The Secret of the Golden Flower

[1] Studies by Monica Esposito and Mori Yuria,[2][5] provide documentary evidence that the book was produced by the spirit-writing (fuji) groups of two altars devoted to the deified Lü Dongbin: Bailong jingshe ("Pure Assembly of the White Dragon", 白龍精舍), and a branch of Gu hongmei ge ("Old Red Plum Hall", 古紅梅閣) in Piling.

[6] The Secret of the Golden Flower became one of the best-known Taoist texts in the West as a widespread Chinese religious classic, following Richard Wilhelm's translation with commentary by Carl Gustav Jung,[7][1][8] but receives little attention by Eastern scholars.

At the beginning of the Qing dynasty, there were followers of Xu Xun who received texts on contemplative alchemical practices (internal alchemy) and self-cultivation through spirit writing.

As Xu Xun's writings had disappeared for generations, the text was considered by Pure Brightness members to require the founding of a new Taoist sect, which was called the "Ritual Lineage of Great Oneness".

Pan Yi'an (彭伊安), one of the recipients of the work, describes the initial composition process of its first part:[2]"As I remember, it was in the wushen year [1668] that our holy patriarch Chunyang [i.e., Lü] began to transmit the 'Instructions.'

It became a central doctrinal scripture of the Longmen school canon through popularization by Min Yide (1758-1836), who attributed to its importance as a "blueprint for healing of the world".

According to Wilhelm, the Chinese publisher (Zhanran Huizhenzi) relied on an incomplete 17th-century version of a woodblock he had discovered in a bookstore, which he later completed with a friend's book.

Richard Wilhelm had raised the hypothesis (now considered erroneous due to newer academic researches, as seen above) that the text expounded an orally transmitted philosophy found in early esoteric circles of China in the eighth century during the Tang dynasty.

The procedure consists in refining the material soul and interrupting conceptual thought (of the world of the senses) through this meditation; thus, the true nature of the primordial spirit would be revealed.

[15][full citation needed][1] The meditation technique is supplemented by descriptions of affirmations of progress in the course of a daily practice, suggesting stages that could be reached and phenomenon that may be observed such as a feeling of lightness, like floating upward or slight levitation.

Several drawings portray imagery relevant to the personal evolution of a meditation practitioner, images that may be somewhat confusing in terms of pure rational analysis.

[12][1] The Secret of the Golden Flower was first translated into German by sinologist Richard Wilhelm, a friend of Carl Jung, who had been introduced to the work by his Chinese teacher.

[1] Cleary criticized the validity of Wilhelm's translation, characterizing it as incomplete and inaccurate:[19] Because the still-current Wilhelm/Jung/Baynes edition of this manual contains dangerous and misleading contaminations, a primary consideration was to make the contents of The Secret of the Golden Flower explicitly accessible to both lay and specialist audiences.According to Cleary:[1] Although Jung credited The Secret of the Golden Flower with having clarified his own work on the unconscious, he maintained serious reservations about the practice taught in the book.

[1] In his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Carl Jung states that he had sought a connection between Western and Eastern psychological understanding, and that for 15 years he had not found parallels in confirming the collective unconscious, until he read the German translation of The Secret of the Flower of Gold by Wilhelm.

[1] Christopher Cott and Adam Rock consider that Jung's comment left out many constructs present in The Secret of the Golden Flower.

He also notes that another text that was included in Wilhelm's translation, the Hui Ming Jing/Ching ("The Wisdom Book of Life"), also covered by Jung's commentary, is not Taoist: it is from a branch of Mahayana Buddhism.

A Chinese Book of Life: Wilhelm possessed the mastership which is won only by the [person] who surmounts his specialty, and so his knowledge became a concern touching all humanity... .

It could only have been an all-embracing humanness, a greatness of heart that divines the whole, which enabled him to open himself without reservation to a profoundly foreign spirit, and to put at the services of this influence the manifold gifts and capacities of his mind.