Indian Wisdom, Christianity and Modern Psychology

Indian Wisdom, Christianity and Modern Psychology

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Author: Jacques Vigne
Translator(s)/ Editors(s): Nayana Gupta
Publisher: B R Publishing
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 229
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8170189446

Description

In this book the author shows how psychological and spiritual sufferings are interwoven, and how tradition with its answers can collaborate with psychology to alleviate them. He starts by questioning the Western notion normality, saying it reduces human and spiritual potentials for growth to a kind of average neurosis. He speaks of depression or depression-like reactions as an opening door towards spirituality, if dealt with in the right way.

He attempts to discriminate between pathology and mysticism in what is called by psychologists regression and dissociation, and can be in some cases the awakening of the spiritual childhood or liberation of the mind from social conditionings. Dr. Vigne, who has been familiar with Christian monasteries as well, tries to understand why the spiritual transmission in Christianity has been more institutional, while in Hinduism it has been more from Guru to disciple. He further develops the comparison between non-dualism in India and among certain Christian mystics.

This book is written for the reader who does not resign himself to live in closed compartments, but whose mind and heart is searching for the unity beyond diversity.

Contents


PART I: THE SPIRITUALITY OF PSYCHOLOGY
Introduction

1. Can ‘Normosis’ Be Cured?
- The Notion of “Normal” in the East and West
- Schizophrenia in Daily Life
The Hypomania of the Consumer – Protection against Existential Depression
- Paranoia: Animal and Human
- Hysteria and the Need for Attention
- Obssessive Rigidity and Ego-Consciousness
- To End for Good with the Idea of ‘Normality’

2. Depression and Spirituality
(From Existential Emptiness to a Liberating Vacuity)
- The Psychological Descriptions of Depression and Their Limitations
- Depression: A Hidden Spiritual Awakening?
- Depression and Liberation in the Course of Spiritual Evolution

3. The Child-Sage
(Psychological Regression and Spiritual Progress)
- Regression, Symptom or Therapy?
- Psychotic Fusion and Mystique of Unity
- “The Sage is a Child but Without the Seeds of an Ego”
- Return to Self, Return to the Self, and the Point of No Return

4. To Become or to Be?
- Towards a Spiritual Maturity in the Field of Psychotherapy
- The Yoga of Knowledge (‘Jnana Yoga’), a Self-Dissolving System
- The Pairs of Opposites and Their Resolution in Unity
- The Ultimate Objectivity beyond the Dizzying Proliferation of Words
- Therapeutic Aspects of the Trance and of Hyperventilation in Indian Tradition
- The ‘Sahaja Samadhi’, State of Realization in Ordinary Life
- Yoga, Psychotherapy and Inner Conflicts as Consumer Goods
- The Practice of Meditation: The Discovery of One’s Own Spiritual Psychology

5. Crazy Wisdom
- Fortunes and Misfortunes of Inner Experience
- Beginning of Schizophrenia and Mystical Tendency
- Gentle Craziness, Harsh craziness, and Holy Craziness in tradition
- Towards Therapy as an Initiation

PART II: PAYCHOLOGY OF SPIRITUALITY
(Spiritual Transmission in Christianity and in Hinduism)
Introduction
6. How Jesus is considered by Hindus
- Jesus, Living Liberated Being
- Jesus Considered as an Avatar

7. Dogmatism, Politics and Inner Experience in the First Centuries of the Church
- Two Points of view on the Evolution of the Dogma
- Towards a Hindu Understanding of the Trinity

8. The Concept of Authority
- “God the Invisible Boshop and the the Bishop, the Visible God”
- On Dogmatism and Celibacy: Some Psychological Perspectives
- Is there a Christian Esoterism?
- What Kind of Obedience Helps Spiritual Progress?
- Centralization of Authority and the Will for Expansion
- Present Day Decentralization and the Demand for Acculturation

9. The Desire for Martyrdom – Pathology or Saintliness?
10. The Spiritual Master and Meditation

PART III: NON-DUALISM AND CHRISTIANITY
Introduction
11. Stilling the Mind
- A Silence as Vast as the Sky
- Stilling the Mind in Vedanta
- Christianity and Hesychia

12. Psychology of Asceticism
- Excessive Asceticism: The facts
- Right Asceticism
- Respecting the Body
- Beyond Body Consciousness
- The Psychology of Excessive Asceticism and Anguish in Christianity
- The Desire for Asceticism
- Austerity and Powers
- Asceticism and Solitude
- Anguis and Grace

13. An Asceticism for Today
- The Meaning of Chastity Today
- On Mental Pollution
- Hesychasm and Yoga
- Return to Action after Asceticism and Silence

14. The Non-Dualism Hidden at the Core of Christianity
- Elements of the History of Non-Dualism in the West
- Non-Dualism and Christianity: Twelve Points of ‘Paralle Divergence’

15. The Necessity of Non-Dualism Today
- To Contextualize the Question of the Jivan-Mukta
- Signs of Non-Dual Experience among Christian Mystics
- Can the Essence of the Incomprehensible God be revealed to the Mystic?
- Non-Dualism in the West: Theory and Practice
- The Last Counterpoint of the Two and the One

Last reflections
Index