ABSTRACT
T he Mind in which the irreconcilables-samsara and nir vana-are united is ultimately our mind. Does this statement spring from profound modesty or from overweening hybris? Does it mean that the Mind is “ nothing but” our mind? Or that our mind is the Mind? Assuredly it means the latter, and from the Eastern point of view there is no hybris in this; on the con trary, it is a perfectly acceptable truth, whereas with us it would amount to saying “ I am God.” This is an incontestable “ mysti cal” experience, though a highly objectionable one to the Westerner; but in the East, where it derives from a mind that has never lost touch with the instinctual matrix, it has a very different value. T he collective introverted attitude of the East did not permit the world of the senses to sever the vital link with the unconscious; psychic reality was never seriously disputed, despite the existence of so-called materialistic speculations. T he only known analogy to this fact is the mental condition of the primitive, who confuses dream and reality in the most bewilder ing way. Naturally we hesitate to call the Eastern mind primi tive, for we are deeply impressed with its remarkable civiliza tion and differentiation. Yet the primitive mind is its matrix, and this is particularly true of that aspect of it which stresses the validity of psychic phenomena, such as relate to ghosts and spirits. T he West has simply cultivated the other aspect of primitivity, namely, the scrupulously accurate observation of nature at the expense of abstraction. Our natural science is the epitome of primitive man’s astonishing powers of observation. W e have added only a moderate amount of abstraction, for fear of being contradicted by the facts. T h e East, on the other hand, cultivates the psychic aspect of primitivity together with an inordinate amount of abstraction. Facts make excellent stories but not much more.
