Lessons of Jung's Encounter with Native Americans

Last Updated on Sunday, 27 October 2013 20:37

Written by Timothy C. Thomason

Timothy Thomason explores how Jung's encounters with Native Americans in the Taos pueblo in 1925 deepened his belief that humans need a sense of their individual and cultural significance to be psychologically healthy.

Lessons of Jung's Encounter with Native Americans
Timothy C. Thomason
Northern Arizona University

Abstract
This article describes C. G. Jung's meeting with Mountain Lake, a Hopi elder, and other Native Americans during his visit to Taos, New Mexico in 1925. Jung's thoughts about the significance of what he learned from the Indians are discussed and analyzed, with a view toward describing how they contributed to the development of Jung's thought. While Jung made some over-generalizations from his brief meetings with a few Pueblo Indians, the main lesson of his encounter in Taos is still valid, which is that humans need a sense of their individual and cultural significance to be psychologically healthy.

Lessons of Jung's Encounter with Native Americans In Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1973) Jung described his encounter with Native Americans he met in New Mexico in 1925. This event, though brief, had a profound effect on Jung, and he referred to it many times in his writings. He commented that his experience in New Mexico made him aware of his imprisonment "in the cultural consciousness of the white man" (Jung, 1973, p. 247).

At the Taos pueblo, Jung spoke for the first time with a non-white, a Hopi elder named Antonio Mirabal (also known as Ochwiay Biano and Mountain Lake), who said that whites were always uneasy and restless: "We do not understand them. We think that they are mad" (Jung, 1973, p. 248). Jung asked him why he thought the whites were mad, and the reply was " 'They say that they think with their heads . . . . We think here,' he said, indicating his heart" (p. 248). Impressed, Jung said he realized that Mountain Lake had unveiled a significant truth about whites.

To Jung the Indians he met appeared to be tranquil and dignified, which Jung attributed to their belief that (as Mountain Lake explained) through their religious practice, they helped the sun cross the sky every day. Jung believed this belief and practice served the function of making the Indians' lives cosmologically meaningful. Whites, on the other hand, use reason to formulate the meaning of life: "Knowledge does not enrich us; it removes us more and more from the mythic world in which we were once at home by right of birth" (Jung, 1973, p. 252). Jung said that it would be necessary to put away all European rationalism and knowledge of the world to begin to understand the Pueblo Indian's point of view.

Jung pointed out that "The idea, absurd to us, that a ritual act can magically affect the sun is, upon closer examination, no less irrational" than the Christian religion which, like every religion, is "permeated by the idea that special acts or a special kind of action can influence god - for example, through certain rites or prayers" (Jung, 1973, p. 253). Jung said that while the cosmological beliefs of the pueblo dwellers would be seen as superstitious by Europeans, to the Native Americans European beliefs about science would be seen as superstitious and illogical (Jung, 1964). To Mountain Lake, it was obvious than that the sun provides all light and all life and is therefore the great father or God. Jung, on the other hand, argued that God is the one who created the sun. Jung realized that from a modern perspective, Mountain Lake's animism and Christianity are equally superstitious.

Jung attributed the dignity and serenity of the Pueblo Indians to their relationship to the deity, and their belief that their rituals were essential to keep the universe functioning (Berger & Segaller, 2000). Jung interpreted Mountain Lake's reference to the restlessness of whites as describing their "insatiable lust to lord it in every land," and their megalomania "which leads us to suppose that Christianity is the only truth" (Jung, 1933, p. 213). In Jung's view, the religious and cosmological beliefs of all cultures are useful to help people make their existence seem meaningful.

The main lesson Jung learned from his encounter with Mountain Lake was the importance of forging meaning through a coherent system of beliefs and practice. The content of the belief system is secondary; since philosophical and religious beliefs are based on faith and cannot be empirically validated, in a sense one system is as good as another. Each culture or subculture has their own system of beliefs and practices that provide a sense of meaning. Such belief systems need not be religious; even an agnostic or atheist worldview provides the individual with a view of existence that makes sense to that individual.

Jung was interested in developing a theory of how Pueblo psychology might complement his theory of personality types (Bair, 2003). Jung's visit with Mountain Lake (who he called his "Red Indian friend" (Jung, 1933, p. 213)) prompted him to think about how different cultures value thinking and feeling differently, just as individuals within a culture do. Based on Mountain Lake's comment that Indians think with their hearts rather than their heads, Jung speculated that there is a great divide between whites and Indians, and he seemed to admire the Indian psychology.

Jung's theory of psychological types has been compared to the circular sand paintings of the Navajo, which symbolize the mythical history of the gods, the ancestors and mankind (Sandner, 1991). Duran (1995) graphically represented the four Jungian personality types on two axes (north/thinking; east/sensation; south/feeling; and west/intuition. Others have placed the types in different positions on a circle (north/sensation; east/thinking; south/intuition; and west/feeling (Moodley & West, 2005). Which type goes with which compass point is, apparently, not important, as long as thinking is opposite feeling and sensation is opposite intuition. Two additional psychological functions of introversion and extraversion could be visualized as being above and below the center of the circle. For an individual, the goal is to walk in balance at the center of the sphere (Duran, 2006).

Duran (1984) criticized Jung for his overly idealized view of Native Americans, specifically Jung's (1964) comment that the Indians were so at ease that they were unaware that they were living in America (under the domination of the whites). Jung did not see that many Indian people felt so oppressed that they were drinking themselves to death, according to Duran (1984).

Jung saw the lives of the Indians he met as simple and serene, even though their serenity was based on what Jung considered an animistic mythological system. Jung's view of the Indians as serene and tranquil may be considered as stereotyping to some degree. Many Europeans and European-Americans have seen the aboriginal Indian people as "noble savages," as if their lack of advanced technology somehow made them inherently noble. A more reasoned view would be that Indian people are people like any others, and have both positive and negative aspects. The apparent simplicity and tranquility of the Pueblo dwellers impressed Jung, but in his brief one-day visit he apparently was not made aware of the many social problems that were, and still are, common in many Indian communities. A longer visit may have revealed some distress beneath the tranquility. In addition, if, as Jung concluded, all religious and mythological systems are equally irrational, then why idealize one over another? But Jung's encounter with Mountain Lake did illustrate to Jung how different cultures are similar in their need to make sense of the universe, even if their explanations differ.

Jung may also have over-generalized about the Indians when he tried to compare their thinking style to that of whites. Jung believed that being fully conscious requires intensive thinking, and is exhausting. Primitive people (as he called them) do not think; if they think at all, it is in the belly or in the heart; they are conscious only of emotional thoughts (Jung, 1968). Referring to the Pueblo dwellers, Mountain Lake said they think with their hearts, not their heads. Jung said "the Pueblo Indians derive consciousness from the intensity of feeling. Abstract thought does not exist for them. . . . They cannot go beyond the perceptions of their senses and their feelings" (Jung, 1968, p. 9).

Jung's interest in Indian psychology is admirable, although today it is apparent that his generalizations about Indian psychology were simplistic and based on very little information. His only Indian informant on psychology was Mountain Lake, who only talked with Jung for part of one day and told Jung generalities already known to the general public (Bair, 2003). Jung's limited understanding of Indian psychology led him to idealize it. Given Jung's interest in world mythologies and his belief that all such systems are human creations, one might expect him to simply describe the Pueblo dweller's beliefs as one more belief system, rather than idealize it.

Jung was, of course, correct that the Pueblo belief system was sophisticated enough to serve as a meaning-making system for the Indian people who believed in it. He said "Primitive psychology is by no means primitive" (Jung, 1968, p. 9). Jung actually found his own ideas more in tune with the Pueblo Indians than with the culture of early twentieth-century Europe. "He saw that it was quite wrong to believe that the white man had all the truths" (Berger & Segaller, 2000, p. 152). Jung wrote "it is not only primitive man whose psychology is archaic. It is the psychology also of modern civilized man . . . . every civilized human being, however high his conscious development, is still an archaic man at the deeper levels of his psyche" (Jung, 1964, p. 50-51). This thought reinforces the idea that while modern whites might think they know it all, most of them still operate psychologically at a primitive level. For example, many Americans participate fully in their highly technological society while at the same time holding religious beliefs that date back thousands of years.

Jung never forgot his encounter with the Indians in New Mexico. In a letter to Mountain Lake several years after his visit, Jung said "I am busy exploring the truth in which Indians believe. It always impressed me as a great truth" (quoted in Berger & Segaller, 2000, p. 137). One lesson of Jung's encounter with Mountain Lake is that all humans need a belief system to make sense of the universe, even if every culture has a different belief system, and there is no way to know which (if any) belief system is correct. Jung seemed to feel that it really does not matter which system is believed, since the effect (a sense of meaning) in each case is the same.

Just a year before he died, Jung said that Mountain Lake correctly assumed that the consciousness and meaning of his people "will die when destroyed by the narrow-mindedness of American rationalism" (quoted in Berger & Segaller, 2000, p. 153). From this comment it appears that Jung felt that American society as a whole emphasized the thinking function to the exclusion of the feeling function. In Jungian analysis, an individual who was unbalanced in this way would be encouraged to experiment with getting more in touch with his or her feeling side (Duran, 2006).

There are interesting similarities between Jung's theories and Native American healing. Sandner (1991) suggested that the traditional symbolic healing rituals of the Navajo operate on the same principles as modern psychotherapy, which is also a symbolic form of healing. While almost all forms of psychotherapy operate on a symbolic level, Jung's analytical psychology is perhaps the approach that most explicitly recognizes the symbolic and mythological dimensions of the human personality. Like the ritual healing ceremonies of Native Americans, psychotherapy is a socially sanctioned ritual that involves its own belief system. While modern psychotherapies like to claim their practices are empirically supported, often the reference to science is just a pro forma part of the ritual. In modern healing practices, science tends to have more credibility to patients than ancient ceremonies, but scientific practices are not necessarily more effective for healing psychological distress.

It has been noted that Jung's view of the goal of psychotherapy as achieving balance and integration of the parts of the self is similar to the goal of traditional Native American healing rituals. After studying the ceremonies of the Navajo for many years, Donald Sandner noted that "If you wanted a place to look for corroboration of a lot of Jung's views . . . you could do no better than to look into the Navajo symbol system - it's all there. It's all put together from the collective unconscious" (quoted in Berger & Segaller, 2000, p. 141). Joseph Henderson said "The Indian's ceremonies come from the rightful use of archetypes in the unconscious" (quoted in Berger & Segaller, 2000, p. 144). It may be that the widespread belief that humans have disparate aspects that must be integrated into a whole to be healthy provides support for Jung's concept of the collective unconscious.

C. G. Jung's encounter with Mountain Lake in New Mexico was a provocative meeting that Jung always remembered with fondness. He felt that he learned important lessons about how Indian people think, and about the relativism and utility of belief systems. Mountain Lake's perspective on the meaning of existence made clear to Jung that all humans would benefit by having a clear (but humble) sense of their own significance in the order of things.

References
Bair, D. (2003). Jung. New York: Little, Brown and Company.
Berger, M. & Segaller, S. (2000). Wisdom of the dream. New York: TV Books.
Duran, E. (2006). Healing the soul wound. New York: Teachers College Press.
Duran, E. & Duran, B. (1995). Native American postcolonial psychology. Albany, NY:
State University of New York Press.
Duran, E. (1984). Archetypal consultation. New York: Peter Lang.
Gustafson, F. R. (1997). Dancing between two worlds. New York: Paulist Press.
Jung, C. G. (1968). Analytical psychology. New York: Random House.
Jung, C. G. (1964). Civilization in transition, Collected Works, Vol. 10, Bollingen Series
20. (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). New York: Random House.
Jung, C. G. (1963). Memories, dreams, reflections. New York: Pantheon Books.
Jung, C. G. (1933). Modern man in search of a soul. New York: Harcourt, Brace &
World.
Moodley, R. & West, W. (Eds). (2005). Integrating traditional healing practices into
counseling and psychotherapy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Sandner, D. (1991). Navajo symbols of healing. Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press.

Timothy C. Thomason is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational
Psychology at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to:
Dr. Timothy C. Thomason,
P. O. Box 5774, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ. 860111
E-mail: Timothy.Thomason@nau.edu
Telephone: (928) 523-1341 FAX: (928) 523-1929

Carl Jung’s experience in New Mexico with the Pueblos Indians

Posted on April 20, 2012 | 4 Comments

Picture : Taos Pueblos – By Luca Galluzi at http://www.galuzzi.it/

MEMORIES, DREAMS, REFLECTIONS BY C.G. JUNG,

In this long passage, there are two distinct but yet related stories. One is about how the Pueblos see the white man who has colonized them and is about to destroy their ancient culture. The second story goes into the mysteries of Indians ways of relating to nature and in particular the sun: “After all,” he said, “we are a people who live on the roof of the world; we are the sons of the Father Sun, and with our religion we daily help our father to go across the sky. We do this not only for ourselves, but for the whole world. If we were to cease practising our religion, in ten years time the sun would no longer rise. Then it would be night forever.”

Please let me know how you feel and what you think about this passage !

On my next trip to the United States I went with a group of American friends to visit the Indians of New Mexico, the city-building Pueblos. “City,” however, is too strong a word. What they build are in reality only villages; but their crowded houses piled one atop the other suggest the word “city,” as do their language and their whole manner. There for the first time I had the good fortune to talk with a non-European, that is, to a non-white. He was the chief of the Taos Pueblos, an intelligent man between the ages of forty and fifty. His name was Ochwiay Bianco (Mountain Lake). I was able to talk with him as I have rarely been able to talk with a European. To be sure, he was caught up in his world just as much as a European is caught up in his, but what a world it was! In talk with a European, one is constantly running up on the sandbars of things long known but never understood; with this Indian, the vessel floated freely on deep, alien seas. At the same time, one never knows which is more enjoyable: catching sight of new shores, or discovering new approaches to age-old knowledge that has been almost forgotten.

“See,” Ochwiay Bianco said, “how cruel the whites look. Their lips are thin, their noses sharp, their faces furrowed and distorted by folds. Their eyes have a staring expression; they are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something; they are always uneasy and restless. We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. We think they are mad.”

I asked him why he thought the whites were all mad.

“They say they think with their heads,” he replied.

“Why of course. What do you think with,” I asked him in surprise.

“We think here,” he said, indicating his heart.

I fell into a long meditation. For the first time in my life, as it seemed to me, someone had drawn for me a picture of the real white man. It was as though until now I had seen nothing but sentimental, prettified colour prints. This Indian had struck our vulnerable spot, unveiled a truth to which we are blind. I felt rising within me like a shapeless mist something unknown and yet deeply familiar. And out of this mist, image upon image detached itself: first Roman legions smashing into the cities of Gaul, and the keenly incised features of Julius Caesar, Scipio Africanus, and Pompey. I saw the Roman eagle on the North Sea and on the banks of the White Nile. Then I saw St. Augustine transmitting the Christian creed to the Britons on the tips of Roman lances, and Charlemagne’s most glorious forced conversions of the heathen; then the pillaging and murdering bands of the Crusading armies. With a severe stab I realised the hollowness of that old romanticism about the Crusades. Then followed Columbus, Cortes, and the other conquistadors who with fire, sword, torture and Christianity came down upon even these remote Pueblos dreaming peacefully in the Sun, their Father. I saw, too, the peoples of the Pacific islands decimated by firewater, syphilis, and scarlet fever carried in the clothes the missionaries forced on them.

It was enough. What we from our point of view call colonisation, missions to the heathen, spread of civilisation, etc., has another face – the face of a bird of prey seeking with cruel intentness for distant quarry – a face worthy of a race of pirates and highwaymen. All the eagles and other predatory creatures that adorn our coats of arms seem to me apt psychological representatives of our true nature.

Something else that Ochwiay Bianco said to me stuck in my mind. It seems to me so intimately connected with the peculiar atmosphere of our interview that my account would be incomplete if I failed to mention it. Our conversation took place on the fifth storey of the main building. At frequent intervals figures of other Indians could be seen on the roofs, wrapped in their woollen blankets, sunk in contemplation of the wandering sun that daily rose in a clear sky. Around us were grouped the low-built square buildings of air-dried brick (adobe), with the characteristic ladders that reach from the ground to the roof, or from roof to roof of the higher storeys. (In earlier, dangerous times the entrance used to be through the roof.) Before us the rolling plateau of Taos (about eleven thousand feet above sea level) stretched to the horizon, where several conical peaks (ancient volcanoes) rose to over twelve thousand feet. Behind us a clear stream purled past the houses, and on its opposite bank stood a second pueblo of reddish adobe houses, built one atop the other towards the centre of the settlement, thus strangely anticipating the perspective of an American metropolis with its skyscrapers in the centre. Perhaps half an hour’s journey upriver rose a mighty isolated mountain, the mountain, which has no name. The story goes that on days when the mountain is wrapped in cloud, the men vanish to perform mysterious rites.

The Pueblo Indians are unusually closemouthed, and in matters of their religion utterly inaccessible. They make it a policy to keep their religious practices a secret, and this secret is so strictly guarded that I abandoned as hopeless any attempt at direct questioning. Never before had I run into such an atmosphere of secrecy; the religions of civilised nations to-day are all accessible; their sacraments have long ago ceased to be mysteries. Here, however, the air was filled with a secret known to all the communicants, but to which whites could gain no access. This strange situation gave me an inkling of Eleusia, whose secret was known to one nation and yet never betrayed. I understood what Pausanias or Heredotus felt when he wrote: “I am not permitted to name the name of that god.” This was not, I felt, mystification, but a vital mystery whose betrayal might bring about the downfall of the community as well as of the individual. Preservation of the secret gives the Pueblo Indian pride and the power to resist the dominant whites. It gives him cohesion and unity; and I feel sure that the Pueblos as an individual community will continue to exist as long as their mysteries are not desecrated.

It was astonishing to me to see how the Indian’s emotions change when he speaks of his religious ideas. In ordinary life he shows a degree of self-control and dignity that borders on fatalistic equanimity. But when he speaks of things that pertain to his mysteries, he is in the grip of a surprising emotion which he cannot conceal – a fact which greatly helped to satisfy my curiosity. As I have said, direct questioning led to nothing. When, therefore, I wanted to know about essential matters, I made tentative remarks and observed my interlocutor’s expression for those affective movements which are so very familiar to me. If I had hit on something essential, he remained silent or gave an evasive reply, but with all the signs of profound emotion; frequently tears would fill his eyes. Their religious theories are not conceptions to them (which, indeed, would have to be very curious theories to evoke tears from a man), but facts, as important and moving as the corresponding external realities.

As I sat with Ochwiay Bianco on the roof, the blazing sun rising higher and higher, he said, pointing to the sun, “Is not he who moves there our father? How can anyone say differently? How can there be another god? Nothing can be without the sun.” His excitement, which was already perceptible, mounted still higher: he struggled for words, and exclaimed at last, “What would a man do alone in the mountains? He cannot even build his fire without him.”

I asked him whether he did not think the sun might be a fiery ball shaped by an invisible god. My question did not even arouse astonishment, let alone anger. Obviously it touched nothing within him; he did not even think my question stupid. It merely left him cold. I had the feeling that I had come upon an insurmountable wall. His only rely was, “The sun is God. Everyone can see that.”

Although no one can help feeling the tremendous impress of the sun, it was a novel and deeply affecting experience for me to see these mature, dignified men in the grip of an overmastering emotion when they spoke of it.

Another time I stood by the river and looked up at the mountains, which rise almost another six thousand feet above the plateau. I was just thinking that this was the roof of the American continent, and that the people lived here in the face of the sun like the Indians who stood wrapped in blankets on the highest roofs of the pueblo, mute and absorbed in the sight of the sun. Suddenly a deep voice, vibrant with suppressed emotion, spoke from behind me into my left ear: “Do you think that all life comes from the mountain?” An elderly Indian had come up to me, inaudible in his moccasins, and has asked me this heaven knows how far-reaching question. A glance at the river pouring down from the mountain showed me the outward image that had engendered this conclusion. Obviously all life came from the mountain, for where there is water, there is life. Nothing could be more obvious. In his question I felt a swelling emotion connected with the word “mountain”, and thought of the tale of secret rites celebrated on the mountain. I replied, “Everyone can see that you speak the truth.”

Unfortunately, the conversation was soon interrupted, and so I did not succeed in attaining any deeper insight into the symbolism of water and mountain.

I observed that the Pueblos Indians, reluctant as they were to speak about anything concerning their religion, talked with great readiness and intensity about their relations with the Americans. “Why,” Mountain Lake said, “do the Americans not let us alone? Why do they want to forbid our dances? Why do they make difficulties when we want to take our young people from school in order to lad them in the kiva (site of the rituals, and instruct them in our religion? We do nothing to harm the Americans!” After a prolonged silence, he continued, “The Americans want to stamp out our religion. Why can they not let us alone? What we do, we do not only for ourselves but for the Americans also. Yes, we do it for the whole world. Everyone benefits by it.”

I could observe from his excitement that he was alluding to some extremely important element of his religion. I therefore asked him: “You think, then, that what you do in your religion benefits the whole world?” He replied with great animation. “Of course. If we did not do it, what would become of the world?” And with a significant gesture he pointed to the sun.

I felt that we were approaching extremely delicate ground here, verging on the mysteries of the tribe. “After all,” he said, “we are a people who live on the roof of the world; we are the sons of the Father Sun, and with our religion we daily help our father to go across the sky. We do this not only for ourselves, but for the whole world. If we were to cease practising our religion, in ten years time the sun would no longer rise. Then it would be night forever.”

I then realised on what the “dignity,” the tranquil composure of the individual Indian, was founded. It springs from his being a son of the sun; his life is cosmologically meaningful, for he helps the father and preserver of all life in his daily rise and descent. If we set against this our own self-justifications, the meaning of our own lives as it is formulated by our reason, we cannot help but see our poverty. Out of sheer envy we are obliged to smile at the Indians’ naiveté and to plume ourselves on our cleverness; for otherwise we would discover how impoverished and down at the heels we are. Knowledge does not enrich us; it removes us more and more from the mythic world in which we were once at home by right of birth.

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Edwardspoliticaltruthand fact

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Wisdom Literature through the Ages

Homer's "Odyssey"

Omar Khayyam; Gnostic poet of the Sufis

Dante's "Divine Comedy"

Shakespeare's "Hamlet"

Shakespeare's "King Lear"

Shakespeare's "The Tempest"

Shakespeare's "Macbeth"

John Donne's Mystic Poetry

Louis Claude de St. Martin

J.W. von Goethe and the Archetype of Faust

William Blake;isionary Gnostic

Friedrich Nietzsche, Poet and Gnostic

Rilke and Kafka: Poetry and Existence

W.B. Yeats: The Poetry of Magic and

Consciousness & Altered States

Albert Hofmann and his Discovery: LSD-25

The Freedom to Know Reality

Alan Watts: Explorer of many Mystical Dimensions

The Man from Ixtlan: Carlos Castaneda's Journey

Great Mystics Pt. I

Great Mystics Pt. 2

Ceremonial Magic and Altered States

Entheogens of Greece, Persia, and Egypt

Visionary Traditions of the East

The Mysteries of Eleusis

Manna: Mysterious Communion of the Old Testament

From Druids to Grail: Celtic Ecstatic Traditions

Altered Consciousness, Culture and Psychology

Wednesday, December 19, 2018

Lessons of Jung's Encounter with Native Americans

Lessons of Jung's Encounter with Native Americans

Carl Jung’s experience in New Mexico with the Pueblos Indians

Picture : Taos Pueblos – By Luca Galluzi at http://www.galuzzi.it/

Suggested Reading:

MEMORIES, DREAMS, REFLECTIONS BY C.G. JUNG,