[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
what Gopi Krishna describes. The immersion of the ego in this stream of light is a common
theme of religious mysticism, and also of psychopatho-logical derangement.
Our author was at once confronted with this problem, and the major part of the book deals not
with the experiences, but with their integration. The road to the enlightenment experience has
been made much shorter with modern hallucinatory drugs and other techniques. The real issue
is how to integrate these experiences, how to live with them, how to keep them from
overwhelming the body and external reality, how to translate them into awareness and human
service, how to ground them in the world, in other words, the 'return', how to return with them
to the human condition.
The first sign of disorder in the flow of light was the turmoil of 'sinister light', 'particles of an
ethereal luminous stuff', the 'shower' or 'waterfall spray' effect. Intuitively, Gopi Krishna
knew that it was not right. Comparable effects are noted in states of psychological
dissociation, in which consciousness appears to break up into multiples of itself,
35
disintegrating into sparks, scintillae, fragments, or hosts of tiny insects. From the Hindu point
of view the turmoil could be attributed to a state of mind called 'vrtta' ('whirling motion'), that
is, the self, or light per se, is not disordered, but the state of mind of the attachedly observing
ego is still affected by hyper-activity. And this we have in the author's statements that he was
searching, questing, questioning, examining, reading, writing letters, worrying, etc. It is the
introspective worry itself which we might interpret as vrtta and which splits up experience
into an anthill of particles.
In addition to the fear of madness, the inner derangement of mind, other events occurred
which we call in the language of psychopathology, 'depersonalization', 'disorientation',
'alienation'. The sense of belonging to his own body here-and-now and the feeling connection
to his own family were among the first attachments to go. These secondary symptoms, as well
as those of roaring or other sounds and visual distortions which our author describes, belong
too to the symptomatology of various psycho-pathological states called: paranoid,
schizophrenic, epileptoid. One might well imagine that had our author presented himself with
this syndrome at a usual Western psychiatric clinic he would have been diagnosed in the way
that he himself intuitively feared. From the psychiatric view, was this experience not a
psychotic episode?
With this question we come to the heart of a Western problem. We have no other than these
diagnostic categories for conceiving states of this kind. Alien and altered states of
consciousness are the province of the alienist. Fortunately, Gopi Krishna had another set of
concepts (Kundalini yoga) which could place within a non-pathological context what was
going on. In so far as the awakening of Kundalini is not limited to the Indian sub-continent
only, it is conceivable that some of the experiences described in Western psychiatric
interviews could also be viewed as the beginnings of enlightenment rather than as the
beginnings of insanity. (I think in particular of epilepsy and of Dostoevsky.) The touchstone,
again, is the same: the way in which the personality handles the experience, the integration of
it.
It is to our author's credit that he avoided psychiatry, and even medicine, when later he was to
go through the feverish experience of being burned alive from within. Again, however, from
the viewpoint of modern psychiatry such avoidance is typical of a man undergoing paranoid
delusions. How close the borderlines are! How much depends upon the quality of the person
and the way he grapples with the integration of his experience. Sometimes therapeutic
psychology lays stress upon its therapeutic task at the expense of the psychological. Then we
find that what a person has, his diagnosis, has become more important than who a person is.
Psychology is obliged to put the who first, the psyche of the person, his soul with its qualities
and virtues, its uniqueness as a moral being for whatever diagnosis it may accrue. Our author
was holding to this position. He did not want to be treated, whereas to be 'cured' of what he
had would have meant loss of both who he was and why he was. As A. Bharati points out in
his The Tantric Tradition (London, 1965, p. 290), 'if an adept seems to "act mad" it is just
because people around him do not see what it is all about, as they are lacking the adept's
frame of reference'. Tantric preceptors deny mental disease en route to samadhi and warn the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl karpacz24.htw.pl
what Gopi Krishna describes. The immersion of the ego in this stream of light is a common
theme of religious mysticism, and also of psychopatho-logical derangement.
Our author was at once confronted with this problem, and the major part of the book deals not
with the experiences, but with their integration. The road to the enlightenment experience has
been made much shorter with modern hallucinatory drugs and other techniques. The real issue
is how to integrate these experiences, how to live with them, how to keep them from
overwhelming the body and external reality, how to translate them into awareness and human
service, how to ground them in the world, in other words, the 'return', how to return with them
to the human condition.
The first sign of disorder in the flow of light was the turmoil of 'sinister light', 'particles of an
ethereal luminous stuff', the 'shower' or 'waterfall spray' effect. Intuitively, Gopi Krishna
knew that it was not right. Comparable effects are noted in states of psychological
dissociation, in which consciousness appears to break up into multiples of itself,
35
disintegrating into sparks, scintillae, fragments, or hosts of tiny insects. From the Hindu point
of view the turmoil could be attributed to a state of mind called 'vrtta' ('whirling motion'), that
is, the self, or light per se, is not disordered, but the state of mind of the attachedly observing
ego is still affected by hyper-activity. And this we have in the author's statements that he was
searching, questing, questioning, examining, reading, writing letters, worrying, etc. It is the
introspective worry itself which we might interpret as vrtta and which splits up experience
into an anthill of particles.
In addition to the fear of madness, the inner derangement of mind, other events occurred
which we call in the language of psychopathology, 'depersonalization', 'disorientation',
'alienation'. The sense of belonging to his own body here-and-now and the feeling connection
to his own family were among the first attachments to go. These secondary symptoms, as well
as those of roaring or other sounds and visual distortions which our author describes, belong
too to the symptomatology of various psycho-pathological states called: paranoid,
schizophrenic, epileptoid. One might well imagine that had our author presented himself with
this syndrome at a usual Western psychiatric clinic he would have been diagnosed in the way
that he himself intuitively feared. From the psychiatric view, was this experience not a
psychotic episode?
With this question we come to the heart of a Western problem. We have no other than these
diagnostic categories for conceiving states of this kind. Alien and altered states of
consciousness are the province of the alienist. Fortunately, Gopi Krishna had another set of
concepts (Kundalini yoga) which could place within a non-pathological context what was
going on. In so far as the awakening of Kundalini is not limited to the Indian sub-continent
only, it is conceivable that some of the experiences described in Western psychiatric
interviews could also be viewed as the beginnings of enlightenment rather than as the
beginnings of insanity. (I think in particular of epilepsy and of Dostoevsky.) The touchstone,
again, is the same: the way in which the personality handles the experience, the integration of
it.
It is to our author's credit that he avoided psychiatry, and even medicine, when later he was to
go through the feverish experience of being burned alive from within. Again, however, from
the viewpoint of modern psychiatry such avoidance is typical of a man undergoing paranoid
delusions. How close the borderlines are! How much depends upon the quality of the person
and the way he grapples with the integration of his experience. Sometimes therapeutic
psychology lays stress upon its therapeutic task at the expense of the psychological. Then we
find that what a person has, his diagnosis, has become more important than who a person is.
Psychology is obliged to put the who first, the psyche of the person, his soul with its qualities
and virtues, its uniqueness as a moral being for whatever diagnosis it may accrue. Our author
was holding to this position. He did not want to be treated, whereas to be 'cured' of what he
had would have meant loss of both who he was and why he was. As A. Bharati points out in
his The Tantric Tradition (London, 1965, p. 290), 'if an adept seems to "act mad" it is just
because people around him do not see what it is all about, as they are lacking the adept's
frame of reference'. Tantric preceptors deny mental disease en route to samadhi and warn the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]