Jung. Yoga and the West

Less than a century has passed since yoga became known to the West. Although all sorts of stories about the legendary country of India - the country of sages, gymnosophists and omphaloskeptics - had been known in Europe for two thousand years, it was impossible to talk about real knowledge of Indian philosophy and philosophical practice until the Upanishads were received by the efforts of the Frenchman Anquetil du Perron.. As for a deeper and more comprehensive knowledge, it became possible thanks to the work of Max Muller, who published the sacred books of the East at Oxford. At first, this knowledge remained the privilege of specialists - Sanskrit scholars and philosophers, but very soon the Theosophical movement, inspired by Madame Blavatsky, took possession of the Eastern traditions and conveyed them to the widest possible public. Since then, for several decades, knowledge about yoga has been developing in two different directions: on the one hand, yoga is the subject of the most rigorous academic science, on the other, it has become something like a religion, although it has not developed into a church organization, despite all the efforts of Annie Besant and Rudolf Steiner. Although Steiner was the founder of an anthroposophical sect, he began as a follower of Madame Blavatsky.
This product of the development of yoga in the Western version is very difficult to compare with what yoga is in India. The fact is that the Eastern teaching met in the West with a special situation, with a state of mind that India had never known before. This situation is characterized by a strict division between science and philosophy, which existed in one way or another for about three hundred years before yoga became known to the West. The beginning of this split - a specifically Western phenomenon - actually dates back to the Renaissance, to the 15th century. It was at this time that a broad and passionate interest in antiquity arose, caused by the fall of the Byzantine Empire under the blows of Islam. For the first time in Europe, perhaps not a single corner remained where the Greek language and Greek literature were not known. The Great Schism in the Roman Church was the direct result of this intrusion of so-called pagan philosophy. Protestantism appears, which will soon cover the whole of Northern Europe. But even such a renewal of Christianity could not keep the liberated minds of Europeans in slavery.
The period of world discoveries began, both geographical and scientific - thought was increasingly freed from the shackles of religious tradition. Of course, the churches continued to exist, supported by the religious needs of the population, but they lost their leadership in the field of culture. While the Church of Rome was united by its unsurpassed organization, Protestantism was split into almost four hundred denominations. On the one hand, this was evidence of his bankruptcy, on the other, it spoke of his irrepressible religious vitality. Gradually, during the 19th century, this process led to the emergence of syncretism, as well as to the large-scale importation of exotic religious systems, such as the religions of Babism, Sufi sects, the Ramakrishna Mission, Buddhism, etc. Many of these systems, such as anthroposophy, contained elements of Christianity. The situation that arose as a result was somewhat reminiscent of Hellenistic syncretism of the 3rd-4th centuries. AD, in which there were also traces of Indian thought (cf. Apollonius of Tyana, Orphic-Pythagorean secret teachings, Gnosticism, etc.).
All these systems labored in the field of religion and recruited most of their supporters from the Protestants. Therefore, they are fundamentally Protestant sects. By attacking the authority of the Church of Rome, Protestantism has largely destroyed faith in the Church as a necessary instrument of divine salvation. The whole weight of authority was thus placed on the individual, and with it a previously unprecedented religious responsibility. The absence of confession and absolution aggravated the moral conflict, burdened the individual with problems that the church had previously decided for him. Indeed, the sacraments, and especially the ecclesiastical mass, guaranteed the individual's salvation through a sacred ritual that had power through the clergy. The only thing that was required of the individual was confession, repentance, penance. Now, with the disintegration of the ritual that carried out all this work for the individual, he was forced to do without a divine response to his actions and thoughts. It is this dissatisfaction of the individual that explains the demand for systems that would promise at least some kind of answer, a clear or at least signaled favor to him of a different power (higher, spiritual or divine).
European science has not paid the slightest attention these hopes and aspirations. She lived her intellectual life, which did not concern religious needs and beliefs. This historically inevitable split in Western consciousness also had an impact on yoga, as soon as it established itself on Western soil. On the one hand, she became the object of scientific research, on the other hand, she was hailed as a way of salvation. As for the religious movement itself, its history knows many attempts to combine science with the faith and practice of religion, for example, in Christian Science,3 theosophy and anthroposophy. The latter especially likes to give itself a scientific appearance, and therefore, like Christian Science, it easily penetrates the circles of intellectuals.
Since the Protestant does not have a predetermined path, he is ready to welcome almost any system that promises success. He must now do for himself what the church used to do as mediator, but he does not know how to do it. And if he is seriously in need of religion, then he is forced to make extremely great efforts to acquire faith, because the Protestant doctrine places faith extremely high. However, faith is a charisma, a gift of grace, not a method. Protestants are so devoid of method that many of them took a serious interest in the purely Catholic exercises of Ignatius Loyola. But whatever the Protestant does, what most oppresses him is the contradiction between religious doctrine and scientific truth. The conflict of faith and knowledge went far beyond Protestantism, it also affected Catholicism. This conflict is due to a historical split in the European consciousness. From the point of view of psychology, this conflict would have no basis if it were not for such an unnatural compulsion to believe and an equally unnatural belief in science. It is quite possible to imagine such a state of consciousness when we simply know, and, in addition, believe in what seems to us, for one reason or another, probable. There is no ground for the conflict between faith and knowledge, both sides are necessary, because individually neither knowledge nor faith alone is enough for us.
Therefore, when the "religious" method is at the same time recommended as the "scientific" method, one can be sure that it will find a wide audience in the West. Yoga fully meets these aspirations. In addition to the attraction of everything new and the charm of the semi-understandable, there are many more reasons the fact that yoga fans flock. First of all, it not only offers a long-awaited path, but also has a philosophy unsurpassed in depth. In addition, yoga contains the possibility of obtaining a controlled experience, and thereby satisfies the scientist's passion for "facts". Moreover, the profoundness of yoga, its venerable age, the breadth of doctrine and method, covering all spheres of life - all this promises unheard of possibilities, which its missionaries never tire of emphasizing.
I will not expand on what yoga means for India, because I cannot judge anything without having personal experience. I can only talk about what it means to the West. Our lack of spiritual orientation borders on mental anarchy, so any religious or philosophical practice is tantamount to at least some kind of psychological discipline; in other words, it is a method of mental hygiene. Many purely physical yoga procedures are also a means of physiological hygiene, far superior to ordinary gymnastics or breathing exercises, since yoga is not just mechanics, but has a philosophical content. By training various parts of the body, yoga connects them into a single whole, connects them to consciousness and spirit, as it clearly follows from pranayama exercises, where prana is both breathing and the universal dynamics of the cosmos. If any act of an individual is at the same time a cosmic event, then the "light" state of the body (innervation) is combined with the uplift of the spirit (universal idea), and thanks to this combination, a vital whole is born. It will never be produced by any "psychotechnics", even if it is the most scientific one. The practice of yoga is unthinkable - and ineffective - without the ideas on which it is based. In it, the physical and the spiritual merge in an amazingly perfect way.
In the East, where the origins of these ideas and practices lie, where an uninterrupted tradition for more than four thousand years has created the necessary states of mind, yoga is an excellent method of merging body and mind. Their unity can hardly be called into question, and I am willing to admit it. In this way, predispositions are created that make possible an intuitive vision that transcends consciousness itself. Indian thinking easily operates with such concepts as prana. Another thing is the West. Possessing a bad habit of believing and a developed scientific and philosophical criticism, he inevitably finds himself in a dilemma: either he falls into the trap of faith and, without the slightest glimpse of thought, swallows such concepts as procha,