by Bob Doolittle
“Who you gonna call?” Ghostbusters posed the dilemma for us quite nicely.
In the old days, you called the clergy with your troubled mind or heart and
found healing wisdom.
Now, you call a therapist.
In the west, mental health professionals have superseded religious professionals
as the new priesthood -- as society?s most trusted resource for troubled lives.
And deservedly so. The young science of psychology has blessed us all
with an incredible wealth of research and treatment methods
to heal everything from broken marriages to eating disorders.
Ministers, and priests (and imams, rabbis) confidently refer severe problems to the mental health
experts and have gladly sat at their feet to enrich their own pastoral skills. They and all believers
have learned from psychology the healing power of: thorough listening, honoring dreams,
meeting developmental needs, discovering hidden feelings, medication,
surfacing childhood wounds, empowering clients to be their own problem solvers--
to name just a few of the many gifts we have received from the therapists and their science.
So what is the big problem? Hasn?t our humility and respect for this new priesthood done us good?
Indeed yes, but unfortunately, psychology does not return that respect and tends on the contrary
to se spirituality as delusional or pathological -- often trying to medicate our mysticism. Imagine
how a psychiatrist might have “helped” Joan of Arc with her voices. Or Mary and Joseph
with their angels. So, yes, we have learned a lot at the feet of the mental health people
but we are plagued by their unkind opinion of the core of who we are.
We desperately need a psychology which can integrate not denigrate spirituality. Suddenly
-- if we can allow it --here comes Hinduism to the rescue with an ancient and elegantly
simple psychology which does precisely that and sees human nature as essentially spiritual.
Traditional Hinduism maps the human body and psyche with seven energy centers called chakras.
Each of them is a center of motivation, desire, and pleasure, a doorway through which the soul
is drawn to and interacts with others. The lower three chakras are regarded as pre-spiritual
or worldly centers -- by themselves addictive and only overcome with much effort and grace.
The upper four chakras are regarded as the centers of spirituality, and can only be accessed
and activated with uch effort an grace.
Spiritual growth is then tracked as the emergence of character as we struggle and learn to live
from the higher and higher motives associated with the higher spiritual centers. That means --
this is very important -- not suppressing but integrating our lower desires within our higher desires.
This spacious and wise model from Hindu psychology grounds and locates spiritual development
in our very human bodies as the inborn and built in potential of our human nature, ready whenever
we are to be developed as far as we are willing to go.
The seven centers are listed below in developmental sequence, but to visualize their location
in the body, please invert the list, the first chakra being approximately at the anus, and
the seventh at the top of the head.
Chakra Title Chakra Drive Chakra Objective
1. The survival chakra The desire to live Food & Money
2. The sex chakra The desire to mate Sex & Babies
3. The power chakra The desire to fight Dominance & Success
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
4. The heart chakra The desire to connect Service & Unity
5. The throat chakra The desire to express Creativity & Beauty
6. The third eye chakra The desire to understand Insight & Truth
7. The crown chakra The desire to worship Mysticism & God
It is an elegant map. The connections with Christian spirituality are many: 1) the monastic
vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience dethrone the dominance of the lower centers by
renouncing what they seek, which frees the soul to develop our higher inclinations;
2) Christian faith is opening up heart to heart contact with Christ; 3) The Holy Spirit descends
at Pentecost onto the top of the apostles? heads and releases the ecstatic love of God and
the power to reach others.
Freud had a word for the motivating drive underlying all human behavior: the libido.
He thought it was in essence the sex drive, though it could be “sublimated” to higher
purposes like creativity and service. Hinduism says in effect that Freud had only discovered
1/7th of our human nature, and offers another word for that essential motivating drive
which energizes all our pursuits. The kundalini is the pleasure seeking vitality of the soul
which finds any of seven different expressions and enjoyments depending which part
of our human nature it animates. Eastward leaning Americans tend to see
the “awakening of the kundalini” as an esoteric spritual exeperience rather than
a model of human possibiliy.
Here are several more chakra lists which are just meditations of my own to illustrate
the power of this psychological map to integrate both the “animal” and the “spiritual”
parts of our human nature.
Associated with (and built upon)
one particular physical system
1. Digestive system (Survival)
2. Reproductive system (Sex)
3. Muscular system (Power)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
4. Circulatory system (Heart)
5. Respiratory system (Voice)
6. Sensory nervous system (Third eye)
7. Central nervous system (Crown)
When a lower center predominates and
defines us, the higher ones are eclipsed
1. Anxious materialism
2. Self indulgent sex
3. Competitive ego
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
4. Cold heart
5. Silent gifts
7. Darkened soul
When a higher center predominates and
defines us, lower ones can blossom too.
1. Produce, share abundance
2. Unite in mutual commitment, generosity
3. Overcome problems, defeat injustice
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
4. Serve joyfully
5. Say wonderful Things
6. See objectively
7. Lose oneself in God
Public figures whose greatness
manifests a particular chakra
1. Bill Gates, Paul Newman
2. Abigail Adams, John Adams
3. Lance Armstrong, Rev. Martin Luther King
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
4. Oprah, Jerry Lewis
5. Stephen Speilberg, Michael Moore
6. Dr. Bernie Seigel, Thich Nhat Hahn
7. Mother Theresa, Rabbi Abraham Heschel
Let?s be very fair to the mental health movement overt its assessment of faith as pathalogical. My brother, a successful therapist, says his colleagues are about evenly divided over whether the faith of their clients is an asset or a liability -- an ego strength or an ego weakness. However, those who do affirm faith know they are dissenting from orthodox psychology, and I propose that they are as much in need of the larger, more inclusive model of human nature which Hinduism so beautifully provides.
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