Sri Aurobindo, a recent Master and one of our greatest teachers. had this to say.

From Sri Aurobindo: Life Divine, page 14…
“…Will is only consciousness applying itself to a work and a result.

What is that work and result, if not a self-involution of Consciousness in form and a self-evolution out of form so as to actualize some mighty possibility in the universe which it has created”?

MY COMMENT:

What does it mean that “Will is only consciousness applying itself to a work and a result”?

Everything is Consciousness. It is the first manifestation from the Source, and the origin of everything in manifestation. There for it is consciousness or intention, applying itself to get the  result It desires. That is what is meant by “self-evolution (Consciousness creating from Itself) in order to actualize its own possibility with an eye on manifesting its goal.

Years ago I had the privilege of having private darshan (audience) with Muktananda. I was very Westernized at the time, to say the least. In his presence, however, I felt an enormous surge o love in my heart and a huge dedication to helping the world through my profession. When I asked for advice as to my further development he said, “Meditate, meditate, meditate.” While I thought that was superficial at the time – I have learned. It is essential. It is the ESSENTIAL.

What is there about meditation that makes me say that it is these things?

We are essentially Divinity (Spirit) precipitated as we descend from the creative heights into this material plane. We learn here, and we return. Meditation is learning here and return, both at the same time.

What do I mean by that?

When we meditate, we loosen the ties with our earthly home by removing attention from the body, from the emotions and from the ordinary pre-occupations of life. Then we are in a place of SILENCE; we are at the cusp. We remain in contact with the earth, but we are open to reception from High Planes, from the Cosmic Wisdom. If we retain what we learn (if we remember it) we can weave it into Life and grow progressively into the Spirit-Beings that we are.

With that in mind, I would like to transmit some of my meditations and their meaning for me. Not selfishly, but in the spirit that we are all essentially alike and that we can learn from each other.

Here is the first: Revolution Evolution

We are in the midst of a rapidly developing Revolution, a part of an accelerating evolution. What I mean by this is that there is a veil between the two worlds in which we live, and that it is gradually growing thinner,- not too gradually, perhaps at an accelerating pace.

What do I mean by the two worlds and veil between the two worlds? One world is the five-sense sensory realm, the material world, the scientific world, the here and now and “can-do” world. The other is the world of thought-spirit-love-imagination-subtle energy—God!

Heretofore, we have worshiped the physical-scientific way. Gradually society becomes aware of the spiritual/thought world; –its reality and its power.

A whole host of new happenings are on the scene

Experiences such as those of Botkins AID’ERS, and Raymond Moody’s near-death experiencers, experiences of the Indigo children, a new breed of children who come into the world with knowledge and conviction of the after death realms and “goodness” of it all—all of this new knowledge brings us progressively into a higher world of subtle energies,-the realm of higher consciousness and indeed Love

This is a Revolution-Evolution, which in the West was started by Freud, who made introspection legitimate, and had us learn that the inside-self, the inner-direct self is important in our lives. We have learned that we are not just a bunch of outward-directed people. The inner-self is moving us in significant ways. The popularization of psychoanalysis has led, and continues to lead us into a veritable proliferation of ways of understanding ourselves, healing ourselves emotionally and mentally, and therefore of investigating ourselves.

It was Alan Watts who brought this into our country, along with a whole host of others: Grof, Maslow, Pierrokis – all of this gathering as a revolution-evolution, bringing us closer and closer to the other side, and the other side closer and closer to us. Instead of a wall between the two worlds, we have a veil, a fog or a mist,- which promises to become clearer and clearer,–and as it does we will integrate the goodness of God, which IS the other side, into our lives and our culture and our society, — and live in the Promised Land.

AND another: Personality Counts

Personality is that through which we live. If we are the expression of the soul which created us, we are not unlike the filter changes the color of the light as it comes through the projector. So we, in our personalities , change the expression of the light from within; we color it, we distort it into something else.

What is the importance of this? If we study ourselves and get to know ourselves better, we can locate our distortions and convey ourselves in a progressively purer way our light from within becomes progressively white and we become more of what we are in potential. We approach our divinity.

I have noticed this, not only in my patients, but in many people of high achievement, many of whom I admire greatly.

A researcher, well known for her contributions to the study of the higher mind, and one who has an extraordinary psychic gift, nevertheless is held back by the residues of an overly strict and compulsively moral upbringing. This has given rise to in a certain degree of shyness about promulgating her own contributions, — a certain inhibition by due to hypertrophied self-criticism.. To relieve that would free her to put forth her very important contributions, and to do so more fully and more clearly — the expressions of a purer light.

Since the early 1970s, I’ve been working with Olympic skaters. In the beginning, I noticed with great surprise that the skater’s personality “flows through the blade”. It is the inner self wanting to expressing itself. But the distortions, the learned inhibitions, the contaminations of learned personality, distort the pure expression of pure performance. One must be true to oneself. The skater who is afraid to communicate his/her true self neither completes the self or the performance.. I remember one very gifted girl, squashed by herc oach who insisted in having her skate his way. Thus the inhibition of her own free flow; her gift of the beauty of her presentation disappeared, – as did she.

We are at our best when we project the inner light harmoniously, with free flow and with the strength of a coherent laser. The inhibitions of pure expression came when the skater (or we) are unafraid to express our individual style.

Perhaps in this fast food society, where we are in such a rush, we have forgotten too much of the humanity that we are, and therefore we have imposed too many filters.

I saw too much of death and of the end of things when I was in medical school: working on a cadaver and subsequently in the hospitals watching the last breaths of life. I witnessed the last peaceful expirations of my own mother.

All of this seemed to me like the end of things. It was attended by fear, great fear. More than that, hopelessness, helplessness, despair as I attended those with chronic and incurable disease. Cancer wasted away the body, and there was nothing left toward the end. What could I do? Give false hope? Deny the oncoming death of the body? Give potions of morphine both physically and mentally? All of this was all that I could do.

I could pray, but I could not believe at that time that prayer meant anything, if there was such a thing as God Who would intervene in the affairs of men. The body was the body and religion was religion and ne’er the two would meet.

But—

Some twenty years ago I began to learn about Eastern psychologies, their beliefs in re-incarnation, the immortality of the soul who we are. It seemed strange to me. But there was a call to religion when I heard, “I am God and God is within me.” “I am part of God.” This seemed somehow to make sense; a molecule in the ocean. Which is the ocean and which the molecule? Each is total, and each is in the other. The one in the All and the All in the one. So it was taught, and so it seemed to be, and so it is that we are one, and we are eternal, and we are together and we are separate in our identities – together.

How does all this play out in terms of life as we live it?

Clinical evidence seemed to weigh in upon me more and more to vivify and enlighten the teachings which had come. I saw and I learned and I remembered that the “I” is within me. That the “I” who I am today is not very different, if different at all, from the “I” who I was when I was four, when I was six, when I was eleven, when I was thirteen, twenty-one, thirty-five. Student, father, grandfather – the “I”, the eternal remained the same. The “I” remains in a dream; the “I” remains in a meditation; the “I” is out there hovering above me as I watch myself in self-seeking, self-searching, self-conscious contemplation. In meditation, prayer, the “I” is the Witness who watches as it is indeed a part of everything that exists now and forever. So the “I”: is who I am even as the body changes.

And then I treated a triple amputee. He had been run over by a train in his car, and had survived. He was unhappy; he was handicapped; he was brave; he was trying; he was sad. But his inner self had not changed, neither in basic self-concept nor in his hopes for the future nor in the person he dreamed himself to be at night. And then I treated quadriplegics and paraplegics and those who had dwarfed in the body by old-age. Yet they remained, they remained, they remained as they were.

The poem, “Nurse Look At Me” detailing the 90 year old woman who was found dead on the floor of an Israeli nursing home, recounted who she was; not the doddering, slobbering old thing who existed just before she was found, but rather the young girl, the young adolescent, the young mother, a mother in full bloom, a grandmother and so on. Always the “I”, much like the Witness, remaining, hovering over the scene, deep within the core, always eternal within the body.

And then there are so many discoveries of life after death. There are the life-after-death stories gathered by Raymond Moody, the stories of those who beckon in the other realm, the stories of those who have died indeed and been brought back by electro-shock applied to the heart, the stories of those in coma who nevertheless know everything that is going on. All of this bespeaks an eternal consciousness, hovering above, different from the body, even from the brain.

And then there are studies in reincarnation beginning with Professor Ian Stevenson who reported in exhaustive, even boring detail the adventures of those who are reborn in India, recognizing places they were not to recognize, having lived there before. Stories about re-incarnation which are influencing present life are coming more and more to the fore as our psychoanalytically trained, psychodynamically thinking clinicians find the effects of past lives as they influence our lives now. All of this is now being reported in the scientific tradition of Freud himself, bearing out the same witness to the importance of active, albeit unconscious memories as they are carried over from previous lives.

Putting all of this together, is there not a round gem of evidence, the many facets describing the jewel which say that we are indeed more than the body, different from the body, existent beyond the body when the body dies. These are the evidences: the eternal ”I”, the remainder of the “I” as the body has changed, even withered or lost a part of itself, the near-death and after-death experiences of those who have come back, always telling the story the same, the scientific stories which are now being carried on to bear witness to those introspective, investigative know ledges brought to us by the Eastern sages of the past, who have been studying the introspective realm for centuries, nay for millennia.

And is it not well for us to know that we are immortal? Is it not a promise and at the same time a moral obligation? If we can fool our contemporaries; if we can hide our sins and selfishnesses now, can we hide them from the eternal “I” who will come back to continue the journey onward, but at the cost of having to make up for the sins and harms committed in this lifetime? Are we not morally rewarded when we know that as we ascend the ladder of karma we will indeed be rewarded for our good deeds in growing ever closer to love, ever closer to our brethren and sisters, ever closer to God Himself, becoming a part of God. The molecule in the ocean, the molecule containing the God within the All. More than that, knowing the eternal powers of the “I” we also know the powers of the body: the mind, the “I”, to repair the seemingly incurable. This I have learned, and this I have transmitted to my patients, and this has brought them hope and even cures of the incurable.

Love is all; Love is eternal. And so are we.

First of all it is determined:

Thirty years ago, Patricia Joudry received a spiritual vision which transformed her from a successful, and material, playwright-author to a spiritual chela (apprentice). Since that time she has trod the path of personal and spiritual development in response to high intuitions and dedication to improving her personality and carrying the message of spiritual elevation to her audience. She had received the vision of Light descending from God and taking form as group souls which became familiar with each other as a family, and descending in ever smaller family packets to an individual soul which then split into male and female, twin souls, the two ever after longing for each other. Then there appeared an ascension upward toward reunion of the whole through personal development, to greater and greater love and a greater outpouring of unconditional service.

She had tried to write a book on Twin Souls in order to carry the message, but had been unable to do so until six years ago when we began to collaborate: she has a high intuitive, a strongly grounded academic psychiatrist. This combination allowed for the development of the spiritual message and its translation into life’s lessons.

How do we find the true spiritual partner?

• By knowing that the meeting is inevitable.
• By being patient, waiting for the right relationship, and taking time to test the relationship at hand.
• By devoting the self to increasing self-reliance while at the same time being open to relationship.
• By developing tolerance: a) of one’s own failings and love-strivings, fears and depressions, in order to transmute them into something higher; and b) tolerance for others in a context of patiently relating, trying to help the other to become better through relationship.
• By listening to that high mind, so close to the soul, which is called the intuition.
• By blending intuition with common-sense knowledge, patience and the opportunity to experience in life whether the relationship is truly pre-destined or simply the product of one’s love-longing.

There are ways of avoiding the fit as well, such as trying to make something real which is not real. (Listen to your intuition). Or there may be fleeing due to fear (of being hurt, or dissatisfying one’s family for example) so that too soon a real and fulfilling relationship is lost.

I remember one of my patients who was very lonely. He wanted very much to marry, and was afraid of his prolonged bachelorhood. He met a young woman with whom he felt comfortable, but there was a real lack of passion. He tried to talk himself into it and even approached the point of being engaged. His family was happy; she was happy; his friends were pleasantly surprised; but he wasn’t happy. It just didn’t work. At the last moment, realizing his heart wasn’t in it, he avoided future tragedy by ending (as kindly as possible) the relationship. He went on in his search, but was patient. Finally he found someone with whom he was passionate; he was in love. Of course there were trials and tribulations; there always are as long as we are ‘in the skin of the personality’. But they were minor compared to the overall attraction, fit and love-satisfaction.

I remember another patient who must have had a previous life in Spain. She traveled to Spain at the age of nineteen, fell in love with a young man and he with her. Their affair was very passionate, and very fulfilling. But she left. She fled the fit because she was afraid that the distance was too great, that the family would object, that she was too young. She returned to the United States, became a school teacher (of Spanish) and maintained her constant attraction to things Spanish. But her heart longed for the previous relationship in spite of the fact that she had married, that she had two children, and that she remained faithful. But her heart was empty. She had fled the fit.

If one allows one’s self to be purified in love’s threshing floor, and yet remains in search, one can have the reward of the end of loneliness, of true communion with love’s partner, and through this communion with God and all of humanity.

- with myself as a patient,
- with my understanding of patients,
- trying hard to know what it is that gives the sense of reality, — the impact, the conviction the something is true.

I could not find it.

Admittedly, I was (am) given to “Intellectualization”, using words instead of contacting the feeling/meaning. I had a hard time in my personal training-analysis. When my analyst said, “Intellectualization is your chief defense”, I didn’t know what to do with it.

Then Muktananda arrived on the scene.

Muktananda was an Indian sage, sent from the East to teach the West the wisdom that was his heritage. I was lucky to have a personal meeting with him. When I asked what could I do to learn and advance, he said, “meditate meditate meditate”. At first I had a hard time with that, but over the years, I learned that I could sink into inner silence, inner surveillance, relaxed observation,- and in that place, immersed in a sea of silence, messages, insights, realizations came. They came with a sense of, “I never would have thought of that!” which in fact was a truth. Such realizations and gifts come from another place, a place above.

Recently I have gotten a number of messages, and one hit me hard. It was about the sense of realization, –reality. Where does that sense that something is real come from? What makes something seem real with a strong sense of conviction?

I believe this sense of reality/conviction comes from the Creator, the Original, the Creative Substance, — God, the All, – call it what you will.

The Creative Substance is the origin of everything. It descends in involution becoming involved in everything the Creator creates. On the plane of the Creator, there is always conviction, — always knowledge that “this is real” — for after all this is the Ultimate.

So, what hit me was this: That wherever there is a sense of reality, there is a recognition of the Ultimate Reality which is contained within everything that the Creator has created. And so when we have a sense of reality in the dream, that sense is borrowed from, and recognizes, the ultimate Creator/Reality which is contained within the dream. And so it is too, with the feeling of reality in the waking state.

The feeling of unreality, or lack of conviction, comes about when we have drawn of veil of “ignorance” (or repression) across the sense of reality that would otherwise always be present in our existence, no matter what plane: Physical, material, dreaming, meditation, inspirational or otherwise, — the veil is drawn across by whatever mechanism of repression, but most especially by the mechanism of doubt. Repression and doubt present a sense of UNreality, negating our belief in the subtle-spiritual planes. And when we lay this doubt-mechanism aside, as we do when we open ourselves in meditation, we receive inspiration, and with it just as in the dream, the stamp of reality.

Or to Put It Another Way: The Stamp of Reality

The stamp of reality comes from the land of Brahma, the realm of the Creator, — to which we return. The stamp of reality is borrowed from the ultimate reality and applies itself, so that in the dream we feel that we are in reality. When we wake up we feel the stamp of reality applied to that. It is almost like shifting attention lighting up the feeling of reality from one realm to the other. As we open our eyes, the feeling of reality that we had in deep meditation or deep dream is shifted, — lost to the one, the dream state, and shifted to the other, the waking state.

But all of this is not so strange for each derivative of the Ultimate Reality, each derivative of the Creator Consciousness, Is a Portion of That, and therefore contains all of That. So why shouldn’t there be the feeling of reality on all planes?

Why do we shift from one to the other while losing the feeling of reality on the first plane? It must be that we are not prepared, in our evolution/consciousness to perceive all of that, to contain all of that tremendous energy, — to open to all of that wide, wide, wide knowledge.

And so the veil descends. The eyes blink, and we shift from dream to waking consciousness. Or vice versa.

Her most important message:

Whereas Karma may be a Cosmic Law, — it (like everything else in our lives and destinies) can be examined with enlightenment, and can be managed for the betterment of the individual, the society and the progeny who follow.

And listen to Madorsky in this respect:

“Why does Karma play such an important role in our daily lives? If we develop the skills and understanding to access the information about our karma and past lives, we are forewarned, and we may be able to correct many things that seem otherwise impossible to change. In every second of our lives, we are all given a chance to make different choices and redirect our destinies There is always a way out of every situation. We just have to be willing to do the work to change our course.”

And:

Quoting Madorsky again: “If we develop the skills and understanding to access the information about our karma and past lives, we are forewarned, and we may be able to correct many things that seem otherwise impossible to change.”

This is a courageous point of view. Too many of us seek rules (of others) and then feel helpless to transcend them. This has certainly been true of many in their views of destiny and Karma. One hundred years ago, Freud revealed how earlier biological experiences may shape and influence our later periods of life, and that they can be changed by insight and effort. Thus – access to freedom – of choice and of growth. The same is true of past lives which may live on in their influence. They can be discovered and their influence changed. And all of this adds up to and joins with the Law of Karma.

The High Self can create and re-create ourselves and enable them to grow into Self. In this way we may view the Law of Karma as an outside, powerful influence, we can also know that it can become subservient to the High Self, and modified by our ascended selves, -leading to spiritual freedom.

“The human soul can be kept pure only if it’s given the freedom of choice. Free will and freedom of choice are the greatest gifts of the Creator to humankind! Each of us has the ability to create our own karma.”

So – Rachel Madorsky’s well-written, well-documented, well-illustrated (with clinical examples), lessons in Karma, becomes a guide in life for personal grown and spiritual ascension.

Many thanks Rachel.

As a clinician I have observed when I called an actual goodness within-natural buoyancy of the soul. I have seen this repeatedly in group therapy. After a short period of time, the group unites and develops a family feeling. Each member can hardly wait to be helpful to the other. It is a natural rising of the goodness within.

We owe a great debt to Freud and the study of psychoanalysis, for he has laid bare the dynamics of the personality. He has revealed the stages of development as well as the resistances that impede development. Through this knowledge we can know more about how to move ourselves forward on the ascending path of development, and how to recognize and remove the resistances to development, — when removed they allow this natural beneficence and community of feeling to arise.

Today society has an increasing awareness of these things. Society recognizes an alternative reality, alternative to the one that it has so tenaciously held, namely the view that to waking a material world was THE world of reality. Now society recognizes the subtle realms and the subtle energies the subtle energies that emanate from us, as well as are gathered to form us.

Today Science studies the energies of Reiki., Emotional Freedom Technique, Thought Field Therapy and other modalities that are described in Energy Psychology. However these studies, valuable as they are, neglect something of prime importance. These studies are essentially mind-to-body energies. What is lacking is the study of mind-to-mind energies as they are expressed in acts of love, in person-to-person communication, and in all realms and human behavior, — and most especially in the realm of communication called psychotherapy.

Years ago I had an epiphany experience. I had the privilege of a private meeting with Muktananda. To my surprise, in his presence I felt EXTREME love and in expansion in my heart of a desire to help the world through my profession. It grew HUGE. When Muktananda would touch me with Peacock feathers, or rub my chest, I would go into orgasms of love. What was this Shaktipat, this transmission of forceful love-energy imparted in such a powerful way? In fact, what are the person-to-person energies in all of OUR acts of love? Or our acts of aggression? What are the energies involved in inspiration, mother love, heroism, devotion? Are not these energies of a higher plane? And would it not be well to not only study them but to cultivate them through personal effort. This would help us to open to the higher regions, allow the soul to rise and be actualized in our lives, expressed goodness, — expressed as feelings of community, empathy, consideration for others and humankind and indeed for all of God’s creations.

These are the signatures of the ascended personality. These are the marks of becoming “gooder”. These are the marks of our ascending journey to the higher spiritual realms.

Isn’t it clever of the electrons and protons to know exactly where to go in order to create the hydrogen atom? And isn’t it intelligent for two hydrogen atoms to find an oxygen atom with which to unite, and to form water. That’s intelligence, and it comes from somewhere. It inheres within the atom, but it is also part of the overall intelligence of the All which invades, or exists within everything, and surrounds, and interflows, and expands and contracts and creates. This intelligence of the atom is the intelligence of the All, the Creator. It is the Law which both orders us and gives order to us.

It is a loving thing at the same time, for it is, in its basis, a uniting, a drawing together, a union. But it is done is such a way that it is balanced by separation, so that things do not (yet) fuse together, melt together, lose identity together. There is a space between the electron and the nucleus. There is distance between the various molecules that comprise water. There is space and separateness that gives identity to our very cells of our body, as well as the selves that we are. And this is the consciousness of the atom; this is the consciousness of the All, this is the order of God.

All of that sounds pretty theoretical, I think, but it leads to practical ways in our lives. I have so long observed, in group psychotherapy (and I have mentioned this before I am sure) that as the group comes together, there is a union formed, a love that comes to exist between the members. It grows, and grows progressively. A family forms and each member of the family wants, is eager, to help the other. That is love. That is unity. That is the buoyancy of the soul. That is a rising to the surface of the inherent divinity and union that exists within us. It is the inherent godliness that exists inside and comes to surround. This matter of being inside and all around at once, is the holographic principle in which everything contains everything else; in which everything is a part of everything else. The Chinese have described this in terms of their organizational charts. In contrast to the West, it does not exist in lines that descend from the top and spread by division into lower and lower matter. Instead they draw a large circle that contains a yet smaller circle which in turn contains several smaller circles and so on and so on. Thus each constituent is ultimately a part of the whole.

Ken Wilbur has talked about the “Holon”. This is an entity, a unit, which exists and is distinct quite by itself. Yet it cannot exist at all except in relationship to a larger whole. An example would be the cell of the human body. It is a little civilization, a factory, a thing all in itself. But, without the surrounding plasma and serum and company of other cells that comprise the organ which in turn (with other organs) comprise the human being, it could not exist. And so it is with all of us.

There is the consciousness of the atom. There is the consciousness of each thing. There is the consciousness within us which can rise to higher and higher levels, until we realize the consciousness of the All, – the Law and Order which surrounds us, which has created us, and to which we ourselves contribute.

How do we realize this yet more in life? There is such an inherent goodness within each human being that is stifled by the learned and acquired beatings that have occurred to so many emotionally and even physically in their childhood and in their course of life. But once these things are understood, and relieved, released if you will, there is a rising to goodness. And how can we rise this way? We can rise by firstly knowing ourselves. And this requires meditation, introspection, the courage to find our faults and traumas, but with a good heart. It comes about when we recognize the power of intuition, for our intuition really is a signal from God Himself, from the Higher Regions. It is a wide and acute wisdom. It arises from letting go and letting ourselves be the power that we are. It also issues from recognizing the inherent goodness in other people. That doesn’t mean cultivating their ill manners or even evil ways, but recognizing that underneath there is something that can rise to the surface. There is an inherent talent and quality and goodness, that can be brought forth under the proper circumstances.

All of this is a part of the consciousness within each creation, including the atom itself. And this is a part of the Law which God has created, and which guides us. All of this is a part of the consciousness of the All.

Let me illustrate this with an example from my practice:

CLINICAL EXPERIENCES IN THE SUPERMIND This was a 58 year old woman whom I had seen in class for two years or more. She was very eager to learn, but so often off the point. There was something about her that made me feel empty. I finally suggested that we have a private session.

She began – she told me her story, and then I felt so empty, so bored. This inner feeling told me that she was detached from me, and I from her. It was a loss of contact. I told her that I think that she must have a very hard time making contact with people. Immediately that struck her. I had said, “You seem to be empty!” She agreed, and added that that was her problem in life, and went on to day that she did that because she was afraid of being hurt. She had been so hurt so man times in her life. She went on and on about that.

The fact is that she had seen other therapists, but nothing had breached the wall that existed between her and other people, and presumably her former therapists.

My Comment :

I was able to contact her in the Higher Realms by listening to my inner realms. In reflecting her state of mind and feeling, I reproduced it within myself, and then put it into a cognitive set. I could then offer it to her and she could validate it with her own Higher Self of Witness. This describes a meeting in the Superplanes. Again the wall asserted itself. At one point, however, when she was talking about the only nice thing her mother had ever said to her came when her mother was dying, “You always had stars in your eyes”. When she said that she reddened a little in her eyes. I caught that, and helped it to develop. She then began to cry and expressed bitter anger at her mother for always putting her down. Her memory was such that when she came home from kindergarten and told her mother she had missed her, her mother slapped her. Over and over again she experienced this kind of rejection.

It became very evident that she had sealed herself off from her feelings, a very thick defense. As she began to express herself, she became real and likeable in contrast to the boring person I had confronted before.

What does this have to do with the Superplanes? It is a matter a meeting people up there, and of invoking the higher mind called the Witness, in order to look at these things, to command the tolerance of the painful feelings of rejection, shame, of guilt over anger at your own mother.

Speaking of the beauties and the imperatives of long-term psychotherapy, allows me to speak meaningfully of human relationships, deep human relationships. In this case, I am speaking of the Spirit in relationships, the capacity for relationships, the gift for growth in relationships – growth of self, other and society as well. This is urgent today in view of the fact that we live in a fast food culture, where speed and the worship of technology diminish both humanity and human interchange. We are in despair; we are in ill health; we are in spiritual crisis.

I happen to be lucky, – lucky to be a psychiatrist/psychotherapist who is no longer restricted by insurance companies. I have left them and now am free to enter into and maintain a long-term relationship with my patients. This leads me to give a case history which will cast light on the beauties, as well as the imperatives, of long-term psychotherapy. Please know that what I say is not limited to psychotherapy; but is offered as an index and standard for personal growth and for the growth of personal relationships. If one allows one’s a self to look deeply within and then empathically within the other, there is created a special meeting place, one which is truly heartfelt. In that place you will experience a communication that is far beyond words, -and you will be in a domain of highest truth.

This, I believe, is a model for the creation of the higher self, the higher partnership, and the higher society. It is a solution for the ills of society.

Also – please know that in true relationships, we honor the guru within –both within our self and in the other. Now Truth can be taken for granted.

Case Illustration:

This young man who suffered from very severe stuttering. As time unfolded in therapy, it became evident that when he was in a relaxed hypnotic state, he did not stutter! His stuttering was a psychological something. Very slowly, he came to trust me, and very slowly he revealed more about himself. Then – the occasion came for me to ask something that I had been wondering for some time, why he didn’t want to come more than once a month? When asked, he replied that the therapy, was hard on him. First of all he needed to think about and to digest the sessions. Secondly, he needed time to absorb the insights. Inwardly I welcomed what he had said, but somehow it didn’t seem quite enough. And then, -to my surprise, he told me he likes to have a private life, one in which he can live in his fantasies, and then fashion them into stories, and ultimately into published literature. When he comes here, and shares with me, it is as if he has taken a part of himself and left it here, – losing a part of both himself and his very private self. This was relevant to his outside life, too, for it would seem that his stuttering served a purpose, it preserved his private self and kept people away. But – the alone-ness, which he treasured, also created an unbearable loneliness.

This insight would never have happened in fast psychotherapy. Therapy and true relationships need time to unfold. A real relationship is based on trust. Knowing oneself as a patient or otherwise requires an inward search, drilling down deep. Then what occurs, between patient and therapist, friend and friend, lover and lover, is a communication called “being to being”, wherein essential truth, rises from within, from within each, and is then communicated, – – often silently, from the one to the other and back again.

What are the lessons?
I believe all psychotherapy is based on human exchange, and really is based on life as we live it. In a sense, life is psychotherapy, Formal therapy is a contract between two people. In such a case, the one party is seeking help and the other is (allegedly) giving it. In truth, however it is a mutual exchange, and the deeper the exchange the more true the communication. The more true communication, the more progress

The real truth is that there is no patient. There is no therapist. There are two human beings, learning from each other. The truth is that one of them, the therapist, has special experience in the matter of self inspection, in dealing with emotional trauma, in helping to heal emotional wounds. But the process is really not one in which the therapist gives something to the patient, rather it is a mutual something. Furthermore — – the whole scene is set by intention. The intention of the therapist makes all the difference in the outcome, – and silently, and perhaps unconsciously, (but effectively) this intention is felt by the patient.

What I’m speaking of, is also active (albeit silently) in the many emerging psychotherapies. These are the many, such as: Thought Field Therapy (which is tapping meridian points), or EMDR (eye movement desensitization response}, and the variety of body therapies that release emotion. Intention is active in all, although acting at an unconscious level. It is, again, the human exchange that is of the essence.

Let me repeat – it would be a loss to think of this article as a lesson in psychotherapy. It is not. It is an illustration of life as we live it. All psychotherapy is relevant to, and influences and depends upon life as we live it; indeed, again, life itself is psychotherapy. And – all psychotherapy should be growthful, although it can be a constricting if poorly administered. The model I’m putting forth is a model of human transaction. It is a model in which two people dive into the depths of the truth, meeting each other, exchanging with each other and finding essential honesty. This heals both of them, — each the other.

I believe this is a model for all human relationships, and one toward which we can strive. It is a model in which we can grow into health, happiness, community, – and a true healing of the world’s ills.