(1) Psychotherapy is usually associated with a somewhat mysterious, well-being-promoting effect of the environment (including other people and therapists), referring to what is understood as psychological support or help in solving problems. That is why we talk about the therapeutic influence of listening to appropriate music, hiking in the mountains, walking in the park, and relaxing in a charming bay of the blue sea if only we were cheerful, stronger and calmer afterwards. In this way, cooking dinner together and then eating it together or having community conversations with patients where they share with each other how they cope with problems are also psychotherapeutic. Also, the appropriate colour of the walls in the hospital room or at home, the presence of a favourite book by the hospital bed, and finally, the presence of the mother or father during the stay of a small child in the hospital. Such a free, broad understanding of psychotherapy forces, on the one hand, a more precise definition of what it is, and on the other hand, it causes methods of conduct that have little in common with it to be considered psychotherapeutic. Diligent and statistically oriented researchers have found over six hundred definitions of psychotherapy in the literature, which results in the ambiguity of the concept of psychotherapy, and therefore also various approaches and very different therapeutic or psycho-manipulative offers. Many psychologists and psychotherapists have the least in common with therapy and much more, for example, with ideological psycho-manipulation, including that aimed at preventing the patient from exploring the needs related to spiritual development and metaphysical or religious searches.
(2) Dealing with the psyche, from the Greek soul or self, we touch on philosophical and metaphysical problems – the mystery of existence and the essence of humanity. The terms that capture what is psychological in man (psyche, self, soul, spirituality, ego) are burdened with meanings, the content of which many people interpret quite freely and often deny their existence. This is particularly visible in applied sciences dealing with man – such as medicine. The situation is similar in psychology and psychotherapy. It can be said with some disappointment that modern psychology, as a science and finally distinguished as an independent scientific discipline in the mid-20th century, has only, to a small extent, brought people closer to the great philosophical mystery of human existence. Its leading trend in the last decades of the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century is, unfortunately, behaviourism, in which reflection and contemplation on internal experience were abandoned in favour of the analysis of habits and behaviours of what is observable, measurable and what can be studied in a way that meets the requirements of materialistic empirical sciences. However, this is not the only significant direction in which studies on the human psyche and spirituality are developing. All of them must refer to the fundamental question of the relationship between the body and the psyche, between the body, emotions and thoughts. This dichotomy, or even trichotomy, for reasons that are difficult to explain, corresponds to the way of thinking of a person and constantly accompanies people (body-psyche, body-mind, and, more broadly, the relationship of the body-psyche-life triangle).
(3) It seems that the body-mind, body-psyche dichotomy is a serious obstacle not only to explaining the essence of man but also to explaining the essence of disorders and improving the methods of good psychological or psychotherapeutic help. The unity of the person and the physical and mental inseparability is an important postulate that is difficult to assimilate in practice by medicine and its auxiliary therapies. Professor Kępiński unequivocally stated that the possibility of describing a man in various dimensions (he mentioned biological, psychological and social) generally has only an auxiliary function, facilitating description, research or teaching. It is only an expression of the limited possibility of describing a man in the whole, which a man is. The latest research on brain function in the 21st century, using very sophisticated methods, allows us to establish that each previously described and catalogued mental function corresponds to the activity of some parts of the brain and that this activity can also be described in terms of neurophysiology and biochemistry. However, the belief in the unity of biological and psychological activity is unfortunately still not widely accepted in Europe or America, unlike the Asian East, where it is an obvious fact (Ayurveda, Chinese or Tibetan medicine). In the East, there is a saying that anyone who leads you away from the practice of meditation, from spiritual development, from the spiritual path, from the spiritual community or the spiritual master – is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, the greatest pest that should be avoided at all costs. Psychotherapists or psychologists who, even with only gentle suggestions or hints, suggest that you abandon the spiritual path, ignore metaphysical needs, stop meditating or participate in religious mysteries that give you inspiration and spiritual strength – should be avoided like the devil disguised as an angel or that wolf dressed in the skin of a lamb that he devoured.
(4) An interesting example is provided by the history of psychoanalysis, where Sigmund Freud’s theoretical construct (called psychoanalysis) described the human psyche in close connection with its biology, and specifically with the brain in a way determined by knowledge of the biology of the brain at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. This construct referred to observations about the significant participation in our lives of what we are not aware of, made in work with people suffering from various mental ailments, as well as to another observation, previously treated medically in the West, in Europe and America, as unimportant, that a person from childhood to adulthood not only gains weight, grows and matures sexually, but also changes qualitatively in terms of psychology. Previously, these issues were dealt with by professional occultism and various occult trends of esotericism, such as the Pythagoreans or some mystery religions. However, this Freudian theoretical construct quite quickly began to live a life of its own, pretending to be reality for so long that it became an ideology. This fate seems to be shared by most, if not all, theoretical concepts that either pretend to explain the essence of the psyche and the phenomenon known as the soul or, contrary to the intentions of the creator, are forced into such a role. However, mental life has attributed a role in maintaining health and the genesis of somatic diseases, as well as in the process of recovery from these diseases, and the influence built on these theoretical foundations is an important factor in prevention, treatment and rehabilitation, so instead of turning discoveries into the ideology of some psycho-scientism, discoveries should be further studied with the help of ever newer techniques and methodologies, studied and improved. One such successful study, especially in the sense of the practical creation of a well-functioning system of psychotherapy taking into account the spiritual aspects of man, is Dianetics and Scientology – still underestimated and denied by the ignorant. Another successful product is the entire transpersonal school of psychosynthesis.
(5) In the case of treating a mentally ill patient, it does not have to be about a philosophical or metaphysical solution to the mystery of existence but about ordering human activity. Treatment is a special type of procedure, and the object and the goal determine this speciality; as it turns out, the acting subject is also not without significance. In the common understanding, the subject of treatment is the disease; flu, tuberculosis, tumours, and appendicitis are treated instead of curing a person of the disease. However, the purpose of the action that we call treatment is to eliminate the disease, to heal the patient, and not, as it is absurdly said, to cure tuberculosis or cancer. At this point, a serious doubt arises as to whether the disease is accurately defined as the object of treatment or whether the patient should always be included as the subject, including his deeper needs, perhaps also metaphysical ones. After all, one does not cure the disease but a person, we treat a human, animal, or plant, a living being affected by the disease. A healthy, strong and efficient tumour is not necessary for anyone to be happy and live unless it is for the heirs of a patient who has cancer. Therefore, it must be assumed that treatment is a procedure aimed at healing a sick person, a sick human being, who is not only a material being. A therapist cannot take the disease that the patient suffers from as a subject and deal with treating depression because the treated depression will become healthy and strong and also capable of killing the patient in whom it develops and on whom it preys like an energy vampire, taking away all the patient’s life energy and the very will to live. A materialistic psychologist or psychotherapist is a blind man in the spiritual and metaphysical realm, a blind man incapable of indicating the path of development or the direction of travel, so when he tries to advise you on the matter of spiritual needs, or even just philosophical and aesthetic ones, he can only lead you into a dark pit, where both that worthless and uneducated therapist and thousands of his patients will perish. Therapists who ignore and suppress the spiritual needs of patients often lead them to suicide and total destruction of their lives, to total psychological and life ruin. All because they cannot understand higher feelings or subtle needs of an aesthetic and metaphysical nature, they do not understand the need for an internal journey in which the journey itself is often the most important, just as for a traveller exploring and learning about the external world.
………………
(7) A patient with needs and inclinations for a deeper spiritual life should be supported and directed to people experienced in the metaphysical field and in the field of spiritual guidance, rather to a spiritual master or an Eastern guru than to some materialistic psychotherapy that only wreaks havoc by dealing with the reduction and suppression of philosophical, aesthetic, metaphysical or deeply spiritual needs reaching into supernatural areas, completely elusive to the concept of psyche and reason as materialistic functions of the brain. Among psychotherapists, the most numerous are currently doctors and psychologists, but psychotherapists are also teachers, theologians, nurses, social assistants or volunteers after various questionable training courses or theological-psychomanipulative ones. However, the lack of understanding that many psychological problems result from unmet needs for aesthetic experiences, unmet philosophical inquiries concerning the essence of being, unmet needs for connection with a deity or a living spiritual authority (spiritual master) or finally, from, unmet or defective connection with God Himself, the Absolute – prevents psychologists and psychotherapists from providing effective help to entire groups of patients. It is also harmful to force concepts that are incompatible with the sensitive conscience of people who are awakening to spiritual life, typical of certain psycho-perverts and psycho-deviants calling themselves psychologists or psychotherapists. Even gentle suggestions enforcing so-called tolerance for sadists and psycho-sadists, tolerance for sexual disorders, perversions or various deviations, can and usually do have a destructive effect on the spiritual life of man, which is in its infancy or already awakened, as an internal being, a spiritual self. When seeking the help of psychologists or psychotherapists, one should avoid people who are ideologically involved in promoting sexual deviations and perversions, in open protection of rapists, promoters of materialism and atheism, as well as those involved in ideological activities of the nature of inquisitorial theology, both Protestant and Catholic or any other. For example, a Pentecostal, Catholic, Maoist or Marxist psychotherapist will always be more of an ideological demagogue and convert to his religious theology or to a socio-political ideology than a therapist capable of helping in the philosophical and spiritual area of the human mind and soul. Similarly, you cannot entrust a child to a child psychologist for therapy if that psychologist is a paedophile, sexual pervert or a paederast, but many people do not understand that the same rule applies to all deviations and perversions, both sexual and ideological, which may overwhelm the mind of psychotherapists or psychologists, including those degenerate in the circles of American Satanism, Luciferism, vampirism and all the dark side of the New Age (and the bright side of the New Age, which was there at the beginning of the movement in the 70s and 80s of the 20th century, is so scarce in the 21st century that it is increasingly difficult to find it).
……………..
(14) The threat of using psychotherapy alone for patients with a metaphysical or spiritual disposition is the reduction of the aesthetic and spiritual sphere or the control of spiritual life – subjecting it to the strong influence of the psychotherapist, who can (even unconsciously) evaluate it only in terms of the goals of psychotherapy, i.e. improving self-esteem, improving relationships and emotional connections with the environment, and earthly success in life. It is unlikely that a psychotherapist will react positively to the emotional distancing from loved ones of a person who wants to follow God, abandoning the world for spiritual contemplation and mystical life. Such a moment is, for example, the moment of deciding on a monastic life in a monastery or going on a long-term meditative retreat. Especially if a young person, deciding to live a monastic life in a monastery or hermitage, leaves behind their girlfriend or boyfriend (the love of their life), for a psychotherapist, their love and broken relationship may be more important than the decision to be in a monastery and the development of awakening spiritual needs at a perhaps refined level requiring immediate search for a very good guide of spiritual life (guru). Advanced yogis have such a section of their practices, known as pratyahara, which is yogic psychology and psychotherapy at the same time; however, contemporary Americanized fitness or academic pseudo-yoga usually ignores this essential part of true yoga practice, limiting itself to physical exercises, which is the same mistake as the harmful activity of materialistic psychotherapy that ignores the spiritual sphere of man and deep aesthetic-mystical experiences and experiences of connection with God. A good spiritual guide and therapist at the same time will be a yogi or yogini if he is an expert in the whole yoga, the whole system of the yogic tradition, including meditations and samadhi states, as well as with knowledge of the mystical sphere of the deities of heaven, and not someone who only has an idea about physical exercises taken out of the context of the system of yogic practices. An academic after graduating from Physical Education at University or a fitness person after some gymnastics course on body positions is not a yoga practitioner, and many exercises are stolen from yoga without knowledge of their spiritual purpose, usually practised very badly, in incorrect and flawed versions, and sometimes in a way that is harmful to the body and psyche. These are the effects of going to incompetent atheistic-materialistic people who have no idea about the recesses of the subconscious, nor about the relations of consciousness with the body, nor the relations of the psyche with the spirit and the Absolute.
………………
(23) Since the beginning of the 21st century, we have called almost everything psychotherapy, and a patient is someone who goes to therapy because of a need for development, because of minor fears, but also because of severe psychoses or personality disorders. However, few people advise how to distinguish a good psychotherapist from a bad and harmful impostor. Victims of psychotherapy are considered to be people whose functioning, social relations, professional position and well-being are worse after psychological therapy than before and whose love relationship or family, as a result of the psychotherapist’s influence, falls apart instead of being repaired or at least significantly improved. We have many examples where a bitter spinster or a feminist lesbian, whose love relationships in life did not work out, takes revenge on patients by convincing them, using her psycho-manipulation techniques, that their “other half” is destructive and harmful so that the patients themselves make an effort to destroy their love relationship, abandon their family, and break up. The most common and harmful are also unnecessary therapies, dragged out endlessly despite the problem having been solved long ago. With a desire for self-improvement and internal development, it is better to go to a spiritual guide or guru than to try methods typical of psychotherapy for solving problems. Scientific studies show that the effectiveness of help provided by psychologists and advisors called coaches is lower (often almost zero) compared to the high effectiveness of the assistance provided by well-trained psychotherapists (even beginners) or guides and masters of spiritual life – of course, within their competencies.
………………
(26) Spirituality – in various approaches – is a deepened reflection on one’s existence and self-awareness, consciously shaped morality and hierarchy of values, searching for answers to the question about the meaning of human life and one’s purpose. Spirituality in human development is an existential way of thinking about the causes of events, which is shaped in children between the ages of 2 and 4; the leading motive is searching for the meaning, significance and purpose of events and objects; the ultimate goal is searching for the meaning and purpose of one’s own life and one’s place on earth. In problem-solving psychotherapy, it has been noticed that, taking into account the weekly or biweekly rhythm of meetings, after about 21 two-hour sessions, about 50% of patients achieve healing, stop having symptoms of disorders, and after 50 sessions, 3/4 of patients achieve healing and get rid of problems. Generally, the effects of psychotherapy, depending on the state of development of the patient’s consciousness, usually come after half a year to a year, so it is important to remember to undertake good psychotherapy for a sufficiently long period so that it has a chance to help. Psychotherapy in the treatment of hospital patients usually only makes sense when the patient is in hospital for a sufficiently long time, and then therapy sessions can also be offered two or three times a week – usually not more often because the patient needs time to process what they have become aware of during the therapy session. When it comes to spiritual development, the most common reference is to observe the positive effects of the practice over three-year periods, so there is little point in undertaking spiritual development practices for periods shorter than three years. In spirituality, one does not seek quick, sudden, immediate effects either, and those who offer such usually turn out to be mentally disturbed mythomaniacs suffering from confabulations and delusions that they have achieved something that, in reality, they do not even have the slightest or even the faintest idea about.
Many Blessings on the Path of Awakening and Realization!
Om Namaśśivaya! HUM!
(C) Swami Paramahansa Aćaryaćarya Lalitamohan Babaji – Master L.M.G.K.
SEVENTH MANDALA HRIDAYA SUTRAM (HR 97-112)
(This publication contains only fragments of the original esoteric-hermetic Hridaya lesson. The entire material of this lesson is available in a paperback or book edition, available at workshops and trainings of tantric yoga for adepts and supporters of the Himavanti Confraternity Order and Kaśmiri Śaiva – Kashmir Śaivism.)
Leave a Reply