atman, chakra, samadhi, etc., or his scientific criticism at once dismisses them as "pure mysticism". The split of the Western mind from the very beginning makes it impossible to make any adequate use of the possibilities of yoga. It becomes either an exclusively religious affair, or something like gymnastics, breath control, eurythmics, etc. We do not find here a trace of that unity of this natural wholeness, which is so characteristic of yoga. The Indian never forgets either the body or the mind, while the European always forgets one or the other. Thanks to this forgetfulness, he has conquered the whole world today. Not so with the Indian: he remembers not only his own nature, but also that he himself belongs to nature. The European, on the contrary, has at his disposal the science of nature and knows surprisingly little about his own essence, about his inner nature. For the Indian, the knowledge of the method, which enables him to control the highest force of nature within and without himself, seems to be a gift from above. For a European, the suppression of one's own nature, already distorted, the voluntary transformation of oneself into a kind of robot would seem like pure hell.
It is said that yogis can move mountains, although it would be difficult to find proof of this. The Yogi's power is limited to what is acceptable to his environment. The European, he is capable of lifting mountains into the air, and the world war brought a bitter realization of what he can be capable of when the intellect, which has become alien to nature, loses all rein. As a European, I would not wish other Europeans more "control" and power over nature, be it internal or external. To my shame, I must confess that my brightest insights (there were quite good ones among them) owe their appearance to the fact that I always acted just the opposite of the yoga prescriptions. Having traveled his path of historical development, the European has so far removed himself from his roots that his mind eventually split into faith and knowledge; just as any psychological exaggeration is always torn into its inherent opposites. The European needs to return not to Nature - in the manner of Rousseau - but to his own nature. He must rediscover the natural man in himself. However, instead of this, the European loves systems and methods that can only further suppress the natural in a person, which all the time gets in the way of the European. Therefore, he will certainly begin to use yoga for evil, because his mental dispositions are completely different from those of an Eastern person. I am ready to say to everyone: "Study yoga, and you will learn a lot, but do not try to apply it, because we Europeans are simply not arranged to use these methods correctly. An Indian guru will explain everything to you, and you will be able to imitate him in everything. But do you know who will apply yoga, in other words, do you know who you are, how you yourself are arranged?
The power of science and technology in Europe is so great and undoubted that there is no need to mention everything that has been done or can be done thanks to them, to enumerate everything invented. One can only shudder in the face of such amazing possibilities. Today, a completely different question takes on an alarming meaning: who uses all this technique? In whose hands is this power? The temporary means of protection at the present moment is the state - after all, it is it that protects the citizen from huge reserves of poisonous gases and other infernal machines of destruction, which can be manufactured at any necessary moment in time. Our technical skills have become so dangerous that the most urgent question is not what else can be done, but who is entrusted with control over all these achievements. This is also the question of how to change the consciousness of Western man so that he can get rid of the feeling of familiarity with these terrifying possibilities of technology. It is much more important to deprive him of the illusion of omnipotence than to further strengthen in him the false idea that everything is available to him, everything he wants. In Germany, we often hear: "Where there is a will, there is a way" - this slogan has cost the lives of millions of people.
Western man does not need more mastery over nature, external or internal. Dominance over both reached almost diabolical perfection. Unfortunately, there is no clear understanding of one's own inferiority in relation to the nature around oneself and to one's inner nature. He must realize that he can't do whatever he pleases. If he does not come to realize this, he will be crushed by his own nature. He does not know that his own soul is suicidal against him. Since Western man easily turns everything into technology, it is in principle true that everything that has the appearance of a method is either dangerous or useless for him. Because yoga is a form of hygiene, it is as useful as any other system. However, in a deeper sense, yoga means something completely different, much more. If I understand it correctly, yoga is the liberation of consciousness from any enslavement, the renunciation of the subject and object. But since we cannot get rid of what is unconscious for us, the European must first know what he is as a subject. In the West we call it the unconscious. The technique of yoga is applicable exclusively to the conscious mind and will. Such an enterprise promises success only if the unconscious does not have a worthy potential; in other words, if it does not contain a significant part of the personality. Otherwise, conscious efforts will remain in vain. All convulsions of the mind will produce a caricature or cause the exact opposite of the desired result.
The rich metaphysical and symbolic thought of the East expresses the most important parts of the unconscious, thereby reducing its potential. When a yogi says "prana" he means much more than just breathing. The word "prana" is loaded for him with all the fullness of metaphysics, he seems to immediately know what prana means in this respect as well. The European only imitates it, he memorizes ideas and cannot express his subjective experience with the help of Indian concepts. I more than doubt that a European would express his corresponding experience, even if he is able to get it through such intuitive concepts as "prana".
Initially, yoga was a natural introverted process in which there are various variations. Introversion leads to peculiar internal processes that change the personality. For several millennia, introversion has been organized as a set of methods that are quite different from each other. Indian yoga itself takes on numerous and highly varied forms. The reason for this is the original diversity of individual experience. Not every one of these methods is suitable when it comes to a particular historical structure, which is the European. Most likely, yoga, co-natural to the European, has historical samples unknown to the East. Methods comparable to yoga arose in two cultural formations that in the West came into contact with the soul, so to speak, practically - in medicine and in the Catholic healing of the soul. I have already mentioned the exercises of Ignatius Loyola. As for medicine, the methods of modern psychotherapy came closest to yoga. Freud's psychoanalysis returns the patient's consciousness to the inner world of childhood memories, to the desires and drives repressed from consciousness. His technique is the logical development of confession, artificial introversion, the purpose of which is to become aware of the subject's unconscious components. The method of the so-called autogenic training proposed by Professor Schultz is somewhat different - this method is consciously combined with yoga4. The main goal here is to break the partitions of consciousness that cause the suppression of the unconscious. My own method, like Freud's, is based on the practice of confession. Like Freud, I pay special attention to dreams, but as soon as we approach the unconscious, our paths diverge. For Freud, it is some kind of appendage of consciousness, where everything that is incompatible with the consciousness of the individual is dumped. For me, the unconscious is a collective psychic disposition, creative in character. Such a fundamental difference in points of view leads to a completely different assessment of the symbolism and methods of its interpretation. Freud's procedures are basically analytic and reductionist. I add to this a synthesis that emphasizes the purposive nature of the unconscious tendencies of personality development. These studies revealed important parallels with yoga - especially with Kundalini yoga, as well as with the symbolism of tantric, lamaist yoga and parallels with Chinese Taoist yoga. These forms of yoga, with their rich symbolism, provide me with invaluable comparative material in interpreting the unconscious. But in principle, I do not use the methods of yoga, because in the West nothing should be forcibly imposed on the unconscious. Our consciousness has intensity and limited narrowness of action, and therefore this already dominant tendency does not need to be further strengthened. On the contrary, everything must be done to bring the unconscious into consciousness, to free itself from the rigid obstacles of consciousness. To this end, I use the method of active imagination, which consists in a special kind of training in the ability to turn off consciousness (at least relatively), which provides the unconscious with the possibility of free