In the modern societies it has often become difficult to have success on the path.
Stress and unnatural life are only one important hinderance. Most modern people
have thrown religious principles away and live only for the fulfillment of their wishes
because they have not learned to analyse their wishes and do not see that they
are in reality slaves of their wishes, and that they have been educated to think that
they have won a new freedom through the extended possibilities of consumption.
They feel disturbed if a spiritual seeker does not keep up their material values.
Culture and technics have become two different things in many fields of life.
But most things of modern culture are just old wine in new bottles. The modern cultural
values are just as before power, wealth, success and sex in a variety of modern forms, just those
things which are attractive for the small human ego.
Modern technics is used to make all this possible and to awaken the desires, and therefore
our world has become a plundered planet !
Master Sri Aurobindo said : "This planet is mainly a big place of fulfilment of desires".
Psychology and spirituality
Modern science is the consequent effort to create logic-causal coherences
between the occurences of the environment and to formulate these with numbers and terms.
The problem is the limited human psyche and mind, once regarding the perception, but even
regarding the logic and the ability of
abstraction.
Therefore it has become the aim of psychology to explore the human psyche and to control it.
(Liter.: Wenzlaff/Feder :
Die Wirklichkeit des Geistes(PDF,german text)).
From the sight of modern psychology
spirituality is just a fancy, not only because relative few people in the western countries
have spiritual experiences.
But the psyche of a psychologist is equally limited as the common human
consciousness
, so that this
scientific yardstick becomes
the problem of the generalisation of the scientific observations.
Therefore we find "scientific authorities" who lead the various directions and scools of
psychology.
The other problem of psychology is that the patients do not want to develop an "integral
personality and soul" but mostly to get rid of their problems and to have success in life without
reflection of the false application of their energies. Therefore Psychology has
a problem with Ethics.
Integral psychic health comprises the liberation of the
three poisons
which can for example be removed by the invocation of the
Medicine-Buddha.
People with spiritual selfrealization have a different view of life and different
patterns of behaviour than the adapted citizen. They have inner spiritual culture
instead of self-centered outer culture, which is an aspect of vitality and of the
human ego.
"The spiritual man is one who has discovered his soul. He has found his self
and lives in that, is conscious of it, has the joy of it
he needs nothing external for his completeness of existence."
(Sri Aurobindo
, Life Divine II,27)
"Again, the sign of the divine worker is that which is eternal to the divine
consciousnees itself, a perfect inner joy and peace which depends upon nothing
in the world for its source or its continuance; it is initiate, it is the very
stuff of the soul's consciousness, it is the very nature of the divine being.
The ordinary man depens upon outward things for his happiness; therefore he
has desire; therefore he has anger and passion, pleasure and pain, joy and grief;
therefore he measures all things in the balance of good fortune and evil fortune;
none of these things can effect thew divine soul."
(Sri Aurobindo :
Essays on the Gita, Page 175)
Many psychologists try to supress people on the path as
schizophrenic ,
often because of their false understanding of the higher spiritual EGO.
In some countries psychology has lost a part of their influence, but very often
first judicially.
Psychology
can become a kind of modern inquisition, if
in the false hands, and in modern societies it has often reached this position.
To be "social" means to be like the others (in psychological terms) - and not to
help or support each other. (In the USA the word social can have the meaning of communism).
If You think very different or live very different than the majority of people then
you are probably sick or
psychotic - or at
least neurotic !
Modern medicine uses Psychology and Psychiatry more and more
as a terminus for difficult to find illnesses and for infections with virusses,
with the unproven argument argument that 75% of the
diseases
have a psychic background.
Meditation
is just self-hypnosis (like
NLP) with illusions, and psychology has
various models of man, which are all just approaches. They cannot lead the
patients out of the dark Maya-Cave of Materialism and can only deleiver
a theory of the lower human self.
The scool of C.G. Jung
is a bit different but he sees his "archetypes" as a kind of psychic symbolism.
The Sabda(Nada) is from the sight of psychology at the most a kind of
Tinnitus.
Of course these scientific thinking people are absolutely convinced of their
plausible models
(they live from their Job!).
If You argue with them then that maybe a hint that you are psychotic. They can explain
everything without a real proof in the individual cases,
their proof is the
plausibility , and especially the
Neurologists
cant beleive that the "spirit" has a feedback on the body.
Since several years psychology shows interest in meditation and similar techniques.
Chemical treatments(which belong to the neurologic section) have proved to have
negative effects on the nervous system (Valium etc.) and the results of the
therapies are very often disappointing.
The methods of autosuggestion, NLP, hypnosis and
autogenic training have shown limited results. Therefore it has been
tried to use the methods of meditation for treatment.
The electrical alpha-waves and
Gamma-Waves during meditation and relaxation and the chemical changes in the human body caused by these methods
were measured, which in fact exist and which have already been published before
(St.Palos : Breath and meditation ; E.Taylor-M.Murphy-St.Donovan: The physical and psychological Effects of meditation).
But the chemical changes cannot simply be used to reach higher states of consciesness
through injection of those chemicals.
Further all this does not mean that psychology accepts the religious systems around these
methods. It is just the attempt use these methods as a means of treatment of patients
, and to deleiver a modern description.
If it would be possible to bring down the spiritual energies as a means of treatment
just to heal people who are completely against spirituality then this would be a
modern branch of the black path.
The "Transcendental meditation"- movement is an example for such an attempt of abusing
spiritual energies for daily success, and this movement publishes chemical and
electrical measurements (though probably many of them are just
self produced and false).
People on the spiritual path have a different view of life than the average man :
"The spiritual man has detected his soul. He is conscious of that and he enjoys of that.
He has found his true self und he lives within this self. He needs no outer things for
the fullness of his existence",(Sri Aurobindo, Life Divine II,27)
Spiritual aberrations
Many people and some Yogins (in Nepal etc.) take
drugs to have "spiritual" experiences :
The real soul is undeveloped and cant develop, and drugs offer a way out of the common life,
a bit similar to alcohol !
But drugs are not a kind of spiritual experience. Some drugs open a small door to
the negative worlds with the price of destruction of the body.
Also "spiritual" Sex (abused in "left tantra"
or similar techniques) is a method to sink into the unconscious and negative forces !
The lowest point in the taoistic "Small cycle" is named "gate of death".
Such methodes are only for developed people of the first initiation (if at all),
but these negative forces are transformed then and not stimulated!
Modern psychology has opened the door to these primitive forces, and people
have now no inhibition to live with their vitality. Sex-education in the sense of
reconaissance maybe useful but serves today as a means of living with
selfish desires in a clean modern way.
The other main problem is that psychology has won a big influence on the leading people,
and in the United States many of these leading people visit their "soul doctor" regularly.
So they stand under the influence of these "scientific" trainees who are visited to
guarantee their success in daily life.
One of the results was the american definition of
"
team-work" instead of "to work in a work-team".
It has its old basis in the animal-kingdom where the bull leads
his herd and controls it completely, a group which follows the herd-impulse.
Animals who are different or do not surrender have no chance in the animal kingdom
or have to leave the herd.
Another problem is that animals have neither a mental body nor a mental
intellect or a mental ego, and therefore they cannot generally be compared with human
society.
This psychological developement is a danger for freedom and democracy (as far as both really exist).
It supresses the individual personal developement and so supresses spiritual developement too.
Nowadays this aspect of the "american way of life " spreads all over the world - especially
in the management of firms.
The american society is a good example for a modern and
unsocial society
where success counts.
"It is false to demand that the individual has to surrender
to the community or to melt with it. A community can only develop through the
most progressive individuals, and those individuals can only make progress if they are
really free.
But it is true the the individual finds his unity with the community and with the
universe the more it is spiritually progressed", (
Sri Aurobindo, Life Divine II,28)
"In the gnostic or divine being, in the gnostic life, there will be a close and complete
consciousness of the self of the others, a consciousness of
their mind, life, physical being which are felt as if they were one's own. The gnostic
being will act, not out of a surface of love and sympathy or any similar feeling,
but out of this close mutual consciousness, this intimate oneness",(
Sri Aurobindo, Life Divine II,28)
Introspection
Psychology tries to explain the psychic problems from an intellectual standpoint,
and therefore its has developed a very complex system.
From the esoteric standpoint a
psychoanalys with the revival of old incidents of the past of the individual patient
(by remembrance) should be avoided. Very often it leads
to a long crisis of the patient.
Introspection combined with inner exercises brings higher and better and deeper results,
but the aspiration must be very different and continuous. The patient should be taught to live
to live "here and today and always conscious".
Modern pyschology teaches people that they should love themselves, but the
self-love is one of the roots of the black path. It is taught to establish the
small untamed personal ego.
"The gnostic beeing starting from this new basis takes up our ignorant
becoming and turns it into a luminous becoming of knowledge and a realised
power of being."
"As mind seeks for light, for the discovery of knowledge and for mastery by
knowledge, so life seeks for the developement of its own force and
for mastery by force; its quest is for growth, power, conquest, posession,
satisfaction, creation, joy, love, beauty; its joy of existence is in a
constant self-expression, developement, diverse manifoldness of action, creation,
enjoyment, an abundant and strong intensity of itself and its power. The gnostic
evolution will lift that to its highest and fullest expression, but it will not
act for the power, satisfaction, enjoyment of the mental or vital ego,
for its narrow posession of itself and its eager ambitious grasp on others
and on things for its greater self-affirmation and magnified embodiement."
(Sri
Aurobindo, Life Divine II,27)
Therefore psychology is a science about the small human ego and the forces
which are consciously and unconsciously controlled through the ego and control the ego
because they are its substance, and therefore of the lower self. But psychology has
only terms for the description of the unconscious forces.
It does not anticipate of the abysses of human
consciousness .
In contradiction the goal of spirituality is the complete spiritual
transformation of body, soul and mind.
Finally a quotation of master Sri Aurobindo who said: "Psychology is only the exorbitant
generalization of some small truthes."
To know these small truthes of psychology can of course somtimes be quite useful together
with introspection if put into a proper order, just like any special knowledge can
sometimes be useful.
(Lit.: Ch. N. Norbu : Buddhism and Psychology, Shang Shung Edition;
Hazrat Inayat Khan : Spiritual Dimensions of Psychology)
"An evolution of gnostic consciousness brings with it a
transformation of our world-consciousness and world-action : for
it takes up into the new power of awareness not only the inner existence but
our outer being and our world-beeing."(Sri Aurobindo, Life Divine II,27)
"For the law of the body arises from the subconsient or inconscient;
but in the gnostic being the subconscient will have become conscious and subject to the
supramental control, penetrated with its light and action;
the basis of inconscience with its obscurity and ambiguity, its
obstruction or tardy respones, will have been transformed into a lower or
supporting superconscience by the supramental emergence",
(Sri Aurobindo, Life Divine II,27)
At the latest on step 18 of the Universal Path the
Adept has transformed the
unconscious energies of his material body so far that he needs no more sleep, instead
only two hours of rest of the body - as a forrunner of coming extensive changes.
"In our soul exists a thirst for perfection; but not for this human perfection,
which is a perfection of the EGO and which blocks the path of the divine
perfection, but it is that kind of perfection, which has the power to reveal
eternal truthes on earth." (The Mother, Aurobindo)
