Jung and the Mandala

Mandala drawn by Jung himself.

“I gathered all my courage, as though I were about to leap forthwith into hell-fire, and let the thought come. I saw before me the cathedral, the blue sky. God sits on His golden throne, high above the world - and from under the throne an enormous turd falls upon the sparkling new roof, shatters it, and breaks the walls of the cathedral asunder ... I felt an enormous, an indescribable relief. Instead of the expected damnation, grace had come upon me. I wept for happiness and gratitude.” - Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

Carl Jung claimed to be able to heal the mentally ill largely by having them draw “mandalas.” He borrowed the term from Buddhism, specifically Tibetan Buddhism, which has a tradition of drawing elaborate, mostly geometric, patterns radiating outward from a central point.

The real thing: a Tantric Buddhist mandala.

According to Jung, “it is easy to see how the severe pattern imposed by a circular image of this kind compensates the disorder of the psychic state– namely through the construction of a central point to which everything is related, or by a concentric arrangement of the disordered multiplicity and of contradictory and irreconcilable elements.” Elsewhere, he observes “the mandala is the centre. It is the exponent of all paths. It is the path to the centre, to individuation.”

Church ceiling, Bucharest.

Jung's understanding of just what a mandala is about, and what it is showing, actually differs from that of his source, Tantric Buddhism. To Jung, the mandala shows the psyche, and the central point represents the self: "Their basic motif is the premonition of a centre of personality, a kind of central point within the psyche, to which everything is related, by which everything is arranged, and which is itself a source of energy." To Buddhists, it shows the universe, and to place one's self at the centre would be the worst sort of heresy. The core Buddhist doctrine is “anatman”--the non-existence of any continuous self.

Church ceiling, Santo Domingo.

It is also a bit surprising that Jung reached for a Buddhist model in classifying this sort of image, of a variety of things radiating from a central core—for it is at least as common in Christianity. The reason may well be that, had he cited the Christian examples, it would have been too evident to his readers and his patients that he was reinterpreting its significance in a profane way. For in Christian models, and to Christians, it is achingly clear that the subject is the cosmos, not the soul, and that the central point of the motif the divine, is God, not the self.

Rose window, Paris.

As to Jung's idea that the mandala shows “contradictory and irreconcilable elements,” that too seems debatable, both in its eastern and its western forms. It is, of course, an image of symmetry. Symmetry implies the balance of opposites, as in left and right, up and down. Opposites are not, however, in themselves either contradictory or irreconcilable. Quite the reverse: men and women are opposites, sexually speaking, but in the natural order of things they reconcile rather well. So do left and right. If they did not, there would in fact be no possibility of balance.

Church ceiling, St. Petersburg.

Here Jung seems to have his own little Gnostic axe to grind, primarily because this idea of a “reconciliation of contradictory elements” was an opportunity for an end run around conventional morality. After all, if good and evil are opposites which could and should be balanced, that gives one a perfect excuse for behaving badly when it seems to be in one's self-interest. And why not, indeed, if one's self, as Jung sees it, is the centre of the universe?

Labyrinth, Amiens. A "labyrinth,"in this usage, is the opposite of a maze. There is only one path; one cannot go astray.

Might it be too unkind to suggest that Jung's interpretation of the mandala is that of a perfect narcissist; the view of an evil man? The self is the centre of everything, and anything that seems good for the self is not just permitted but divinely ordained.

Bad medicine. Although no doubt it played well in the German-speaking world during a certain period...

Labyrinth, Boxgrove.

Still, I submit that Jung is perfectly right in claiming that the mandala, at least in its proper significance as an image of cosmic order, is indeed an image of mental health. It might even be true that drawing one is a useful form of therapy, as Jung found it.

Rose window, Durham.

Begin with the premise that mental “illness” generally is mental confusion. This naturally springs most commonly from having been emotionally abused: that is, having been put consistently in a situation in which any conceivable choice is represented as wrong; R.D. Lang's “double-bind.” Take this for a few years, and it gets hard to see which way is up. Take this throughout a childhood, and you are left with very little solid ground on which to grow. Hence the lack of motivation commonly seen in depression: if any move is the wrong move, it is terribly hard to get out of bed in the first place.

Rose window, Strasbourg.

On top of this, as M. Scott Peck observes, because of the demands of conscience, any abusive situation, any evil regime, is founded on and sustained by a web of lies. Peck calls the evil or narcissistic “people of the lie”; Jesus calls them “hypocrites,” meaning, roughly, “actors.”

Labyrinth, San Francisco.

Accordingly, the experience of depression is very much like being trapped in a maze, but one for which there is no exit. It is the proverbial “rat race.”

Schizophrenia, in which people see or hear hallucinations, may really be no different. As Oliver Sacks points out in his recent book on the subject, hallucinations are in fact fairly common, and in most cases unrelated to schizophrenia. The problem, therefore, may not be with seeing things, but with not being able to meaningfully interpret them, to fit them into one's existing world-view. One therefore becomes confused by them, frightened by them; and this is the “schizophrenia.”

Labyrinth, Lucca.

So: if the essence of mental illness is mental confusion, the essential medicine is a new or restored vision of cosmic order. One that can accommodate all of one's real experiences, one that restores meaning to life, one that restores a path that one can take.

This is religion; this is what religion is all about. Religion is the antidote to mental illness. QED.

Image of New Jerusalem, church ceiling, St. Petersburg. Holy Spirit at centre.

The mandala is simply the image of this. But icons, as an aid to meditation, can no doubt have healing power. The mandala is an anti-maze, a cosmos in which all the ways have been made straight for the Lord, in which the plain truth is plainly visible.

So religion is the antidote to mental “illness.” Among other things.

Rose window, Chartres.

This explains Jesus's call to the depressed and abused in the Beatitudes. They are those most in need of true religion.

Jesus even introduces a mandala immediately after calling for their attention. He says, of the abused, "You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden." (Matthew 5:14). The image of a city is an image of order; being set upon a hill for all to see, and radiating light to all the world—that is a mandala. The city he mentions is, of course, the New Jerusalem, the Christian heaven. At its centre is the Lamb of God, the divine.

The New Jerusalem, French. According to Revelations, it is a perfect cube, symmetrical in three dimensions, made of precious stones, radiating light.

But the very next thing Jesus says is the opposite of Jung. Jung declares, the heck with conventional morality. You should do what's best for your self. Jesus says conventional morality is not really strong or straight enough; it is a compromise. You should tear out your own eye if it leads you to sin; you should cut off your own hand. You should be perfect, as God is perfect.

The New Jerusalem. German.

Jesus's demands here are commonly taken to be hyperbolic—nobody, perhaps, has ever followed them literally. Jesus himself doesn't. But to the abused and depressed, they were and are probably what the doctor ordered. The last thing the depressed want or need is a fudge: they hunger for truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. This Jesus gives them; no compromise, no minced words, no softening of blows, but what moral perfection looks like.

Labyrinth, St. Lambertus.

I recall a talk by an Australian priest who, for whatever reason, once had a psychotic break and ended up raving in an asylum. He believes that his cure began—for he is now perfectly well--when a fellow priest came to visit, grabbed him by his shoulders, looked him in the eyes, and, in the true spirit of Aussie mateship, said “You've gone crazy, you bugger.”

Rose window, St. Dunstan's.

That was the first sane word he had heard since he had been in there. Certainly, he had gotten no truth from the doctors.

Yet it is the Truth that sets you free.