The term Tao occupies a peculiar and irreducible position within the depth-psychology corpus: it resists domestication into Western psychological categories while simultaneously attracting sustained interpretive effort from some of the tradition's most significant voices. Jung, Wilhelm, Watts, Campbell, and the Taoist I Ching commentators each approach Tao from a distinct angle, yet converge on several core recognitions. First, that Tao names something prior to the conceptual opposition of subject and object, conscious and unconscious, light and dark — a ground-principle that generates polarity without being reducible to either pole. Second, that depth psychology's central preoccupation with the Self, with individuation, and with the tension between ego and unconscious finds a structural analogue in the Chinese concept, however imperfect the translation. Wilhelm translates Tao as 'Sinn' (Meaning); Jung notes that Western languages have no equivalent; Ritsema and Karcher emphasize its connection to purposive, self-renewing energy. The I Ching tradition — in both its Confucian-Wilhelmian and Taoist-alchemical registers — treats Tao as the law underlying change itself, the pattern disclosed by hexagrammatic consultation. For Campbell, Tao gestures toward the same archaic stratum as dharma, the impersonal ordering principle of cosmos. The Taoist I Ching commentary distinguishes between the 'mind of Tao' and the 'human mind,' a dichotomy with direct resonance in Jungian discussions of ego versus Self. Tensions remain: whether Tao is primarily cosmological, psychological, or soteriological; and whether Western individuation genuinely converges with Taoist self-cultivation or merely borrows its rhetoric.
In the library
22 passages
Tao is the ongoing, self-renewing and purposive energy of life, continually creating as it moves. It traces a way or path which is, potentially, reflected in each individual being. To be 'in' tao or connected to tao is to experience meaning and move with the energy of life.
This passage offers the most comprehensive positive definition of Tao in the corpus, identifying it as self-renewing purposive energy whose connection to an individual constitutes meaning itself.
Rudolf Ritsema, Stephen Karcher, I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, 1994thesis
The subtlest secret of the Tao is human nature and life. It is characteristic of the Western mind that it has no word for Tao. The Chinese character is made up of the sign for 'head' and the sign for 'going.' Wilhelm translates Tao by Sinn (Meaning).
Jung establishes the irreducibility of Tao to Western conceptual vocabulary, reviews competing translations, and suggests its meaning as 'conscious way' with implications for depth-psychological individuation.
Jung, C. G., Collected Works Volume 3: The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease, 1907thesis
The fundamental idea is that the Tao, though itself motionless, is the means of all movement and gives it law. Heavenly paths are those along which the constellations move; the path of man is the way along which he must travel.
Wilhelm grounds Tao etymologically and metaphysically as the unmoved principle that generates all movement — an apophatic cosmological claim with direct bearing on the psychology of individuation.
Wilhelm, Richard, The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life, 1931thesis
They contain only the tao that underlies events. Therefore all chance contingencies can be shaped according to this tao. The conscious application of these possibilities assures mastery over fate. That which lets now the dark, now the light appear is tao.
The I Ching is interpreted as encoding only the Tao underlying events, making divinatory consultation an act of aligning consciousness with the deeper law of alternating light and dark.
Richard Wilhelm, Cary F. Baynes, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950thesis
They contain only the tao that underlies events. Therefore all chance contingencies can be shaped according to this tao. The conscious application of these possibilities assures mastery over fate.
Parallel to the Ritsema-Karcher Wilhelm passage, this formulation from the standard Wilhelm-Baynes translation defines Tao as the abstract relational law encoded in the Book of Changes, enabling conscious participation in fate.
Wilhelm, Richard, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950thesis
When you seek the Tao with the true mind, myriad differences are of the same root. The mind of Tao is in this text associated with 'celestial' yang, in contrast to the 'human mind,' or human mentality, associated with 'mundane' yin.
Liu I-ming's commentary distinguishes the 'mind of Tao' — stable, celestial, yang — from the conditioned human mentality, establishing a psychological polarity that directly parallels Jungian ego-Self differentiation.
Thomas Cleary, Liu Yiming, The Taoist I Ching, 1986thesis
When you seek the Tao with the true mind, myriad differences are of the same root. The mind of Tao is in this text associated with 'celestial' yang, in contrast to the 'human mind,' or human mentality.
The Taoist I Ching positions the mind of Tao as the unifying ground of apparent multiplicity, accessible only through the stable, unconditioned true mind rather than through habitual ego-functioning.
The Tao of spiritual alchemy is none other than the Tao of the I Ching, the Tao of sages is none other than the Tao of immortals, and that the I Ching is not a book of divination but rather is the study of investigation of principles, fulfillment of nature, and arrival at the meaning of life.
Liu I-ming's synthesis identifies a single Tao running through alchemy, divination, and sage-cultivation, collapsing the Confucian-Taoist distinction and centering the I Ching as a guide to fundamental self-realization.
Thomas Cleary, Liu Yiming, The Taoist I Ching, 1986thesis
The Tao of spiritual alchemy is none other than the Tao of the I Ching, the Tao of sages is none other than the Tao of immortals, and that the I Ching is not a book of divination but rather is the study of investigation of principles.
This formulation identifies the Tao of inner alchemy with the Tao of the I Ching, grounding both in a unified path toward self-knowledge rather than external divination.
Without the human mind, you don't see the mind of Tao; without the mind of Tao, you cannot know the human mind. Using the human mind temporarily to restore the mind of Tao, even though the human mind is the chief of villains, it is also the chief in merit.
The human mind and the mind of Tao are presented as dialectically interdependent: the ego's limitation is simultaneously the condition for recognizing and recovering a deeper orientation.
Thomas Cleary, Liu Yiming, The Taoist I Ching, 1986supporting
The Tao that can be discussed is not the enduring eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the enduring, eternal name. The word Tao, 'the way, the path,' is in as much equivalent to dharma as it refers to the law, truth, or order of the universe.
Campbell situates Tao within a comparative framework, equating it structurally with dharma as the impersonal ordering principle of the cosmos, while acknowledging its resistance to conceptual capture.
Campbell, Joseph, Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II, 1962supporting
Breathing means to empty oneself and to wait for Tao. Tao abides only in the emptiness. This emptiness is the fasting mind. That which you look at but cannot see Is called the Invisible.
This Chuang Tzu passage, presented in the Divine Feminine context, defines Tao as accessible only through radical psychic emptying, a via negativa convergent with both apophatic mysticism and depth-psychological surrender of ego-control.
Harvey, Andrew; Baring, Anne, The Divine Feminine: Exploring the Feminine Face of God Throughout the World, 1996supporting
Breathing means to empty oneself and to wait for Tao. Tao abides only in the emptiness. This emptiness is the fasting mind.
Drawn from the same Chuang Tzu source, this passage in the Campbell context emphasizes Tao as discovered through the receptive void rather than through active cognitive effort.
Campbell, Joseph, Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, 2013supporting
In the Chinese philosophy of the Tao, of which the classic statement is the Tao Teh Ching, 'the Book of the Power of the Way,' it is maintained that a Quietist contemplation of the Tao gives, as the Chinese say, a power over the outside world undreamt of by those who pit themselves against matter.
Campbell links Tao to the doctrine of te (power/virtue), arguing that inward Quietist contemplation produces a paradoxical sovereignty over the outer world — a claim with resonance in Jung's concept of inner orientation as transformative force.
Campbell, Joseph, Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II, 1962supporting
The predetermined course along which a constantly self-renewing current is directed. This path is also fate, in so far as a man's fate depends on his psychology. It is the path of our destiny and of the law of our being.
Jung here implicitly equates Tao with libido as fate-path, articulating the psyche's own directional law as analogous to the Chinese concept of the Way — an early bridge between depth psychology and Taoist thought.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychological Types, 1921supporting
Husband[and]Wife's tao. Heaven[and]Earth's tao. The all-wise person lasting with-respect-to his tao and-also Below Heaven the changes accomplishing.
This concordance of tao's appearances across I Ching hexagrams shows it as a relational term applying equally to cosmic, social, and individual registers of the text.
Rudolf Ritsema, Stephen Karcher, I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, 1994supporting
To rest in the quietness of mind and humility of heart, which the Taoist sage embodies, is to live in a state of instinctive spontaneity that the Taoists named Tzu Jan — a being-in-the-moment that can only exist, as in childhood, when the effort to adapt to collective values is of no importance.
Campbell connects the living of Tao to tzu-jan (spontaneous naturalness), presenting Taoist sagely existence as a return to pre-egoic instinctive integrity, a state comparable to individuation as wholeness.
Campbell, Joseph, Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, 2013supporting
The human mind is perilous, like the two yins being outside one yang in water; the mind of Tao is faint, like the one yang fallen between two yins in water. With yang fallen into yin, the mind of Tao is burdened by the human mind.
This hexagram commentary uses the language of trigram structure to represent the fragility of Tao-consciousness when overwhelmed by conditioned human mentality — an inner-alchemical psychology of spiritual recovery.
More subtly and comprehensively than any other religious tradition, Taoism nurtured the quintessence of the Divine Feminine, keeping alive the feeling of relationship with the ground of being as Primordial Mother.
This passage situates Tao within the symbolic register of the Divine Feminine, linking Taoist practice to a sustained connection with the Great Mother archetype as ground of being.
Harvey, Andrew; Baring, Anne, The Divine Feminine: Exploring the Feminine Face of God Throughout the World, 1996aside
More subtly and comprehensively than any other religious tradition, Taoism nurtured the quintessence of the Divine Feminine, keeping alive the feeling of relationship with the ground of being as Primordial Mother.
Campbell parallels Harvey's framing, presenting Taoism's cultivation of Tao as inseparable from a feminine-ground-of-being mythology, rooted in ancient shamanic cosmology.
Campbell, Joseph, Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, 2013aside
The mind of Tao is real, the human mentality is artificial. When you use the artificial mind, sensing is inaccurate; yin and yang dichotomize. When you use the real mind, sensing is true; yin and yang commune.
The passage articulates a psychology of perception in which access to Tao is the condition for correct sensing, while the conditioned mind produces false dichotomies — a formula for understanding psychic integration.
Thomas Cleary, Liu Yiming, The Taoist I Ching, 1986aside
The concept of change is not an external, normative principle that imprints itself upon phenomena; it is an inner tendency according to which development takes place naturally and spontaneously.
Hellmut Wilhelm's description of change as an immanent inner tendency implicitly glosses what Tao does in the I Ching tradition — governing development from within rather than imposing law from without.
Hellmut Wilhelm, Change: Eight Lectures on the I Ching, 1960aside