This first meeting about a'Spiritual Approach in Psychiatry' aims at exploring the nature of meditation through the light of teachings of wisdom and self-knowledge, at deepening the connection between psychotherapy and meditation, and at finding how such an orientation integrating psychology and spirituality can enrich the comprehension and open new therapies.
"The XXI st. century will be spiritual or will not be" - André Malraux
Besides the imposing stream of psychoanalysis with all its Californian tributaries, some therapists (first of all Philo of Alexandria) support the idea that relaxing the muscles and developing inner life could lead to equilibrium, and even to wisdom.
From etymology : relax is to release the prisoner that I am, get out of slavery, remission of penalty, diminution of strictness, to give up. That's leads to a lesser kind of release, that of muscle tension, its link with anguishes from the past ...
The Heavy Past which grips tightly, constrains, leads us out of the united functioning way, building fences and walls, not only between the others and oneself, but also between oneself and oneself!
Our concern is to cast off the yoke which hinders innermost exchanges, these transactions which set me up as a functioning oneness, a structured Unit; out of those exchanges I get to be nothing but a speck of dust, but scattering of dealings restricted by being only reactions.
From this psychophysiologic surrender, the person can have access to a more opened perception, great simplicity, a more general and deeper silence; until the giving up of the localized, together restricted and inflated ego, and realize through the meditation process one's subjective being, unreachable source, unfailing springing, with neither excess power nor servitude.
Neuroticism can't block this way. Psychological conflicts on the contrary, will be soothed by meditation which will promote their solution by suitable means (for instance some kind of admitted psychotherapy). Not only relief, but with even more perseverance : real liberation.
We have three 'Liberations' (sanskrit : 'Moksha'):
2) respect to desires
3) by vacuity
However, a growing number of our contemporaries are taking a serious interest in what might be called the liberating experiences of the suffering of time.
For about thirty years, a few researchers have realized the legitimacy of the metaphysical experience, transcendental, in which the root is the man himself, in the depth of his being.
An everyday tragedy should interpellate us. That is, the number of young people and young women who turn towards drugs for such experiences. Without guidance they don't know that the satisfaction of their legitimate aspiration is possible, thanks to the practice of meditation, for example.
Another tragedy is neurosis. In France alone, it has been established that the daily consummation of anxiolytics is 8.000.000 units. On reading this sad statement, a question should be posed : who prescribes this medication?
Therapy, be it somatic, psychic or psychosomatic always reflects an image of a man "such as he should be in the eyes of the therapeutic milieu at a given time".
Is the pragmatic therapy imposed today still justifiable? We have gone from the medicine disparaged by Molière to experimental medicine. Good! But today ought not this medicine pass on to another? Should this other medicine and more precisely, this other psychotherapy go as far as carefully considering practices such as meditation?
Here is what was said by Professor Karlfried Graf Dürckheim, guest of honor at the Lindau Congress on Psychotherapy in 1970:
It is, in effect in as much as a man becomes aware of the fortitude concealed deep within his being that there appears a new dimension, full of promise. This other dimension doesn't stop at the horizon of the primary self and its rational representation of the world. It goes beyond the horizons of the cultivated man, who, setting aside the self turns towards traditional ethical, logical and aesthetic values. This other dimension is of a transcendental nature. This amounts to saying that there exists a dimension concerning an inherent transcendence in the nature of a man taken as a whole".
A question must be asked : what is the reason? Another question is essential : what can be proposed as a means of recovery?
Will meditation be the universal panacea? Far from it! But it represents an answer for those, more and more numerous at this century's end, who feel confronted by what we would call in our intervention, the question of the inner way.
We should ask ourselves the question as to whether a therapy which accepts the principal of immanent transcendence can seriously be envisaged.
Such a therapy should not in any case be linked to prejudices or dogmatic pre-suppositions.
The maturation of the person, which is the sense of such a therapy, must be able to be verified.
Finally, this therapy which has as its basis the practice of meditation should be taught to the others.
If initiatory therapy represents, for the Western world, something new, we should know that for the other half of the world, it constitutes from time immemorial the basis of a daily way of life and the root of all wisdom.
1- Autism, schizophrenia, parapaphrenia show the incapacity of structuring the broken pieces of the being.
As an unifying process, a meditation focused on the body's representation may help to find a link : Yoga, Tai Tchi, Chi Kong, etc.... Contra-indications: an inability to follow instruction, an inability to focus on the imagery proposed by the helper. Incidents: burst of anger. Accidents: suicide attempt, violence against the staff. The place of refuge could be a psychiatric hospital where the patient's spiritual needs would be accounted for.
2- The manic-depressive syndrome.
As well as it would be expected, the individual has developed himself into two polarities. In this bipolar system, he needs to center himself on a protective figure and to use techniques which create fervour : prayers, rhythmic prayers, mantra, yantra connecting with the "Great One, the Mighty", with the help of a saint, a guru, etc.... Contra-indications: the critical periods when hospitalization is requested (chemotherapy). Incidents: violence against others. Accidents: crime, suicide. However, such techniques which build fervour are powerful tools if one dares to offer them at the right time.
3- The obsessional
Avid for rituals, they unfortunately can close themselves with complicated counting. Indications : some Jappas - oral practice with repetitions "Little philocalia", prayers form the heart, could be a powerful help when carefully offered. Practice of Prâna-Yama, meditation through the cold (Tibetan To Mo), practices leading to a paroxysm bring an obvious but heroic relief. Contra-indications: feeling of confinement and exasperation toward the ritual perceived as a jail. Incidents: occasional fit of delirium - accusations, etc....
4- Phobic neurosis, panic fear
Meditation helps the individual to find a secret sense for his problems. Psychoanalysis as an enlarged meditation is recommended as well as the Vipassanâ and the Samatha techniques.
5- Perversions
The perverts with their pathologic, sacrificial ruminations (sado-masochism, pedophily, etc...) bring us to the door of the third refuge: the jail. They seldom ask spontaneously for help except if they run the risk of prosecution. However meditations upon the Christ wounds, the Lady of the Seven Distresses or the Sufi's mutilations can bring them close to what they are subjected to and to what they subject the others to. Accidents: numerous relapses.
In the widest meaning, all that the human being have invented to accede to experience the dimension of sacred sense, of spiritual quest, could be named "yoga". In the (too much) restricted sense, yoga has become in our culture a gymnastic tool for good health, sold in every good "form" supermarket.
Between these two extremes, it has multiple forms, though you can modulate it infinitely in regard to the cultural context, though it is adjustable to every voluntary individual, yoga must be first of all considered as an applied methodology and technology of spiritual accomplishment.
Strictly speaking, it is not a psychotherapy, but, if you really get involved in it - if only you can - it becomes a mean of inner change, which is able to lessen most of the pathological structures.
Both in the traditional Indian context and in its textual origin, there is no major difference between yoga and meditation. If you speak about yoga, you speak about meditation; and if you talk about meditation, you talk about yoga! It's six of one and half a dozen of the other!
However, for Indo-Cartesian convenience (because Indians themselves fish in troubled waters), people think that so-called "physical yoga" is restricted to the body, and is therefore limiting, whereas so-called "spiritual yoga" is a matter of spirit, and therefore is not limiting, and for that reason "royal" (Raja Yoga).
Anyway. Let's say merely that Buddhists or Christians, for instance, would more specifically practice a meditation's yoga (Dhyana Yoga), when tantric yogis, for example, practice the command of subtle energies proper to the yoga of "great effort" (Hatha Yoga).
Even though there is no fundamental difference between yoga and meditation, there is clearly an essential one between yoga and psychotherapy.
Above all, psychotherapy, generally speaking, involves an interest in contents of conscience; yoga aims at transforming the conscience itself.
Psychotherapy rearranges the furniture, yoga (real yoga) "moves house" and moreover does it without necessarily conceding arrangements or care!
In fact, meditation in yoga leads to a unification of states of consciousness, in other words, to a transcendental consciousness (turiya) : free, open, clear and spacious when you are awake, but also during dreaming, sleeping, or better - or worse - in death.
Anyhow, and before death happens, we should add that meditation in yoga is so simple that even Westerners, even psychotherapists can appreciate its subtle pungencies and verify on a day-to-day basis the change of their own relations with life, the other, themselves and, of course, with their patients.
So many open questions which, I expect, will remain open.
Their prescription for a sane and happy life: "Happiness in life is in proportion to one's self discipline".
Kriya Yoga is a scientific art which consists of a series of techniques grouped in five categories which promote an integral human development at five levels : physical, vital, mental, intellectual and spiritual:
2- Breathing techniques which help to develop one's sense of self, balance one's emotions and increase ones level of energy;
3- Meditation techniques which purify the subconscious and which increase one's awareness of internal and external reality;
4- The use of resonant sounds or words which help to transform habits and which help awaken the intellect, the intuition and superconscious states;
5- Activities which enable one to cultivate love and a sense of unity with all.
2- A breathing technique which treats emotional disorders;
3- Several exercises for the treatment of insomnia and stress related disorders;
4- Several exercises which increase one's sense of well being and which treat nervous depression.
Psychotherapy is generally considered to be a daughter of this century and of the Western world. Although it did develop then and there in an extraordinary blossoming, it is still possible to find its premises at different times throughout history - when therapists, priests and hierophants would heal body, mind and soul as a whole.
Among them, the therapists from Alexandria, as described by Philo, knew how "to take care of the Being", connecting psychic healing to metaphysical knowledge and to a re-orientation of desire towards its true end: Being itself.
As for the word meditation, it usually evokes the Buddhist and Hinduist Orient, the great specialists of that marvelous art of "coming back to the Self".
Nevertheless, the Western world too has its "letters of nobility" on the matter, in the heart of the mystical trends of its great religions : gnostic, hesichastic or Eckhartian Christianity, hassidic and kabbalistic Judaism, Islamic Sufism, all describe the paths of the soul seeking unity with the Divine - within itself. Among the ways and methods that their respective sages and spiritual teachers proposed, meditation, under its diverse names, is considered as "the Royal Way".
Among the many definitions and descriptions of what meditation is, we shall choose here the one that stresses a "coming back towards the center of being" (from the latin "itari in medio", as suggested by Jean-Yves Leloup). That coming back towards the center implicates a path that would start at the periphery of being, made of daily worries, thoughts, feelings, projects...
Meditation would then be the Ariadne's thread that would make possible the finding of one's path into the immutable center of the endless whirlpool, the silent eye of the cyclone.
Much of the research on meditation explores its "measurable" effects upon self-regulation and self-exploration, and other research takes into account its spiritual dimension.
Some researchers - those belonging to the Transpersonal Movement in particular, - speak about a line of psychological development that would start in the darkest recesses of the id, grow through psychological health as defined by the psychotherapies. It might then blossom into an "optimal psychological health", of an "ideal man", freed from himself, as described by the spiritual traditions (the Christian saint, the Jewish "righteous man", the liberated man of Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism) - all those who disidentified themselves from the restriction of their personality to comprehend both their human and their divine identity.
For those who attain that maturity, words become inadequate, but still try sometimes to describe those ineffable heights of a live intuition.
As Thomas Merton puts it, "Everything sums up not in a concept, but in an experience : I Am" - and as Saint Jean of the Cross has experienced "The center of the soul is God".
Master Eckhart adds : "If God is me, there is no me any longer, there is only the Absolute, the Unique, the Eternal left".
The quality of the look determines comprehension. A simple observation of thought content is not something simple, considering the extreme rapidity of the process at stake. This is why only a calm and tranquil mind can contemplate the unfolding of the mental intricacies. Meditation is often associated with corporeal immobility. A body which does not move is in effect one less source of distraction. A less dispersed attention can rest more easily on what is being observed. But an immobile body is not synonymous with tranquillity. For intentional immobility is generally accompanied by a rigidity in the muscular structure and by psychological tension. That is why when a pose is adopted for contemplation, it is as well that the body be firm but relaxed, set down on the floor or on a chair, like an object. It's quite an art to be simply seated.
But in fact contemplation is the most natural of the functions of the mind. We are in permanent contemplation. Only the implication in the world of sounds, sight and sensations makes us forget our natural attitude of perfect rest, of profound and spontaneous tranquillity. Wanting to seize and appropriate agreeable sensations for oneself is nothing more than a habit, but a habit profoundly anchored in the psychocorporeal structure. All the bodily contractions are a vibrant reflection of this desperate tentative to grasp the ungraspable sensation of happiness, to cling to ephemeral sensations of total relaxation. And there resides the essential paradox : every tentative to seize joy or happiness brings us inevitably back to dissatisfaction. The art of meditation resides in this perfect freeing from the perceived world, distance which is not the fruit of a fear or an intention, but the expression of an infinite living space within which perceptions appear and disappear. To be at one with the unlimited is to be quite naturally outside of the world but conscious within it.
Psychotherapy is above all an exercise destined to develop an aptitude for discrimination. An open and receptive way of looking observes tendencies in the personality which tirelessly seek pleasure and refuse pain, the game of the mind which recreates without end, past and future in a display of colored images and bodily sensations, always moving and changing. In spoken language, one refers to oneself by the term "I", which represents either a constructed image of "ourselves" elaborated as the years go by or of the body in its apparent form. This image constructed from the idea that we have of ourselves or from the mental representation of the body is usually considered as the real me.
At the end of a long investigation, one realizes that finally it is our own mind which creates suffering. And that therefore there is no mental solution to suffering. It is a terrible statement. To see clearly that what creates suffering cannot liberate from suffering. If for example one considers fear under one of its multiple forms, one notices that to want to free oneself from fear is in fact the expression of another fear. And as such one rests enclosed within a sort of vicious circle. If instead of freeing oneself from fear, one accepts fear, that's already a new attitude. Whilst fear is not fought against but accepted, there is an immediate sensation of relief. No longer struggle against fear but accept it. As the struggle stops, peace bursts forth. If it bursts forth, it is because it was already there. And if therefore one stayed within, there, without moving, without searching for whatever may be. Peace is an infallible guide since it always leads us back to itself. One can but live it. One cannot think it, peace. It's there that one places the shift in meaning between comprehension and that which has been lived. To live words in their essence, to live peace, to live quietude, to live love, to live beauty. It's not about a new elaboration of the mind, but a direct expression of what we are.
Establishing in the heart this essential truth which bursts forth from our deepest being is the fundamental psychotherapeutic act, or rather integral therapy for it includes the body and the mind in a unique and sensitive being in which we are the connoisseur.
In perfect identity with the connoisseur of all things, sensitive to the world but unaffected by it, I am.
This project presupposes that human nature itself is defined and known. Obviously this premise greatly limits what can be attempted and hoped for. We will accept the validity of the Hindu and Buddhist teachings, something that will shock many Westerners. But we will examine them in as scientific a way as possible. The traditional teachings and the experiences of meditation, credit mankind with normally latent and untamed capacities, that are nevertheless real, which when they intervene in the meditation process or in therapy radically change normal behavior. For their description, we can refer to the parapsychology literature, the lives of the Saints, and as to how they may be used to what the East calls the use of Siddhis, the Accomplishments.
The real importance of this is that it overturns our contemporary narrow minded ideas on the nature of man. This opens the door to the practice of meditation which acts as a solitary and refined extension of the mechanisms for change which are already well known in psychotherapy. Even if they are working equally.
We will examine the explanation of changes that occur as a result of "Samatha-Vipassanâ" (Concentration and Insight Meditation), according to the following different factors :
2- Specifically psychic
B- Abreaction by repeated micro-discharges of emotion. - Sudden integrative awareness.
C- Reciprocal inhibition and deconditioning. - Avoidance conditioning. - "Operant" conditioning.
Pathological regression along with false experiences of unity make one come back to primary process. The return to oneself during meditation, along with genuine experiences of unity, put him in touch with the primeval energies of human beings. In this sense, the thinking of a meditator, like that of a child, is close to the body. It has the capacity of watching emotions without sticking to them, of letting them pass by as does that of the child, and to adhere to the other's viewpoint with a full empathy. Meditator and child, both together, can easily enter the world of day dreaming and mental imagery without their relationship to reality being altered by that. The meditator is a child, 'in-fans' in Latin, 'the one who does not speak', because he is directly connected with the silent basis, both physical and emotional, of his mind without being hypnotized by the endless spiral of words. Yet, contrary to a child, an advanced meditator or a sage has a discriminating capacity to reflect and feed back to people only that which may be useful to them. A sage does not identify with the role of a child, although he plays it often. He may take as well the part of a father, mother or friend. This ability of non-identification is hinted in Ramana Maharshi's word : 'A sage is a child, but without the seeds of ego'.
The quest for Unity is not a regression, but a progression for it requires a thorough knowledge of the mind along with an ability to master it and to extricate it from its usual compulsions to repetition. This quest is an art of freedom, freedom from mind's work, which is neither regression nor progression, but 'circumgression' as it were, i.e. mind, by nature, is prone to go round into circles indefinitely. In this sense, the sage who has gone far on the meditative path represents in every generation, the progress, the success and ultimate blossoming of the human consciousness which yearns to grasp itself.
The word psychiatry is used here in its nobler etymological meaning, the meaning of a medicine of the soul, of a medicine of the spirit.
The purpose of this association is to establish the bases of an open and dynamic psycho-spiritual medicine, in which the psychological suffering and psychopathological disturbances will be separated no more from the context of spiritual maturation characteristic of each individual.
The intention is to integrate the teachings and ways of realization peculiar to the great spiritual traditions in clinical understanding and in the therapeutic field, and to promote work and research in psychopathology through the light of a global perspective.
The association will use different kinds of reflection tools and ways of expression.
- in March-April 1996, in France or USA. Two subjects are still possible : either the study of a great psychopathological group - "Spiritual Approach in Depression" - , or the body-mind relations studied from a spiritual perspective.
3) Seminars, organized by highly qualified therapists, will be proposed.
Its administrative office is located at the following address
:
ESSENCE - IASP
2094, avenue des Templiers, 06140 Vence, France
Telephone +33-4-93.58.53.53, fax +33-4-93.58.53.63
The coordinator will be :
Jean-Marc Mantel, M.D.
jmm@essence-euro.org