O caminho do yoga e a realização do si-mesmo na psicologia analítica: cotejamentos e considerações

Abstract

According to the Vedic tradition, the suffering common to every human being, identified as the feeling of limitation and mortality, is caused by the subject's ignorance about his essential nature. The solution to this problem is self-knowledge, which refers to the understanding on the part of the individual that their real nature is the same as everything in the universe: Brahman, Consciousness. The subject must have the mind capable of achieving self-knowledge, with Yoga being the lifestyle that prepares him to obtain the necessary qualifications and to experience the real understanding of himself. Individuation, in turn, refers to the subject's development process towards the Self. It is a work of integrating unconscious contents into consciousness, the result of which is the direction of the subject to the center of his personality, providing the realization of a unity of being felt as a “liberation”. Considering that Yoga and individuation concern the process of personal development, the present work constitutes an investigation about the possible intersections between Yoga, as described by Vedic philosophy, and the individuation process, proposed by C. G. Jung. Therefore, a bibliographical documentary research of texts from the Yoga tradition and works by C. G. Jung on the subject of individuation, as well as his writings on oriental practices and on Yoga, was carried out. The method used for reading and analyzing the texts was hermeneutic. From this, it was found that Yoga and individuation point, after all, to the same issue: the union of opposites. Both processes deal with the meeting of the self with a higher psychic instance and refer to an alchemical process, that is, transformative, in which the subject is brought to a state of peace through the attainment of totality. There was also a need for further investigations concerning the psychic implications of the incorporation of the practice of Yoga by the West.