Eastern & Western Concepts of the Unconscious

The term unconscious has been used in western psychology to explain altered states of consciousness, meditative states and other phenomena for which there is no other explanation. Certain types of behaviour exhibited during ordinary waking states which are otherwise inexplicable, have also been termed as unconscious.

Experience constitutes the utilization of both the conscious and unconscious aspects of the human psyche, therefore making the experiences both conscious and unconscious. This can be seen as a western dualistic view. At the same time a sense of unity is created between the two.

Although an exact parallel cannot be drawn between the western and eastern theories of the unconscious, similarities can certainly be found. Both western and eastern theories believe that our conscious experience is significantly influenced by those factors of which we are not aware – ie: unconscious factors. Regardless of the differences in the underlying beliefs of these philosophies, there is a general consensus that, by making the unconscious aspects of the psyche conscious, a deeper awareness is created and consequently the ability to live completely in the present moment.

The purpose of bringing the unconscious into conscious awareness for both western and eastern is much the same – to create awareness, leading to a happier and more fulfilling existence, a more whole being. His Holiness the Dalai Lama says: “…the most important use of knowledge and education is to help understand the importance of engaging in more wholesome actions and bringing about discipline within our minds. The proper utilization of our intelligence and knowledge is to effect changes from within that develop a good heart.” (Goleman, 2004, p.258-259)

In “Memories, Dreams and Reflections”, Jung says: “…within the soul from its primordial beginnings there has been a desire for light and an irrepressible urge to rise out of the primal darkness…the psychic primal night…is the same today as it has been for countless millions of years. The longing for light is the longing for consciousness.”

The above similarities can be viewed as the foundation on which a reconciliation of the western and eastern notions of the unconscious can be built. Due to the vastness of eastern theories and philosophy, in this essay I will be drawing predominantly on Buddhist philosophy, with particular references being made to the ālaya-vijñāna of the Yogācāra school of Indian Buddhism. From a western perspective, I will be primarily highlighting the theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung in relation to the unconscious.

In order to understand how western and eastern notions can and are currently being reconciled, we must first look at each notion individually.

Outside of its psychological meaning, the word “unconscious” is described in the dictionary as “lacking awareness, sensation or cognition; not perceived at the level of awareness; done without intent; the part of the mind rarely accessible to awareness but influencing behaviour”. This basic description coincides with the western psychological notion of the unconscious.

Western philosophy believes that our behaviour is not fully determined by our conscious mind, but that there is another unconscious aspect of our being. Although this unconscious part lies outside of our awareness, it is still able to exercise influence and power over our behaviour.

Since Freud, the unconscious has played a major role in the way we think about and understand ourselves. Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung can be credited for the scientific development of the concept of the unconscious in the early 20^th century. They illustrated the presence of a type of unconscious process in incidents such as dreams, habit, slips of the tongue and forgetting.

In the present, it is accurate to say that the notion of the unconscious is deeply engrained in our culture, and is a customary way of looking at the mind and understanding human behaviour. Freud and Jung are the key figures in the study and conceptualisation of the unconscious.

According to Freud the unconscious is a container for the mind’s moral garbage. It is a storage place for all mental contents that are unacceptable to conscious awareness. These include sexual urges, hatred, violent impulses and shameful memories. Freud also believed that unconscious processes have the power to shape what we do. This belief exists in western psychology to this day.

The Jungian perspective of the unconscious is much more holistic. Although it includes the base instincts (as does Freud’s perspective), Jung also includes all that is not contained in conscious awareness, creating a much broader and more open-minded view of the unconscious and encompassing both the personal and collective unconscious.

The following statement by Jung gives a clearer insight into his notion of the unconscious: “Everything of which I know, but of which I am not at the moment thinking; everything of which I was once conscious, but have not forgotten; everything perceived by my senses, but not noted to my conscious mind; everything which, involuntarily and without paying attention to it, I feel, think, remember, want to do; all the future things that are taking shape in me and will sometime come to consciousness; all this is the content of the unconscious.” (Hunter, 2010)

Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious was a psychological attempt at interpreting meditation. Jung interpreted meditation as approaching “the state of unconsciousness”. This contrasts sharply with the interpretation of Buddhist teachers, who stress that meditation is the gateway toward a clear awareness of the world as it is. Consequently, Jung discouraged Westerners from meditating, believing that the seductiveness of ego-loss could lead to a dangerous uprush from the unconscious. This belief of course was built on the concept that the mind is completely embedded in the subject-object alienation, which from an Eastern viewpoint is the root of ignorance, defensiveness and suffering. (Welwood, 1977)

Jung attempted to use this holistic approach to highlight the complimentary nature of the conscious and unconscious. The dualistic nature of the model he was working with presented limitations, as it considered the unconscious to be separate to the psyche.

Breaking away from the Freudian and Jungian concepts of the unconscious, existentialist Rollo May when asked to speak on the existentialist point of view on the unconscious had this to say: “…I think the unconscious is to be understood as the farther reaches of consciousness. Consciousness begins only at the time when the unconscious begins also…Now the unconscious is simply the further expansion of what you and I are concerned with in our reverie, certainly in our dreams, but I think also very much in our myths.” (Schneider, Galvin, Serlin, 2009)

May’s reference to dreams and myths is very much a Jungian concept, which to this day plays a major role in western therapy.

Eastern philosophy has been influencing western psychology for thousands of years. Some well known clinical psychologists who were influenced by eastern philosophy include Freud, Jung, Perls, Fromm, Erikson, Maslow and Grof.

Although the terms conscious and unconscious are not generally used in Eastern philosophy, definitions of them appear in a variety of forms in Buddhism, Daoism, Hinduism and even mystical Abrahamic traditions. Here we will concentrate on Buddhist tradition.

Buddhism predates the field of psychology by over two millennia and overlaps in theory and practice. The notion of the unconscious is as ancient as Buddhism itself. In Buddhist philosophy the unconscious is defined as “anusaya”, the latent tendencies of lust, aversion and ignorance, which manifest as greed, hate and delusion, the three root causes of suffering. These unconscious actions stem from a lack of awareness and mindfulness, creating an action that is a routine, a habit that is enacted on autopilot. (Tan, 2006)

In order to better understand the eastern notion of the unconscious, it is beneficial to look at the ālaya-vijñāna of the Yogācāra school of Indian Buddhism and the concept of dependent arising or cognitive awareness.

The Yogācāra, also called Vijñāna (“the doctrine of consciousness”) teaches a mind-only philosophy that perceives the human reality as non-existent, and merely the consciousness of the momentary event as real. (Tan, 2006) This basically means that our experience is a mere illusion, a construct of our imagination. This notion explains the non-use of the term ‘unconscious’. If what we deem as reality is a mere illusion and a construct of our mind, then the experience itself is unconscious, which further explains the need to reach a stage of awareness or enlightenment, whereby this ‘illusion’ can manifest itself as such in a conscious fashion in order to be alleviated.

If we were to identify an unconscious process contained within eastern philosophy, it would be what is known as “bhav’anga”, the literal meaning of which is “existence factor” and is sometimes translated as “the unconscious process”. Bhav’anga is an inactive mode in which the process-free mind rests, unaffected by any of the sense doors. It flows from one life to the next and is therefore known as ‘the life-continuum stream”. The concept of the bhav’anga paved the way for the notion of the ālaya-vijñāna.

The best known teacher of Yogācāra, Asanga, developed the ālaya-vijñāna. He defined the consciousness aggregate as mind, thought and consciousness. The mind is the store consciousness that contains all the seeds, thought is the store consciousness that is always thinking of the self, and consciousness is the six groups of consciousness – eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind. The seventh consciousness is known as mana, the ‘monkey mind’ containing thoughts, ideas, and memories. The eighth and most important of the consciousnesses is ālaya-vijñāna which is the karmic storehouse. This consciousness is the foundation for the production of the other seven consciousnesses and is therefore also known as the root or seed consciousness. The ālaya-vijñāna is the only consciousness that continues to exist after death, and is commonly known as karma. Transforming the ālaya-vijñāna attains nirvana. (Tan, 2006) The implicit goal of the Asangan branch of Yogācāra is the destruction of the ālaya-vijñāna and the extinction of consciousness itself, since by nature, it is dualistic. (Hunter 2010)

The above is summarised best by Buddha: “This body does not belong to you, nor to anyone else. It should be regarded as (the results of) former action that has been constructed and intended and is now to be experienced.” (Waldron, 2003)

The concept of dependent arising is a traditional and core Buddhist concept whose basic formula rests in that in order for something to exist something else has to exist before it. In other words, the existence of any given thing is dependent on the existence of another that precedes it. When one thing ceases, so too does that which relied on its existence to exist. The Buddhist concept of causality is strongly highlighted in the formula of dependent arising. (Waldron, 2002)

Eastern philosophy is vast and rich, and Buddhism, although a core aspect, is a mere fraction of the information available on eastern notion of the unconscious.

Having summarised the key points of both western and eastern notions of the unconscious, we will now compare the similarities and differences between the two.

Eastern philosophy suggests that we are functioning from a state of non-awareness, living our lives as unawakened beings that are run predominantly by our latent tendencies (anusaya). This view is comparable to the western view that unconscious aspects of our psyche influence our conscious behaviour.

In eastern philosophy, the most common medium used to cultivate awareness is meditation, in particular, mindfulness meditation. From an eastern perspective, meditation can be viewed as a doorway into the unconscious, into the parts of the psyche that are temporarily asleep and waiting to be brought into awareness. In this sense, western and eastern notions overlap. Western therapy attempts to bring the unconscious into conscious awareness. Eastern philosophy focuses on cultivating awareness with the view toward complete enlightenment, or Buddhahood.

Jung’s process of individuation, of becoming a complete, integrated, fulfilled and optimally functioning person coincides with the Yogācāra notion of transcendent, numinous salvation. (Hunter, 2010) The difference occurs only in the path toward the achievement of these notions.

The eastern notion of karma is reminiscent of Jung’s collective unconscious theory that he referred to as the totality of all archetypes that conditions and drives the experience of all human beings. (Hunter, 2010)

The dualistic nature of Jung and Freud’s western notions of the unconscious create a picture of man being separate from his nature. This dualism does not exist within Eastern philosophy’s notion of emptiness of inherent existence, which states that what we perceive to be our reality, our world, is in fact a false creation of our deluded unconscious mind. Our lack of consciousness does not allow us to recognise that our mind is creating a false impression.

Western psychology and Eastern philosophy also differ in their approach toward the science of interpretation. In western theory dreams, thoughts and fantasies that rise up from the unconscious into the conscious mind are seen as important symbolic communications of the unconscious. In Buddhist meditation however, one is taught to disregard the actual content of any thoughts that arise, as the world of the unconscious is considered as useless illusions. (Hunter, 2010) Grasping onto these unconscious illusions creates attachment to what is an illusory experience, which in turn creates suffering. Where the West analyses the contents of the unconscious, the East, although aware of their presence, dismisses them.

Jung viewed the unconscious as an active source of consciousness. This fundamental connection in the relationship between conscious and unconscious led him to dismiss any idea that all contents in the unconscious could be brought into consciousness. This belief deviates from the goal of the Yogācārians which is to completely empty the ālaya-vijñāna thereby extinguishing consciousness itself, leaving a whole and perfect human mind. (Hunter, 2010) This goal of a whole and perfect human mind, can be likened to Jung’s individuation, with the difference being the path towards its achievement.

In clinical settings, the Buddhist technique most commonly used is mindfulness. The simple meaning of mindfulness is “remembering to be aware”, whether during meditation or during day-to-day activities. In Buddhism mindfulness is used to bring about a state of awareness in the present moment, a state of simply “being”. By utilising this method in Western therapy, it allows the person to be fully present in the now, which in turn brings acceptance, clarity and understanding.

Gendlin’s formulation of experiencing is suggestive of the awareness evoking concept of mindfulness. Experiencing “must make contact with the individual’s experiencing process” (Friedman, 2004), in a similar way in which mindfulness brings the individual’s awareness to the present moment and all that is being experienced in that moment.

The incorporation of mindfulness techniques in western therapy is a clear indicator that a reconciliation of the western and eastern notions of the unconscious is already in motion. Goleman says: “Where two systems of thought intersect, there is greatest potential for cross-fertilisation.” (Goleman, 2004, p.358)

This “cross-fertilisation” is most clearly evident in the incorporation of mindfulness techniques within western practices such as Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT). ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Theory) and CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) also use mindfulness techniques.

Describing the MBSR program, Kabat-Zinn writes: “This ‘work’ involves above all the regular, disciplined practice of moment-to-moment awareness or mindfulness, the complete ‘owning’ of each moment of your experience, good, bad, or ugly. This is the essence of full catastrophe living. Although at this time mindfulness meditation is most commonly taught and practiced within the context of Buddhism, its essence is universal. Yet it is no accident that mindfulness comes out of Buddhism, which has as its overriding concerns the relief of suffering and the dispelling of illusions.”

The overlapping theories, ideas and concepts between the western and eastern notions of the unconscious can be easily identified throughout this essay. Differences between the western and eastern notions of the unconscious are simply a case of diversity in perspective. Western theory views the unconscious as something that is hidden within the psyche, yet actively affecting our conscious experience. There is therefore a need to shine a light on the unconscious matter in order to bring them into our conscious awareness. Eastern theory on the other hand, views the person as living unconsciously and in a deluded state of existence. The concentration is on consciousness and bringing it into our present life as fully as possible so that we may reach a state of complete awareness, or enlightenment. Differing perspectives, however the outcome sought is the same.

Some may argue that a reconciliation between the two would be difficult, however sufficient evidence has been given in this essay to suggest that a reconciliation has indeed already taken place, namely in the integration of eastern techniques into western therapy practices, predominantly in the utilization of mindfulness techniques and meditation.

The integral foundation in this reconciliation lies in the shared understanding of the importance of awareness to the growth and progression of humans toward a more conscious, more aware existence. The reconciliation of western and eastern has been and continues to be, a steady progression into a new way of viewing the unconscious. In Welwood’s words: “…a new model of unconscious process would be useful in allowing the psychological community to approach transpersonal and non-dualistic experience in an appropriate manner.” (Welwood, 1977)