garbled translation of a corrupt text with the last few chapters missing, Jung
was admittedly preoccupied with expounding his own theories.
Jung's concern with the problems of cultural differences led him to
believe that the golden flower practice developed from Chinese tradition, in
spite of the fact that he had evidence of its existence in Western tradition.
Jung apparently misunderstood descriptions of the exercise partly because
of Wilhelm's mistranslation and his own lack of experience.
To deal fully with Jung's treatment of the golden flower teaching would
lead us afield from the point of this work, which is to expose the original
teaching itself. The purpose of mentioning Jung here is to reopen a door of
inquiry by questioning the limits of the limitations he presumed.
On awakening from this pleasant reverie, however, he found that he was
no longer sure whether he was a man who had dreamed he was a butterfly,
or whether he was a butterfly now dreaming he was a man.
The issue of this story is not its superficial question of which psychic
contents to identify as the self but is in the act of recalling attention to the
"turning point" revealed in between states, the formless "opening" or
"aperture" through which the real self of the formless host can be seen and
experienced in its own purity and freedom.
By this means it is possible to detach from conditioned states and
identities without thereby becoming dissociated from the realm of ordinary
