The Tao of Jung by David H. Rosen

Author:David H. Rosen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2017-02-09T14:41:27+00:00

The Secret of Richard Wilhelm

Jung first met Richard Wilhelm in 1922 at the School of Wisdom in Darmstadt, Germany. In 1923, Wilhelm brought out his German translation of The I Ching or Book of Changes, which Jung considered to be “the greatest of his achievements.”24 Jung had worked with Legge’s inadequate rendering, so he “was therefore in a position to recognize fully the extraordinary difference between the two.”25

But what was “the secret” that Wilhelm possessed? Jung recalled that in the place where they met—in a fertile “field of humanity”26—in the “point of contact; there leaped across a spark that kindled the light destined to become for me one of the most meaningful events of my life. ”27 Jung viewed “Wilhelm and his work” as creating “a bridge between East and West.”28 Of course, Jung, through his collaboration with Wilhelm and others, helped make this bridge stronger and longer-lasting. Probably the most critical “inner marriage” that Jung would participate in was the inner union of East (introverted and feminine) and West (extraverted and masculine).

Jung maintained that Wilhelm “possessed in the highest degree the rare charisma of spiritual motherhood.”29 What did Wilhelm take in, contain, and give birth to? None other than “the Tao,” which Wilhelm translated as “meaning.”30 So, Wilhelm’s secret had to do with catalyzing Jung’s acceptance of the Tao and meaning in his own life. He saw Wilhelm experiencing “Chinese wisdom as a living thing.”31 Jung viewed Wilhelm as “The messenger from China, ... [who was] able to express profound things in plain language [which] disclose something of the simplicity of great truth and of deep meaning.”32

What led Jung to say, “I feel myself so very much enriched by him that it seems to me as if I had received more from him than from any other man”?33 He provided the answer right away: because Wilhelm “transplanted in the soil of the West a tender seedling, the Golden Flower, giving [Jung and] us a new intuition of life and meaning, as a relief from the tension of arbitrary will [ego] and arrogance [pride].”34

In 1927, Jung had created a most magnificent mandala that he called “Window on Eternity.”35 It was almost a prophetic prelude to what was to unfold (see plate 10). In 1928, Jung painted another mandala “with a golden castle in the center.”36 (See plate 11.) Jung asked himself, “Why is this so Chinese?”37 As Jung recounts:I was impressed by the form and choice of colors, which seemed to me Chinese.... It was a strange coincidence that shortly afterward I received a letter from Richard Wilhelm enclosing the manuscript of a Taoist-alchemical treatise entitled TheSecret of the Golden Flower, with a request that I write a commentary on it. I devoured the manuscript at once, for the text gave me undreamed-of confirmation of my ideas about the mandala and the circumambulation of the center. That was the first event which broke through my isolation. I became aware of an affinity; I could establish ties with something and someone.

In

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