Beyond Egocentrism

 

Ram Healing

 

The mantra Ram is used in the Indian cultural tradition to invoke protection, and to gain access to divine energy for healing purposes. When Western psychology looked in a retrospective way at consciousness and human development, during the formation of the early scientific discipline, and focussed predominantly upon our animal nature, and preconscious and unconscious mental processes, it made a substantial move in the wrong direction. By avoiding the divine, and shying away from spiritual considerations, through a sincere wish to be scientific, approaches to human psychological distress became negatively tied to physical disease formulations. The so-called mental disorders were not seen to have a spiritual component, and were defined mainly in terms of organic illness. The unconscious was analysed, through Freudian interpretations, but the soul was usually ignored as an irrelevance in human developmental conceptualisations.

 

      According to the ancient system of yoga, the soul of a person is their inner consciousness. As such, consciousness does not arise from organic functioning, as an emergent property of matter, as the materialist position would hold, although, of course, in terms of our living human experience, conscious activity is connected with the brain. Brain function and concomitant cognitive processing, however, are not the basis for human consciousness, but can be understood to be gross and subtle manifestations of states of being which arise in the spiritual realm. Knowing that our spiritual nature is the essence of our being, dysfunction within the mind and body system of a person should not be treated in isolation from the individual soul. Both karmic and lifestyle considerations are relevant, as are the notions which can underlie a person’s ideas about identity or the Self, because the karmic consequences can be far-reaching. People need to be taught that our identity is not limited to mental conceptualisations about self, as it is ignorance of our true nature that leads to disease and suffering. Adjustments to lifestyle habits should also be encouraged if particular activities have been doing any damage to an individual’s state of health. Wrong diet, misuse of alcohol, and the use of other drugs, too, can all contribute to the mire in which people can find themselves.

 

 

 

 

     

     

 

Personality theories are now abound in Western human psychology. Freudian ideas, about unconscious determined behaviour that is embedded in instinctual aggressive and sexual urges, have been considered by academics and critics, far and wide, as the seminal influence upon many modern cultural movements. Such predominantly irrational, unconscious influences upon the human personality, however, which have been closely linked to an evolutionary past that is connected with the animal kingdom, should not now bind human life to punitive societal control of feared animal urges. Sex and bestial aggression can be extricated from each other in a way that ensures that sexual behaviour is neither associated with primitive aggressive tendencies, nor treated as an activity which is too closely tied to body attachment, or to ego considerations. Wrong ideas about sex do cause a great many psychological and social problems, and these issues should be reflected upon by adults without recourse to the punishing imagery associated with dirt and shame, or by pursuing gratification which is driven by the human need to feel powerful or wanted.

 

      Spiritual maturity finds solutions to the perennial problems which have often been associated with sexual activity in society throughout the ages. Sex and good health are vital for each other. Sex and underlying sinful conflicts are not inextricably tied, and the negative human emotions which can be connected with wrong attachments, such as jealousy, possessiveness, pride and anger, which cause so much strife within too many relationships, can be overcome with a better understanding of identity and the mind. Self-knowledge goes far beyond mentally construed ideas which are formed in the stage of development characterised by mental functioning. Visualising healthy relations that are loyal, but not bound to mental attachments, is key to ensuring that relationships do not become insipid, or overly dependent, and that they do not degenerate into mere power play, or other egoistic games which are lacking in love.

 

      How we see and experience ourselves in relation to other people, and with respect to our spiritual identity, is fundamental to our state of well-being. Getting beyond a view of the self that has fixed attributes, or that is bound in space and time to error-driven, self-limiting occupational performances, is a route out of the maze that has caught so many people in conflicting stressful activities. Finding peace and transcending the world of agitating mental constructions, through divine mergence, is the goal of yoga. It is the path to self-knowledge and to a fulfilling life through divine revelation. Preparing the ground in readiness for transcendence is the duty of all human beings who are ready to reach the next stage of spiritual experience.