THE THERAPEUTIC USES OF MEDITATION
I am not so pessimistic as the transpersonal psychologists who advise against using transpersonal techniques, such as meditation, to alleviate personal suffering, despair, depression, and inadequacy feelings.I do not share their rigid, hierarchical stage model of development, but agree with psychoanalytic theorists that everyone has unresolved developmental issues.
Melanie Klein15 emphasized that most people experience a life-long struggle with depression, while Fairbairn and Guntrip16 emphasized that schizoid tendencies (to withdraw into fantasy rather than face the terrors of life and relationships) underlie even the most healthy personalities.
Kernberg" expressed his belief that better than 60 percent of all people suffer from some degree of borderline or narcissistic disorder.
So everyone has some degree of personality disorder with the consequent symptoms of generalized anxiety, fear, depression, worthlessness, and inadequacy feelings, fears of relationship, being devoured or destroyed by neediness; and they need not fear a generalized decompensation and self-disintegration from the practice of meditation. They have attained a sense of self although it may lack stability, clear boundaries, or self-regulating capabilities and may be overwhelmed at times by the world or its own feelings. I think only the true schizophrenic, schizotypal, and borderline personalities need to avoid meditation altogether.
Zen itself uses different forms of meditation for different stages of practice and for different purposes other than enlightenment. Philip Kapleau18 has created a hierarchy of
Zen practice and the accomplishments of that practice. Sasaki Roshi has said that Zen can help anyone except the hopelessly insane.
Zen means Zazen, or sitting meditation. Meditation, especially Shikantaza, or just sitting, is 70 percent of Zen. The rest—chanting, breath watching, Koan work, meeting with the Roshi—are all secondary to just sitting and watching. Krishnamurti calls this "bare or choiceless awareness."
Sitting itself can have a great calming effect for those who are overwhelmed by feelings, especially if combined with the calming meditations of breath watching and feeling the body. Shikantaza and Koan work can also take one's mind off one's pain or make the pain an object of introspection.
Meditation gives the ego a technique by which it can learn to deal with feelings by observing them rather than being overwhelmed by them. With mastery of this observing ego position, there comes a sense of security over feelings. This observational capacity leads to an inner "vision" of somatic sensations and feelings, splitting their perception into two experiential modes: feeling the experience through the body and "watching" that same experience through an inner seeing. This splitting diminishes the painful impact of just feeling negative emotions or painful body sensations, while remaining fully conscious of them.19
Just sitting with feelings and internal mental phenomena develops a stability of self and an ability to stay with painful feelings and pain in the body. This can lead to a greater familiarity with feelings, and this familiarity diminishes fear of them, which ultimately allows us to feel those feelings rather than just watch them. I have developed this process into a dialectical technique I call microanalysis, which I will discuss in the next section.
Lastly, meditation can lead to an experience of the first enlightenment state of boundless awareness. This is a fantastic experience wherein one experiences the world and self as fully intermingled, along with a tremendous sense of freedom and sometimes of power and joy from merger, with, for example, the wind or the sound of a bell. It also gradually leads to what Krishnamurti calls an awakening of intelligence, which results in a radical independence of thought and an increased reliance on one's own experience.
Engler and Wilber advise against the practice of formless meditation by people who have a weak sense of self, poor control over emotions, a major depression, or who have great dependency feelings because the meditation states can lead to a destruction of the barriers that prevent these feelings from overwhelming the self, leading to a regression to psychosis. This is indeed a possibility.
Currently I am treating a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who did have his sense of self "blown away" 17 years ago by practicing meditation under a local guru. He has been on medication and been recurrently hospitalized since that time.
WHAT ARE SELF BOUNDARIES?
I believe this "disappearance of self" phenomenon is an important clinical and spiritual topic of investigation which promises to yield exciting discoveries in the future. Phenomenologically, the chaotic and permeable boundaries of the schizophrenic, and to a lesser extent the borderline personality, are similar to aspects of the no-self states attained through meditation. In both cases, various experiential boundaries become permeable or temporarily non-existent.
It is easy to talk about transcending the boundaries that comprise the self, but what are these boundaries, how are they maintained, and how are they undone? With regard to the boundaries that contain the self, we must first distinguish which self we are talking about: the representational self of image, idea, and memory of the object relations theorist; the body-self of Reichian therapy; or the pure subjectivity of the Gestalt model?
Psychoanalytic development psychology has emphasized the stages of self and object development as representation, and ascertained a tentative sequential schedule of the development of ego defenses from the earliest (denial) to the later and more complex (repression, sublimation). It has not examined at all the mechanisms by which the self maintains its separation from the rest of its experiential reality, such as the external world. It assumes, along with Piaget's scheme, developmental stages as givens determined by neurological maturation. Such maturation would still be accompanied by subjective, phenomenological mechanisms of boundary maintenance.
Psychoanalysis examines how impulses (arising from where?) and ideas are kept out of consciousness, but now how the self can both perceive itself from the inside and perceive the world as "outside." It examines the mechanism of projective identification that prevents full separation from others in a borderline personality, but not the differentiating mechanisms that separate self from the world and which projective identification sometimes overwhelms thus leading to an emotional merger.
Nor has anyone yet developed a taxonomy of merger experiences which ranges from the emotional mergers with another person, to mystical merger experiences with God, or feeling merged with the world, to a full enlightenment experience where the self and the world become one. Different boundaries and experiential contents must be involved in each sort of merger experience.
It seems likely that some of the thirty-odd ego defenses, which are postulated by psychoanalysis and which separate impulses from the self, probably are involved in the creation of the boundaries that separate self from the world. Perhaps there is an experiential and perceptual equivalent of projection which "projects" external world phenomena to one side of the self boundary, while another set of identification mechanisms creates an inner, subjective world of self.
What effect does meditation have on these mechanisms? Also involved in boundary building are other mechanisms and abilities, such as time-binding, whereby images, memories, and experience are linked together and maintained through time, and reflexive self-consciousness, which helps differentiate inside from outside. Meditation affects the experience of time and reflexivity in such a way that normal divisions of the contents of consciousness by boundaries temporarily cease, leading to the no-self experience. These two mechanisms are seriously impacted by formless meditation, yet are very different from the postulated ego defenses of the psychotic and borderline individuals that Engler and Wilber claim to be exacerbated by meditation.
In addition to the self-boundaries, representations, images, and ideas are held together in "dense" associations (such as the self) within the mind by unknown linking mechanisms until examined by bare awareness. Then "complexes" seem to expand and dissolve away. What are these associational glues and linkages that hold complexes of ideas and the self together, and how are they loosened by meditation? Memory? An experiential logic? Primary process logic? For most people who are able to concentrate effectively, and who are not overwhelmed by their feelings, Shikantaza may be used without fear; their borderline, schizoid, and narcissistic disorders are well enough under control to tolerate the emergence of painful memories and feelings. Yet formless meditation usually does not result in the emergence of emotions and feelings except during the beginnings of practice. Once the technique of sitting is mastered, it blocks feelings through the creation of inner seeing, which as mentioned before, splits the experience of emotions into competing perceptual modes, diminishing the impact of feelings.
The Samadhi state can also bring a sense of accomplishment, but, further, it can reinforce a narcissistic grandiosity which causes the meditator to feel especially accomplished through his ability to merge into the cosmos. This accomplishment compensates for underlying feelings of worthlessness not touched by the meditation itself. It is much like a man who makes a million dollars in order to compensate for feeling worthless. He still feels worthless on one level, but he also feels good because he is a millionaire.
This state of accomplishment itself can be so marvelous that the person wants to spend all his free time in it rather than return to ordinary consciousness which feels boring or painful in contrast. Yet the silent, empty mind of enlightenment can itself become boring after a few years.
THE MICROANALYTIC SYNTHESIS
I believe that a synthesis is possible between the Western ideals of building a strong ego and the Eastern notion of No-self and use of certain kinds of meditation for psychotherapeutic purposes. But this synthesis is very different from the transpersonal models.
First, I do not believe that there is an evolution of self beyond the personal levels. I think enlightenment and the many altered states of mind created through meditation practices are not higher levels of self, but parallel levels of development of consciousness itself. I also believe what the religious sages and transpersonal therapists call "transcending the self" is much more likely a "forgetting of the self." The self no longer looks at itself. It is no longer reflexive.
Awareness of these other levels and states of consciousness can have an impact on self development and on the development of ego functions, but will not result in total transcendence; nor would transcendence be desirable. If the forgetting of self is done after the self is repaired, it is a natural state. The healthy self, not in pain, is far less self-aware than a self which worries about its continued existence. The healthy self is busy manifesting itself rather than introspecting itself, or at least it has the option of not being self-involved.
But if we lose sight of the self before it is repaired, we are actually defending against the awareness of pain within ourselves. Destroying reflexive consciousness before it does its work of consolidating the self is at best symptom relief. Reflexivity of consciousness, introspection, is a necessary component of personal level healing. It is used to find and merge with lost portions and poorly developed portions of the self.
The healthy self can go into meditation and experience states of no-self, absorption in the world, or the emptiness enlightenment states. But it certainly would not want to stay there. As Sasaki Roshi put it, "The real action is in the everyday world or ordinary mind." Most of us go into these states to escape from pain, boredom, hurt, fear, and anger, which may be disguised as a curiosity and a search for inner truth and meaning but which is actually an escape from the personal.
Meditation may be used for several purposes, some of which are productive, and some of which may worsen symptoms:
1) As a way to re-experience a lost symbiosis with the idea of repairing the self. This is doomed to failure because it is not an interpersonal state. Symbiosis requires an "other" which is personal and human. Merger with the world is a defense against fears of merger with another person.
2) As an escape from inner pain.
3) As a self-soothing technique.
4) As a technique to master one's inner world.
5) Attaining altered states of consciousness and enlightenment with associated awakening of intelligence called "Prajna" in Buddhism.
6) To perform a detailed analysis of the basic structures of the self from the inside. I call this microanalysis:
a. Resulting in the discovery of pathological complexes and linkages. An example of this would be the discovery of abandonment anxiety or the arising of rage associated with developing emotional closeness in interpersonal relationships. The consciousness of these linkages allows a "working through" and gradual dissolution of them, allowing better developed, non-pathological attachments.
b. Negative self feelings can be watched, isolated, and detached from the self. The self can become separate from self hate and worthlessness feelings; they can be observed as objects not intrinsic to the self.
c. Introspection in this manner can lead to the formation of new inner linkages which encourage a strengthening of self. Just the ability to introspect makes the self feel stronger—it has discovered and is exploring a whole new world of meaning, thoughts, feelings, and body sensations. Part of the re-linking is to add the body sensations to our representation of self, giving it flesh and depth.
Many people have a very poor awareness of their feelings and their bodies. Well-defended narcissists, neurotics, and even schizoids have little contact with emotions. Their strong ego structures inhibit the experience of feelings. They may also use a defensive stance of "witnessing" their feelings, as opposed to feeling their feelings. Their feelings become buried and embedded in their soma, in their sense of their own bodies, the experience of which, in turn, they defend against.
We must teach these clients first to witness their bodies and then to feel their bodies. These somatic feelings can then be microscopically introspected and "stretched out" so that poorly developed feelings can be seen for the first time in all their complexity and with all their interconnections. Then the therapist can teach his client to feel these feelings and express them which makes them more real and binds the anxiety of their experience through verbal expression.
Therapy is a dialectical process in these cases. First we witness (objectify) and then we feel (subjectify). Then we witness and articulate more deeply, and extract the spectrum of emotions found within the body feeling. Then we subjectify and become those differentiated feelings of previously hidden rage, fear, hurt, and worthlessness. We can train the client to do this dialectical meditation. The therapist can help this process by being a good guide and by engaging in a dialogue which helps the client explore his/her inner world.
The outcome of successful introspection is a loss of fear about one's inner world, wants, needs, and feelings. We see these as new feelings, feel them and express them, and the therapist accepts them. His acceptance gives us permission to feel all those feelings, especially the bad and painful ones. He gives us permission to be and to express our hurt and demanding selves.
Another important question must be asked: What do these enlightened states mean? Are they a higher viewpoint of our ordinary world, as Wilber contends? Are they an alternative viewpoint, not necessarily higher or lower? Or, are they experiences of consciousness itself which provides the field on which the personal self and the world is experienced?
The author20 conceives of the sense of "I" as being a nodal point where consciousness enters our experience of being human. It is the subjective origin of the field of consciousness upon which the flesh of the personal self is added. By focusing our consciousness on the I-ness source located within our more global sense of self, we can enter states of Samadhi and enlightenment. These states concern the nature and experience of consciousness itself and need to be fully explored in any future comprehensive system of phenomenological psychology or religion. I think that here we will find the ultimate reconciliation of the transcendent and the individual.
But the real problems of the self and the person occur on the level of humanity and relationships. The most difficult problem in life is learning how to love and remain in relationship, and, secondarily, how to make a living in the world and be happy doing it. In enlightenment there is no East, West, North, or South. But in the world we live in, maps and distinctions are as necessary and vital as is our separate individuality. This individuality leads to the highest Western religious experience of communion with another soul in a mature I-Thou relationship and to the awakening of a radically different and creative intelligence.
