The Psyche as The Giver of ALL Data

It is an undeniable fact that The Tibetan Book of The Dead is created out of the archetypal contents of the unconscious. Behind these there lie - and in this our Western reason is quite right - no physical or metaphysical realities, but “merely” the reality of psychic facts, the data of psychic experience. Now whether a thing is “given” subjectively or objectively, the fact remains that it - is.

The Bardo Thodol was no more than this, for its five Dhyani-Buddhas are themselves no more than psychic data. That is just what the dead man has to recognise, if it has not already become clear to him during life, that his own psychic self and the giver of all data are one and the same. The world of gods and spirits is truly “nothing but” the collective unconscious inside me.


















text : Carl Gustav Jung, Psychological Commentary on "The Tibetan Book Of The Dead"
image : Nadav Kander, "Bodies. 6 Women, 1 Man", 2011

video : visit in Nadav Kander London studio
film : Bodies. 6 Women, 1 Man (10:50) by Nadav Kander

* at the end of Psychological Commentary, Jung writes:
"The Bardo Thodol began by being a 'closed' book,and so it has remained, no matter what kind of commentaries may be written on it. For it is a book that will only open itself to spiritual understanding. and this is a capacity which no man is born with, but which he can only acquire through special training and special experience. It is good that such to all intents and purposes 'useless' books exist. They are meant for those 'queer-folk', who no longer set much store by the uses, aims, and meaning of present-day 'civilization'."

Thu, Sep 3, 2020  Permanent link

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