these other tendencies they can it's like pushing down a spring you just giving it more charge to boing and come right back out. So the more that you repress it's like fracking you know this fracking we have in america this horrible thing called fracking. Jet so much pressure deepened cracks in the earth that it basically explodes underneath and all this stuff garbage poisonous toxic black oil and gases and all this stuff just. Comes out from jamming down the pressure it makes it explode and you know hemorrhage the earth hemorrhages and all this garbage comes out and they tried to like. Fracking and that's what everybody who hasn't gone through what you're talking about the human. Rights of passage you haven't become the mystic sacred process that every sacred tradition every ancestral tradition the world is doing only one thing and it's like walking the human being through the process of. True becoming and the western psyche hasn't learned that yet so we're you know fracking and the. The unintegrated person I'm not saying all eastern people have gone through this process either because now it's all kitri hodgepodge every the west is infected and this not just west but this cancerous thing it's not about western east it's about. A sick relation with life wherever it comes from is bad for everybody yeah but this. Shadow will come out like the fracking you know the more you repress the more with more pressure it's going to come out and you're going to like you know freak out one day and do some violence or some addiction or some degradation. So the anti thesis also speaks you know the thesis is like how you try to hold it together in the daylight and then the anti thesis sometimes is going to speak in your like. Incongruent fall downs and if those two things you know they override each other you know when you're super angry for example when the shadow just loses control you like I'm trying to be patient I'm trying to be a good person but your pride that you're. Pretending like you don't have this enormous pride when that pride is just too much rubbed then this rage comes out. You know what you really feel the pride of how important you are comes out like a rage and that anti thesis of the shadow when it comes out completely denies the goodness of you it doesn't care about your yogi values it doesn't care about your life. Liberal you know or conservative it doesn't care about your value system of the daylight ego it's just. So the ego and the shadow take turns colonizing each other like paving over each other and there there at war. They're at war with each other and war is born out of that and you're saying the only way that that you can stop that is if instead of one just trying to talk over the other. They can sit down and listen to each other if you could go through heated this process of internal meditation a very shamanic process that he would walk off so this. His clients the people he was healing into a process of going awake consciously into the unconscious and seeing face to face the different archetypes and things that are there. No consciously facing the unconscious that creates a bridge just like when mommy and daddy come together the seed and the egg this firm in the ovum they connect just one tiny little connection one time. Sets off a process of creating a new being and that's where synthesis comes with the thesis and the antithesis connection touch respectfully synthesis will come in the process of integration integrating all the diverse parts of you. The yoga the real yoga of becoming a whole person will come out and if that if the West is doing creating their own yoga yet. Collectively no I think we're still in the war stage we're in a very dangerous suicidal self-destructive disturbed adolescent traumatized you know born into a traumatic family basically. The soul is taking birth in this Western culture barbers one-sided culture you have family trauma you've been born into a sick family and you have inherited it and that can make a person suicidal drug addicted severely depressed. Dangerously narcissistic you know it's all in. Unavoidable knee-jerk reaction to the pain that you've inherited my being born into a family that's compounded generations of extreme pain. It comes from the heart of the mother you know back at the time of amenities after that they cut off from the mother who loves us the heart of Davie of grace of wisdom. She's crying for her baby and inside our hearts and so body is born from her. In our wisdom is for her the deepest part of our psyche is crying for mother and yet we're in reaction like I hate you mom like trying to destroy I don't know what we're just crazy. Yeah we need yoga but I don't have to learn how to get into yoga. And maybe we need some Western collective as a being adolescent disturbed being maybe needs to make some friends with Eastern yoga with indigenous yoga. You know with older schools like cultures that have lasted for a long time they did that not just because they knew how to farm or how to hunt. It's because they knew how to be and the Western culture doesn't know how to be and so it's freaking out and it doesn't know how to maintain itself. You know it hates itself it's like it's in war thesis versus antithesis and maybe those older cultures that have made it to synthesis. Instead of like in our barbarous one-sidedness you know and you know rebelling was so proud is in our adolescence that we can't listen to anyone else. Maybe to save our life we should actually be humble enough as a culture I mean it's just a pipe dream I can't imagine the Western culture bowing its head collectively to anyone but the mirror. But some people need to make it you know there is going to be great like an adolescent passes through many I was a punk rocker I was kind of like a goth I was kind of you know hippie I went through so many I molted like a chameleon so many things in my middle adolescence. Many things I went through when they died huge things that I identified with died and maybe a lot of Western culture will die in this process. And those of us who can actually start to wisely and maturely take on the work of yoga healing and reconciliation without putting a mask of yoga to hide from the woman face it and be part of the solution. Maybe us and our children and our successors will be the part of the adolescent being that survives and the rest of it has to die. Yeah this is very much also about what we talked last time the spiritual bypassing. So I really really enjoyed this conversation and I think it's also it would be super helpful for whoever is going into yoga right now because it's so important to learn first of all we know we are not speaking only about asanas and position and this and that. Like the reason behind and what is really yoga it's the most important thing otherwise we are just wearing masks and we don't get anywhere. So thank you very very much for this conversation and I will for sure invite you again. Yeah it's fine it's becoming a conversation you know it for me it's been two months or something since we spoke last. But it's exactly where we were before. Yeah yeah that's so interesting because I mean probably it came to my mind somehow unconsciously for that reason but it was not meant to be but it's really a continuation of what we talked last time. Well and I think it's because we are doing enough yoga that we are united with the collective human process and this is the conversation there's no real other conversation for a very sick dangerous mortally. Threatened person then healing you know and becoming for someone who's lost they need to be found someone who's dying they need to be saved if they can. Someone who's questing they need to discover and so I think this conversation is it's our conversation as a species and yeah I hope that this hour between you and I as two tiny little souls. This also can feed something in our brothers and sisters who are also part of this conversation you know I give my respect my britannam to anyone who listens to these things and and feels himself part of this conversation because we're in it together that's what yoga is also is that we do it together. Yeah sharing so thank you. Thank you. I hope this episode fulfilled its purpose of inspiring you if you like it feel free to share it give a review or a rating subscribe and if you have any questions please get in touch at aikoyoga-eikki. Com Namaste.