ABSTRACT
Critical philosophy, the mother of modern psychology, is as foreign to the East as to medieval Europe. Thus the word "mind", as used in the East, has the connotation of something metaphysical. The Western conception of mind has lost this connotation since the Middle Ages, and the word has now come to signify a "psychic function". Before embarking upon the commentary proper, he must not omit to call the reader's attention to the very marked difference between the tenor of a psychological dissertation and that of a sacred text. Their peaceful and wrathful aspects, which play a great role in the meditations of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, symbolize the opposites. The fact that the opposites appear as gods comes from the simple recognition that they are exceedingly powerful. Chinese philosophy therefore declared them to be cosmic principles, and named them yang and yin.
