Carl Jung's Critique of New Age Spirituality

New Age ideas can intoxicate Western minds, leading to inflated egos and spiritual disconnection.

### The Dangers of New Age Thought: Insights from Carl Jung
* 🧠 Carl Jung critiques New Age thinking, emphasizing that **without a psychological framework**, these foreign symbols can **poison the Western mind**.
* ⚠ He warns that these symbols cling to the unconscious, **inhibiting natural psychological growth** and functioning as a **“corpus alienum”** within our psyche.
* 🌌 The allure of enlightenment and mystical experiences creates hierarchies in spiritual communities, **inflating egos and leading to manipulation**.
* 🔍 Jung suggests that the search for **exotic spiritual practices** can distract from **deep psychological work**, which is essential for **true transformation**.
* 🌱 He asserts that enlightenment is not achieved through **fantasies of light** but through **confronting and integrating the darkness within ourselves**.
* 🌺 The fascination with Eastern philosophies can lead to **ungroundedness**, as individuals seek **novelty without recognizing the potential dangers** involved.
* 📜 Jung traces the roots of New Age thought back to the Sophist movement, highlighting how the **importation of Eastern texts** has evolved into **contemporary spiritual practices**.
* 💬 The episode encourages viewers to **reflect on their own spiritual journeys** and the importance of **grounding in their psychological realities**.

I've seen many criticisms of New Age thought over the years, of Buddhist, Hindu, and all these different strains that kind of converge in New Age thought. I've seen a lot of criticisms of them as anti-rational or as naive, innocent, just that kind of school

of a rationalist critique of them. But in his book *The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga*, Carl Jung gives us a completely different type of critique of New Age thinking and its novelty, which has the power, and that's what we're going to be

exploring on today's episode of The Living Philosophy. [Music] In these matters, one needs a great deal of psychology in order to make it palatable to the Western mind. If we do not try hard and dare to commit many errors in assimilating it to our Western

mentality, we simply get poisoned. For these symbols have a terrible clinging tendency. They catch the unconscious somehow and cling to us, but they are a foreign body in our system, *corpus alienum*, and they inhibit the natural growth and development of our psychology. It is like a secondary growth or a

poison. Therefore, one has to make almost heroic attempts to master these things, to do something against those symbols in order to deprive them of their influence. Perhaps you cannot fully realize what I say, but take it as a hypothesis. It is more than a hypothesis.

It is even a truth. I've seen too often how dangerous their influence may be for anyone who spent any amount of time in the spiritual community. These words might sound at first a little bit foreign, but you'll be able to connect it to something. You'll be able

to realize oh okay yeah maybe there's there's something going on here and I guess that the main thing you think of is the guru the kind of guru complexes you get these these spiritual leaders and because of the the kind of new age ideas because of the

the hierarchy of the spiritual who has the the least ego who is the most spiritually evolved who's had the most thrilling experiences on a spiritual level well these things create a sort of hierarchy within a spiritual community and you get egos that become inflated

because not only are they inflated in the way that we might say a spiral dynamics orange someone who's who's got a lot of status who's worldly but in this this green sphere of spiral dynamics in this spiritual domain the hierarchy it's

subtler in some sense because it's psychologically based rather than based on material things rather than based on superficial things it's based on where is your psychology at what experiences have you had so it's a fascinating beginning to to peel back those layers

and to see the sort of hypocritical kind of that lies within there and so there's a lot of people in the spiritual community with very inflated kind of egos and you might say that they're they're they're on a power trip or that they're

kind of uh psychopaths who've just come in and manipulated the whole thing but I think it's there's something that Young is saying here but actually it's it's tapping into it much more accurately I feel when I first got into spirituality and when

basically anyone I know that got into spirituality initially had this this fascination with the idea of enlightenment, the idea of becoming enlightened, the idea of becoming fully realized and experiencing these mystical unions with the oneness or experiencing that that total liberation

and these are the ideas, these ideas of samadhi, of nirvana, these things get into your mind, they get into your your way of looking at things and and all of a sudden that's the assumption, that's the that's the central premise, that's the thing that we're all trying

to reach, and so whoever is closer to that, whoever seems to be higher on that hierarchy can help you get there, is it takes on a more esteemed quality and and have more status within that community and it's it's that idea of enlightenment, it's the idea of these mystical

experiences, it's the idea of potentially magical synchronicities happening to you, it's all these little things that people can play on, that people embrace, that people get lost in, these are the poisonous ideas, this is the danger of intoxicating the western

mindset, and in an early video of the Living Philosophy we looked at the parallels between the situation of modern religious making, modern religious seeking and the Roman situation, and it's it's that we look to the to the east, we look to these exotic flowers

because in the case of the Romans their old pagan religion had grown dull to them and had lost the grip on their psyche, and the same thing has started to happen with Christianity in the West, it's become mundane, it's become the religion we grew up with and

it's lost that hold on us and that it would have had in earlier years and at lower levels of development and so when we look to fulfill that kind of a religious meaning that that psychical psychological higher meaning we look to something exotic and then

you the Romans looked at the they got sick of their paganism they looked at this exotic Christian religion to the Isis cult from Egypt to the Mithras cult in the Middle East and we've done the same thing just slightly further afield we've looked to

the Indian religions the the Hinduism and the Buddhism and the Buddhism I guess more are probably coming from further in East Asia looking at the Zen tradition is more popular but you've also got the the Vipassana groups the old Theravada groups

and then you've got the the the Vedas the Bhagavad-Gita the Hari Krishna all these things they develop a certain gravity and modernity and there's also the Taoists coming from China so we've we've taken in these Eastern

things and what Young is saying is that you're you're taking a foreign flower you're taking an exotic flower and you're trying to graft it onto a root system which it did not evolve with which it's a completely unrelated root system and while I'm not

sure that Young's sentiment holds up I'm not I'm not convinced by it necessarily certainly with the Indians you could look at a common Indo-Aryan heritage or Indo-European heritage but I so I'm not sure but there's there's something

in what he's saying it's the it's the exotic thing polluting our minds or if not polluting then uh it's dangerous and and we have not treated it as dangerous we've treated it as something exciting and something novel is as something true

and so we're all seeking this thing that very few of us have had any experience of and and so it's the we get drunk on this because it's the it's like discovering a whole new world and everything is fresh and beautiful and and all of a sudden the old rules of

life have completely changed and you're playing a whole new game and so you're you're ungrounded you begin to develop this this this new idea of reality and all of a sudden you're cut off from the from the the foundation of which your

your entire life was built up on to that point all your all your assumptions all your perceptions can be slightly altered and it's at that place that people become very vulnerable that people can get taken advantage of within the spiritual community and it's really uh for me it's quite

frustrating and infuriating sometimes when you when you see people doing that and even the the people taking advantage can be doing it unconsciously it's it's the whole thing just reeks of a sort of intoxication of a sort of uh

a poison and ungroundedness I think that's that the idea of spiritual bypassing is one of the most important ideas to understand in spirituality today because it's you see it everywhere you see the the nature of these ideas is it this disconnects us from our roots

and brings in these exotic flowers which fascinate the mind but does it reach down to the depth level of the mind does it reach to the depth of what you are and transform you there and there's another great Jungian quote that kind of taps into

this same vein and it's it's that one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious and I guess that's what we're looking at in terms of the the work of of psychology of depth psychology of dream psychology of

getting into your own mind getting into your own roots getting into your own reality going home for Christmas and experiencing those conflicts experiencing what it's like what does that trigger in you and so that's the the path to like gritty grounded growth

and this other path is very tempting because it's got bright lights it's got mystical visions it's got a lot of exciting things but is it just an intoxication is it just a new type of buzz is it just the same pattern repeated in a new

more exotic looking way so you can't recognize it and I think that all of this is what Jung means by the the potential for these ideas to poison us and he's talking about the Sophist movement at this point and they're the ones who imported these

these Eastern texts into the West and the that's what evolved into the New Age in the 60s and and onwards to to where we are today so that's just something that I wanted to explore in today's episode of The Living Philosophy if you've enjoyed it please subscribe if

you haven't already and uh yeah I'd love to hear from you down in the comments if you've any thoughts, insights or feedback on this video, around the channel in general. And yeah, otherwise I shall see you next time. Thank you for watching.

Carl Jung: Why New Age Thinking is Poison

The Living Philosophy

Common criticisms of New Age thought include anti-rationality and naivety.

Jung offers a different critique focusing on the novelty and potential dangers of New Age thinking.

New Age symbols are described as a 'foreign body' that can inhibit psychological growth.

The speaker connects Jung's critique to the development of guru complexes within spiritual communities.

Spiritual hierarchies based on perceived enlightenment lead to inflated egos.

The speaker discusses the potential for hypocrisy and manipulation within spiritual communities.

The initial fascination with enlightenment and mystical experiences is highlighted as a key factor.

The speaker identifies the pursuit of enlightenment and mystical experiences as potentially poisonous ideas.

A parallel is drawn between modern religious seeking and the Roman situation, where exotic religions were adopted.

The adoption of Eastern religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism) is discussed as an example of this phenomenon.

Jung's idea of grafting exotic spiritual ideas onto an unrelated root system is explored.

Vulnerability and Ungroundedness in Spiritual Seeking

The speaker discusses the potential for ungroundedness and vulnerability when embracing new spiritual ideas.

The concept of spiritual bypassing is introduced as a significant issue in contemporary spirituality.

A Jungian quote emphasizing the importance of confronting the darkness is presented.

The speaker contrasts a path of grounded growth with a potentially intoxicating path of exotic spiritual experiences.

The speaker connects the discussed ideas to the Sophist movement and the development of the New Age movement.

The speaker concludes the episode and encourages viewers to subscribe and comment.