Psychotherapy and the Spiritual Path

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What has happened in the West in recent years is, as far as I can see a sort of outcrop of this Christian view of transformation, and is seen in the development of psychotherapy in its various forms. This has become a very powerful influence in society toward the transformation of self. And I believe this is an amazing step forward. Although many psychotherapists will not agree with me, I believe that in the broadest sense psychotherapy is a tremendous tool and advancement in the process of spiritual growth.

I say this because as far as I can see, nowhere in the past was there a real meeting with the effects of life in the womb, the trauma of birth, childhood traumas, and the sexual dilemmas and pains many of us suffer. Today when we take the spiritual path, the meeting with these blockages and infant traumas is part of the cleansing mentioned already. The best of the psychotherapies looks at the whole of the human being and includes body mind and spirit in its approach to transformation.

What I have seen is that if you press far enough into the deep renovation of yourself you cannot help but confront a widening of awareness. That, after all, in the essence of the spiritual.

Chris: You used to talk about Grof a lot. How do you connect his work with what you have said?

Tony: Yes. This was because I see Grof as a leader in the field of modern psychotherapy. He encompassed an enormously wide view of the human being. He moved beyond the limitations of Freud and Jung, and gave a much more detailed and extensive map of the human being than we had previously. Of course he was not alone in this. During the period of his major work he was accompanied by other giants in the field of exploring the human psyche. (See the work of Dr. Frank Lake, Otto Rank, Wilhelm Reich, Medard Boss).

Something that links with what I said in regard to the spiritual path and the addition that psychotherapy has made to it is that very often in the past the meeting with oneself often remained in symbols. Or to put it another way, the traveller on that path never got beyond the symbols of what he or she was meeting.

To give what is perhaps not a very precise example; the person might have a powerful vision or experience of being in a frightening cave, or of meeting the devil, or an animal; perhaps even an angel. What people like Grof did was to break through the symbol into the reality underlying it. For instance Grof clearly defined the various stages of the birth trauma often represented by the symbol of a cave, or being tortured or threatened by a devil.

An interesting insight into what the avoidance of going beyond the symbol might lead to has been given by Ralph Frenken Ph.D. in his review of Christian mystics. He believes that, "The psychodynamics of mystics, their symbol formations and their actions are based on excessive early trauma. . . . There is evidence that medieval mystics were deprived and also emotionally and sexually abused as children."

There is still a great tendency to remain in the symbol with many people on the spiritual path today. However, when we do frequently have the courage to break through the symbol and meet the reality of our own experience, the reality of who we actually are. We are readier to confront our real history and experience how it shaped and wounded us. So I see the path toward growth and change is enormously enhanced. I believe this adds great power to social change as well as individual change.

Another aspect of Grof's contribution was that his early work involved the use of LSD as an aid to psychotherapy. From his observations of thousands of patients he arrived, after much questioning, to the realisation that human consciousness can transcend all the boundaries we usually believe limit it. He sums this up by saying, “There is at present little doubt in my mind that our current understanding of the universe, of the nature of reality, and particularly of human beings, is superficial, incorrect, and incomplete.”

To quote one example from which this conclusion was reached I quote from Michael Talbot's book Holographic Universe:

Beyond the Limitations of the Body

In one particularly unnerving session a young man suffering from depression found himself in what seemed to be another dimension. It had an eerie luminescence, and although he could not see anyone he sensed that it was crowded with discarnate beings. Suddenly he sensed a presence very close to him, and to his surprise it began to communicate with him telepathically. It asked him to please contact a couple who lived in the Moravian city of Kromeriz and let them know that their son Ladislav was well taken care of and doing all right. It then gave him the couple's name, street address, and telephone number.

The information meant nothing to either Grof or the young man and seemed totally unrelated to the young man's problems and treatment. Still, Grof could not put it out of his mind. “After some hesitation and with mixed feelings, I finally decided to do what certainly would have made me the target of my colleagues' jokes, had they found out,” says Grof. “I went to the telephone, dialled the number in Kromeriz, and asked if I could speak with Ladislav. To my astonishment, the woman on the other side of the line started to cry. When she calmed down, she told me with a broken voice: 'Our son is not with us any more; he passed away, we lost him three weeks ago.'” Grof also gives examples of people remembering events that occurred to their parents or grandparents long before they were born and of which they previously knew nothing. Some memories seem to come from periods far in the past, and the patients were able to describe in detail events and environment they were remembering.

Past Lives or Collective Unconscious?

Chris: So, do you mean that they were remembering former lives? Or were they tapping into a collective consciousness?

Tony: I am not sure that Grof tried to carefully define a philosophy around these experiences. I personally refer to it in a very open sense. I think we can make the mistake of very quickly saying it is a past life, or it is the connection with a collective consciousness. There are so many theories about what these things mean. We are a long way from being certain of where they arise from. One serious researcher, seeing the universe and the mind as holographic, believes that dreams themselves enter into other dimensions of reality. So we need to leave such questions open.

What we can say with some certainty is that we are capable of extending our awareness far beyond the limitations that are generally accepted.

Expanding Mind

Chris: Under what circumstances or conditions can we do those things?

Tony: Looking back at the information that past cultures left us, it seems likely that early human beings at first accidentally stumbled on the possibilities of extending their awareness. For instance we still have thousands of records of near death experiences occurring to people in the past, and still happening today. One of the common features of such experiences is the person witnessing verifiable events occurring at a distance from them, or at a time when they appeared to be in a coma with their eyes closed.

There are also many records collected by anthropologists and also verified, of tribal people dreaming of particular herbal remedies to cure ills. Some of these dreamt remedies have been taken into the modern pharmacopoeia. Namely such things as quinine. Also, in the past and in today's world, sometimes dreams present information that the dreamer does not have, has not learned, has not heard, and has in no way taken into themselves from outside.

From such experiences older cultures gradually developed the concept of having a soul that could dissociates from or be independent of the body. Some cultures, especially those in India and the Far East, explored ways of purposefully bringing about such extended awareness. It seems as if at a certain period the human body and mind became a laboratory in which those cultures tried out all manner of things to see what the results would be.

Of course, some of the techniques used were quite crazy. This probably arose because the underlying principles were not really understood. For instance, fasting gradually reduces the physical and emotional energy to a point where the mind and emotions become very quiet. But the active principle, so to speak, is not the fasting, but the quietness of the mind and emotions.

It was also noticed that to really explore these further reaches of consciousness certain qualities were necessary. A certain amount of confidence and fearlessness were needed to meet the further reaches of mind. Some cultures, such as the native American Indians, also realised that if one could not meet a reasonable amount of pain, then you could not really dive very deeply into that wider awareness; if for no other reason than the wider awareness breaking through the narrow and limiting boundaries of the ego of personality can be felt as pain.

Methods of Awakening

So some of the classic ways of extending awareness are:

1) Repeating a word or phrase over and over. The aim of this is not so much to gain understanding of the word or phrase, although sometimes particular words were used because of their associations, but to keep the mind one pointed and to draw it away from wandering into thoughts and feelings. In essence it was a way of quieting the mind and allowing other levels of awareness to become known.

2) Controlling the breathing in one way or another. It was probably observed that people in sleep, and in altered states of consciousness, breathed differently. My own guess is that these different types of breath were copied to see if they would produce such states of mind and body. Rapid breathing for instance, if carried on for some period of time tends to break down the usual threshold that exists between the conscious and the unconscious. Whereas very slow breathing has the effect of quieting the mind and emotions until, as with the repetition of a word or phrase, great quietness exists allowing another level of awareness to be known. This is a little bit like the hibernation that some animals enter into. And in fact the consciousness, or the state of consciousness that it produces, appears to be very similar.

3) Because dreams are projections into waking awareness of the deeper layers of consciousness, exploration of dreams is one of the great methods of extending awareness into the wider ranges of consciousness. I am not talking about interpreting dreams, but of exploring them, as described in Peer Dream Work. 4) Drugs, such as plants and herbs that have mind altering effects, have been used from the very earliest times to transport awareness into other dimensions of experience. Again, these were probably discovered by accident by early human beings, and then felt to be holy in one way or another. Some tribal people such as those in South American for instance, and others still involved in the shamanic traditions, still use such herbs or plants today. 5) Almost anything that enlivens, excites, uplifts or stimulates the human being has the potential to introduce them to altered states of consciousness. Therefore such things as dancing, singing, athletics, dramatic performance, sex, can all at times lead into a very different experience of oneself and ones perceptions. Probably because of this, love, and the direction of loving feelings toward the unknown, the abstract, or a concept of God, have been used throughout the ages by worshippers in the various religions. I believe what this does is to lead the energy from an outward expression through the genitals or the body, up the trunk into the brain. Here it enlivens parts of the brain that were probably under-stimulated previously, and produces altered states of awareness. One particularly sees descriptions of this method in the writings about what is called in India, Shakti, prana and tantra or Tantric sex.

Art by Jacqui Mair, from Your Dream Interpreter.

6) A practice that one also finds used in various ways in many past cultures is one in which the conscious will is surrendered, and one gives oneself over to spontaneous physical movement, vocal expression, emotions and imagination or fantasy. When the practitioner has really learned to give themselves to this practice, what arises is very much like a vivid waking dream. In fact it is probably the dream process breaking through into consciousness and interacting more fully with the waking critical mind. This method, to act as a power to mature the personality, needs to be interacted with consciously. In other words one needs to penetrate the symbolism of what arises as one does with dreams. This approach is very obvious in early Christianity in the Pentecostal experience. It is also seen in Subud, Seitai, the form of yoga called Shaktipat, and in some forms of psychotherapy such as early Reichian work.

But surrender means just that - surrender of ones body, surrender of ones sexuality, surrender of ones hungers, surrender of ones emotions, surrender of ones vocal ability, surrender of ones thoughts, imagination and beliefs. Thus also the surrender of the belief in God or the disbelief in God. We exist in a state of unknowing to discover the mystery behind our existence. If we don't surrender, then we are saying we already know.

7) A powerful approach taken from Zen Buddhism and Indian traditions is to simply ask oneself the question, “Who am I?” Of course, this enquiry into self must be continued diligently until there is a breakthrough.

8) One of the oldest of methods is that of simple self awareness. I suppose you could call it non-identification. What I mean by this is that usually we deeply identify with our body, with our thoughts, our emotions, and often very deeply with our beliefs. By recognising the passing quality of your body sensations, your thoughts and feelings, you discover a freedom and spiritual life you were previously cocooned from. Usually the central fact of our awareness, the core of existence, is possessed by thoughts and emotions, or the idea that we are our body. That possession falls away as you simply watch your thoughts and feelings and recognise them for what they are. This is not a case of repressing or controlling them, simply recognising them and not being possessed by them.

I have not specifically mentioned meditation because there are so many approaches to it, and in the end they are very similar to the things already mentioned.

9) In the practices of yoga one of the paths is called karma yoga. I know that the fundamentals of this are described in the Bhagavad Gita. It is there talked of as a way of living without attachment to ends or rewards. But I would like to describe it from a slightly different perspective. The things I have been talking about revolve around the first subject, the origin of things. As explained there, every tiny particle, everything we see around us, is part of that fragmented body of the original state of things. Everything is an expression of that, holding within it the potential of the source of existence. Nothing arises that is not a direct expression of that almighty creative act. Nothing can stand outside of the impulses and influences that were set in place at the beginning. Therefore, everything in our life is part and parcel of what we seek in a spiritual quest. We do not need to travel away from the ordinary and everyday events and surroundings to come face to face with the holy. We can therefore meet each day with that sense of relating constantly to the divine - and that is a spiritual path.

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