Jagat

In his letter posted to this blog , Christiaan asked a question about spiritual life and practice in general. In the second, he is more specific. At the end of his first paragraph, he spoke about cultural conditioning and objects of worship. He develops on this in the second paragraph: Then there is Jung. Although considered a little outdated in the more modern cognitive field, it seems that the projection of love on a divine couple is a nice example of a Jungian archetype. Jung spent much time in India, even in Bengal. What would you say to a person like me to convince me to become a practitioner. I am neither a psychologist (as you might have guessed) nor a devotee or worshiper of Krishna. I am interested though in both. As far as Jung is concerned, to say that he is not thought highly of by today's pundits just shows the bias of the particular schools of psychology with which you are familiar. Archetypal psychology is simply saying that our brains are predisposed to formulat...

Christiaan sent a question on the Karpatriji thread , which rather than continuing there, I decided to answer in a separate post. Actually, I will divide my answer in two, as there are really two questions. Is modern psychology compatible with the RK-Lila concept? I recently heard that someone who suffered from a severe obsessive compulsive disorder got treated rather succesfully, but in his therapy chanting was considered a symptom of his disorder rather then a solution to it. He gave up on it (the chanting). Rituals seem to dovetail OCD's. In a way most rituals have much in common with OCD's. Then the phenomenon of chaotic/catatonic schizophrenia. Most of the symptoms correspond with what are called symptoms of ecstatic trance in India, or possession. In Italy they hallucinate about Mary, in Turkey about Fatima and in India about... With regard to your question about whether Radha and Krishna is compatible with modern psychology. The short answer is "which psychology?...