On the nature of tao
From Jung's Collected Works 6 Psychological Types (1921)
361
He who knows the Always-so has room in him for every thing;
He who has room in him for everything is without prejudice.
To be without prejudice is to be kingly;
To be kingly is to be of heaven;
To be of heaven is to be in Tao.
Tao is forever, and he that possesses it,
Though his body ceases, is not destroyed.
362 Knowledge of tao has therefore the same redeeming and uplifting effect as the knowledge of brahman. Man becomes One with tao...Tao is also the stream of time. It is irrational, inconceivable.
Tao is a thing impalpable, incommensurable.
For though all creatures under heaven are the products of [Tao as] Being,
Being itself is the product of [Tao as] Not-Being.
Tao is hidden and nameless.
It is obviously an irrational union of opposites, a symbol of what is and is not.
The Valley Spirit never dies;
It is named the Mysterious Female.
And the door of the Mysterious Female
Is the base from which heaven and earth sprang.
363 Tao is the creative process, begetting as the father and bringing forth as the mother. It is the beginning and end of all creatures. He whose actions are in harmony with tao becomes one with tao.
Therefore the perfected sage liberates himself from the opposites, having seen through their connection with one another and their alternation. Therefore it is said:
When your work is done, then withdraw.
Such is heavens way.
He [the perfected sage] cannot either be drawn into friendship or repelled,
Cannot be benefited, cannot be harmed,
Cannot be raised or humbled.
364 Being one with tao resembles the state of infancy:
Can you keep the unquiet physical soul from straying, hold fast to the
Unity, and never quit it?
Can you, when concentrating your breath, make it soft like that of a
little child?
He who knows the male, yet cleaves to what is female,
Becomes like a ravine, receiving all things under heaven;
And being such a ravine,
He knows all the time a power that he never calls upon in vain.
This is returning to the state of infancy.
The impunity of that which is fraught with this power
May be likened to that of an infant.
365 This psychological attitude is...an essential condition for obtaining the kingdom of heaven,
and this in its turn - all rational interpretations notwithstanding - is the central, irrational symbol
whence the redeeming effect comes. The Christian symbol merely has a more social character than
the related conceptions of the East. These are directly connected with age-old dynamistic ideas of
a magical power emanating from people and things or - at a higher level of development - from
gods or a divine principle.
366 According to the central concepts of Taoism, tao is divided into a fundamental pair of
opposites, yang and yin. Yang signifies warmth, light, maleness; yin is cold, darkness, femaleness.
Yang is also heaven, yin earth. From the yang force arises shen, the celestial portion of the human
soul, and from the yin force comes kwei, the earthly part. As a microcosm, man is reconciler of
the opposites, Heaven, man, and earth form the three chief elements of the world, the san-tsai.
367 Man is a microcosm uniting the world opposites is the equivalent of an irrational symbol
that unites the psychological opposites. This primordial image of man is in keeping with Schiller's
definition of the symbol as "living form."
368 The division of the psyche into a shen (or hwan) soul and a kwei (or p'o) soul is a great psychological truth. This Chinese conception is echoed in the well-known passage from Faust:
Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast,
And each will wrestle for the mastery there.
The one has passion's craving crude for love,
And hugs a world where sweet the senses rage;
The other longs for pastures fair above,
Leaving the murk for lofty heritage.
369 The existence of two mutually antagonistic tendencies, both striving to drag man into extreme
attitudes and entangle him in the world, whither on the material or spiritual level, sets him at
variance with himself and accordingly demands the existence of a counterweight. This is the
"irrational third,"tao. Hence the sage's anxious endeavour to live in harmony with tao, lest he fall
into the conflict of opposites. Since tao is irrational, it is not something that can be got by the will,
as Lao-tzu repeatedly emphasizes. This lends particular significance to another specifically
Chinese concept, wu-wei. Wu-wei means "not doing" (which is not to be confused with "doing
nothing"). Our rationalistic "doing", which is the greatness as well as the evil of our time, does not
lead to tao.
370 The aim of Taoist ethics, then, is to find deliverance from the cosmic tension of opposites by a return to Tao...
In every heart there dwells a sejin (sage).
Only, we do not believe it firmly enough,
And therefore the whole has remained buried.
