Abstract

As the intellectual dialogue between the East and the West increases, there is a growing attempt among Western scholars to synthesize Eastern and Western psychologies, spiritual techniques, and philosophies. This dissertation places itself amidst this scholarship in its attempt to compare the Jungian myth with Advaita Vedanta. Hopefully, such an attempt will add spiritual depth to Jung's myth and will make Advaita Vedanta more emotionally accessible to the Western student. ;The essential message of Advaita Vedanta is that one's very being is limitless fullness and is the Self of God and the substrate reality of the creation. The vedantic vision frees the ego from its sense of isolation, for according to Vedanta, the individual, like a wave in the ocean, is, in essence, identical with the substrate being of God. ;The Eastern methods for gaining the maturity necessary to own this knowledge, however, are not adequate for the Westerner. Jung's methods open the way for the West to understand the East in a form which is palatable and possible. ;The dissertation is divided into five chapters. The first two chapters discuss Jung's myth. Chapter One focuses on the loss of our containing myth and the effects of such a loss on our psyche. Chapter Two discusses Jung's psychological recasting of the Christian myth into a new myth which Jung found personally meaningful to him. The final section of Chapter Two discusses the transformation of the trinitarian God-image into a quaternity with the Assumption of Mary, bringing our Western God-image much nearer to the God-image of the East. ;Chapter Three presents the vision of Advaita Vedanta and compares some of its key concepts with those of Jung. The vision of Vedanta extends beyond the epistemological limits to which Jung was confined and is, therefore, able to shed light on the substrate nature of consciousness, which is the vedantic Self. This knowledge adds a benign dimension to Jung's conception of the Western God-image. The assimilation of Eastern wisdom into the Western God-image as the task of the new aeon is discussed. ;Chapter Four addresses the problems a Western spiritual seeker will most likely encounter in following an Eastern spiritual path and suggests a Western-oriented approach to sadhana which incorporates many of Jung's ideas. The chapter ends with a discussion on the Jungian and vedantic concepts of good and evil. ;And finally, Chapter Five presents the conclusions of the dissertation