Digging Deeper through the Hill

The attempt to bridge Western and Eastern thinking has only been as of recent, and this attempt seems to have as many advocates as devil advocates. The depth psychology movement shares in this tug-of-war and depth psychologists likewise differ in their (un)appreciation for inviting Eastern philosophies into their field of study. Carl Jung is well known for his appreciation of Taoism and the I-Ching, though even in the Jungian movement there is no consensus on incorporating Eastern ideas in this prominently Western school of thought. Archetypal psychology cannot avoid the invasion of Eastern thought in the Western world, and using the East’s numerous mythologies solely for the purpose of corroborating a pre-established Western way of understanding the psyche will reveal an Apollonic archetype, though Dionysian they attempt to portray themselves. The focus of the present paper is on the archetypal figure of the Bhagavad-Gita’s Krishna and will be coupled by the earlier developments, specifically those of James Hillman, of that branch of depth psychology termed archetypal psychology. The amalgamation of Krishna as an archetypal source with that of Hillman’s notions of soul will lead us to see similarities between Western and Eastern modes of understanding, and standing under, the soul and how Krishna leads us beyond the radical re-visioning of James Hillman.
Hillman’s breakthrough work Re-Visioning Psychology revolutionizes what is meant by the “psyche” and painstakingly argues for what he calls a “polytheistic psychology” (167-171). In the preface to the 1992 edition, Hillman explicitly admits that he as not “gone East” but stayed in the “Western tradition” (xxii). The adamancy of staying within the Western tradition of psychology, of studying and theorizing of how to articulate the psyche, is analogous to the West’s tendency to stay within our limited worldview and present it as the way of understanding, the way of seeing. That is, it is Apollonic. If there is to be such a thing as depth-psychology that poses itself to be a field directed towards a way of understanding the human psyche, then it must at least attempt to integrate a worldview that has long existed prior to the West’s and is ever present today in the West. Prior to this conscious decision to stay within the Western tradition, Hillman’s archetypal psychology is tinted time and again with Eastern concepts. This is jumping too far too quickly, though; an examination of what is being referred to as “the archetype of Krishna” will first be delineated.
Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita: A Figure Amongst figures
Krishna’s commentary on reality and how the human fits within reality is found in the Bhagavad-Gita. In the Gita, Krishna is an anthropomorphized figure of Atman, the soul of the cosmos that infiltrates all of existence and, in humans, resides in each individual. Krishna pervades the whole universe by his non-manifested form and all of the cosmos exists in him (12.4). This anthropomorphized archetypal perspective infers that all the multiplicities that abound throughout the cosmos all derive from and are sustained by an infusing and fusing force: “…al that exists is woven on me, like a web of pearls on thread.” Yet, this unifying ideation that infiltrates Krishna’s imagery and teachings does not dismiss the reality of multiplicities. Hinduism assumes a pantheon, but even the gods that make up the constellation of the Hindu pantheon, along with the rest of Nature, derive from this Source (10.2); Heinrich Zimmer reminds us in Myths and Symbols of Indian Art and Civilization that the gods which make up the Hindu pantheon are actually derivatives of, manifestations of, something beyond themselves: “But the gods are themselves the production of a greater maya: the spontaneous self-transformation of an originally undifferentiated, all-generating divine Substance” (25). This “divine Substance” is, in the language of the Gita, that of Krishna: “[Humanity], see my forms in hundreds and thousands; diverse, divine, of many colors and shapes” (11.5).
This all said, it is important to keep in mind that this is not sheer monism. A.C. Commenting on 18.55 of the Gita, Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, founder of the International Society of Krishna Consciousness, mentions that, “One should not misunderstand that the word visate, ‘enters into Me,’ supports the monist theory that one becomes homogeneous with the impersonal Brahman” (824). Thus, the innumerable manifestations that are inherently part of reality are really multiplicities of a Source. Simultaneously, they are manifesting multiples of Krishna, which infers they are not ends in themselves, but are images of that which resides behind, beyond and below them. The multiplicities, then, are quite real images that symbolize the vast variation of life: “…the supreme infinite spirit…Its hands and feet reach everywhere; its head and face see in every direction; hearing everything, it remains in the world, enveloping everything” (Gita 13.13). A hand is not a foot, though they are compartments of an entire body—so it is with Krishna. In depth psychology and its pantheon of archetypes, Krishna is typically seen as one archetype amongst a host of others; however, it is argued here that the Krishna of the Gita is, much like “psyche” or “soul”, the container in which all other archetypes manifest. Krishna, then, is the quintessential of what it means to be archetypal: “Archetypal images demonstrate difference, differing from each other and infinitely deferring a fixed meaning” (Post-Jungian Criticism: Theory and Practice, 43).

The above paragraphs are a summarization, not an exhaustive description of Krishna in the vast Hindu tradition or even a covering of all the diverse interpretations of Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita. The basic overview of who and what Krishna is a springboard into the body of depth psychology, most notably that of James Hillman’s earlier works. Jung differed from Freud in that Jung was willing to travel East in his psychological experimentation; Hillman, a pupil and yet guru of Jungian ideation, started East but, as noted in the opening paragraph, intentionally turns his attention West and chooses to stay within that tradition. What follows is a transcription of the descriptions of Krishna above into depth-psychological terminology. Following this intertwinement will be a brief exploration of how Krishna, and all that Krishna infers, might be leading depth-psychologists past the idolatrous gods that depth-psychology currently revels in.
Worlds Colliding and Coalescing.

Putting Krishna-consciousness in depth-psychological language immediately leads to one of, if not the, most recognized depth-psychologists today: James Hillman. The attempt to intertwine philosophical worldviews is a precarious endeavor; miss-representation of one or the other is all too common. While anachronisms might occur, an attempt of exchanging the imagistic teachings of Krishna with depth-psychological jargon might prove beneficial. Krishna, representing the soul of the cosmos, is the archetypal source from which all subsequent archetypes stem from. As the psyche contains both the conscious and unconscious, so Krishna exists in manifest and invisible realms, knowable and unknowable. The physical and psychical manifestations of the archetypal source have archetypal backgrounds themselves, evidenced by the mass of depth-psychological literature that juxtaposes Greek mythology with the archetypal diversity found within the psyche (though rarely do users of Greek myths ask if there is something beyond the archetypal images being referenced).
It is Hillman’s first scholarly book, Emotions, where there are obvious parallels between Hillman’s notion of “soul” and the archetypal imagery described of Krishna above. For Hillman, psyche is the banal term that he replaces with the more ambiguous and poetic word soul (Suicide and the Soul, 47). And, as Hillman notes, “The psyche as a whole…is the original text through which all translations and correlations must be referred” (Emotion 273). In the paragraph that follows he delineates this notion of soul: “It is the psyche which is the formal ground of human experience and behaviour [sic]. And emotion, as the energetic stuff of the psyche…is the primary state of activity of the soul” (273). The human experience—conscious or unconscious, awake or asleep, imaginary or empirical, et cetera—is found in the psyche/soul. “We must keep in mind here that the central and total, inner and outer, quality and pattern are ways of talking about a single complex, the psyche. By tradition the psyche is one, even if divisible into many factors” (Emotion 271). In the Gita this is stated Hindu style in 8.3: “Eternal and supreme is the infinite spirit; its inner self is called inherent being; its creative force, known as action, is the source of creature’s existence.” This “infinite spirit”—that which is both inner and outer, immanent and transcendent—is, of course, portrayed through the anthropomorphic figure imaged as Krishna.
The psyche is, “the container of the energetic aspect” (Emotion 275), and yet like Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Hillman adamantly denies that such psychological articulation is akin to monism. Hence, psyche/soul is to be understood as the unity where diversity abides in, the soil from which archetypal forces germinate, blossom, and return to. The plethora of archetypes that most depth psychology illustrates through references to Greek mythology derive from a single Source—call it soul or Krishna—and are not dissolved by their similar originating point. Atman, the Hindu term for “God within”, is personalized through Krishna in the Gita and, as Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj points out, is diversely recognized: ““But here God means in the indwelling principle within you—the atman, which is given various names. These represent this ‘inner-God’ who will respond no matter what names of other Gods you chant” (The Very Fount of Bliss in The Inner Journey: Views from the Hindu Tradition, 299). This is the Hindu way of saying the psyche is the generating container where archetypes stem from, and to which they return. It is for this reason that Krishna, as Atman in person, is seen by Arjuna as having no beginning, middle, or end—that is, the human psyche and its manifesting archetypes are figured in the Gita by and through Krishna. “Lord of All, I see no end, or middle or beginning to your totality” (Gita 11.16).
Parting Ways
The “soul” of Hillman and Krishna of the Bhagavad-Gita are microcosmic representations of a macrocosmic trend—the coalescing of Eastern and Western meta-psychological understanding. However, where Hillman and Krishna both preach of the God within, they part ways as Hillman spends more and more time writing and inter-viewing on his polytheistic campaign. It is difficult to not smirk as one reads the words of Krishna: “Votaries of the gods go to the gods, ancestor-worshippers go to the ancestors, those who propitiate ghosts go to them, and my worshipers go to me” (9.25). The vast amount of time and energy spent on validating the gods within has put an overcast of Hillman’s earlier work on soul. It is noteworthy that while Emotion, first published in 1960, focuses on “the primacy of soul” (272) and yet the 1992 reissue is prefaced with polytheistic language (xi, xii, xiv). The diversity of the psyche, articulated with words like “archetypes”, “gods”, and “goddesses”, has been the focus of depth-psychology since Hillman’s Re-Visioning and little attention has been given to the Source of this re-visioning. Hillman re-visions the psyche through his concept of soul, that perspective which includes all the diversity that manifests itself from a Source.
Harold Davis notes that Hillman is considered a postmodern psychologist, and as such his adamancy on difference verses singularity is not surprising (Jung, Freud, and Hillman: Three Depth Psychologies in Context, 184-187). Perhaps Hillman’s contextual milieu explains his polytheism—authenticating a decentralized, differentiated psyche. However, if Hillman is part of a deconstruction campaign, as Davis notes similarities between Hillman and Jacques Derrida (185), it would only be logical to follow Hillman to his logical conclusion and deconstruct—see through—the pantheon of archetypal gods he so vehemently apologizes for. The past two millennium have been marked by countless monotheistic apologists; Hillman on the other hand—though part of the same body—is a polytheistic apologist.
As Krishna is analogous to the soul, the God within, so his manifestations (Gita, ch. 11) are interchangeable with the hosts of archetypes that stem from the soul of each individual, from the souls of humanity. To interpret Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita through a monistic lens is a fallacy, as mentioned above. Similarly, seeing the teachings of Krishna as transcendental should also be avoided, for Krishna frequently and consistently urges Arjuna to take action (ex. 2.3 and 18.59-60). Thus far Krishna is in line with Hillman’s existential tendencies, as Davis reminds us that, “…the way for [Hillman] is through this world, not around it; psychologizing is about engaging the world, not denying or withdrawing from it or transcending it” (177). The psyche may be more accurately described as hosting many gods, but these gods make themselves known in and through the psyche. It is with the psyche, as with Krishna, that one perceives, experiences, and interacts with the universe; with the dissolution of the psyche comes the closure of one’s experience—inner and outer—of this world. Put simply, without soul, from where would the archetypes, the “gods within”, manifest themselves? Hillman would agree: from the soul.
A Krishna-Conclusion: Looking Beyond the Hill
Krishna of the Gita impersonates what depth-psychology refers to as psyche and soul, and it is with a Krishna-lens that one sees through the depth-psychological-pantheon of Greek mythology. Imaginary as it might be, one must question if Hillman’s looking back East to Greece does not stop short—if he should have kept heading East. Depth psychologies preoccupation with Greek mythology as the backdrop for the human psyche and all its diversity (i.e.—“pathologies”) prevents them from seeing through their own myth. The majority of depth psychology, if not Hillman than his followers, has fallen to Hillman’s own warning: “Archetypal here refers to a move one makes rather than a thing that is. Otherwise, archetypal psychology becomes only a psychology of archetypes” (A Blue Fire, 26-7). Yet credit must be given where credit is due.
Hillman, again in his earlier career, did go East. His commentary on Gopi Krishna’s Kundalini is insightful and re-visionary in itself as Hillman interpolates depth psychological insights to Gopi’s experiences. Hillman critiques the West’s Cartesian pathology of splitting mind and body, material and mental (68). Hillman even praises Kundalini yoga in its conceptual framework that prevents Gopi from having to grapple with what the West categorizes as “pathologies” (70). And yet, Hillman cannot help but conclude his commentary by noting that, “All the Gods are within” (250, emphasis mine). The adamant advocacy of a polytheistic psyche seems to be pathological itself as Hillman is captured by this mythical way of seeing.
Krishna-consciousness enables one to acknowledge the gods within; in fact, Krishna forewarns Arjuna that suppression of the gods’ force is detrimental to the individual for the gods will have their way despite our denying them (18.59). As Krishna comes into being through his own magic (4.6), so the psyche is constituted and sustained by a host of forces that are archetypal, and yet these archetypes are constituted and sustained by the soul. Like Hillman’s soul as perspective (Re-Visioning, x), so Krishna should be seen as a way of seeing. When Krishna-consciousness sets in, though, one realizes that the archetypes that are manifested and capture us are manifestations of one’s self. The manifestations might be articulated as “gods within”, but these gods serve and are served by the God within; they are created by and destroyed by the soul. It must be restated, however, that this does not denigrate, transcend, or belittle the very real heterogeneity that the soul/psyche manifests in each individual. Indeed, “see [the] forms in hundreds and thousands; diverse, divine, of many colors and shapes” (11.5) that reside within and materialize through each individual. Simultaneously, though, Krishna’s imagery and teachings deconstruct the assortments of life and then construct a unification that is constituted by, and could not exist without, the innumerable multiplicities that exist macro and microcosmically; externally and internally; that is, cosmologically and psychologically.
While depth psychology continues to theorize and practice polytheistic psychology, soul is working through their work. As manifestations of the soul, embodying archetypes, they serve and are served by the all-sustaining soul that enlivens us all. It is this soul that the Hindu’s designate in the humanly divine, or is it divinely human, Krishna. Until depth psychology can integrate the psychical understanding of the East, it will remain a strictly Western movement that intentionally sets its limits to its own chosen mythical perspective. One must ask, how deep is depth psychology willing to go? So deep that it looses itself and its hosts of Greek gods? Krishna reminds us, as he has for millions of adherents throughout the millenniums, in such a way that can only be archetypal, that even the archetype has a Source.

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Bhagavad-gita As It Is. New York: Macmillan Company, 1972.

The Bhagavad-Gita: Krishna’s Counsel in Time of War. Trans. Barbara Stoler Miller. New York: Bantam Dell, 1986.

Davis, Harold. Jung, Freud, and Hillman: Three Depth Psychologies in Context. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2003.

Hillman, James. A Blue Fire. New York: Harper & Row, 1989.

-Emotion: A Comprehensive Phenomenology of Theories and Their Meaning. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 1972.

-Re-Visioning Psychology. New York: HarperCollins, 1975.

-Suicide and the Soul. New York: Harper and Row, 1964.

Krishna, Gopi. Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man, with a Psychological Commentary by James Hillman. Boston: Shambhala, 1997.

Zimmer, Heinrich. Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization. Ed. Joseph Campbell. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1946.

Post-Jungian Criticism: Theory and Practice, edited by James S. Baumlin, Tita French Baumlin, and George H. Jensen

The Inner Journey: Views from the Hindu Tradition. Ed. Margaret H. Case. Sandpoint, ID: Morning Light, 2007.