Psychoanalysis and Psychosynthesis both are mind processes. The mind is a good mechanism, but not a good master. It can serve you if you are the master and the mind is the servant. But if the servant becomes the master and starts ruling over you, that is the state of insanity.
What can help is witnessing -- witnessing the mind and its activities. And witnessing is the real miracle. The more you witness, the less thoughts are there in the mind -- in exact proportion. If your witnessing is only ten percent, then there are ninety percent thoughts. If your witnessing is ninety percent, there are only ten percent thoughts. If your witnessing is one hundred percent, then there is no mind, there are no thoughts at all.
So Sigmund Freud, who talks about psychoanalysis, and Assagioli, who talks about psychosynthesis, are in the same boat. They are both talking about mind; neither of them is talking of going beyond mind.
In the East, nothing like psychotherapy or Psychosynthesis has happened. You will be surprised that in the East, for ten thousand years, no enlightened person has even paid any attention to the mind. If they have ever talked about the mind, they have talked in reference to meditation. And what they have talked about is how to make the mind silent, empty, a total nothingness, a no-mind.
The state of no-mind is unknown to the West, and it is only in the state of no-mind that one becomes aware of that which is beyond mind.... Because when all the chattering of the mind stops and there is no more noise, the still small voice of the being is heard. For the first time one becomes aware, "I am here. I was not there in that crowded place, I was always out of it."
Witnessing simply takes you beyond mind. And to be beyond mind is the whole of religion, the true religion. I call it pure religiousness.
1 comment:
Hi Raaj,
I agree that it is in a state of "no mind" that the small still voice that comes from our essence, our true consciousness - this is precisely the ultimate goal of personal and transpersonal psychosynthesis. I would disagree that Psychosynthesis is a psychology of the mind - it is a psychology that presupposes that we are spirit manifest into matter and that the ego is a container for spirit/ Self (conscious awareness and will) - it serves a purpose but ultimately our purpose is to turn to our essence - ultimately non being. Psychosyntheis as a psychology functions to support people towards enlightment but does not prescribe the path.
Even amongst eastern traditions - teachers/ Guru's support disciples to overcome their personal complexes - this support goes beyond the practice of meditation. Witnessing is key - but there are many culdesacs for the "witness" and different degrees of suffering as the process of witnessing uncovers the different layers of ego and physical manifestation.
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