Dear Member,
Welcome once again to the newsletter. Since
the first meeting of the Spirituality SIG on 24th September 1999,
the SIG has gone from strength to strength, membership having
steadily increased (to around 375 at the present time).
Since the inception of the group, we have
now had five one-day meetings, all well attended and, judging from
the feedback, much valued. Perhaps for many, the opportunity to
meet with like-minded others, with similar personal and profession
interests is of the essence. (The topic of spirituality has a way
of crossing back and forth between the personal and professional as
soon as we venture into discussion).
The programmes to date have been: 'What do
we mean by Spirituality and its relation to Psychiatry'; 'Fear and
Faith, the quandary of the psyche under threat'; 'Avenues to Peace
of Mind'; 'Forgiveness and Reconciliation'; and most recently,
'Engaging the Spiritual Mind'.
The newsletter has grown in size, due to the
speakers at the meetings kindly agreeing to having abridged texts
of their talks reproduced. There is a danger – members can
read about the meetings in comfort and stay home! So do be sure to
come if you can, and share your ideas and aspirations with
others.
We look forward to meeting up with everyone
attending the College Annual Meeting in London in July
(see under Notices and Forthcoming Events).
Warmest good wishes,
Gillian Broster, Daphne Wallace and Andrew
Powell (editors)
Contents
Report of Meeting on 4.5.01.
Dr. Daphne Wallace
Vipassana Meditation: Dr.
Kishore Chandiramani
Engaging the Spiritual Mind:
Dr. de Wet Vorster
Perverse Spirituality. Dr.
Chris Holman
Examining our Spiritual
Spectacles. Dr. Sunil Raheja
Chairman’s Corner / Notice of SIG
Resource List
Retreat Opportunity for SIG
members. Dr. Helena Waters
REPORT ON SPIRITUALITY SPECIAL
INTEREST GROUP MEETING 4.5.01 'ENGAGING THE SPIRITUAL MIND’
Daphne
Wallace
Thirty-one members were present. The meeting
began with a fascinating and stimulating insight into ‘Vipassana
meditation as a tool for mental health’ by Dr. Kishore
Chandiramani. A lively discussion followed. It was agreed
that whereas this technique might be dangerous in the presence of
active psychosis, it could be very helpful in anxiety and
depression. Courses in this type of meditation include periods of
group meditation but the essence of the process is individual and
silent. There is a realisation of freedom of choice between mental
action and reaction. A member asked about demonstrable
physiological changes and it was commented that some studies in
various types of meditation showed significant physiological
changes, including reduction in pulse rate and blood pressure and
oxygen uptake, with lowering of cortisol and catecholamine
levels.
The second talk, by Dr. de Wet
Vorster on ‘the Church and patients that are reluctant to
engage with the Helping Agencies’ led to discussion covering issues
such as ‘the chaplain on the team versus the chaplaincy team’. The
question ‘What is practical Christianity?’ highlighted the need for
a balance between theology and practical activities. It was pointed
out that Jesus did both – he preached and he healed, often together
(as in the healing of the paralysed man). A quotation from The
Gospel of Thomas (one of the apocryphal gospels) talks of the
‘kingdom of God within me/us.’ We need motive and meaning, and some
of our patients are able to take a profound sense of meaning from
their illness. It is important to see things in the round. We need
to encourage patients to talk about the things that matter to
them.
Dr. Chris Holman then spoke
on ‘Perverse Spirituality’, which led to a wide-ranging discussion
with examples cited by several members. A perversion was understood
as a misdirection of a healthy drive, linked with excitement and
notions of evil. It was pointed out that cults often claim to meet
spiritual needs and attract people with a spiritual longing.
Intense dependency usually follows. Discussion of cults included
how considerable spiritual resources are needed to help such
patients and how a therapeutic group can be of great value in
‘holding’ the person. Institutions, too, may provide support but
can themselves be dangerous in imposing their own ideologies.
Dr. Sunil Raheja concluded
the afternoon’s talks with ‘Examining our Spiritual Spectacles –
Danger and Pitfalls’. The discussion explored the important theme
of unconscious subjectivity in value judgements (my considered
opinion is someone else’s prejudice!) and no less with apparently
objective diagnostic criteria. Examples were quoted where the
distinction between dualities such as ecstatic versus hypomanic
state or mystic/ascetic versus psychotic was important, yet
difficult to evaluate. Other examples included Freud’s Nirvana
principle (the longing to merge with that from which we emerged),
of Jung’s ‘readiness to return to the ocean from which we were
born’ and an extensive debate about the Christ’s crucifixion, real
and symbolic.
The lively discussion throughout the day
underlined the interest generated by the speakers and the value of
the SIG in providing a forum for sharing, where there is acceptance
of religious belief/spirituality, and in facilitating exploration
of spiritual/clinical issues.
VIPASSANA MEDITATION: A TOOL FOR
MENTAL HEALTH
Dr. Kishore Chandiramani
Introduction
Vipassana is supposed to be the core of what
Buddha taught some 2500 years ago. The term Vipassana means
‘to see things as they really are, and not as they appear to be’.
Our habitual ways of understanding the world tend to be coloured by
our past conditionings and very often we fail to see others’ points
of view. It may be desirable to integrate the multiplicity of
perspectives in order to arrive at a better understanding of
things. This is possible only when we have gained the ability to
free (or distance) ourselves from our own fantasies and fears and
reach a reasonable state of equanimity. It is assumed that the mind
is at its best when it is equanimous. Vipassana enables us to
neutralise the restricting influences of our past experiences and
attain greater equanimity. This helps in exercising a free
choice.
Vipassana is not just a technique. It is a
way of being in this world, although initially one has to
employ a method or make preparations for the required change to
occur. It is a return to our true, real nature, which we have
forgotten. It is observation of the contents of our mind as
they appear and disappear without reacting to them.
The typical reactions that arise are those of craving for, or
aversion to, things. Detached observation, with suspended
evaluations and mental reactions, does not encourage the
suppression or expression of emotions but sees with impartiality,
making it possible for us to deal with these emotional reactions
appropriately.
It may seem an almost impossible task to
eradicate all cravings and aversions (and one might question the
desirability of such an endeavour when one sets out on this path)
but what one can hope for initially is freedom from one’s fears and
addictions to one’s desires, which can be a hindrance to the real
goals of life. Vipassana enables us to transform our
reactions (which are conditioned) into actions that are based on a
free choice.
The Atheoretical Stance
Vipassana practice is based on the individual’s inner
experiences. No theoretical framework is used to explain or analyse
intrapsychic phenomena. It is assumed that the meanings hidden
inside the experiences will be revealed to the individual as the
inner unfolding takes place. No attempt is made to impose meaning
from outside. The individual is encouraged to face anything that
comes up in the mind, no matter how distressing, without any desire
to distort it.
Although no attempt is made to analyse the
experience, one does use some understanding of certain universal
principles, which are helpful in freeing oneself from past mental
reactions, false beliefs and false self-definitions. All
experiences are understood in terms of the following three
principles:
- Anicca(impermanence): nothing is
permanent; everything exists against the background of
no-thingness, which is predominant. This leads to a state of
unsatisfactoriness, which is at the bottom of human life, and one
begins to question the essence of things.
- Anatta (egolessness or
non-identification): not identifying oneself with what one
encounters during introspection. It is not a denial or
disowning parts of ourselves but recognition of false
identifications and letting go of things that we are holding on to
out of our own insecurities.
- Dukkha(suffering): this is the
corollary of impermanence. One can think of two different types of
suffering, in-built and self-created. In-built suffering is not
related to anything in particular. It is about eventual nothingness
or uncertainty about things. In spite of our best efforts we remain
subject to chance and battle with doubts about the fairness of
human life.
It is easier to avoid self-created
suffering as it originates from our own mental reactions,
self-definitions and the conclusions we draw about our experiences
and the world in general. There is a link between the two
types of sufferings. Our unwillingness to accept in-built suffering
makes us react in certain ways leading to further suffering.
Vipassana encourages us to confront the ultimate concerns
pertaining to in-built suffering.
The ‘acceptance of suffering’ in
Buddhist psychology is generally misunderstood as a nihilistic
approach. The acceptance should not be viewed as the end point.
Rather, it is a means of achieving the goal of total eradication of
suffering. Even in-built suffering dissolves with the dissolution
of one’s ego. It becomes a non-issue as one transcends the
human ways of looking at things.
The Ten Day Course
The practice of Vipassana is divided into
three parts, sila, samadhi and panna, being respectively,
morality, concentration and wisdom. Sila, or virtuous
living, is the basis for samadhi (control of mind leading
to one-pointedness). In turn, it is only when samadhi is
attained that one can develop panna. Therefore, sila and
samadhi are the prerequisites for panna. By panna is meant
the understanding of annica, annata and dukkha,
through the practice of Vipassana.
Students wishing to learn Vipassana undergo
a minimum ten-day residential course, during which time they take
the precepts not to kill, not to steal, not to commit sexual
misconduct, not to speak lies and to refrain from
intoxicants. For the entire ten days they do little other
than sleep, eat, meditate and wash. For the first three days,
concentration of the mind is developed by observing the inhalation
and exhalation of the breath, and the consequent sensations that
arise. From the fourth day, students learn to feel sensations
inside the body in order to awaken the insights related to the mind
and matter. Each day’s progress is explained during an hour’s
discourse in the evening. The course closes on the last day with
the practice of loving-kindness meditation, the sharing of the
purity developed during the course with all beings
Embodiment
Meditators in the tradition of Vipassana work at the body
level. It is assumed that the mind exists in each and every
living cell of our body and therefore to change the mind one has to
work at one’s body level. The brain is considered an
important organ regulating consciousness but there are many
important functions of the mind that happen outside our heads, in a
complex network of energy spread all over the body. Many complex
tasks are precognitive and pre-linguistic and they tend to bypass
our conscious awareness. They are mediated through internal
body sensations and symbolic representations connecting our
sensations with our thoughts.
Sensations as the roots of experience
We know that there are many experiences for which the
corresponding thought forms do not exist, but it is inconceivable
to think of an experience that does not involve inner body
sensations. These sensations result from the contact of our
five senses with the outside world, but they can also be triggered
by the residual or resultant consciousness of past experiences,
which remain dormant in the unconscious. Reflecting our
consciousness on to thought alone will take us to a certain point,
but reflecting it on to the sensation level will enable us to
experience things in totality. Such inner sensations are not
experienced in the normal waking state (although they may be
elicited when listening to music, or in extreme conditions such as
fever, illness or fatigue). But these sensations are available at
all times, being linked with the functioning of our unconscious
mind, in each and every cell of the body. It is we who ordinarily
fail to perceive them.
The practice of Vipassana enables one
to experience these sensations, laid down as representations of our
past actions or conditionings. Each action, whether by word
or thought or deed, leaves behind an active force called sankhara
(also known as kamma), which accumulates to the credit or debit
‘account’ of the individual, depending upon the nature of the
deed. The understanding of the three characteristics of
impermanence, suffering and non-identification enables us to rid
ourselves of the sankhara, which has accumulated in this
account.
A comparison with scientific models
Psychoanalysis. Vipassana
shares the psychic deterministic view and acknowledges the
existence of unconscious. Like psychoanalysis, Vipassana leads to
an uncovering of the unconscious mind. Past experiences are
relived. Whilst reliving, the meditator is able to achieve a
different understanding, through the realisation of the three
characteristics of impermanence, non-identification and suffering.
While it is held that the cause and effect rule operates in the
mind, a part of the mind remains free from this conditioning and
thus can create new causes and neutralise the effects of previous
causes.
The client-centred
approach. Vipassana is humanistic in nature, being a
non-judgemental approach that leads to inner unfolding, and it
assumes that the basic nature of human beings is good. The
important difference is that whereas the client-centred approach
focuses on emotions through verbal means, Vipassana is concerned
with the totality of our experiences and consciousness and the work
is done more effectively in silence.
Behavioural approaches.
The model of biofeedback can be used to explain the change
process. Staying with the distress without reacting completes
a feedback loop which leads to the dissolution of distress and
enables in-built healing mechanisms to function.
Conclusion
Vipassana is not a simple undertaking.
It is a deep journey into the mind that can be at times
distressing, but the gains are proportionate to the effort, time
and dedication given. Change does not come by accident or
miracles. Vipassana works on the basis of the scientific
principle of cause and effect. One has to work hard at
one’s past conditioning to experience the higher and subtler forms
of realities hidden inside the deeper reaches of the mind. On
this path one learns after a while that the peace which comes from
within is much more enjoyable than the transient excitements and
happiness which can be obtained from without.
Further information on Vipassana is available
on the following websites: http://www.dhamma.org/ and
http://www.vri.dhamma.org/
ENGAGING THE SPIRITUAL MIND: THE CHURCH AND
PATIENTS
THAT ARE RELUCTANT TO ENGAGE WITH HELPING
AGENCIES.
Dr. de Wet Vorster
Initially, I will quote from John Summers,
a retired vicar who attends our local middle-of-the-road Anglican
Church. I will then describe my own convoluted experience with
religion, which has led to holding bi-monthly multi-faith meetings
in our home in South Brent, a tiny but active village in Devon,
involving contributions from those of many different religions and
faiths. My wife and I also contribute to prayers and many
other activities in the Church. Following a visit to the
multi-faith centre in Assisi run by Father Mitzi we have also
joined a group seeking to bring balanced and comprehensive
religious education to schools in our local area. We were
impressed that Father Mitzi counts the Dalai Lama, the Archbishop
of Canterbury and many other leaders of different faiths as his
friends. The welcome at Mass in Assisi is extended to
all.
John Summers writes: ‘the
conviction grew, borne out of many years of urban ministry, that
there was something vital missing from the version of the gospel we
were proclaiming. There was an undeniable lack of connection
between the theoretical Good News to which we were committed and
the concerns of most ordinary people and their everyday
lives. As I saw it, we seemed to be proclaiming a Gospel of
eternal life, forgiveness, and life after death etc. all of which
unfortunately did not appear to be grasped as good news by most
ordinary people in Devonport, or to come high on their
agenda.
For most of them, “Church Jesus”
did not come into the scheme of things. The conditions in
which they live, crime, vandalism, lack of jobs, exploitation in
employment and the sheer struggle to make ends meet are their
issues of relevance. Jesus was immediate good news to those
He met and He identified with ordinary people in their situation
and need. He gave them their dignity. Jesus dealt with
practical issues first; our emphasis seemed to be good news for a
future in heaven. The two are not contradictory but Jesus
dealt with the practical first.”
In most aspects of life in the parish, the
watchword is devolution of Ministry to the people. There is a great
chance that if a local need has arisen there is every possibility
that a member of the church who lives in the immediate area may
know the person concerned and be able to follow the matter up’
(1).
Summers calls this, ‘A new way of being
church’.
Over the years, I have become deeply
interested in what constitutes ‘mentally healthy religion’. I
started my own church life as a teenager, joining a Congregational
Church in Chicago in the USA. My family then moved to Lady
Grey, a small town in a very beautiful, mountainous area of South
Africa, where I attended a Dutch Reformed Church.
During my childhood and adolescence I was
frequently confined to bed with serious asthma, having the
opportunity to ponder issues of life and, perhaps, imminent
death. I felt very different to my apparently tough minded,
athletic father who had played rugby for Guy’s and for
England. My father died and we moved to Cape Town, where a
close relative had a breakdown that appeared to follow a period of
intense religious activity. He required many physical
treatments. His spirituality was very fundamentalist.
He isolated himself, constantly talking about guilt with a
religious theme. This was the era of the evangelist Billy
Graham and others who preached, “Believe and be saved or suffer
hellfire and damnation”. I was amazed that they never seemed
to think that they should concern themselves with those who were
starving. I felt that one of the hidden results of rallies
like Billy Grahams were recruits to the ranks of social isolates
alienating themselves from the reality of this world.
I was a medical student and many of my
colleagues came from delightful mission stations run by the Swedish
Lutheran church. Their churches looked typically Scandinavian
and they had a relaxed and happy attitude to life, enjoying wine,
for instance, rather than seeing it as being “of the Devil”.
Later, my wife and I moved to Montreal,
Canada, where I pursued training as a psychiatrist. We
attended a Presbyterian Church that we enjoyed, although I was
something of a sceptic. At work, psychiatrists and trainees
had monthly meetings with priests and ministers of different
churches. We quickly learnt which patients should be referred
to which priests!
We then moved to St Louis. Here, there
was a very caring, vital Presbyterian Church in a massive building
which incorporated all social and sporting activities. Then another
move, this time to Aberdeen, and another Presbyterian Church,
caring but traditional.
After I qualified, we returned to South
Africa, where I worked first as a GP in Soweto. Here I
learned a lot about my patients’ spirituality, their churches,
their witch doctors, and their prayers to their ancestors for
help. I also learned of their unhappiness at the Church’s
teaching against their traditional beliefs, many of which had been
helpful to their well-being. I took up a post as a consultant
psychiatrist in Johannesburg and where I became psychiatrist to a
number of churches. I saw many nuns and missionaries who had
become depressed and who were taking scriptural texts too
literally. Mercifully, they were not fundamentalists, chained
by scrupulosity, and could respond well to a balance of medication
and psychotherapy.
We moved to London for psychoanalytic
training, later settling in Devon – to the house we live in today –
and I became a consultant in child and adolescent psychiatry.
I have already mentioned our involvement with the local church and
with the promotion of inter-faith. I also attend a group
involved with Ignatian spirituality and at Sharpham, an ecumenical
Buddhist centre. I find that meditation is of great value in
alleviating anxiety states and I also use it in my work with
children. Professionally, I have continued my life long
research into attachment, its importance for babies, children, and
adults and the value of being held as child contributing to feeling
held as an adult.
Practical religion, practical Christianity in
action, would be of great value for mental health partly because
the NHS seems unable, for financial or other reasons, adequately to
deliver what it seems to me patients and carers need. There
are many patients who are only reviewed by a CPN on an annual basis
and who live otherwise totally isolated lives. The “whole
person” concept of treatment, which has proved useful even with
psychoses, is not followed in many areas of this country.
Medication when helpful, day opportunities, individual, group and
family therapy, outreach and even in-patient treatment should all
be available to every patient when necessary.
I believe that the Finnish “need adapted”
therapeutic approach is a model that can inform us. The
Scandinavians make good use of the voluntary sector. In this
country we are fortunate to have MIND, NSF and others who do great
work, including providing befriending services. Helpers may
or may not have had experience of being a patient but all have
empathy and some training. (I am wary of using the initials NSF
anymore - the government appears to have hijacked them - so I
will say that I am proud to be a member of the National
Schizophrenia Fellowship, which runs many groups for carers and
users in our area). I wait with interest to see what effect
the new transitional benefit housing payments will have, which the
government intends to make to supportive landlords.
In the document ‘A Question of Choice’ (2000),
the National Schizophrenia Fellowship discusses people’s view of
treatments used in mental illness. Two thousand five hundred
patients and carers were interviewed. One quarter considered
that medication helped them most, and one quarter considered
supportive care was the greatest help (including guidance
concerning practical problems and accommodation). The relapse
rate was 50% less as a result. 55% of people with severe
mental breakdown received ‘talking treatments,’ and of those who
were able to get such help, 80% said they had found it of
considerable benefit. 25% were offered cognitive therapy, of
which 70% said that it had helped them. In fact, from the
findings of this survey, only half had received talking
therapies. Compare this with the Finnish model, where the
State pays for patients wishing to return to work to receive up to
three years of psychotherapy. (This is instead of the disability
payment they would otherwise receive).
From a church point of view, I have become
aware during the foot and mouth epidemic of the work done by the
Agricultural Christian Fellowship, demonstrating practical
Christianity by providing a befriending service. This service
is not a recent one but was already available for those affected by
isolation, money problems, distress. This is, of course,
particularly difficult when people do not want or cannot receive
help, support or love, let alone mental health services. What
makes this group special is that it is pro-active and is about
farmer contacting farmer – in many ways like the street support
discussed by John Summers.
Few of the priests and ministers I have come
across have been trained in counselling and I believe that this
should be a compulsory part of their training. I am sorry to
say that just recently a professor of theology told me that
training in counselling was sparse and priests had to arrange their
own post-graduate training. Empathy is vital.
It does appear that mentally healthy religion
comprises love for your neighbour and yourself and it is vital that
the Church is not so heavenly minded that it is of no earthly
use. If congregations can become involved in befriending the
friendless, not only will they be following their founder’s
commandments but they will also prevent relapse and
re-admission. In the process, they can reach out to those for
whom scripture generates blame, guilt and self- hate rather than
healing. My hope is for a repeat of the collaborative
approach I experienced in Montreal, with those in mental health and
those in the church working together for the benefit of the whole
community.
Perverse Spirituality
Dr. Chris Holman
I am going to talk about an aspect of the
spiritual experience that interacts with psychiatry; occasions when
the impulse to spirituality is misused by another to lay that
individual open to control and misuse. The consequent
distress is often identified as needing psychiatric help and these
individuals may indeed benefit from psychological help. However,
psychiatry as a discipline interested in brain and in mental
mechanisms may have difficulty responding in a congruent manner to
the spiritual issue, and this difficulty can make the situation
worse.
I became interested in this issue
through my contact and work with people who have had a range of
experiences. I have worked with people who have been through cults
both secular and religious including, of religious groups, the ‘9
o’clock service’ in Sheffield, and Satanist groups. A number of my
patients who have experienced abuse and exploitation outside such
formal group settings find it easiest to describe their experience
as an attack on their soul. I am suggesting it may be useful to
think of them as suffering control and misuse as a perversion of
their impulse to establish a spiritual identity. To help them
recover from the consequent emotional and psychological
disturbance, one must be prepared to enable restoration of normal
spiritual development.
Many reading this will have no difficulty
thinking of the spiritual aspects of the self as integral to its
complete being. However, in the Special Interest Group we have
struggled to find a simple way to define spirituality, and others
seem to have the same difficulty. The search for a way to express
spirituality in one’s daily conduct may be something we could all
agree is important, and the character of such a ‘spiritual life’ is
rather more readily described than reaching a definition of the
term itself. In the Christian tradition, the Sermon on the Mount is
an extended exposition of the spiritual life. St Paul in his letter
to the Colossians gives a briefer account, while later writers
include St Augustine and Thomas a Kempis. The Advices and Queries
of the Society of Friends is a modern version in the same tradition
and the only contemporary attempt in the Christian tradition of
which I am aware formally to set out to describe the spiritual
life.
Broadly, all these come up with the same plan.
Life should be lived in the consciousness of a need to accept that
while its full purpose cannot be known, it is directed towards
something higher than personal gratification. For Christians and
people of many other religious faiths, the purpose is known to God,
although to some it may remain inscrutable.
Good and evil, right and wrong exist and can
be discerned by those adherent to a sound faith; falling short in
this may allow error. All this requires a degree of self-discipline
and reflection, and a willingness to suffer emotional and physical
privation. Others may fail to understand or may criticise the
endeavour, which should bind one more firmly to the task as a
personal testimony to the good that may come from it. Understanding
and adhering to the scriptures is a necessary aid in the
process.
Whether or not we agree with the values an
individual ascribes to the discipline to which he or she adheres,
we would probably see such a life as more admirable than otherwise.
Many people with or without religion do pursue such a path to good
effect. However, in my experience, such normal impulses to discover
a spiritual life can also be perverted by the influence of others
wishing to exploit it.
What do I mean by perversion? By perversion, I
intend to convey the misdirection of a healthy impulse or drive.
This is like the psychoanalytic notion that instinctual drives are
undifferentiated in children but acquire an adult, fruitful,
direction through appropriate learning. In vulnerable people, those
who abuse them can exploit drives, as with the misuse of the drive
to attach in children. The impulse to develop spiritually can be
exploited in just this way, through being perverted to engage
someone in a damaging spiritual journey.
To illustrate this, I want to use a clearly
codified guide to the spiritual life to explore my clinical
example. I can find none better spelled out than the Noble
Eightfold Path of Buddhism. I believe the structure it offers could
be applied well to any attempt to describe the spiritual life. The
precepts of the Eightfold path are grouped as follows:
Wisdom, comprising:
1. Right Understanding, of the four
noble truths of Buddhism:
·
All that is created is impermanent, and inherently ill (causes
suffering)
·
Ill (suffering) arises from ignorance and craving sensual
pleasure
·
Ceasing of Ill (suffering) is Nirvana, the realisation of truth
·
Knowledge of the Eightfold path leads to Nirvana
This central belief, the ‘given’, of
Buddhism is achieved, as the fourth point says, through adherence
to the further disciplines of:
2. Right Aspiration
Morality, comprising Concentration, comprising
3. Right
Speech
6. Right Effort (striving
for
4. Right
Action
good states of mind)
5. Right
Living
7. Right Mindfulness
(seeking calm
withdrawal from the
imperfect)
8.
Right Ritual
I don’t intend to discuss the steps
themselves; assume that to some extent what they intend is
self-evident. (For a helpful discussion, read ‘The Four Noble
Truths’ by Venerable Ajahn Sumedho, Amaravati Publications 1992).
Here, I am using them to illustrate a general point: that the steps
devised to help one to live a virtuous and admirable life, can be
hard to distinguish from the steps used to lead a person into abuse
and exploitation.
I am thinking of a young woman who became a
patient of mine as she struggled to deal with the consequences of
living for years in a cult. She had been recruited in her early
adult life as she sought to find a way forward following a very
traumatic upbringing. She was sustained by her principled interest
in ecology and in issues of justice. Not surprisingly, she felt the
world to be in need of improvement.
She was attracted to the cult by their
publicity, describing themselves as an agricultural community,
which shared property in common and sought to develop a better way
to live. They rejected the conventional culture as materialist and
corrupting, aspiring to devote themselves to a life of mutual
commitment and growth. Good would flow from the testimony of their
principled and disciplined lives. This was their central belief,
which was achieved through following a range of disciplines.
‘Right Understanding’ - The leader of the cult
encouraged them to challenge their own understanding, to question
what of their beliefs were sound and what had been tainted by
conventional thinking. It was at all times possible to slip back
into thinking not conducive to personal growth. Great discipline
was required to correct this.
‘Right Aspiration’ - Members were encouraged
to maintain a firm grip on the goal of renouncing ordinary
understanding and discovering a true understanding of the nature of
things. The leader of the cult was the arbiter of what was ‘true
understanding.’ Letting go of conventional thinking and attitudes
was recognised to be difficult and to require constant
endeavour.
‘Right Speech’ - Certain ways of expressing
oneself were appropriate; others gave evidence of failure to make
progress. Speech was monitored and corrected in individual and
group sessions.
‘Right Action’ - The cult required certain
domestic duties of each of its members including child-care in the
communal nursery. Child-care entailed oversight of harsh
‘disciplinary’ measures administered to the children. People went
out to work, giving their earnings to the cult. Personal service to
the cult leader was considered a particular privilege. This would
eventually include sexual service.
‘Right Living’ - The cult required a strict
adherence to a disciplined lifestyle, with abstaining from
intoxicants and strict vegetarianism. Failure to live up to the
ideals led to disciplinary measures, which would result in loss of
sleep and being expected to perform arbitrary duties at any time.
Struggling with the necessary self-control, especially the showing
of emotional responses, was itself a cause for discipline.
‘Right Effort’ - At all times the individual
had to strive to maintain and further the objectives of the cult.
Showing doubt or dissent was reacted to with great hostility as
potentially damaging to the task. Those who fell short were left in
no doubt of this. The rules and expectations could change and vary
arbitrarily, but doubt or questioning produced criticism and
attack.
‘Right Mindfulness’ - At all times the state
of mind should be committed to the goals of the group. Mental
doubts and dissent were as bad as those openly expressed, and might
be suspected at any times. My patient became conscious of checking
herself all the time, screening out independent thoughts. When the
idea of leaving occurred to her she had to avoid thinking of it for
fear of being detected.
‘Right Ritual’ - At all times behaviour must
meet the ideal, as set out by the leader. All conduct became
automatic and driven by the fear of criticism. Failure became
unbearable as the individual felt she would be letting the cult
down, and since frightening and degrading reparation would be
exacted.
This cult did not refer to the eightfold path
but I have utilised it here to illustrate the fact that someone
committed to abusing another’s spiritual needs can mimic the steps
of even so great and well respected a spiritual code. Central to
this process was the leader of the cult, an able and disturbing
character, who had a good understanding of peoples’ spiritual
craving.
My patient was exposed to systematic
exploitation of her self-doubt and lack of confidence, and to
emotional and physical terrorism if she failed to meet
expectations. She was led to believe that her failure to feel
content or helped was a sign of her spiritual poverty, to be fought
against. Her social isolation was cultivated so that it was easy to
convince her that there was nothing of value outside the cult, and
no one who would understand her or want her. Her initial healthy
impulse to follow a path to her own spiritual development was
perverted to damage her profoundly. The consequence was years of
traumatic amnesia, and then of psychiatric treatment. Her
psychological disturbance was an understandable, if ultimately
maladaptive, attempt to cope with this parasitic invasion of her
sense of self.
Comparable patterns of high jacking the
elements of the spiritual life can be seen in experiences as
diverse as the young people attending ‘the 9 o’clock service’,
Patty Hearst’s experience with the Symbionese Liberation Army, or
for someone in a Satanist cult. People who have suffered sexual and
physical abuse may describe feeling that their soul is stolen or
damaged. Each is having their capacity to strive to high ideals and
a principled life taken over and abused in a perverse way.
Part of the power of the kind of experience
that my patient endured lies in that normal and admirable impulses
are being recruited. The individual feels blamed for responding,
just as the victim of sexual abuse feels guilt if her body responds
with arousal to what is done. Recovery needs the recognition that
part of the abuse is this engagement of normal impulses to perverse
ends.
EXAMINING OUR SPIRITUAL SPECTACLES:
DANGERS AND PITFALLS
Dr. Sunil
Raheja
I have to start by apologising for the
negative title. Why should examining our spiritual spectacles be
about dangers and pitfalls? Are not all spiritual experiences
equally valid and to be unequivocally encouraged? What right do I
have to comment on your spiritual experience and you on mine?
I'm sure many of us remember The Prince of
Wales’ keynote speech to the Royal College Annual Meeting ten years
ago, when he raised the important issue of how spiritual issues
needed to be considered by psychiatrists. The very existence of
this special interest group is testimony to a sea change sweeping
through the heart of psychiatry, if not western society itself,
with regard to spirituality. And yet, I would argue, we must not
stop at ‘spirituality’ per se. We need to raise and talk through
areas that may be uncomfortable and even threatening.
These issues are uncomfortable and threatening
on both a societal level and on a personal level. Yet, if we choose
to ignore or suppress them, then we ourselves will be at risk of
becoming guilty of the shortsightedness that has caused psychiatry
to ignore spirituality for so long.
As human beings we have a unique capability
not shared by any other species and that is the power of
self-awareness. We don't just have the capability of thinking, but
we can stand back from ourselves. We can, as it were, think about
our own thinking. Taking the title of this talk then, we can look
at the very spectacles through which we see the world. We can stand
objectively back from our paradigms and when they do not fit with
reality we can change those paradigms.
That is unique to us and, it has been
suggested, one of the main reasons why we have developed and
progressed this far as the human race. It is the reason why we can
evaluate and learn from others' experiences as well as our own.
Let me quote from Steven Covey, a contemporary
self-development teacher, who points out, ‘we are not our
feelings. We are not our moods. We are not even our thoughts. The
very fact that we can think about these things separates us from
them and from the animal world. Self-awareness enables us to stand
apart and examine the way 'see' ourselves’.
That is all well and good, but it is not the
whole picture. We like to imagine ourselves as neutral and
impartial, particularly in our professional capacity as
psychiatrists. But the reality is that all of us come with our own
particular biases and prejudgments. The history of medicine is
littered with such prejudices. Indeed, it is now part of the
rationale for evidence-based practice. With the benefit of
hindsight, we can see how tenaciously held views and opinions are
later on proved to be incorrect.
Take, for example, the case of Dr. Ignaz
Philipp Semmelweis, an Austrian obstetrician living between 1818
and 1865, who cut the death rate from infection on his labour ward
from 11.4% in 1846 to 1.3% in 1848 by insisting that staff wash
their hands when going from the dissection room to the delivery
room. When his theory was made public, his accreditation was
withdrawn and he was committed to a lunatic asylum. (His case was
not helped by the fact that he also developed tertiary syphilis
later in life and so it was presumed that everything he said was
deranged). But, if you will excuse the pun, they ended up throwing
the baby out with the bathwater!
The issue has been an inability and
unwillingness to look objectively at strongly held beliefs and
views. When we come to the issue of spirituality, the need for
self-awareness is greatly increased.
Religion and personal spirituality are one of
the last taboos in Western society. Defence mechanisms and
pre-judgements are very quick to surface when these subjects are
discussed. I myself speak to you with my own particular slant and
reference point. I come as a British Asian western-trained
psychiatrist, brought up in a Hindu culture and environment, who
from my late teens has come to a personal faith in Jesus Christ.
That faith has sustained me for the last 17 years and I can see no
reason why it should not continue to do so for the rest of my life.
Through my own research and reflection, I have come to regard the
Bible as the inerrant Word of God. These are the spiritual
spectacles through which I am viewing the world and through which
this presentation comes to you.
Some of you may be tempted to label me as
misguided or worse, some may have sympathies with this viewpoint
and others may regard themselves as neutral.
But it is imperative to see that all of us, no
matter how impartial we like to imagine ourselves, come with our
own deeply held views, paradigms, experiences and prejudices. And
by prejudice we mean literally pre-judgment, that is, making a
judgment before exploring all the alternatives.
The challenge for us is how will future
generations look at our tightly held views. I propose in the time
that we have to look at three dangerous assumptions to do with
spirituality.
Assumption One: all
religions and spiritualities are equally valid.
As psychiatrists we have ethical guidelines by
which we are told not to bring religious or spiritual issues into
treatment when it is counter to the patient's belief system, nor
should we attempt to discredit the patient's belief system. These
are good and laudable aims, but do not give a complete picture of
the situation. Such guidelines are generally interpreted to mean
that a religious psychiatrist should not impose his or her religion
upon a secular humanist patient.
However, think about the converse. Here I
quote Scott Peck in his address to the American Psychiatric
Association as distinguished Psychiatrist Lecturer, on
4th May 1992 (nine years ago to this very day):
‘What about the secular
humanist psychiatrist who attempts to impose his or her secular
humanism upon a religious patient? That imposition is so frequent
as to be almost standard, and is made by large numbers of
psychiatrists, overtly or covertly, without their even being aware
of it.’
The spectacles through which psychiatry has
looked has meant that spirituality is at best regarded as an
irrelevance and at worst as a dangerous malaise. Once again, to
quote Scott Peck:
‘Psychiatrists tend not only look
upon all religion as inferior and pathological, but also to be
oblivious to the fact that they themselves may have a spiritual
distance to travel’.
Assumption Two: religion is the same
as spirituality.
Acute psychiatric wards up and down the
country have a number of patients who in their acute psychosis or
mania will profess to be God or Jesus Christ or Mohammed or Buddha
or some other special spiritual person. Elsewhere, various terrible
atrocities are done in the name of religion around the globe.
What a number of our psychiatric colleagues
have done, metaphorically speaking, is once again to throw the baby
out with the bathwater. Because of their negative experience, many
completely discount religious and spiritual experiences alike.
The association in some instances of
religious belief with bizarre behaviour, as well as what would be
generally labelled as evil, has led to an assumption of causation
rather than association. And yet there is clearly much more to
religion, spirituality and behaviour than such simplistic
observations would propose. We know this instinctively and yet few
of us think this through.
Returning again to Scott Peck, he has
suggested four stages of spiritual development rather analogous to
Freud's stages of psychosexual development.
The first stage Scott Peck labels
‘chaotic/antisocial’. This may be thought of as a stage of
lawlessness, lacking any form of spirituality. This presumably
underpins a good deal of the western secularism that dominated so
much of the twentieth century. Its roots can be traced back to
writers like Nietzsche who famously quoted, ‘God is dead. We killed
Him’. Nietzsche himself prophesied that because of this wide scale
rejection of God, the twentieth century would become the bloodiest
century in history. Furthermore, western secularism, with all its
determined suppression and indifference to God and spirituality,
has produced a growing hunger and thirst for something more and
greater than this world can provide.
To explain further, I need to refer to the
Christian writer John Piper, whom I feel articulates this well.
‘The world has an inconsolable longing. It tries to satisfy the
longing with scenic vacations, accomplishments of creativity,
stunning cinematic productions, sexual exploits, sports
extravaganzas, hallucinogenic drugs, ascetic rigors, managerial
excellence, et cetera. What does this mean?’
Here Piper turns to CS Lewis, arguably one of
the finest spiritual writers of the twentieth century: ‘If I
find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can
satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for
another world.’
Elsewhere, CS Lewis expands, ‘it was when
I was happiest that I longed the most. The sweetest thing in all my
life has been the longing…to find the place where all the beauty
came from’.
Scott Peck labels the second stage as
‘formal/institutional’, which may be thought of as a
rigorous adherence to the letter of the law and attachment to the
forms of religion. This is institutionalised religion. It offers
structure and tradition but conversely is rigid and unbending. The
longings to which CS Lewis alluded in our earlier reference are
submerged in an adherence to religiosity. It has been described as
‘a form of godliness, but denying its power’.
It is this group of people who are frequently
perceived negatively by society as large. An interesting study by
Allport and Ross from Harvard (Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology 1967, vol. 5, No.4, 432-443) looked at personal
religious orientation and prejudice. They drew three conclusions
concerning the relationship between subjective religion and ethnic
prejudice (and one suspects that their findings would translate
across all religious groups). The findings make sober reading:
1) On
average, churchgoers are more prejudiced than non-churchgoers.
2) This relationship
is curvilinear; that is, while most church attendees are more
prejudiced than non-attendees, a significant minority of them are
less prejudiced.
3) It is the casual,
irregular fringe members who are high in prejudice; their religious
membership is described as of the extrinsic order. By
contrast, it is the constant, devout, internalised members who are
low in prejudice; their religious motivation is described as being
of the intrinsic order.
From this third finding, they amplify a
fourth point, that a certain cognitive style permeates the thinking
of many people in such a way that they are indiscriminately
pro-religious and, at the same time, highly prejudiced.
Scott Peck has labelled the third stage of
spiritual development ‘sceptic/individual’. He argues that
the majority of psychiatrists are stage three people. By this he
means a stage of principled behaviour, but one characterized by
religious doubt or disinterest. This contrasts with inquisitiveness
about other areas of life, an inquisitiveness that does not
ultimately satisfy.
Let me turn again to John Piper, quoting CS
Lewis. ‘The tragedy of the world is that the echo is mistaken
for the Original Shout. When our back is to the breathtaking beauty
of God, we cast a shadow and fall in love with it. But it does not
satisfy. The books or music in which we thought the beauty
was located will betray us if we look to them; it was not in them,
it only came through them, and what came through them was longing.
These things - the beauty, the memory of our own past - are good
images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the
thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of
their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself. They are only
the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have
not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited’.
This realization leads to the fourth stage
that Scott Peck describes, the most mature of the stages and which
he labels as ‘mystical/communal’. He feels that this is a
state of the spirit of the law, as opposed to stage two, which
tends to be one of the letter of the law. To use the language
of Allport and Ross, it is the peak of developed intrinsic faith; a
mystical experience of the soul that, when you have tasted it, you
realize nothing in this world can match it. It paradoxically
satisfies like nothing in this world and at the same time creates a
hunger and thirst for more of the experience. This is hard to
explain and yet is found in all the great spiritual literature of
the world. Here is a succinct description from the writings of the
nineteenth century English preacher, Spurgeon.
‘Some of us know what it is to be
too happy to live. At one point, the love of God was so
overwhelmingly experienced by us on one occasion that we almost had
to ask God to stop the delight. If He had not veiled His love and
glory for a bit we would have died for joy’.
Assumption Three: that God is
ultimately not knowable.
So much of modern day spiritual thinking seems
to be preoccupied with mankind's search for God through making
effort, or good deeds, or meditation. And yet brave or foolhardy is
that man or woman who says they have found God.
Would this not be presumption or false
humility? It is, at least, how it would appear to be, as viewed
through contemporary spiritual spectacles.
I would argue that it is something much more
basic than that. The danger in searching for God is that we may
actually find Him, or rather that He may find us. The next question
then becomes ‘Where will that put me? What are the implications for
my life, if I were really to meet God?
Let me take two examples to illustrate this.
First is the case of Malcolm Little. While in prison for armed
robbery, and having narrowly escaped death, he encountered Black
Muslim teaching. This is how he described it:
‘I had sunk to the very bottom of
the American white man’s society when - in prison - I found Allah
and the religion of Islam and it completely transformed my
life….’
Changing his name to Malcolm X, this was not
the end of his spiritual experience. Visiting Mecca a few years
later he gained new insights that challenged and changed him
deeply. Here is what he wrote to his friends back in the United
States. ‘You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But
on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced
me to rearrange much of my thought patterns previously held and to
toss aside some of my previous conclusions…. During the past eleven
days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate,
drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the
same rug) - while praying to the same God - with fellow Muslims,
whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of
blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words
and in the actions and in the deeds of the “white” Muslims, I felt
the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of
Nigeria, Sudan, and Ghana. We were truly all the same
(brothers) because their belief in one God had removed the “white”
from their minds, the “white” from their behaviour, and the “white”
from their attitude.’
These insights had deep personal
consequences for Malcolm X. When he returned from Mecca he wrote,
‘since I learned the truth in Mecca, my dearest friends have
come to include all kinds - some Christians, Jews, Buddhists,
Hindus, agnostics and even atheists! I have friends who are called
capitalists, socialists, and communists! Some of my friends are
moderates, conservatives, and extremists. Some are even Uncle Toms!
My friends today are black, brown, red, yellow and white!”
The tragedy was that shortly after making
this statement, Malcolm X was assassinated, allegedly by Black
Muslim opponents of his changing views.
The premise I am putting here is that God
is knowable, but the consequences of knowing God may not
always be in keeping with the ideas and preconceptions of the
society and cultural group that surrounds us. In fact the
consequences can be highly dangerous.
I close with a final quote from CS Lewis,
which I think captures this well.
‘An impersonal God - well and good.
A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own
heads - better still. A formless life force surging through
us, a vast power, which we can tap - best of all. But God
Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps,
approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband - that
is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the
children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly; was that
a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people
who have been dabbling in religion (‘Man's search for God!’)
suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We
never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had
found us?’
(From: C. S. Lewis, "Miracles" New York: Macmillan, 1960
p.94)
CHAIRMAN’S CORNER
Membership of the SIG:
Members have expressed the view that membership should, by and
large, be confined to psychiatrists, so that there is a common
ground for our concerns and debates. At the same time, others have
argued that there could be benefit from the admission of selected
other professionals working in mental health. These might
include psychology, nursing and chaplaincy – people actively
involved in the interface of spirituality and health and who would
be supportive of the aims of the SIG.
The steering group has debated this point and
feels that a small number of such honorary members would strengthen
our links with others in the field while preserving the core
psychiatric concerns of the group. We would like to suggest that
when an external speaker (non-member) has taken part in a programme
and has made a valued contribution, there could be an opportunity
to offer honorary membership of the SIG (provided there is general
support for such a move). Members will have formed an impression of
that person and their work, and could give feedback to the chair.
If support was forthcoming, the individual could subsequently be
approached at the discretion of the chair. However, we need to be
guided by your views.
Please let me have your thoughts on this.
Either write to me c/o Sue Duncan at the College or email me at
AndrewSPowell@compuserve.com
Membership of the Steering Group. Dinesh Bhugra has had to step
down due to pressure of other commitments, and likewise Pauline
Stevenson will be leaving at the end of the year. Thank you, Dinesh
and Pauline, for your involvement. Two regular attenders of SIG
meetings will be joining us, Nicki Crowley and Cherrie Coghlan and
we look forward to their participation.
The steering group has no formal constitution (College policy).
We meet four or five times a year. There is a lot of work to
get through and we do it in good cheer. Other vacancies will be
arising and members of the SIG who are interested should let me
know so their names can be kept in mind.
With all good wishes,
Andrew Powell
SIG RESOURCE LIST
Dr. Julian Candy writes: The steering group has asked me to put
together a resource list with the overall title ‘Health and
Spirituality’. It will comprise lists of relevant books, videos,
tapes and websites (title, author, date of publication, publisher),
together with a brief descriptive annotation, (no more than two or
three sentences). I hope to have this ready for approval by the
steering group by November, when initially it will be put on our
section of the College website. We intend to keep it
regularly updated (though not necessarily by me!). If you
have any suggestions for inclusion, please let me know, including
all the necessary information as above. Please remember
though that the Steering Group will retain the final editorial
say. Send to: Julian Candy, 11 Shamrock Way, Hythe,
Southampton SO45 6DY; juliancandy@compuserve.com
RETREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR PSYCHIATRISTS IN
SNOWDONIA
Dr. Helena Waters writes: Recently Andrew Powell and I were
celebrating the advent of the Spirituality Special Interest Group –
something I would never even have dreamed of 20 years ago when I
sat as a junior psychiatrist on Council and E&F, and as Chair
of the Trainees Committee.
Much has changed since then – we have all
“journeyed”. My personal journey led me out of psychiatry,
through a seven-year career as a medical management consultant and
into stress management, personal development and a holistic view of
health. Fourteen years of working with yoga, meditation and
relaxation has convinced me of the benefits of these gentle, yet
powerful, approaches to health and well being, not just for
patients but also for doctors as too.
As a trained practitioner of Dru Yoga – a
gentle heart-based form of yoga that resembles Tai Chi – I am now
able offer simple, effective self-help techniques for a wide range
of physical, mental and emotional “problems”. These
BodyHeartMind approaches have been successfully used in such widely
differing situations as “detraumatisation” training for
psychologists from Chechnya and other war zones, the management of
PMS and menopausal symptoms and the transformation of negative
emotions like fear, anger, grief and anxiety into their positive
counterparts. Dru Yoga also helps us to connect with that
spiritual part of us and so it is truly a holistic therapy and one,
I feel, that would interest many psychiatrists.
One of my current interests has been to
explore how we take our soul to work with us! Even as
psychiatrists with an interest in spirituality I wonder how easy
that is for many of us. With that in mind, and also wishing
to share the power of Dru Yoga, I would like to invite
members of the Special Interest Group to join me on a special
retreat in Snowdonia.
During the 3-day
retreat there will be opportunities to:
·
explore holistic approaches to managing stress and emotional
pain
·
learn basic Dru Yoga, meditation and relaxation techniques
·
experience holistic therapies such as reflexology, aromatherapy
& shiatsu
·
take time out for walking in the mountains
·
for those that wish, a personal “spiritual counselling” session
·
explore spiritual issues in small groups (e.g. how do we take our
soul to work?)
·
eat wholesome home-cooked vegetarian food
and much
more……..
The typical daily programme will be
· early
morning yoga
·
breakfast
· practical
session, learning yoga, meditation, relaxation techniques
· lunch
· walking,
free time, use of sauna, steam room in health suite
· holistic
therapy session
· evening
meal
· ”satsang”
or discussion on spiritual subject
I will be assisted on the retreat by a team of
trained and experienced tutors from the Life Foundation School of
Therapeutics. A warm welcome awaits all psychiatrists at any
stage in their career – especially those wanting to take time for
their own spiritual renewal.
We are offering the following possible
dates: October 2nd – 5th 2001
(Tuesday 5pm – Friday 3.30 pm) and April 23rd –
26th 2002 (again Tuesday – Friday).
The cost for the retreat, including
full board, is £200
This retreat is being planned for
psychiatrists only, so please contact me at the earliest
opportunity. I can be reached on: tel/fax 020 8948
5968, or email me at Helena@lifefoundationlondon.org.uk
Further information about the Life Foundation can be found on the
website http://www.lifefoundation.org.uk/.
Dr. Stephen Craske (member)
adds: The recent creation by the College of a Spirituality
and Psychiatry Special Interest Group is an achievement that should
not be underestimated. Even in the caring professions, we
know only too well how constant work can have a stultifying effect
on the spirit. However, as a Fellow with forty years service
in mental health, I am very conscious of my good fortune that the
creation of the Special Interest Group should coincide with my
retirement and time for greater reflection.
Over the last four years I have had the
opportunity to train and qualify as a yoga teacher with the Life
Foundation, who are based in North Wales and have recently, gained
international recognition through their work for peace.
The radical change in ones' view of the world
that results from such yoga training is a story in itself. That
said, I have been most interested to learn that there is the
opportunity for a Retreat for psychiatrists and tailored to the
needs of psychiatrists, one favoured location being Snowdon Lodge,
the Life Foundation's International Conference Centre in the Nant
Ffrancon valley, near Bethesda, North Wales. The beauty of
this valley and the peace to be found at Snowdon lodge, draw every
visitor back and back to what must be an almost perfect retreat
location.
Rudolph Steiner, the early 20th century
Austrian-born mystic and philosopher, considered Britain to be the
most spiritual of places, and, in the right location, the beauty of
our country rivals anywhere in the world. The warmth of the welcome
a College retreat would meet at Snowdon lodge, and the sense of
peace that we could expect to take home with us would have to be
experienced to be understood.
I could not recommend a more potentially
transforming location.
NEWS, NOTICES AND FORTHCOMING EVENTS
SIG funding: On
4th May, our treasurer, Larry Culliford, attended a
special session for all treasurers of Sections and Special Interest
Groups. A yearly business plan has to be submitted with respect to
the SIG funding of £500 per annum. Further details will be provided
in the next newsletter.
Registration fee for SIG
meetings: From the meeting on May 4th onwards,
all attending need to pay (in advance) a registration fee,
currently £10. This is to cover the costs of refreshments morning
and afternoon, and for lunch. (Unfortunately we had been making a
loss on our previous system and while we don’t feel that our
meetings are aimed at income generation, we do need to break
even!)
Annual Special Issue of
Newsletter: We hope to produce a desktop-published
end-of-year issue in September/October, to include the talks given
by our guest speakers at the College Annual Meeting. But we need to
find a desktop publisher who can help us for a reasonable fee. Any
ideas who? – please contact Gillian Broster. We will be most
grateful.
Cardiff 2002 -
College Annual Meeting: The conference title is
likely to be ‘Psychiatry Today’ and the Steering Group has put
forward the topic for the SIG ‘Emerging themes in Psychiatry –
Spirituality and Mental Health’. Would members who have specific
suggestions for workshops and/or speakers contact the chair so that
the steering group can give them consideration?
Residential Summer Meeting –
August 23rd – 26th 2001
‘SCIENTIFIC AND SPIRITUAL
PERSPECTIVES ON MEDITATION’
Co-hosted with the Scientific and
Medical Network, the Infinity Foundation and the British
Psychological Society, to be held atRipon College, Yorkshire. David
Lorimer, programme director, writes:
Beyond the Brain IV will
build on the success of the first three conferences, held at St.
John’s College, Cambridge. These conferences examined respectively
new avenues in consciousness research, frontiers in consciousness
and healing, and the possibility of existence before birth and
after death. At the heart of central questions in consciousness
studies is the nature of the self in our experience of altered
states. This year’s meeting will be more experiential in addressing
the topic of meditation from a scientific and spiritual
angle.
Since the 1970s scientists have taken an
interest in brain wave patterns associated with meditation, and
many of these investigators are themselves long term meditators.
They can thus take both a first- and third-person view. One of the
critical questions relating to the emerging science of
consciousness is whether science can investigate consciousness only
from its traditional third-person view, or if it is necessary to
supplement this with first-hand experience that involves the
scientist directly and may even lead to a transformation of
consciousness.
All our speakers at this conference have
extensive experience of meditation in addition to their scholarly
expertise. This makes it an exciting occasion where there can be a
true meeting of outer and inner in a spirit of open exploration. We
will have communal meditations together and make time for
contemplative walks, especially to the nearby ruins of Fountains
Abbey, perhaps one of the most beautiful and peaceful places in
England. Speakers include:
Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi: Kabbalistic
Metaphysics and the Ascent of Jacob’s Ladder
Dr. Ram-Prasad Chakravarthi: Consciousness
and its Transformation: the Role of Philosophical Analysis in
Classical India
Dr. Peter Fenwick: Subjective Correlates
and the Neurophysiology of Meditation
Prof. James Austin: Zen and the
Brain
Prof. Jon Kabat-Zinn: Clinical
Applications of Mindfulness Meditation
Dr. Andrew Powell: Dreams and Desires of
the Unquiet Self
Prof. Guy Claxton: Buddha’s Brain: the
Neuroscience of Mindfulness
Dr. Alan Wallace: First-Person Methods of
Exploring Consciousness in Tibetan Buddhism
Sr. Jayanti: Exploring the Realms of the
Soul with the Vehicle of the Inner Mind
Elizabeth West: Meditation in the
Christian Tradition: Opening the Way to Unity
Prof. Arthur Zajonc: Phenomena as Theory:
Goethe, Steiner and the Encounter with Consciousness
Prof. Jonathan Shear: Third-Person
Research on Meditation: Can it Ever be Really
Significant?
Dr. Bisong Guo: Daoism and the Esoteric
Art of Qigong
Prof. David Fontana: Meditation as
Transpersonal Experience
For further details, contact: The
Scientific and Medical Network, Lake House, Vann Lake Road, Ockley,
Surrey RH5 5NS Tel: 01306 710072 email: info@scimednet.org and also
Website: www.scimednet.org
COLLEGE ANNUAL MEETING
London 9th – 13th July 2001
QE2
The SIG is contributing the following
workshops and lectures:
Monday
9th 9.30 –11.00
am. Wisdom and Science, Compassion and Caring:
Spiritual and Material Values in Psychiatry
4.00- 5.30 pm. Meditation
Techniques: An Introduction for Psychiatrists (Workshops
to be conducted by Dr. Larry Culliford and Dr. Sarah Eagger).
Thursday
12th
2.00 – 3.30
pm. ‘Spirituality and
Mental Health Care’.
Guest Speakers: Professor
Michael King
Professor David Larson
Professor Gerrit Glas
(Please note: The SIG
meeting advertised on the programme at lunchtime on Monday
9th is a meeting for the steering group only.)
Also of Interest to SIG
members:
On Thursday, from 5.45 – 6.45pm. there will be an inter-faith
meditation led by the Rev. David Deeks in Methodist
Central Hall, adjacent to the QE2 conference centre.
Other meetings:
20th June:
2nd Multidisciplinary conference on Mental Anguish and
Religion ‘Spirituality, Culture and Psychotherapy – Crossing
the Bridges’. St Thomas’s Hospital, London. Details
from Mole Conferences: 01273 242 634 or http://www.mole-conferences.com/
6th-7th
September: ‘Psychosis and Spirituality 2001’ King Alfred’s
College Winchester. Further details from PET Unit Director,
University of Southampton, Tel/Fax 023 8082 5543, email dkb@soton.ac.uk
For your diary, please note that the
next One-Day programme for the SIG will be on 8th
November, entitled ‘The Healing Power of Love’. Details of full
programme to follow in the August/September
newsletter.
Editors’ note:
This newsletter conforms to the guidelines
issued by Executive and Finance Committee on the production of
College Newsletter. Accordingly, the views and statements expressed
within it are those of the authors and may not represent College
policy.
We do hope you have enjoyed this issue. We
would welcome contributions, jottings, personal points of view, so
please write in and give us the benefit of your musings.
Gillian
Broster
Enquiries, correspondence or articles Daphne
Wallace
Dr. Gillian Broster, Avenue House,
Andrew
Powell
8 Bycullah Avenue, Enfield EN2
8DW
Tel: 020 8367 8844/Fax: 020 8366 0789
GB@lbe-eps-avenue.demon.co.uk