Kakar - Analyst And The Mystic: Psychoaonalyitc Reflections On Religion And Mysticism

Two years ago, I was invited by the Divinity School of the University of Chicago to deliver its Haskell Lectures in the area of comparative religion. I accepted this invitation with alacrity. It encouraged me to return to a field which I had reconnoitered in an earlier work on the healing function of religion and of such religious functionaries as shamans and mystics. After a decade-long intellectual exploration into the vagaries of sexual love, I welcomed the chance to once again engage with this other major area of human transcendence.

In retrospect, it seems inevitable that the focus of these lectures would be ecstatic mysticism, which signifies both a continuity with and departure from my preceding preoccupation with eroticism. Like the lover, the emotional mystic too strives for the transcendence of personal boundaries in an ineffable union with the other, though in case of the latter the other is spelled with a capital O. The fervor of erotic passion, we know, only recognizes the spontaneity of religious passion as its equal and, in some cultures and at certain historical periods, even as its superior. I thus came to ecstatic, emotional mysticism with a curious sense of familiarity which I hoped would permit me access to its strangeness.

Mysticism for me is not something that lies outside the vast spaces of the human mind. Its insights, experiences, and yearnings are a heritage of our condition as human beings; they are a part of our humanity. Shorn of religious trappings, the mystical quest is not apart from the dailiness of life but pervades and informs life in its deepest layers.

I have approached the mystic as a psychoanalyst approaches a subject in the clinical encounter, with empathy, respect, and a sense of the complexity and wonder of human life. My intention has not been to pursue any reductionistic agenda, to shrink the mystic, but rather to expand our understanding of his mystery and, ultimately, of the working of our own selves. Of course, given the nature of my discipline, the understanding of mysticism and mystical experiences I aim for is necessarily in a psychological mode. The psychological understanding, I hope, complements other kinds of understanding; it does not replace them. A psychological appropriation of mysticism is certainly not the intention of these reflections. Yet, if my endeavor, like those of the analysts before me, brings the mystic down from the level of divine to that of human, I console myself with the thought that it may also help in raising the rest of us by making us more aware of our own sensuous and psychic potentials.

Traditionally, psychoanalysis has viewed art and science as valuable sublimatory creations. On the other hand, it has often seen in mysticism in particular and religion in general a regressive return to the protective beings (and being) of infancy and early childhood. Mysticism, I try to show in this book, is a radical enhancement of the capacity for creative experiencing, of the ability to experience with all ones heart, all ones soul, and all ones might. It requires that the mystic undergo a creative immersion in the deepest layers of his or her psyche, with its potential risk of phases of chaos and lack of integration. The mystical regression is akin to that of the analysand, an absorbing and at times painful process at the service of psychic transformation. It differs from most analyses in that the regression is deeper. Where the mystical ability to experience profoundly is sought to be enhanced within a master-disciple relationship, as in most schools of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sufism, the potential mystic may be better placed than the analysand to connect withand perhaps correctthe depressive core at the base of human life which lies beyond language. Psychically, he or she is also more endangered. Mystical techniques in the master-disciple relationship, compared to those of psychoanalysis, are thus designed to foster radical regression, and the role of the master guru, pir, roshiis better understood by taking recourse to the concepts of the more relational analysts such as Donald Winnicott and Heinz Kohut, rather than by remaining within the paradigm of classical psychoanalytic theory with its motivational emphasis on drives and defenses.

The illustrative examples for my arguments are preeminently drawn from the Hindu religious tradition. Following a time-honored psychoanalytic usage where one strives for an in-depth understanding of a single case history in the hope that it may later prove to be representative for a host of other similar cases, I have tried to organize my observations and understanding of mysticism around the person of a single mystic, the nineteenth-century Hindu saint, Shri Ramakrishna. I have sought to discuss in detail three interacting factors in his storyparticular life historical experiences, the presence of a specific artistic or creative gift, and a facilitating cultural environmentwhich I believe may well go into the making of a mystic, at least of the ecstatic variety.

The first chapter of this book was also presented as an invited talk to the Canadian Psychoanalytic Association in Montreal The comments of my Canadian colleagues were most helpful I am especially thankful to the discussant of the paper, Dr. Eva Lester, for her helpful input which I have incorporated gratefully into the text.