08/09/2025
penultimo libro letto: Da Kingsley P.: Catafalque, Carl Jung and the end of humanity, Ediz. Catafalque, London 2021
pag-331 332
Ma c’è un fatto ancor più rilevante: Corbin scrisse quasi un intero libro – pubblicato solo di recente dedicato a Jung. Lo compose con un intento preciso: mostrare come la psicologia junghiana, se compresa nella sua profondità, rappresenti per l’Occidente l’unico autentico equivalente dello Zen o del Buddhismo tibetano in Oriente. Un equivalente autentico perché, al di là dei dogmatismi sia dei Tradizionalisti sia degli stessi junghiani, essa offre un accesso diretto all’essenza dell’esperienza spirituale, a quella “esperienza primordiale” originaria, disponibile potenzialmente a tutti noi in Occidente, ma a lungo bollata come eretica e ripetutamente espulsa, secolo dopo secolo, dal dogmatismo della Chiesa cristiana.
Qui si manifesta un paradosso singolare: un orientalista che dedicò l’intera vita adulta allo studio delle tradizioni persiane e che trascorse gran parte del suo tempo a sentirsi a casa lontano dall’Europa, indicava con tanta forza proprio la sua cultura occidentale. Eppure fu esattamente ciò che Corbin fece. Per questo guardava con scarsa simpatia ai Tradizionalisti occidentali che, convertendosi all’Islam, credevano di costruirsi nuove identità, arrivando in alcuni casi a ripudiare del tutto la loro cultura d’origine. Per lui, tutto ciò che faceva in Oriente era un atto di servizio rivolto all’Occidente. Egli sapeva di restare sempre, innanzitutto, un occidentale; il suo dovere più alto era contribuire alla rinascita spirituale dell’Occidente, aiutarlo a guarire, salvarlo dall’oblio e ricondurlo alla sua fonte originaria.
Per comprendere davvero la sua prospettiva bisogna guardare a come, da occidentale, egli interpretava Jung e la psicologia junghiana, che per lui, osservatore esterno, era ben più di una semplice tecnica: era la vera scienza dell’anima.
Nel suo scritto su Jung, e sul concetto cardine dell’individuazione, descrive ciò che gli appariva davanti agli occhi: “Vedo l’arrivo dell’alba. Vedo il sole sorgere a oriente.” Non intendeva però l’oriente geografico, ma l’oriente interiore, quello che abita in ciascuno di noi.
Rinunciare alla propria cultura occidentale cercando nell’oriente esterno la propria identità autentica, una guida o un maestro, significa smarrirsi: significa ve**re sradicati - come Jung stesso scrive o, peggio ancora, dimenticare di avere avuto un giardino e illudersi di potersi nutrire divorando frutti stranieri.
Corbin spiegava che questo “sorgere del sole a una nuova alba”, che incontrava nell’opera di Jung, era lo stesso momento dell’alba o ishraq nella dottrina sufi di Suhrawardi. Sorprende vedere come egli abbia compreso Jung alla luce di questa tradizione mistica, e come Jung, a sua volta, si sia sentito davvero compreso soltanto da un sufi.
Tutto questo potrebbe apparire suggestivo, ma non si tratta di suggestione. In gioco vi è, piuttosto, una verità che meno di ogni altra vorremmo ascoltare: la responsabilità che incombe su di noi occidentali di affrontare l’oscurità della nostra cultura senza distogliere lo sguardo. Nulla sarebbe più falso che immaginare Corbin troppo “spirituale” per affrontare tale oscurità interiore.
Da Kingsley P.: Catafalque, Carl Jung and the end of humanity, Ediz. Catafalque, London 2021
But then there is the even more significant fact that Corbin wrote what almost amounted to a whole book, which has just been published recently, about Jung.
He wrote it with one key purpose in mind which was to show how, when understood as it should be, Jungian psychology is the only real equivalent for westerners of Zen or Tibetan Buddhism in the East, And it's the only real equivalent because, beyond the dogmatism of Traditionalists as well as the dogmatism of Jungians, it offers direct access to the essence of spiritual experience the original "primordial experience", potentially available to all of us in the West but rejected for so long as heretical, which has been banished century after century by the dogmatism of the Christian Church,"
Naturally there is the strangest paradox here that an orientalist who spent the whole of his adult life specializing in Persian traditions and spent half of it feeling at home outside of Europe would point back, so emphatically, to his own western culture.
But this is exactly what Corbin did. And it's also why he felt so little sympathy for the western Traditionalists who took what they thought were new identities by converting to Islam and, in some cases, abandoned their own original culture for dead.
To him, everything he did in the East was intended act of service to the West. He knew he would always, first Lind foremost, be a westerner; that his ultimate duty was to contribute to the West; to help heal it, rescue it from its forgetfulness, return it to its spiritual source."
And it's important to understand just what he saw when, as a westerner, he looked at Jung and Jung's psychology—which for him as an outsider was far more than some special technique. It was Jung's knowledge his real science, of the soul.
ln the work he wrote about Jung, and about Jung's teak hit individuation, he describes exactly what he found himself looking at. I see, he says, the arrival of the dawn. I see the sun rising in the east. But by this he didn't mean the physical east. He meant the inner east: the east inside us all.
To reject our western culture by looking to the geographical east for one's identity and true self, for teaching and guidance, is the perfect way to end up lost; to get ripped up, as Corbin quotes directly from Jung, by our roots; or as Jung also says, to forget we ever had a garden and try to feed ourselves by gobbling up foreign fruits.
And Corbin explains that this point of the sun rising at a new dawn which he encounters in the work of Jung is the same as the moment of dawn or isbraq in the Sufi teaching of Suhrawardi. It's strange to see how not only did Corbin understand Jung in the light of this Sufi tradition but Jung only felt completely understood by a Sufi.
This could all sound very pretty, except that prettiness is not at all what it's about. What it is about is the last thing we want to know about, which is the responsibility we have as westerners to face the darkness of our own culture without looking away. And nothing could be more wrong than to imagine that Corbin was too spiritual to face this inner darkness. He didn't talk too much about it because he saw that as Jung's job; but he knew perfectly well when to face the darkness, and how. It can be very useful to study and learn from eastern teachings except when you try to use them to cover over the darkness and emptiness you feel inside. They may be able to throw some light on your problem, but they are never going to solve it. And they aren't going to solve it because the only real solution ever comes from the problem itself. When Corbin wanted to illustrate this, he turned back, appropriately enough, to western legends of the Grail. The best way he knew of making his point was to quote the beautiful saying: Seat' gue-rit la blessure la lance qui la fit, "The wound is only healed by the lance that made it."
Jung, too, was intimately familiar with this same situation in the Grail legend—this impossible task of healing the wound through the instrument that caused it. On one hand, of course, this was precisely his task.
On the other, when he talked about it in objective terms, he described this work of returning to heal the gaping wound caused so long ago as the impossible work of the equally impossible savior or Saoshyant; of the precious jewel, father of all prophets, who comes back after thousands of years bringing a completely new revelation.
And just how impossible this task starts to become clear when one finds the courage, if only for a moment, to face that individual but also collective emptiness and darkness inside oneself without trying to do anything, such as thinking good thoughts or inventing childish schemes, to fill the hole.
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