JUNG, C. G. The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1932. Edited by Sonu Shamdasani.  Princeton University Press: Princeton (Bollingen Series XCIX), 1996, Pp.  xlvi + 128. Hbk. $24.75.

In 1932 Jung invited J. W. Hauer, Professor of Indology, to lecture at the Psychology Club in Zurich. Following Hauer's presentation, Jung devoted four sessions of his ongoing seminar (which at that time was focused on the dreams of Christiana Morgan) to a discussion of Kundalini Yoga. Notes from the seminar were compiled and published privately by Mary Foote. Sonu Shamdasani has performed a valuable service by editing these seminar notes and making them available to a wider audience. In addition to Jung's four lectures, Shamdasani provides an excellent introduction as well as informative footnotes. He chose to add Hauer's final English lecture, Jung's comments on Hauer's German lectures, and an earlier lecture of Jung's, ‘Indian Parallels’, given in 1930. He also includes Sir John Woodroffe's translation of the tantric text that was the subject of Hauer's and Jung's commentaries and illustrations of the cakras. Shamdasani's penchant for thoroughness together with an editor's critical eye makes this book a pleasure to study.

This volume is a welcome addition to the Bollingen Seminar Series which includes Analytical Psychology: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1925, Seminar on Dream Analysis; Notes on the Seminar Given in 1928-1929 and Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939. Along with Jung's letters and his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, this material presents Jung and his psychology in an informal, personal way that provides a valuable counterpoint to the Collected Works. In these seminar notes we find Jung speaking in the moment to friends and sympathetic students. In addition to the topic under discussion, the notes contain important ‘digressions’ that sometimes amplify and sometimes bluntly condense ideas presented more formally and circumspectly in Jung's published academic writings. In his introduction to these lectures Shamdasani writes:

Jung's concern was not primarily with the canonical and organized methods and teachings