Indian Rhythm and Jung

This article was downloaded by: [Central U Library of Bucharest]
On: 09 April 2014, At: 00:59

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered
office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche

Publication details, including instructions for authors and
subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ujun20
The Unstruck Sound: Archetypes of

Rhythm and Emotion in Indian Alchemy
and Jungian Analysis
Khenu Singh
Published online: 10 May 2013.
To cite this article: Khenu Singh (2013) The Unstruck Sound: Archetypes of Rhythm and Emotion
in Indian Alchemy and Jungian Analysis, Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche, 7:2, 35-61, DOI:
10.1080/19342039.2013.787887
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19342039.2013.787887
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the
Content) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,
our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to
the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions
and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,
and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content
should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources
of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,
proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or
howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising
out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any
substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &
Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/termsand-conditions
The Unstruck Sound
Downloaded by [Central U Library of Bucharest] at 00:59 09 April 2014
Archetypes of Rhythm and Emotion in Indian Alchemy and

Jungian Analysis
KHENU SINGH
Alchemists Laboratory, by Hans Vredman de Vries, in Heinrich Kunrath, Amphitheatrum

sapientiae aeternae, 1595.
Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche, Volume 7, Number 2, pp. 3561, Print ISSN 1934-2039, Online ISSN 1934-2047.
q 2013 C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. DOI: 10.1080/19342039.2013.787887.
36
JUNG JOURNAL: CULTURE & PSYCHE 7: 2 / SPRING 2013
It has increasingly seemed to me that the sense of aliveness or deadness of a given moment of an analytic
hour is perhaps the most important gauge of the analytic process . . . Words, when they are living and
breathing, are like musical chords. The full resonance of the chord or phrase must be allowed to be heard in
all of its suggestive imprecision. We must attempt in our use of language, both in our theory-making and in
our analytic practice, to be makers of music, rather than players of notes . . .
Thomas Ogden (1997, 4 5)
Even when I have moments of music making in clinical work, including creative possibilities that
can emerge from moments of silence, noise, or dissonance, what a challenge it is to evoke the
nonverbal through words! I nd my efforts lacking in variable degrees when trying to write or talk
about the ow in any clinical moment, session, or larger arc of work. At some level, the music of
our work, like any music, needs its tones and rhythms to be felt and heard in order to be
appreciated. Even then, its impossible to fully re-create the experience as each moment is a new
one, with unique and shifting intrapsychic and interpersonal contexts. In the end, I try my best to
communicate and evoke a sense of the meaningful experience. With this apologia made, I will set
forth to explore rhythmic and musical processes in the clinical work through the lens of Indian
alchemical and aesthetic traditions. My hope is to acknowledge and illuminate facets from lesserknown strands of Indian philosophy and culture that have psychological relevance and are useful
metaphors in understanding the clinical exchange and human experience. I hope to bring this into
relationship to existing Jungian perspectives on alchemy that draw primarily from European and
Greek sources. Perhaps something in this cross-cultural dialogue will resound as musical and
stimulate further inquiry.
Vishal Nagar performing alongside the author (not pictured) (Courtesy of the author, 2007.)
Khenu Singh, The Unstruck Sound
In Indian classical performance, it is typical to introduce the elements that are later developed
in the course of the performance, whether that be particular movements of notes hinting at the
emotional states to be developed or rhythmic phrases introduced as seeds that will later blossom.
With this cultural attitude in mind, I offer a brief overview of the journey, beginning with some
reections on Jungs excursions into medieval European alchemy, as a precursor to an exploration
of Indian alchemical systems and their perspectives on rhythm and emotion. An exploration of the
psychological dimensions of Indian classical rhythm and performance will follow, and nally I will
reect on the musical and rhythmic aspects of the analytic endeavor. My focus draws from Indian
classical music, in particular, the rhythmic and emotional aspects of tabla, the chief rhythmic
instrument of the classical traditions of northern India. The primary method of teaching and
transmission in India has been the oral tradition, passing knowledge from teacher to student,
and in that light, I draw from a decade of study and lively conversation with my tabla teacher,
Vishal Nagar.
Jung and Alchemy

In medieval European alchemy, Jung found a manifestation of psyche where one could observe
symbol formation and deeper psychological process unimpeded by epistemological criticism.
Categories of fantasy were used to describe the phenomena that were seen in the alchemical
retort (Edinger 1995, 19). These chemical processes held a fascination for the alchemists as
they mirrored inner dilemmas in a way in which they could be reected on and engaged
(Henderson and Sherwood 2003). These alchemists often expressed awareness that they were
speaking of internal transformative processes as well as external ones intended to create gold or
elixirs of immortality. The arcane and symbolic nature of the language they used often
obfuscated this fact. Alchemy spoke to Jung, and he made an effort to speak to us in order to
rescue what was alive and meaningful from what seemed to most contemporary audiences a
primitive quasi-science and historical relic. Perhaps most signicantly, he and subsequent
clinicians found in alchemy a grand metaphor, a spectrum of images and psychological
processes that are useful in understanding the human psychewhether in dreams, fantasy,
synchronicity, or the relational eld.
A comprehensive review of the rich alchemical imagery and process, with its psychological
and psychotherapeutic implications, is beyond the scope of this paper.1 I will touch on some
highlights and overarching themes, however, especially those that weave through the Indian
alchemical systems. The Self, a concept central to Jungs notion of individuation, has been
described as the center of all consciousness (both conscious and unconscious), the archetype of
unity and totality, as both immanent and transcendent, as a God-image, and even as the God
within by Jung and post-Jungians (Miller 2004, 7071). Jung borrowed the term and concept
of Self from Indias Upanishads and developed it in his own way (Coward 1985, 52). Although
his study was broad for his time and European background, Jung ultimately undertook a
relatively limited exploration of Indian textual sources. This left him with only a partial
impression of Indian psychospiritual development. For instance, he criticized the Indian seeker
as dealing with the world of opposites by withdrawing libido from external objects and
37
38
internal ideas through yogic practices, until a state of complete detachment from all psychic
contents was achieved. This goal is in much of Vedanta and, therefore, a valid criticism of this
particular canon. Unfortunately, Jung didnt seem to have a deep awareness of the subsequent
Shaivite alchemical and Tantric traditions. In these traditions, this introverted movement is
just one aspect of a larger rhythmic process in which there is a subsequent reengagement with
the world.
Jung felt individuation could be aided by processes of the Self such as the activation of the
transcendent function, which operates on seeming opposites by holding tension until something
new and creative emerges vis--vis the symbol as shown in the following image.
Churning of the Ocean of Milk, by Philippus Baldaeus, Afgoderye der Oost-Indische Heydenen,
Amsterdam, 1672.
The confrontation of the two positions generates a tension charged with energy and creates a
living, third thing . . . a movement out of the suspension between the opposites, a living birth that
leads to a new level of being, a new situation (Jung 1916/1969, CW 8, {189). This living birth
that grows out of intense tension gives rise to the symbol, which Jung references as the
shimmering symbol, highlighting its rhythmic dynamism (1942/1967, CW 13, {199).
These dynamic processes of the Self connect to a central archetype in the Indian alchemical
and Tantric systems: Spanda, the rhythmic nature of the Self, which is sometimes imaged as the
shimmering, quivering pulse of
emanation and absorption, or in
anthropomorphic form as Shiva
who opens and closes his eyes,
alternately gazing outward onto
his creation and then turning in
the other direction focusing on
his interiority. Or the rhythm is
represented as Shiva and Shakti,
his goddess consort, coming
together and parting in the
throes of their cosmic passion.
Jungs identication of the
Self as a goal and core process of
transformation was a theoretical
construct that separated his
theory from other European
and American psychological theories. Jungian analyst Michael
Fordham further developed and
articulated an understanding of
processes of the Self with his
concepts of deintegration and
reintegration, a lifelong dynamism he described: The self
may be conceived as a dynamic
system that deintegrates and
reintegrates in a rhythmic
Bhairava (Shiva) and Kali (Shakti) in Union, Nepalese watercolor,
sequence (1976, 12). Fordhams
eighteenth century (Public domain. WikiMedia Commons, http://en
idea is that the individual, rst as
.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kali_and_Bhairava_in_Union.jpg.)
infant, begins with a primary self,
a wholeness, that reaches out to meet the world (deintegration) and then consolidates its
experience internally (reintegration) in a dynamic pattern of unfolding relationship to its
environment. Jungian analyst Francesco Bisagni further describes the rhythmic and dynamic
quality of deintegration and reintegration as the essential rhythmic quality of the Self in its
39
40
encounter with the object (2010, 255). As I shall continue to elucidate, these formulations
reverberate with the Indian concept of Spanda.2
In analytic work, the patient is supported by the analyst as he or she descends into a dialogue
with the deep layers of his or her own psyche, a process that, at times, necessitates the bearing of
intense affects, as well as the difcult holding of seemingly paradoxical, opposite, and incompatible
positions and perspectives. The work, often with heavily activated complexes, is slow and spiraling.
Old perspectives, narratives, and inner structures break down, and new ones are constructed, ones
that expand space for authentic living. The individual grows through the genuine and conscious
suffering of what had previously been warded off. As the transcendent function is activated, symbol
formation (as experienced through dreams, fantasies, active imagination, and synchronicities)
occurs. This phenomenon provides guidance and allows consciousness to transform and grow.
The rhythmic theme can be felt and observed. Rather than a linear process, the movement
backward and forward, spiraling and circling, regressing and progressing is organic as the individual
engages the prima materia over and over.
Western alchemy is ripe with images that parallel the analytic and psychic processes: images of
burning (calcinatio), dissolving (solutio), dying (morticatio), whitening (albedo), separating
(separatio), and combining/integrating (coniunctio) to name a few. These processes, often imaged
with an intensity of suffering, are part of rening and purication processes that are ultimately
creative. There are parallels between Western alchemy and Indian practices and ritual. The albedo,
for example, corresponds to an Indian tradition in which white cremation ashessymbolic of
death, purication, and rebirthare worn by followers of Shaivite Tantra.
There are two brief references in The Collected Works where Jung indicates that he had
knowledge of Indian alchemy (1942/1948/1953/1967, CW 13, {254; 1950/1959, CW 9ii,
{237). He mentions the existence of Indian quicksilver systems but confesses he did not study
these and instead focused on Greek and European alchemical traditions. During his 1938 trip to
India, he was in the midst of an intensive study of alchemy, reading Gerhard Dorns seventeenthcentury Theatrum Chemicum. Once, while off Indias coast, he chose to remain on ship and study
Dorn rather than disembark. He felt there was something altogether other in what he was
reading, something beyond what he could nd in India. Although he knew that Paracelsus, the
sixteenth-century alchemist, inuenced Gerhard Dorn, Jung did not realize that Paracelsus may
have traveled through India (Hartmann 1993, 4). Similar claims (and disputes) have been made
regarding an Indian inuence on the Greek Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus (Gregorios 2002,
13 23). Though we may never know the ultimate truth of these inuences, it does bring our
attention to layers of possible dialogue and mutual inuence that often go unnoticed.
Greek and Indian civilizations are often considered as distinct. In fact, this distinction was part of
the justication that colonial forces used as they occupied India, feeling they needed to offer their
advanced civilization to the Indians who were considered lesser (McEvilly 2002). We now know that
Greece and India had early contact and exchanges, undermining ideas of monolithic otherness and
throwing this common bifurcation of East and West into suspicion. Going back over 3000 years, there
are Akkadian words in the Atharva Veda, an Indian text from the late second millennium BCE . Later
in the fourth century BCE , the Greek philosopher Pyrrhon of Elis went to India with Alexander of
Macedonia. The subsequent Pyrrhonist lineage is a key body of evidence for the relationship between
Greek and Indian dialectical attitudes and philosophies (2002). There were Hindu monks in
Alexandria, and the Gandharan Greco-Buddhist art in India dates to the rst century BCE . In fact,
Jung hints at some knowledge of a later Greek-Indian relationship in Answer to Job where he makes a
brief connection between Sophia and Shakti and states that relations with India certainly existed at
that time (the time of the Ptolemys) (1952/1954/1956, CW 11, {610).
There are many parallels between Indian and Western alchemical systems. Both traditions had
music as part of their enterprise. The European alchemists valued music and believed that
mathematical relationships based on musical ratios could guide the ratio of ingredients in their
processes. In addition, alchemical work may have been performed to the accompaniment of music
and chanting, with the quality of a religious ritual (Henderson and Sherwood 2003, 3738).
Yet to my knowledge, unlike Indian alchemy, European alchemy lacks a continued, robust musical
tradition. Some historic examples do exist. For example, there are fty fugues associated with
Michael Maiers seventeenth-century work, Atalanta Fugiens, but without living presence in
contemporary culture. The musical aspects of the alchemical endeavor rarely enter our discourse in
any explicit or substantial way.
Thus were left with words, impoverished by the absence of the musics more immediate
somatic and affective impact. In a clinical parallel, the relational psychoanalyst Stephen Mitchell
references psychoanalyst Hans Loewald who spoke of the affective impact of the acoustic
experience of words both before and after symbolic meaning is recognized, sharing a clinical
example in which the somatic feel of the word, the making of the sounds with his tongue and lips
and the place and rhythm of the word in the context of relational experience, became central to
meaning and relatedness (Knoblauch 2000, 7). This seems evident when one reects on the
interactions between parent and infant, where the rhythm and tone carrying the words convey,
construct, and are created by emotional meaning and interpersonal relatedness. Or perhaps we can
remember an interaction with someone who didnt speak a shared language. Somehow with facial
expression, gesture, tone, and rhythm, a shared affective experience emerged. Conveying these
layers of the interpersonal exchange in transcripts of therapeutic hours challenges the writer.
The complex dimensions of Indian texts meet a similar challenge when they are translated and
considered outside of their indigenous context, which are embedded in music and ritual. How
often do we hear the texts sung in Sanskrit, with the particular rhythm and melody associated
with those verses and the qualities of consciousness evoked by this direct acoustic experience?
The musical edge of alchemy (as well as analysis) is often in the shadow.
Music is unique among the arts in that it is purely abstract and without static, concrete form
to reect on. Its dynamic and ephemeral, without the sustained form of a painting or sculpture or
a work of prose or poetry. The European alchemists could paint evocative pictures with their
words and brushes, but they didnt have means to record and play back their music. Even if music
was transcribed into a notated form, it required musicians to read and play it. And unlike the
Indian tradition, there isnt a living thread of oral tradition that has passed on the purported
musical compositions of European alchemists.
Unfortunately, even with the Indian traditions as theyve been known to the West, the
Sanskritologists lacked adequate understanding of the Indian musical systems, and also of the
experiential practices of religious and spiritual texts, and therefore could not record the details of
41
42
musical practice linked to the translations of the written word. At best, though musical detail may
have been lost, they could convey themes through poetic and evocative language. Or, like Jung,
there were others who had direct experience of the psyche and in that way engaged with such texts.
For many Indians growing up in the West, such as myself, who have been trying to nd their way
between worlds, this has been vital.
Moving closer to the present, to the beginnings of depth psychology and psychoanalysis, it is
striking that only upon one occasion does Freud write of music: . . . With music, I am almost
incapable of obtaining any pleasure. Some rationalistic, or perhaps analytic, turn of mind in me
rebels against being moved by a thing without knowing why I am thus affected and what it is that
affects me (Freud 1914/1989, quoted in Sacks 2007, 293). Music evokes direct shifts in affect and
can induce states of consciousness that are less amenable to being contained or understood, and
this, in turn, can be anxiety-inducing and something we defend against. Even Jung seemed
uncomfortable with an intensity of rhythm and dance during his trip to Africa in the 1920s.
In speaking of a tribal dance, he writes, I did not know whether I ought to feel pleased or anxious
about this mass display. To his testament, he joined in the dance, yet as the experience intensied,
he became worried about how it would end (Jung 1961, 271).
Indian aesthetic and emotion theory developed in the crucible of Indian alchemical traditions.
Unlike the divergent paths music and alchemy took in the West, where the musical component
faded, they continue to be linked in a living way in Indian culture.
Indian Alchemy: Spanda and Rasa

In the Indian tradition, we can trace certain principles found in alchemy, such as the separation, tension,
and reconciliation of opposites, as far back as the Rig Veda. This collection of hymns dates back to at least
1600 to 2000 BCE and is one of the oldest texts in any Indo-European language. A more explicit form of
alchemy, one involving the physical use of mercury and other typical reagents, such as sulfur, mica, and
gold, emerged in the rst century BCE and reached its zenith in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
This Indian alchemical tradition did not exist in a vacuum. There was mutual inuence through cultural
exchange with China, Tibet, Central Asia, Persia, and Europe (White 1996).
Somatic healing systems emerged from Indian alchemy, including hatha yoga and the
ayurvedic tradition. A key Indian alchemical text, the Rasarnava (the Flood of Mercury), states,
As in the metal, so in the body . . . By means of the work, a stable body is attained. Mercury and
breath control are known as the Work in two parts (White 1996, 264). This resonates with
principles found in the Emerald Tablet of Hermes, a key Greek alchemical text, where it is written,
What is below is like that which is above, and what is above is like what is below, whereas the
Indian text more explicitly links the alchemical endeavor to the body and yogic breath work. These
healing practicesyoga and Ayurvedatoday continue to thrive in India and elsewhere.
Moving forward and across culture, modern psychiatry and the neurosciences show
increasingly holistic interest in yoga and meditation approaches, especially as scientic research
substantiates that these practices have meaningful impact on the mind and brain. Once again,
there are signicant, lesser-known threads of connection between these traditions. For instance,
the rst antipsychotic medication (Reserpine) was developed from an ayurvedic herb (Rauwola
Serpintina). Overall, yoga and Ayurveda are part of a complex and holistic system that embraces
the somatic, psychological, and spiritual. They emerged from Indian alchemy and continue to this
day as part of a living tradition. This is unlike European offshoots of alchemy, for instance, modern
chemistry, which lost explicit connection with the psychological and spiritual dimension.
Tantra, with its system of chakras and kundalini, its system of yoga, as well as sexo-yogic practices,
emerged from these alchemical traditions (White 1996). Focusing on Shaivite traditions that emerged
in the Northern India region of Kashmir, textual sources rst emerged in written form in the ninth
century CE , beginning with the Shiva Sutras. Although there are multiple lineages in Shaivite Tantra,
I will focus on the two most prominent schoolsthose concerned with the philosophy of Recognition
(Pratyabhijna) and the Doctrine of Vibration (Spanda) (Dyczkowski 1987).
In the Pratyabhijna school, the focus is on the liberating recognition of the souls identity as Shiva,
with a relative dissolution of ego, but no loss of identity or involvement in the manifest world. In many
ways, this precedes and parallels the Jungian idea of surrendering ego control and reorienting the center
of consciousness toward the ego and its dynamic relationship with the Self. The doctrine of Spanda
stresses the importance of experiencing Spanda, the vibration and dynamic activity of the Absolute (that
is, the Self). This idea of Spanda is a core archetype in the Shaivite system.
Shiva dances and as he beats his drum the Sanskrit

language emergesthe rhythm that carries the
word. (Image courtesy of Chanan Singh, 2012.)
As with alchemy in medieval Europe, Tantra compensated for material in the relative shadows
of the larger Indian culture and traditions, including the body with its emotions/affects and the
manifest world itself. Unlike the public rituals of other aspects of Hinduism, Tantric rituals were
done in private, sometimes in cremation grounds, sometimes with meat and wine, and sometimes
with ritual intercourse. The Tantric tradition broke down the dichotomy between spiritual and
mundane, with the task being to realize the transcendent as immanent. At the end, these were
simply two aspects of consciousness: Shiva as being and Shiva/Shakti as becoming, vibrating
as Spanda.
43
44
In the older Vedic traditions, there was a dualism between creator and created. The shift in
Advaita Vedanta (Upanishads) was toward a nondualistic monism, yet here the world was still seen
as less than real, as an illusion (Maya). As well, a plurality of selves was deniedwith Self as
Brahman, there were no unique factors that distinguished one self from another, diminishing the
value of individuality. In the subsequent Shaivite tradition, this Vedantic position was itself
considered a dualism between real and illusory. In contrast, in the Shaivite view, the world is real
and Maya is the creative force of Brahman (Self) as it pulses into its various nite and very real
manifestations and then back into its innite nature again (Dyczkowski 1987).
Tantra was anything but otherworldly:
. . . renunciation, detachment and asceticismby which one may free oneself from the bondage
of existence and thereby recall ones original identity with the source of the Universeare not
the way of Tantra. Indeed, Tantra is the opposite: not a withdrawal from life, but the fullest
possible acceptance of our desires, feelings and situations as human beings. (Khanna and
Mookerjee 2003)
In Tantra, one enters into an encounter with the numinous, the ground of Being, but returns and
lives in this world. As Dyczkowski states:
The Vedantins way is one of withdrawal from nite in order to achieve a return to the innite. This
process from the Shaivite point of view is only the rst stage. The next stage is the outward journey
from the innite to the nite. When perfection is achieved in both movements, that is from the nite
to the innite and back, man participates in the universal vibration of the absolute and shares in its
essential freedom. (1987, 41)
Similarly, Sri Aurobindo, felt to have synthesized Vedanta and Tantra, states:
If the Indian saying is true that the body is the instrument provided for the fulllment of the right law
of our nature, then any nal recoil from the physical life must be a turning away from the
completeness of the Divine Wisdom and a renunciation of its aim in earthly manifestation . . . (Ghose
1996, 7)
Spanda
Vasugupta, the ninth-century philosopher-sage, wrote the rst Shaivite Tantric work, the Shiva
Sutras. He claimed to have received these eighty aphorisms through a dream, not unlike the
Visions of Zosimos, which Jung explicates in his Alchemical Studies. The core archetype of Spanda
was further elaborated in Vasuguptas subsequent Spanda Karikas, a synopsis of the Shiva Sutras.
This text includes material that is clinically relevant and also overlaps models of psyche and
consciousness later developed by Jung and post-Jungians.
In the rst verse, Spanda is characterized as a dynamic process of the absolute (Shiva/Self)
conceptualized as the goddess Shaktithat oscillates rhythmically between unmesa (emergence)
and nimesa (submergence). Vasugupta emphasized that this is both an aspect of the larger
consciousness as well as a process within the manifest individual being.
In verse ve, reality is described as being neither purely a psychological subject nor a physical
object and experience. The idea of bothuidtouches on what Jung tried to articulate through
his concept of the unus mundus and the psychoid. It is this nature of reality that allows for
synchronicity, such that we have meaningful ow between what we consider intrapsychic and the
world of matter and lived experience.
In the sixth and seventh verses, the mediation of external world and interior life is elaborated.
Spanda is described as a rhythm of meeting the outer world, holding its objects and life experiences
in conscious awareness, and then taking and holding this into interior space. These processes
presage Fordhams elaboration of the dynamic nature of the Self as it deintegrates and reintegrates
in relation to the object and the environment. Spanda is described as the essential nature of both
the absolute Shiva, as well as the unique individual soul. The individual soul can itself be
considered a deintegrate of the larger Soul/Self. It is the same yet also different from Shiva. Tantric
commentators conceptualized this as unity in difference, a paradoxical third position between
the opposites of monism and dualism.
In the tenth and eleventh verses, there is discussion of dissolving the limited ego (the ego that
is inadequately related to the Self) to realize Spanda and the Self. As previously mentioned in the
context of Pratyabhijna, this anticipates the Jungian metaphor of repositioning the egos relation
to the Self. These particular verses also articulate processes that are paradigmatic to the notion of a
release of psychic energy from complexes through the analytic process. Realization of Spanda, like
the discharge of energy from a complex, allows relatively unfettered access to ones deeper nature
with its dynamic and creative libidinal power.
Verse seventeen speaks of the partially awakened seeker who experiences Spanda in liminal
zones, the beginning and ending of waking and dreaming. As development progresses, Spanda is
experienced throughout, including the middle of waking. This speaks to the increased experience
of ow and synchronicity that emerges as one works on complexes and develops a deeper
relationship to the Self. Verses nineteen through twenty-one invite the practitioner to cultivate
awareness of Spanda in the day-to-day world and lived life.
Finally, in verse twenty-two, Vasugupta writes: In an intense emotional state or a state of
mental impasse, all the mental activities come to a dead stop. That is the time when one can
have an experience of the Spanda principle if one is properly oriented towards it. Jung later
articulates this principle in his Symbols of Transformation, where he describes a process in
which encounter with an obstacle can result in a potentially creative regression of libido in the
service of the Self, in other words, where there is an introversion with an activation of creative
fantasy and symbol formation. With a symbolic attitude, development and transformation is
facilitated. In words quite close to those in the Spanda Karikas, Jungian analyst Joan Chodorow
says, When we can be conscious of and present to a state of disorientation, the psyche is likely
to produce exactly the images and experiences that are needed to move us through it
(2001, 15).
At the deepest level, Spanda is a central archetypal pattern that underlies rhythmic processes
in clinical work. Spanda includes the alternating rhythm of being in a reective mode or in reverie
and then being in more active modes from which we engage in the interpersonal dance, including
with our words and nonverbal play. In some ways, this reverberates with the image of Shiva closing
his eyes to enter into interior space and opening his eyes into an engagement with the world
through the active principle of Shakti. The manifestation of Spanda also includes rhythmic aspects
45
46
of the analytic frame itselfthe rhythm of sessions and breaks in-between. As Bisagni eloquently
summarizes:
This manifests . . . itself in . . . the oscillations between presence and absence, distance
and closenesswhatever the phenomenology of the oscillation may bein the capacity for attuning
with (and distancing from) the different levels of mental or non-mental functioning moment by
moment, as well as the ritual constancy and reliability of the analytic setting. (2010, 256)
Rasa
Rasa is another core concept in various Indian traditions, but like Mercurius in European alchemy,
it is a hard one to pin down precisely. It has multiple meanings in the broad history of Indian
philosophic and cultural traditions. One meaning is mercury itself, the substance used in
alchemical operations, felt by the Tantric alchemists to be no less than the creative seed of Shiva.
We nd rasa described in the Indian traditions in ways that parallel Jungs amplication of
Mercurius. Yet there are also unique developments that carry rasa explicitly into the realm of
Indian emotion and aesthetic theory.
The rst reference to rasa is in the Rig Veda, where it refers to the nectar of the soma plant.
In the Vedic churning of the ocean of milk myth, the gods and anti-gods collaborate to churn the
ocean to create amrit or soma, an ambrosia of immortality. The serpent Vasuki is used as a churning
rope that pushes and pulls, causing Mount Mandarachala to rotate (see the image on page 38). From
that rhythmic tension, a series of objects emerge. First is a poison that Shiva swallows in self-sacrice,
prevented from fully descending into his being by his consort Parvati. The nal object is the divine
nectaramrit or soma. There are later alchemical versions of this same myth that explicitly
connect soma with mercury and also describe the creation of sulfur, the menses of the
Goddess, as part of this process. Edinger speaks of this myth (1985, 84) and the objects
created through the churning as representative of the coagulatio process, with the ultimate
substance as the elusive quicksilver or Spirit Mercurius that Jung wrote of. Edinger goes
on to write, Essentially, it is the autonomous spirit of the archetypal psyche, the paradoxical
manifestation of the transpersonal Self. To subject the Spirit Mercurius to coagulatio means
connecting the ego with the Self, the fulllment of Individuation (85).
In the Indian alchemical version of the myth, not only does mercury/soma emerge from the
play of opposites, but also sulfur is created. Using dynamic terms, Jung describes sulfur as a motive
factor in consciousness, even stating that unconscious dynamism would correspond to sulfur
(1955 56/1970, CW 14, {151). Given that sulfur is considered the menses of the goddess, this
also reverberates with Spanda, the rhythmic, creative nature of consciousness where the goddess
Shakti embodies the dynamic nature of Shiva. Finally, sulfur brings to mind the idea of rening
primitive desirousness such that it is more aligned with the dynamic ow of the Self (Edinger
1985). This, in turn, resonates with the Tantric perspective that desire is not meant to be
discarded, but rather related to the creative will of the Absolute (Dyczkowski 1987, 41).
After the Vedas, in the subsequent Upanishads, rasa refers to the bliss of Atman (true Self)
joining with Brahman (Godhead), both of which Jung equates with the Self. In this system,
Vedanta, the task is to realize the identity of Atman and Brahman; the bliss of this joining
(coniunctio) and realization is rasa. Again, we nd elements of a dynamic process that would later
be conceptualized as Spanda in Shaivite Tantra.
In the later Tantric alchemical traditions,
the physical realm was valued in new ways and
the individual soul took on new value as
something substantial, the same yet different
from Brahman. Here, we nd texts such as the
twelfth-century Rasopanisat, in which rasa is
both the liquid metal mercury as well as Atman
itself (White 1996), not just the realization of
Atman as Brahman. Rasa was central to these
traditionsboth as a concrete component of
the alchemical process and also at a more
psychospiritual level, as both the supreme
Godhead as well as the unique individual soul.
We nd another story of rasas origin in
the alchemical text known as the Rasendracudamani, in which Shiva produces semen as
mercury. He casts it into the mouth of Agni,
the re god, who takes the shape of a bird.
Shivas semen drops from Agnis mouth into
the mouth of the Lord of Serpents, who
King Soma and the Snake Goddess, from
R. M. Grindlay, Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of
wishes to leave behind old age and death.
Great Britain and Ireland, 1830.
Here, we have a movement from transcendent (bird as spirit) to immanent (serpent as earthly) and back (serpent that transcends mortality)
mediated by the dynamic Spanda nature of Shiva (here as rasa-mercury-Shakti)an image of renewal
through relationship to the Self. The presence of Agni references the Vedic re sacrice, giving
expression to the various levels of sacrice involved in the individuation process. Finally, this origin
story ties into the body, bringing together psyche and soma, through allusion to the related system of
Kundalini yoga, where the goal is activation of the kundalini, envisioned as serpent or the Goddess
Shakti, and its upward ascent through the chakras to unite with Shiva at the crown chakra.
At a more earthly level, rasa also refers to avor or essence: culinary metaphors with rasa as
providing the avor are quite common. The term rasoi, kitchen, emerges from rasa. The kitchen is
an alchemical image that connects to the transformative heat and pressures of the alchemical vessel,
or the analytic container. As well, the rasa/avor of embodied life highlights that aspect of Indian
alchemy that values embodied existence.
Natyashastra and Rasa Sutra: Emotion, Archetype, and Music

The ancient thread of rasa leads into the realms of emotion and music as elucidated in the
Natyashastra and further developed by subsequent Tantric/alchemical theorists and practitioners. The
Natyashastra is a text with an uncertain date, perhaps falling between the second and eighth centuries.
47
48
It is said to be authored by the philosopher-sage Bharata and is considered a foundational treatise on

the arts, music, and aesthetics. Sometimes called the Fifth Veda, in its origin story the god Brahma
meditates to create a work accessible to all, regardless of caste; it is a Veda that incorporates the arts and
sciences and is both enlightening and pleasing to the eyes and ears.
The Natyashastra contains the Rasa Sutra, a well-dened system of emotion theory with both
archetypal and relational perspectives. Here, rasa refers to a deeper aspect and experience of
emotion. Bhava is a term for more day-to-day emotional experiences. It is through the personal
experience, intensication, and renement of bhava that rasa becomes accessible (Schwartz
2004, 23). Sthayibhava, another term included in this system, describes basic permanent states that
reside in us as latent potentials, therefore highlighting emotion as archetypal in the sense of an
inherent and instinctual potential ready to emerge. This is reminiscent of the innate release
mechanisms studied by early researchers such as Nikolaas Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz (they
studied the imprinting behaviors of freshly hatched geese) and the idea of image schemas as a
developmental model for archetypes (Knox 2003, 40).
The experience of rasa arises in a relational context. The focus in the Rasa Sutra is on the
evocation of emotion through the interaction between performer and the receptive audience
member. In Indian classical music, as the musicians play to a receptive audience, there is a slow
development or emergence of deeper and transcendent emotional states that are referred to as rasa.
Subsequent Tantric commentators (for example, Abhinavagupta; see the next section) generalize
these states to relational contexts beyond the experience of art and music. This relational focus ties
into contemporary perspectives on emotion where emotion regulates and emerges from
intrapsychic and interpersonal relational experience, initially between infant and attachment
gure, the paradigmatic model for the relational eld between individual internal states and
external experience.
Rasa is a living core within Indian aesthetic traditions. The concept of rasa has provided the
paradigm, the purpose, and the performative premise throughout a process of evolution that has
characterized both the performing arts and the commentaries on them (Schwartz 2004).
Navarasa
In the Natyashastra, there are eight traditional rasas, each with corresponding deities and particular
relational contexts that lead to their emergence. Classical dance and theater has rules for the expression
of these rasas, including facial and bodily expression. Of note, these predate and correspond closely to the
basic emotions and related facial expressions spelled out by Paul Ekman: happiness, sadness, anger, fear,
disgust, and surprise (1972). In the Indian tradition, these are the eight rasas:
1. Laughter and humor (hasya rasa), associated with Pramata. Hasya emerges in relation to oneself, as
well as in response to the playful and silly action of others.
2. Grief and loss (karuna rasa), associated with Yama (the deity of death). Karuna involves the loss of
objects, including physical objects, loss of health or some comfort, and also the loss of loved ones.
3. Anger and the furious (raudra rasa), associated with Rudra (an earlier image of Shiva). Raudra
involves interpersonal conict, or a response to injustice or cruelty. Rudra is associated with an
aspect of Shiva that ghts the forces of darkness. The tenth guru of the Sikhs was seen as an
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
incarnation of Rudra; he fought against the injustices of the Moghuls and their forcible conversions
of Hindus and Sikhs to Islam.
Courage and the heroic (vira rasa), associated with Indra. Indra was a chief Vedic deity and god of
war; he was also a trickster god. Joseph Henderson (1967) speaks of the internal connection
between trickster and hero and the need for initiation into further processes of psychological
development. Indras reputation and role diminished with the rise of the Trimurtithe trinity of
cosmic functions of creation, maintenance, and destruction, which was personied by Brahma the
creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Shiva the destroyer.
Fear and the terrifying (bhayanak rasa), associated with Kala (the deity of time). Bhayanak involves
experiences of the unknown and the crossing of boundaries. As Kala is associated with time, this
rasa touches on existential fears, including that of our mortality. Accordingly, Kala is also associated
with Yama (the deity of death).
Aversion and the disgusting (bibhats rasa), associated with Mahakala the dark form of Shiva, a gure
that embodies what is dark, ugly, or shameful in the Self. Bibhats involves contact with the
undesirable, the ugly, that which is felt shameful or aversive.
Admiration and the wondrous or awesome (adbhuta rasa), associated with Brahma. Adbhuta
involves sudden and surprising achievements of what is desired, moments of surprising creativity, as
well as contact with the Divine. Brahma is the god of creation itself.
Love and the erotic (shringara rasa), associated with Vishnu, god of the material world. Shringara
involves coming together as well as separating from the object of love. Krishna is an incarnation of
Vishnu. The myth of Krishna and Radha is one of love in togetherness and the creative pains of
longing in separation.
In subsequent developments, shrinagara is felt to have given rise to more differentiated rasas
relating to love: vatsalya (parental love), bhakti (devotional love), and viraha (love in the context of
separation and longing). The Tantric Abhinavagupta related bhakti to shanta rasa, a ninth rasa
that emerged, also related to the deity Vishnu.
Shanta rasa, along with the eight traditional rasas, are considered to be the Navarasa (the nine
rasas). Shanta rasa has a particular signicance and is referred to as the origin and end of the rasas,
a state of being that births and follows the eight other rasasthe original font from where all of
them arise and then get submerged (Gomez 2009, 113). This echoes elements of European
alchemy, with Mercury as both beginning and end, and ultimately reects an experience of the Self.
Experiences of Shanta Rasa
In my own experience, I close my eyes and listen to my teacher. Vishals voice, recorded during our
lessons, moves me. I hear the deep, resonant voice of an old soul: full of musical wisdom and steadfast
commitment to a sacred art. His voice conjures images of a guru with white wispy hair and yet when I
greet him at his door for our weekly sessions, we appear there as two youthful brothers. Vishal is young.
He has a full head of brown hair and his bright eyes sparkle with innocence. He shares:
In the past the audiences had more patience and there was room for deeper exploration, which would
slowly, but eventually achieve shanta rasa. Sometimes the performer and audience would explore for
up to several hours before the shanta rasa could be accessed or would emerge. When the external
49
50
soundahat nadaconnects with the inner, unstruck soundanahat nadathere is an alignment,

which is an experience of shanta rasa. (Nagar 2009)
The slow and rhythmic mutuality and growth was a necessary process in achieving the experience
of shanta rasa. The faster pace of modern life challenges an attainment of shanta rasa, which
requires a slower and more rhythmic emergence of creative, soulful, and deep experiences of psyche.
Archetype, Emotion, and Music in Analytical Psychology
Describing the connection between archetype and affect, Jung writes, Archetypes are formal
factors responsible for the organization of unconscious psychic processes . . . They have a specic
charge and develop numinous effects which express themselves as affects . . . (1952/1969, CW 8,
{841) Jung connects music with emotion, the dynamic archetypal, and the collective unconscious:
Music expresses, in some way, the movement of the feelings (or emotional values) that cling to the
unconscious processes . . . Music represents the movement, development and transformation
of the motifs of the collective unconscious . . . (1973, 542). Jungian analyst Patricia Skar adds,
If listening to music initially connects us to our unconscious processes, it can do so because its
inner workings, expressed in melody, harmony, rhythm, tempo, and overall form, are archetypal in
nature and connect to deep archetypal strata in our own natures . . . (2002, 632).
Abhinavagupta and the Intersubjective Field
Abhinavagupta, the twelfth-century Tantric Shaivite, provides textual links between systems of
Indian alchemy, emotion theory, and aesthetics. He wrote an important commentary on the
Natyashastra, the Abhinavabharati. For Abhinavagupta, rasa is an experience that emerges as the
performer and the audience enter into a state of communal consciousness, ideally a state of
awareness associated with wonder (adbhuta rasa). In a way that both maintains and also transcends
differences between outer, inner, author, actor/performer, and audience, this state of communal
consciousness allows a shared experience of the rasas, as well as a joyful perception of the supraindividual nature, of pure consciousness devoid of obstacle. Abhinavagupta felt that it took some
development on the part of the spectator to engage deeply with the aesthetic experience, speaking
to the need for personal development to meet such experiences, but when this was done, it could be
a deeply transformative process of self-realization.
In his Tantraloka, Abhinavagupta articulates how in large religious and artistic gatherings, the
previously isolated individual consciousness turns into a single expanded and unied state of
consciousness (Gomez 2009). He goes on to discuss how two or more subjects can create a single
psychic knowing subject when they meet in the same spatio-temporal condition, and when they
separate, their epistemological unity dissolves (2009). Here, we have something along the lines of
what contemporary psychoanalysts refer to as eld phenomenonwhat Jung presaged in his
Psychology of the Transference, where he utilized alchemical imagery to illustrate transpersonal levels
of connection between the consciousness of analyst and analysand.
In reference to states of joining in the eld, Jungian analyst Nathan Schwartz-Salant writes:
A state of joining can be experienced by both partiesnot a fusing that blurs boundaries, but a
rhythmical process in which the eld itself is felt to have its own dynamic . . . What in alchemy is

known as the coniunctio [the bringing together of opposites] . . . Experiencing it opens one to a sense
of mystery that can be transformative . . . Experiencing the eld and being changed by its process is a
way of transforming internal structures. New forms that order affects, which were previously
overwhelming and fragmenting can come into existence . . . (1995, 6 9)
This experience of mutual resonance occurs in an analytic process, as it occurs in Indian music. In
those moments, deep and numinous energy is shared in a way that can be wondrous, at times
terrifying, but also transformative.
Play
In his eleventh-century commentary on the ninth century Shiva Sutras, the Kashmiri Shaivite
Bhaskara writes: The Self manifests itself in accord with its own inherent nature everywhere by
penetrating into the deeper sentiment (rasa) of each emotive state (bhava) it expresses, and
playfully behaves accordingly . . .
In the Kashmiri Shaivite texts, we nd the metaphor of play (lila). Not only is the world
created through the play of Divine Consciousness, who playfully manifests through emotional,
artistic, and musical experience, but also we are also meant to play in manifold ways in our ordinary
existences, enjoying the rasa of life.
Psychological Considerations of Indian Classical Music

A cornerstone to North Indian classical music is the percussion instrument called the tabla.
The tabla is a pair of drums. The right-hand drum (tabla or dayan) is made of teak or rosewood.
The left bass drum (bayan) is made of metalaluminum, steel, brass, or copper.
The tabla (Courtesy of the author, 2012.)
51
52
The skin is from cow or goat. The head of each drum is covered with a black paste made of
rice or wheat starch and a black powder of iron llings. After the paste is applied, stonework breaks
the otherwise inexible surface into a lattice of cracks, which allows the vibrations to travel.
The cracks are essential for the sound production, a concrete representation that is a metaphor for
what emerges from the breaks in matter and from the empty spaces that are created.
The tabla has classically been considered an accompaniment to the main instrument, which is
either the voice or instruments such as the sarod, sitar, veena, santoor, or ute. Over time it has
been honored as an instrument in its own right, with more room for its own voice to be heard as
the main performer steps back.
The goal of the accompanist is to create a space where the other (the main instrumentalist)
can surrender to the process and play, eliciting emotion that is seeking emergence in the interplay
between him- or herself, the other performer(s), and the audience. Vishal Nagar shares: With this
trust, the main instrumentalist or vocalist can go into their world and bring from this to share with
you, the audience and the world (2012). Likewise in analytical work, through free-oating
attention, deep listening, and the ability to stay as unsaturated to premature meaning as possible,
the analyst enhances his or her receptivity to what psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion calls the selected
factthat aspect of the Self (what Bion calls O) that is seeking engagement in any given clinical
moment (Bion 1970; Symington 1996). The accompanist must listen deeply in a way that is
responsive in each micro-moment to each emotional expression of the other musician. Again, the
rhythm of the tabla and the audience has its parallel in that of the analyst and analysand.
The trust that develops, created as a structure by the tabla, allows the performer to launch off into
complex places and maintain faith that he or she will arrive back at the rst beat of each cyclethe
Samwith the tabla player. The regularity of the analytic frame, like the rhythm of the tabla, supports
the analysand and enables him or her to drop into the analytic process and a growing relationship to the
Self. Finally, there is the surrender to something larger in Indian classical music. Most performers and
many in the audience perceive this as a spiritual process. Though we may go to hear particular
musicians who have rened their art, the achievements are not just personal achievements; when the
music truly happens, there is the presence and grace of something larger (Nagar 2012). Similarly, in the
analytic process, analyst and analysand hope for the emergence of the Self.
Experiences of the Self
Music, the word we use in our everyday language, is nothing less than the picture of the Beloved. But the
question is: what is our Beloved, or where is our Beloved? Our Beloved is that which is our source and
our goal.
Hazrat Inayat Khan (1923)
The alchemical literature is ripe with images of the goal as beginning and end. In Indian classical
music, time is circular, though with elements of the spiral. The idea of Sam has great signicance in
the Indian rhythmic tradition. Sam is both the rst beat and, as a rhythmic cycle completes, there
is a return to Sam. It is an echo and depiction of the cycles in the natural world and a point of
relation of microcosm to macrocosm. It is vital for the performer to develop a personal feeling for
the Sam, the beat that ends one cycle and begins the next. Connection through Sam is also part of
what links performer and audience (Nagar 2009). This return to Sam continues and grows over
the course of a performance to the grand Sam at the end. Some musicians derive Sam from a name
of ShivaShum, hence forming another link to the Shaivite Tantric systems (Nagar 2009). The
dynamic nature of Shiva-Shakti, the Spanda of the Tantric alchemical systems, is woven into the
fabric of Indian classical musics rhythmic process.
In the classical rhythmic tradition, in certain forms, there is also an oscillation between barri
(full) and khali (empty), with the variable being the presence or absence of the maternal, holding
bass sound. This pattern is a micro-oscillation between fullness and emptiness, presence and loss, as
the thread of Sam unfolds. Psychoanalyst Susan Maiello postulates that the sound of the mothers
voice alternating with silences might be the initial experience in its object relations that gives the
fetus a proto-experience of presence and absence, and perhaps prepares the infant for dealing with
the discontinuity of the presence of the breast after birth (1995). In psychoanalytic theory,
infantile experiences of maternal lossassociated with frustrated and sometimes aggressive feelings
toward the maternal absenceare mediated by good-enough maternal holding, rhythms of
absence and presence through which integrative and reparative processes facilitate movement from
the paranoid-schizoid to depressive positions (Steiner 1992). When navigated well, whether in
actual infancy or analysis, the infant/individual learns that the external others survive destruction
in fantasy, creating transitional space and room for play and imagination, allowing greater space for
symbolic, rather than concrete, thinking.
In Indian classical music, there is an explicit connection with the spiritual. According to the
Natyashastra, the stage itself is felt to be a meeting point of sacred and profane, where a momentary
glimpse of Brahman is one goal (Schwartz 2004, 14). The analytic relationship and frame, as a temenos,
or sacred container, is similar to the Indian stage. In both, a personal process of transformation is
mediated by larger, mysterious forces. In the Indian classical tradition, the numinous is approached
with both loving devotion and dread. Traditionally, the rst raga learned by students is Bhairav, a
reection of the terrible side of Shiva as Destroyer (see page 39). The emotional nuances of the Raga
Bhairav are meant to evoke awesome grandeur and fright, as well as peace and devotion. According to
Rudolph Otto in Ideas of the Holy the numinosum is the mysterium tremendum et fascinansthe
spiritual experience that evokes both dread and awe (1923).
In the various Indian traditions, seeing the creative and destructive aspects of the gods and
goddesses is typical. Jung felt medieval European alchemists also recognized the darker side of the
Divine. For instance, Mercurius is often depicted in ambivalent ways, as the psychopomp and also
as the trickster. Jung tried to expand the image of the Self to include both creative and destructive
aspects in Aion. He felt that much of Western civilization dissociated this dark aspect of the
godhead and projected it onto some other, such as the Devil, thus robbing humankind of a more
complete image and experience.
Somatic Aspects of the Musical Experience
The way you are breathing, when everything of the body is in tune, this allows a connection to happen.
When there is an imbalance in the body, you can feel it in the music. You have to play from the inside out,
not just from the wrist or the handotherwise it is not an embodied sound.
Vishal Nagar (2005)
53
54
In addition to the ethereal aspect of the spiritual, the earthly somatic realm is a pole through which
we experience the numinous. In Tantric systems, the body is valued and is developed through
practices such as hatha yoga. As in medieval European alchemy, in Tantric systems and the
aesthetic theory and creative practices that it inuenced, the body and sexuality were held more
favorably. The affective states felt in music are bodily experiences. As Schwartz states, Far from
rejecting the body for its fallibility, Indian aesthetics celebrates its potential to express the
transformative ability of its Divine nature. Artistic expression through the body may enable
attainment of higher spiritual goals (2004, 9).
Music and the Tension of Opposites
The separation of opposites, a process of differentiation, is needed for the emergence of

consciousness. A creative dynamism can also exist in the midst of oppositions, as evidenced in a
variety of creation myths, including the Churning of the Ocean of Milk myth mentioned
earlier (see page 46). One of the tasks of Jungian therapy is to consciously hold and suffer the
opposites, allowing the process of symbolization and creative fantasy to occur. This can result
in a dream, a fantasy image, a synchronistic event, or other psychic emergence that pulls one
forward in a new way and with an expansion of consciousness. As the Su mystic and musician
Hazrat Inayat Khan says: Sometimes there are two persons who disagree, and then comes
a third person and all unite together. Is this not the nature of music? (1923, 19). This image
speaks to the nature of music as of the Self and its processes (for example, the transcendent
function), which can both emerge from and reunite the opposites. Jungian analyst Stefano
Carta writes:
. . . like the Self, music may convey the sense of a union of the archetypal opposition . . . Music is an
expression of an inner pleromatic potential tension contained in an initial silence as note after note is
destined to ow into silence again. Music expresses the most fundamental emotional tension of
opposites between a loss and a desire. (2009, 92)
In Indian classical rhythm, tension is created through periods of rhythmic density and changes in
tempo. Tension grows between excited fullness and the desire for release. Holding this tension
without prematurely discharging it is a pattern like that of Tantric sexuality, where one holds off
on achieving orgasm as long as one can. Likewise it happens in analysis, where tension grows as an
analysand consciously chooses to suffer the containment of affects rather than discharge them by
regressive actions.
In the experience of listening to tabla, one potentially transformative experience for performer
and audience is this suffering through and bearing of tension in which there is an experience of the
unknown. Although it is unclear where the creativity will take the performer and audience, the
uncertainty is made bearable by the performers playful and exploratory attitude. The density
concludes with a tihai, a repeating pattern of three that ends on the Sam, the rst note that is both
beginning and end in this spiraling movement of rhythmic time. This can become a peak
experience, a visceral one that is held in the body narrative long after the performance is
completetension suffered in a spirit of play, curiosity, and wonder, with release into a shared
state of consciousness that may resonate with the numinous.

Music as Active Imagination
In Jungs essay The Transcendent Function, he says in reference to active imagination:
He must make the emotional state the basis or starting point of the procedure. He must make himself
as conscious as possible of the mood he is in, sinking himself in it without reserve . . . Fantasy must be
allowed the freest possible play, yet in not such a manner that it leaves the orbit of its object, namely
the affect . . . The procedure is a kind of enrichment and clarication of the affect. (1916/1969,
CW 8, {167)
Jungian analyst Joan Chodorow states, Active imagination is a process that involves turning
attention and curiosity towards the inner world of the imagination and expressing it symbolically,
all while seeking a self-reective, psychological point of view (2006, 215). Were reminded of the
Shaivite alchemists who invite surrender into emotion for creative consciousness to emerge.
Similarly, musical teacher Vishal instructs me to harbor an attitude of playing tabla from and to a
deeply emotional, interior place:
There are various rhythms inside us when we sit. During the day, everything is tangled up. One slowly
works through thisit comes out through the tabla, as we try to decode the tension or negative energy
from the day through expression through tabla. Then you connect with somethingthe internal
thought becomes pure and there is a deepening connection with the inner sound through inner
concentration. It becomes like dreaming while awake and being conscious of the unconscious. (2009)
Music and Dreaming
Vishal has shared that, as with people in the outer life who populate our inner landscape,
when one starts to relate to sound and to tabla compositions in a deeply emotional manner
and as living entities, they start to enter the dream world as forms that are alive and dynamic
(2009). In fact, in the Indian classical tradition, the ragas are sometimes considered to be
living beings. In a successful interpretation of a raga, the performer has convinced the deity
of a raga to descend and reveal its sound image (Schwartz 2004, 85). Vishal has described
dreams in which he has communicated with sound and composition, sometimes imaged as
dynamic colors (2009).
A similar phenomenon is recounted by Pandit Jasraj, a great of the vocal tradition, who
dreamed he was in Lord Indras court and asked to sing a particular raga. Shiva was also there. The
next morning he went on to sing that particular raga. This dream was taken seriously as a visitation
(Nagar 2009). Vishal shares similar experiences from his own life, where he sometimes develops
compositions that come to him in dreams and which are often different from what has been
focused on in day-to-day practice.
In the Indian classical tradition, dreams also provide a meeting ground with teachers who
are no longer living. Vishals teacher shared that his guru would come to him in dreams.
There was a belief that if a student served the guru in the last days, the guru would give a
special composition and would also promise a deeper connection that would be sustained
after life. According to Vishal, When you dont know the answer, the guru comes in
dreams.
55
56
Musical and Rhythmic Aspects of the Clinical Interaction
The relational psychoanalyst Steven H. Knoblauch looks closely at the nonverbal aspects of the
analytic dialogue, using metaphors from his experience as a jazz musician. He describes the
musical edge of therapeutic dialogue in which the clinician focuses on
. . . patterns and shifts in patterns of continuous process contours (volume, tone, tempo, rhythm, and
turn taking) that emerge in dyadic interaction and the particular subjective meanings that are both
created and organized by analyst and analysand within these subtle, complex patterns . . . These
process contours are rst recognized in infant-caregiver observations as dimensions of experience
within which mutative interventions can be made when verbal interpretation is not effective.
(2000, 60)
Infant research has shown that rhythmic and tonal interplay between mother and child allows for
mutually constructed regulation. In the clinical hour, attention to the rhythm of breath and body
movement also co-regulates the affective eld of the analytic partners. These interactions can be
important cues with regard to affective meaning (Knoblauch 2000). Knoblauch goes on to say,
The mutative activity is affective resonance, that is, the recognition and responsiveness to
emotional displays, just as improvising jazz soloists and accompanists recognize and respond to
displays of nonverbal dimensions of tone, rhythm and harmony . . . (96).
The theme of rhythmic regulation played an important role in the analytic work with a
woman I will call Barbara. During a moment of an analytic session, she spoke and I said nothing
but raised my eyebrows. My experience was a feeling that I was taking in the intensity of what she
was communicating. Instead of carrying on, there was a palpable fracture to the ow. She shifted,
her rmer tone now had a quiver and then she paused. She seemed fragmented and dysregulated.
I gently pointed this out, and as we explored her interruption, she stated she felt she had lost me, a
painful feeling of perceived disconnection familiar to her from other relationships. We tracked this
rupture back to my facial expression, which she experienced as a form of startle and surprise that
touched a painful chord reminiscent of an anxious and overwhelmed mother.
When signicant and cumulative disruptions occur in the rhythm between an attachment
gure and an infant, a negative parental complex develops. Similar rhythms, whether in life or in
the analytic setting, are like memories of these old songs that provoke old emotional responses to
come to the surface and constellate particular transference dynamics and affective responses. When
these old melodies awaken in a clinical setting, there is an opportunity to improvise and make
unprecedented linkages. Over time the analytic pair create new and more nourishing songs and
compositions together.
Moments of Harmony and Dissonance: Attunement, Disruption, and Surprise
The signicance of harmony between parent and child is well documented in infant research.
Yet harmonious attunement is something that can be needed, longed for, but also dreaded. This is
especially true for those who have had limited experiences of intimacy. Closeness can feel engulng,
constraining, or invasive. In addition, for those who have been hurt by gures who were supposed
to be close, loving, and protecting, or for those who hold deep shame that they fear will be revealed,
it takes time for trust to develop and the rhythms of the work to regulate the way we pace
ourselves, learning to modulate the amount of closeness and attunement as it uctuates in each
analytic hour and moment to moment.
With regards to dissonance, Knoblauch writes:
The mutative signicance of dissonance was not as privileged by infant researchers as harmonious
attunement until conceptions such as by Stern (1998), who describes the now moment seen as an
emergent property of a complex dynamic system. The emergent moment challenges or threatens the
stability of the ongoing initial state. It announces a disturbance in the system . . . When a now
moment emerges, the therapist and the patient are surprised . . . If the therapist knows what to do,
he has probably missed the now moment or has quickly hidden behind technique . . . (2000, 136)
In the analytic process, as with my patient Barbara, there are inevitable breaks in rhythm
moments of dissonance, moments in which we are out of tune with one another. Perhaps it was an
interpretation that felt inaccurate or a nonverbal response that is mismatched to what is seeking
expression in the patient. Perhaps the break in rhythm was because of a vacation or a weekend
during a particularly charged phase of work, or even the closing of an ordinary analytic hour.
The analytic dissonance echoes verse twenty-two of the Spanda Karikas: essentially, moments of
shock and surprise, when endured with consciousness, can be experiences of the Self. As Vasugupta
expressed in the ninth century:
In tense emotional experience, whether of anger, joy, fear or acute mental impasse, all the extroverted
mental activities come to a dead stop. We are unable to grasp the inner Reality because of the
whirling of imagination and thought. It is only when this whirling stops, when the mind is stilled
that we are in a t condition to have an experience of Reality or the Spanda principle, if we are
properly oriented towards it. Yogis and mystics practice meditation in order to put a stop to all
restless mental activities, but intense emotional experiences, of themselves, bring the squirrel-like
activities of the mind to a dead halt. That is the psychological moment for catching the vibration of
the inner Reality, the Divine Spanda, if one is properly introverted to be blessed with its vision. This
opportunity is not open to all; it is open only to those who are eagerly waiting for its reception.
(Singh 1980, 104)
The theme of an analysand experiencing dissonance was particularly vivid in the case of a man
I will call Curtis, who survived severe sexual violence from his father. In the beginning, he
experienced my words as too penetrating and touching too closely. I learned to modulate the
ow of my words, to pay attention to which tones were too close and tried to pace myself in a way
that allowed him space. I had to carefully titrate the experience of opening up with me in order for
the analysis not to be experienced as a retraumatization.
After a year of building trust and emerging from severe and relatively global dissociation, one
day Curtis sat in my rocking chair, the place where I always sat! I was surprised and also puzzled
about what to do. Rather than make an interpretation, I sat in the patients spot with my surprise,
allowed space for curiosity, and followed along this new improvisation of his to see where it would
take us. The physical rhythm and soothing of the rocking chair provided some containment for
this man who had experienced catastrophic maternal neglect and unthinkable paternal sexual and
physical violence. With a new rhythm established, one that he could regulate, and his
understanding that when he penetrated me by surprising me that I was not injured, a trust
developed in which he could take risks and also be safe. Curtis found a way to innovate on a
57
58
different rhythm, that of the rocking chair, and by negotiating the experience of dissonance with
this healing rhythm, we entered into a phase of deeper work in relation to the sexual trauma.
Structure and Improvisation
Knoblauch introduces the metaphor of the jazz soloist playing against the backdrop of
accompaniment, drawing a parallel to therapy when the therapist offers a phrase or word to the
patient who either builds on it or offers a different construction to sustain and continue the
process of unfolding and expanding feelings and meanings (2000, 36). He goes on to describe how
in jazz the accompanist might be pulled to follow the soloist with responses that punctuate or
further elaborate what the soloist is creating. We earlier looked at similar dynamics in the context
of the tabla player as an accompanist, who listens deeply and intuitively creates space for the
soloists expressions. By providing a rhythmic structure and co-constructing an emotional eld, the
tabla player facilitates the soloists surrendering into his or her improvisational process with faith
that he or she can be held. Psychoanalyst Emmanuel Ghent (1990) speaks of this in clinical work,
where there is a longing to surrender what is inauthentic, with a hope for an unfreezing and a birth
of something more alive. The potential cost of this surrender is dread and symbolic death, though
for some there may be clarity or ecstasy.
Joy, Interest, and Play
Play is essential to musicafter all, we play music and play instruments. Earlier I elaborated on
play in the setting of Indian alchemy and Tantra, and now we visit play in the clinical setting. Joy,
with its playful, imaginative aspects, and interest, with its exploratory nature, allow us to manage
and transform difcult states and emotions into bearable meaning. It only takes a glance at the play
of children to see this at work, as they attempt to manage their painful and difcult feelings
through play (Chodorow 2001). In Shaivite Tantra, play is at the essence of the creative
consciousness. When we realize our Shiva naturedeveloping a relationship to the Self
creativity takes on new life. When play emerges in analytic work, it can be precious and a sign of
growth and new creative possibilities.
Every good idea and all creative work are the offspring of the imagination, and have their source in
what one is pleased to call infantile fantasy. Not the artist alone, but every creative individual
whatsoever owes all that is greatest in his life to fantasy. The dynamic principle of fantasy is play, a
characteristic also of the child, and as such it appears inconsistent with the principle of serious work.
But without the playing with fantasy, no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to
the play of the imagination is incalculable . . . ( Jung, CW 6, 1921/1971,{93)
The Unstruck Sound: Anahata Nada

In the course of this article, Ive played with and given expression to the idea of the unstruck
sound in a few different ways. One has derived from its traditional usage as an acoustic image of
the Self as a subtle or inner vibration seeking engagement in the lived world. The unstruck sound
is a literal translation of the Sanskrit phrase Anahata Nada, a Vedic concept with musical
connotations of a primary, fundamental level of sound vibration that doesnt need action to exist
but does need action to enter into the manifest world. Here, we have the poles of Spanda
with Shiva as Being and Shakti as Becoming. Ahata Nada, in turn, is the struck sound. In the realm
of human activity, its production involves some degree of egoic and bodily activity. This speaks to
that which exists in potential, but hasnt been brought into manifestation through conscious
engagement. Clinically, these are the moments in which we attend to what is seeking emergence in
the emotional, interpersonal eld of analyst and analysand. Musically, these are the moments in
which classical Indian musicians surrender into a highly intuitive and emotional ow between
participants and audience. These are the moments of resonance where inner and outer meet.
Ive also played with the unstruck sound as that which exists in the in-between places;
in the margins or in the shadows; what hasnt been struck, sounded, and brought more to
our individual and collective attentionthe pause, the rest, the break, the moment of breath
when nothing seems to be happening. These include the relative silences with regard to musical
and rhythmic considerations of clinical work, depth psychological considerations of music and
rhythm, and also perspectives from less known voices and philosophies from the Indian
subcontinent.
Finally, as unstruck sound derives from Anahata, I nd it signicant that the Anahata
chakra in the Tantric Kundalini system is the chakra related to the heart and associated with love,
empathy, compassion, and devotion. Though we also need to cultivate and hold space for hate,
envy, confusion, and other darker states as they emerge, these aspects of Anahata are equally
important feelings, forces, and attitudes for us to cultivate in clinical work. These facets of a
cultivated Anahata chakra, so to speak, allow us to integrate, metabolize, transform, and grow in
our important encounters with the darkness. Musically, we need devotion for the art to be
cultivated, and we must play from the heart for the music to be truly alive.
ENDNOTES
1. For a good overview with useful clinical perspectives, see Edingers Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical
Symbolism in Psychotherapy (1995).
2. The debt to the Upanishads for an aspect of the Self was acknowledged, but the debt to the Shaivite
Tantric tradition, which spells out the process nature of the Self, wasnt known or wasnt acknowledged
by Jung or Fordham.
NOTE
References to The Collected Works of C. G. Jung are cited in the text as CW, volume number, and paragraph
number. The Collected Works are published in English by Routledge (UK) and Princeton University Press
(USA).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bion, W. 1970. Attention and interpretation. London: Tavistock Publications.

Bisagni, F. 2010. Out of nothingness: Rhythm and the making of words. Journal of Analytical Psychology 55:
254 272.
Carta, S. 2009. Music in dreams and the emergence of the self. Journal of Analytical Psychology 54: 85 102.
Chodorow, J. 2001. Play, imagination and the emotions. Presented at the North-South Conference of
Jungian Analysts.
59
60
Chodorow, J. 2006. Active imagination. In The handbook of Jungian psychology: Theory, practice, applications,
edited by Renos Papadopoulos, 215 243. London: Routledge.
Coward, H. 1985. Jung and Eastern thought. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Dyczkowski, M. S. 1987. The Doctrine of Vibration: An analysis of the doctrines and practices of Kashmir
Shaivism. New York: State University of New York Press.
Edinger, E. F. 1985. Anatomy of the psyche: Alchemical symbolism in psychotherapy. La Salle, IL: Open Court
Publishing.
. 1995. The Mysterium lectures: A journey through C.G. Jungs Mysterium Coniunctionis. Toronto:
Inner City Books.
Ekman, P. 1972. Emotion in the human face: Guidelines for research and integration of ndings. Elmsford,
New York: Pergamon Press.
Fordham, M. 1976. The Self and autism. London: William Heinemann Medical Books Ltd.
Freud, S. 1914/1989. The Moses of Michelangelo. In The Freud reader, edited by Peter Gay. New York:
W.W. Norton.
Ghent, E. 1990. Masochism, submission, surrender: Masochism as a perversion of surrender. Contemporary
Psychoanalysis 26: 108 136.
Ghose, S. A. 1996. The synthesis of yoga. Twin Lakes: Lotus Light Publications.
Gomez, R. F. 2009. The rasa theory: A challenge for intercultural aesthetics. In Intercultural aesthetics, edited
by A. Van den Braembussche, H. Kimmerle, and N. Note. Brussels: Springer.
Gregorios, P. M. 2002. Neoplatonism and Indian philosophy. Edited by P. M. Gregorios. Albany: State
University of New York.
Hartmann, F. 1993. Life and prophecies of Paracelsus (1493 1541). City: Kessinger Publishing.
Henderson, J. 1967. Thresholds of initiation. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Henderson, J. L., and D. N. Sherwood. 2003. Transformation of the psyche: The symbolic alchemy of the
Splendor Solis. New York: Brunner-Routledge.
Jung, C. G. 1916/1969. The transcendent function. The structure and dynamics of the psyche. CW 8.
. 1921/1971. Psychological types. CW 6.
. 1942/1948/1953/1967. The spirit mercurius. Alchemical studies. CW 13.
. 1942/1967. Paracelcus as a spiritual phenomenon. Alchemical studies. CW 13.
. 1950/1959. Aion. CW 9ii.
. 1952/1954/1956. Answer to Job. Psychology and religion: West and East. CW 11.
. 1952/1969. Synchronicity: An acausal connecting principle. The structure and dynamics of the psyche.
CW 8.
. 1955-56/1970. Mysterium coniunctionis. CW 14.
. 1961. Memories, dreams, reections. New York: Vintage.
. 1973. Letters, Vol. I (1906 1950). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Khan, H. I. 1923. The mysticism of sound: Music, the power of the word, and cosmic language. Geneva:
International Headquarters Suc Movement.
Khanna, M., and A. Mookerjee. 2003. The Tantric way: Art, science, ritual. New York: Thames & Hudson.
Knoblauch, S. H. 2000. The musical edge of therapeutic dialogue. New Jersey: The Analytic Press.
Knox, J. 2003. Archetype, attachment, analysis: Jungian psychology and the emergent mind. East Sussex:
Routledge.
Maiello, S. 1995. The sound-object: A hypothesis about prenatal auditory experience and memory. Journal of
Child Psychotherapy 21(1): 23 41.
McEvilly, T. 2002. The shape of ancient thought: Comparative studies in Greek and Indian philosophies.
New York: Allworth Press.
Miller, J. 2004. The transcendent function: Jungs model of psychological growth through dialogue with the
unconscious. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Nagar, V. D. 20042012. Interviewed by K. Singh.
Ogden, T. 1997. Reverie and interpretation: Sensing something human. Lanham: Rowman & Littleeld
Publishers, Inc.
Otto, R. 1923. The idea of the holy. London: Oxford University Press.
Sacks, O. 2007. Musicophilia: Tales of music and the brain. New York: Alfred A. Knopf/Random House.
Schwartz, S. L. 2004. Rasa: Performing the divine in India. New York: Columbia University Press.
Schwartz-Salant, N. 1995. On the interactive eld as the analytic object. In The interactive eld in analysis,
edited by Murray Stein, 1 36. Wilmette: Chiron.
Singh, J. 1980. Spanda-Karikas: The divine creative pulsation. The Karikas and the Spanda-nirnaya translated
into English. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers.
Skar, P. 2002. The goal as process: Music and the search for the Self. Journal of Analytical Psychology 47:
629 638.
Steiner, J. 1992. The equilibrium between the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions. New Library of
Psychoanalysis 14: 46 58.
Symington, J. A. 1996. The clinical thinking of Wilfred Bion. London: Routledge.
White, D. G. 1996. The alchemical body: Siddha traditions in medieval India. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
KHENU SINGH, MD, is a board-certied psychiatrist and an Advanced Candidate in the Analytic Training
Program at the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. He is a former Assistant Clinical Professor with the
Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and is now in private practice in San
Francisco. He continues with some part-time community psychiatry work at Richmond Area Multi-Services
(RAMS). He has been a student of Vishal Nagar, studying tabla over the last fteen years and has been active
in musical collaborations that explore interfaces between traditional and contemporary forms.
Correspondence: 322 Clement Street, San Francisco, CA 94118, USA. E-mail: khenusingh@gmail.com.
ABSTRACT
Musical and rhythmic dimensions of the alchemical endeavor, and of clinical work, are often in the shadows.
Indian philosophy has often been criticized as being otherworldly and even world negating, including by
Jung. India has a long history, with many diverse traditions of inquiry. Ideals of renunciation and unication
with the Godhead, and perspectives of the world as Maya/illusionin contrast to some greater Truthexist,
but these only represent an incomplete set of voices. Putting aside verbal traditions, as well as what hasnt
been scribed, complex forces shape which texts cross the barriers of language, culture, and history and what
sorts of understandings and fantasies emerge as we grapple with the Other. In the Shaivite Tantric traditions,
the upward movement into the realm of spirit is only one arc of a larger rhythmic oscillation. The downward
earthly embodiment in ones lived life is equally important. In the spirit of Jung, with his emphasis on
bringing light into the shadows, we will explore these areas. After a brief review of Jungs interest in medieval
European alchemy, we begin our dialogue with lesser-known perspectives from Indian alchemical and
Tantric systems. Drawing from Indian philosophy and aesthetics, core archetypes of rhythm (Spanda)
and emotion (Rasa) are introduced and developed. Psychological dimensions of Indian classical rhythm and
performance are explored. We relate these to perspectives within psychoanalysis and analytical psychology,
and then we conclude with clinical considerations, looking at musical and rhythmic dimensions of the
analytic exchange.
KEY WORDS
Abhinavagupta, aesthetics, alchemy, archetype, attachment theory, Bharat, Wilfred Bion, emotion, India,
Indian, individuation, C. G. Jung, Lila, Mercury, music, navarasa, Natyashastra, nonverbal, rhythm, rasa,
Self, Shiva, Shakti, Spanda, symbol, tabla, Tantric, Vasugupta
61

Indian Rhythm and Jung

Încărcat de

Informații document

Drepturi de autor

Formate disponibile

Partajați acest document

Partajați sau inserați document

Opțiuni de partajare

Vi se pare util acest document?

Este necorespunzător acest conținut?

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Indian Rhythm and Jung

Încărcat de

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

This article was downloaded by: [Central U Library of Bucharest]

On: 09 April 2014, At: 00:59

Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche

The Unstruck Sound: Archetypes of

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

The Unstruck Sound

Downloaded by [Central U Library of Bucharest] at 00:59 09 April 2014

Archetypes of Rhythm and Emotion in Indian Alchemy and

Alchemists Laboratory, by Hans Vredman de Vries, in Heinrich Kunrath, Amphitheatrum

JUNG JOURNAL: CULTURE & PSYCHE 7: 2 / SPRING 2013

Downloaded by [Central U Library of Bucharest] at 00:59 09 April 2014

Downloaded by [Central U Library of Bucharest] at 00:59 09 April 2014

Khenu Singh, The Unstruck Sound

Jung and Alchemy

JUNG JOURNAL: CULTURE & PSYCHE 7: 2 / SPRING 2013

Downloaded by [Central U Library of Bucharest] at 00:59 09 April 2014

Downloaded by [Central U Library of Bucharest] at 00:59 09 April 2014

Khenu Singh, The Unstruck Sound

Downloaded by [Central U Library of Bucharest] at 00:59 09 April 2014

JUNG JOURNAL: CULTURE & PSYCHE 7: 2 / SPRING 2013

Downloaded by [Central U Library of Bucharest] at 00:59 09 April 2014

Khenu Singh, The Unstruck Sound

Downloaded by [Central U Library of Bucharest] at 00:59 09 April 2014

JUNG JOURNAL: CULTURE & PSYCHE 7: 2 / SPRING 2013

Indian Alchemy: Spanda and Rasa

Downloaded by [Central U Library of Bucharest] at 00:59 09 April 2014

Khenu Singh, The Unstruck Sound

Shiva dances and as he beats his drum the Sanskrit

JUNG JOURNAL: CULTURE & PSYCHE 7: 2 / SPRING 2013

Downloaded by [Central U Library of Bucharest] at 00:59 09 April 2014

Downloaded by [Central U Library of Bucharest] at 00:59 09 April 2014

Khenu Singh, The Unstruck Sound

JUNG JOURNAL: CULTURE & PSYCHE 7: 2 / SPRING 2013

Downloaded by [Central U Library of Bucharest] at 00:59 09 April 2014

Downloaded by [Central U Library of Bucharest] at 00:59 09 April 2014

Khenu Singh, The Unstruck Sound

Natyashastra and Rasa Sutra: Emotion, Archetype, and Music

Downloaded by [Central U Library of Bucharest] at 00:59 09 April 2014

JUNG JOURNAL: CULTURE & PSYCHE 7: 2 / SPRING 2013

It is said to be authored by the philosopher-sage Bharata and is considered a foundational treatise on

Khenu Singh, The Unstruck Sound

Downloaded by [Central U Library of Bucharest] at 00:59 09 April 2014

JUNG JOURNAL: CULTURE & PSYCHE 7: 2 / SPRING 2013

soundahat nadaconnects with the inner, unstruck soundanahat nadathere is an alignment,

Downloaded by [Central U Library of Bucharest] at 00:59 09 April 2014

Archetype, Emotion, and Music in Analytical Psychology

Khenu Singh, The Unstruck Sound

Downloaded by [Central U Library of Bucharest] at 00:59 09 April 2014

Psychological Considerations of Indian Classical Music

The tabla (Courtesy of the author, 2012.)

Downloaded by [Central U Library of Bucharest] at 00:59 09 April 2014

JUNG JOURNAL: CULTURE & PSYCHE 7: 2 / SPRING 2013

Downloaded by [Central U Library of Bucharest] at 00:59 09 April 2014

Khenu Singh, The Unstruck Sound

JUNG JOURNAL: CULTURE & PSYCHE 7: 2 / SPRING 2013

Downloaded by [Central U Library of Bucharest] at 00:59 09 April 2014

Music and the Tension of Opposites

The separation of opposites, a process of differentiation, is needed for the emergence of

Khenu Singh, The Unstruck Sound

In Jungs essay The Transcendent Function, he says in reference to active imagination:

Downloaded by [Central U Library of Bucharest] at 00:59 09 April 2014

Music and Dreaming

JUNG JOURNAL: CULTURE & PSYCHE 7: 2 / SPRING 2013

Musical and Rhythmic Aspects of the Clinical Interaction