The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life

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Lai, Chi Tim (2016). "Revisiting the Jingming Origin of the Taiyi jinhua zongzhi: Pan Jingguan and His Spirit-Writing Community in Changzhou during the Early Qing". Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie. 25 (1): 47–75. doi: 10.3406/asie.2016.1470. Yes, you got it! I spent the two decades, to be exact, at the time of writing, [7] studying the magnum opus, the 20 volumes of the Collected Works, of C. G. Jung. Determined to penetrate to the core of the mystery I had stumbled upon the secret of the Golden Flower, the Diamond Body and the promise of eternal life!

None the less we must be cautious in the matter of derivations, because the most ancient script known in China had no sign for daemon, and so we may perhaps be dealing with primordial symbols whose derivations are lost. After only a few mornings of practicing The Secret of the Golden Flower, however, I began to experience change. My brow was not continually furrowed by tension or thought. I felt comfortable with myself. The first part, constituting half of the book, are some lucid contextualisations of the ancient Daoist text “The Secret of the Golden Flower” by Richard Wilhelm and Carl Jung (both pioneers in making Eastern systems of thought intelligible to a mind embedded in Western concepts). Especially Jung’s writing presents a valuable primer in appreciating Eastern mysticism from a (Western) psychological perspective. He points out the profound issues that come with trying to integrate the accumulated wisdom from Eastern and Western thought traditions, when one is conditioned to think from one (being mostly oblivious of its fundamental assumptions), while being in the dark about the other. Facing profound truths, strange to one’s own thought tradition, usually leads to either the emphatic rejection of them on the one hand or a futile attempt in “cutting off the branch that one is sitting on”. The middle way of carefully investigating confluences, while not trying to abandon one’s culturally constructed viewpoint, is the goal according to Jung. He sees the Western emphasis on the conscious and rational as a compliment to the Eastern emphasis on the unconscious forces beyond the intellect, rather than a contradiction. Jung finds the common denominator in the “tremendous experiment of becoming conscious, which nature has laid upon mankind, and which unites the most diverse cultures in a common task.” As a rule, it will be the anima, the blind will, which, goaded by passions, forces the animus or intellect into its service. A Zen enso or circle summarizing enlightenment in a single brushstroke: insubstantiality and present awareness. Chan teachings melded with Daoist alchemy to produce The Secret of the Golden FlowerThis book is one of the most important Taoist texts in the Taoist religion. However, it’s also very controversial. The Secret of the Golden Flower is a “Westernized” translation of one of Asia’s greatest spiritual legacies. Similarly, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, a Chinese yoga manual, has been simplified for Westerners. The original title of the book was something like Instructions on How to Cultivate the Golden Flower. To understand the purpose of this book, we must know first what the golden flower means. Before reading this article, grab a fresh coffee or tea. Find a comfortable place to sit and do your best to digest the timeless wisdom in The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life. In Buddhism, this return to Nirvana is connected with a complete annihilation of the ego, which, like the world, is only illusion.

In Memories, Dreams, Reflections Jung states that “light on the nature of alchemy began to come to me only after I had read the text of the Golden Flower.”Wilhelm, Richard (Nov 17, 2014). Secret of the Golden Flower (PDF) (Illustrated, Reprinted.). Martino Publishing. p.8. ISBN 978-1614277293. Because the still-current Wilhelm/Jung/Baynes edition of this manual contains dangerous and misleading contaminations, a primary consideration was to make the contents of The Secret of the Golden Flower explicitly accessible to both lay and specialist audiences. At this point, many of our readers may have questions. What kind of alchemy/meditation should I do to achieve that Light described in The Secret of the Golden Flower? The answer is simple, but requires great dedication, practice, and willpower: we must learn how to calm our mind to open our heart. Remember, look for similarities more than differences whenever evaluating translations and studying comparative religions. I seek universal life application of wisdom found at the root level of all great faiths. The idea of having Jung write an accompanying commentary was to make this most mystical of Oriental texts accessible to the Western Mind. Anyone who has reads the original text will understand the difficulty of penetrating to the essence of the Lü Yán ‘s teaching. Jung’s commentary, although itself challenging, framed the text and provided a psychological and symbolic interpretation of the esoteric text.

The anima sinks, the animus rises, and the ego, robbed of its strength, is left behind in a dubious condition.The holy man who understands the mysteries of creation inherent in end and beginning, becomes superior to the limitations of the transitory. For him, the meaning of time is that in it, the stages of growth can unfold in a clear sequence. He is mindful at every moment and uses the six stages of growth as if they were six dragons (the image attributed to the individual lines) on which he mounts to Heaven. -- Commentary on hexagram #1, the Creative (The I Ching p 371, Wilhelm/Baynes edition) This wasn’t exactly the first time I heard the name Carl Gustav Jung, but it was the first meaningful impression he made on me. Not a good impression I must say. I was downright angry with him and his arrogance at “psychologising” this profound mystical text! In living men, the two correspond in a certain degree to the cerebral and sympathetic nervous system. The animus dwells in the eyes, the anima in the abdomen.