AGTSP paoho! Is O.K?
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NIOS MEETS NANTES
The door opened and out came a very congenial scholar. We had some trepidation because before we’ve met some powerful Jungian scholars but some have been chain smokers and others angry and arrogant. . .
Ooof!
Quite a relief. Then Professor Nantes took us across the Baroque lobby into his office, which was lined with books and beautiful artifacts to the ceiling. The fresh morning air of Buenos Aires came in through the window, cars hummed by as they went to work. There were ourselves, Hp Swami and three young students.
“Have you heard of E. T. Hall?”
“Have you read Jung in India?”
We have been trying to meet Dr. Bernardo Nantes, the founder of Fundacion Vocacion Humano, Dean of Universidad del Salvador, translator of C. G. Jung’s Redbook for three years ( and Shonu Shyamdasani of the University of London, co-founder of the Philemon Foundation, for at least seven years).
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In Dialectical Spiritualism, Srila A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, Prabhupada, offers commentaries, on summaries, of the ideas of many, many Western philosophers. These summaries were presented by two of his educated students. The very last philosopher presented was Dr. C. G. Jung:
Prof. Howard Wheeler: That ends our session on Jung.
Srila Prabhupada: So far, he seems the most sensible!
If we take our NIOS work as building bridges between the classical worlds of the Orient and Occident, then Prabhupada’s comment along with Jung’s that follows is simply compelling.
“... if you go to other races, to India or China, for example, you discover that these people are conscious of things for which the psychoanalyst in our countries has to dig for months.”
“We Europeans are not the only people on the earth. We are just a peninsula of Asia, and on that continent there are old civilizations where people have trained their minds in introspective psychology for thousands of years, whereas we began with our psychology not even yesterday but only this morning. These people have an insight that is simply fabulous...”
Jung, C. G.; Analytical Psychology, Its Theory & Practice; Vintage Books, 1970, pages 48 & 74
Please join this work. If you are like us you had some little contact with Carl Jung during your undergraduate university studies. It is enough to pique interest but seemingly superficially presented. If you continue to be like us then you read the above quote in Dialectical Spiritualism and you are motivated but don’t know how to approach Prof. Jung and his followers in more depth. Of course books are the basis, so here is a suggested reading list. It’s interesting that everyone who I know who has read the books has also found them challenging for their personal spiritual development and mental hygiene. They can all be found at Amazon:
· The Tavistock Lectures,
· Memories, Dreams and Reflections (Auto-Biography),
· The Kundalini Lectures.
· Carl Jung and the Making of Modern Psychology – The Dream of a Science (Take it slowly. It is a look at the development of all of Western thought on psychology during Jung’s lifetime),
· Introduction to the Redbook by Prof. Shonu Shamdasani (Buy the text only version of the Redbook)
· . . .and now we are reading Jung in India.
Besides the books there are the people: Beverley Zabrieskii, Paticia Llosa, Maximilian Peralta. We have been able to meet so many, and then we attended a three day symposium on Art and the Creative Intelligence at U.C. Santa Barbara and were swimming in an ocean of youth, old age, various nations, intense scholarship, social awareness and compassion, artistic creativity, money.
Maybe you are not like us. Maybe you are coming from the other side of The Bridge. Our preferred lecture title has been: Science, Psyche and Spirituality, the Encounter of Prof. C. G. Jung with the Mysticism of Ancient India. As soon as you start talking about the mysticism, philosophy, religion, Yoga of ancient India you are diving into an ocean of traditions, practices, living examples.
If you want good food, go to Italy; romance, France; machines, Germany; but if you want Philosophy, India.
Sanskrit
George L. Harte, University of California
A Rapid Sanskrit Method
Motilal Banarsidass, Dehli, 1989
Preface
“It [sanskrita]is, like Chinese, Arabic, Greek and Latin, one of the few languages which has been a carrier of a culture over a long period of time.
Thus, the variety of writings in it, and the quantity of those writings are staggering. An incomplete list of subjects treated in Sanskrit, usually with great prolixity, is as follows:
· The four Vedas
· The Brahmanas and Aranyakas
· The Upanisads
· Grammar
· Epic, puranic, literature - Including 18 major puranas, 18 minor puranas, and hundred of sthalapuranas.
· Works on Medicine
· Logic
· Astronomy & Astrology
· Mathematics
· Lawbooks
· Architecture
· Music…
On most of these subjects, there is an immense literature still extant. Indeed, a rough estimate of the works which will be listed in The New Catalogus Catalogorum yields a total of about 160,000 works… many so difficult that it would take years of study to properly understand them.…Sanskrit does have its share of great writers: Kalidasa ranks with the greatest poets, Panini is without question the greatest pre-modern grammarian, the Mahabharata ranks with the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the Bhagavata-purana is among the finest works of devotion every written, being equaled in my opinion only by other works in Indian languages.”
Of course, the Britannica article is a good place to start if you have no experience with India philosophy and mysticism (which I doubt): https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indian-philosophy.
Then if you have a little preliminary faith and can accept our advice we would recommend our own tradition of Bengali or Chaitanya Vaisnavism. It is centered around the above mentioned Bhagavata-purana and is based in tradition upon Srila Rupa Goswami’s 16th century Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu of which Professor David Haberman, Indiana University, has produced an excellent translation. The Introduction to his translation is worth a million dollars, tracing the entire tradition from Bharata Muni, before Christ, on up to even modern times. At Amazon.com it clocks in at around $101 but maybe you can find it in your research library of even try to contact us. It is 752-pages so if you want a simpler path we would suggest:
· Light of the Bhagavata.
· The Nectar of Instruction,
· The Teachings of Lord Caitanya.
These are all on line at www.vedabase.com and can be purchased in hard-copy at www.Krishna.com .
Are you interested in crossing the Bridge to buy and sell? Are you interested in waking up.
An Englishman saw three people doing the same thing. He asked the first one:
“What are doing?”
The fellow answered, “Can’t you see, you damn fool! I’m laying bricks. Leave me alone”.
“Sorry, please forgive me.”
Then he asked the second man, who was doing the same thing:
“What are you doing?”
The man paused and replied, “I’m making money, take care of my family”.
English man thanked him and asked the third Johnny, “I say old chap, what are you doing?”, and the man looked up and said, “Oh, it’s very interesting. Today we are putting up the wall that goes behind the altar, and after a couple of days when it is set, the marble masons will come and hang the marble. My children are very small now, but when they are bigger I will bring them here and show them how I helped to build this great Cathedral!”.
