Internal Religion

When Freud says that in psychoanalysis „... trembling anxiety over the whereabouts of higher levels in the human being doesn’t need to be shared as long as we are obliged to concern ourselves with the study of repression in the psyche …”, then it only applies in a very limited way. Freud was right in condemning confessional (extroverted) religion as being compulsively neurotic.

But, he did not adequately appreciate the more complex forms of imagery (drive to look, SHINES) and of verbosity (drive to speak, SPEAKS) in their strengths of the It and higher levels of the super-Ego. Both of these powers or basic aspirations are, after all, ‘high’.

Kirpal Singh distinguished both of these basic principle (drives) and spoke of ‘internal religion’ that has nothing to do with extroverted religious practice. This is where the connecting point of psychoanalysis and yoga is found, whereby I would rather speak of conjectural thinking, or conjectural science, than of ‘internal Religion’. It is substantial to recognize the SHINES / SPEAKS drive as basic aspirations, which facilitate a whole new way of thinking in psychoanalysis when writing it with a diagonal or fraction stroke. Studying repression from a ‘low’ viewpoint is just not quite sufficient. Even though we need not be concerned with a traditionally higher ‘up’, the SHINES / SPEAKS provides us with an important new entry in the sense of a science mandated to love (a science of the subject).

Psychoanalyst N. Symington has the same understanding. He says, that Freud's theory is 'nonmoral'. The author attempts to interpret psychoanalysis as a 'scientific religion'. He says, that: were we to know of the harm we do to ourselves with our complexes, then we could eliminate them. Contrarily, he errs here, and errs in the same way that Kant did when stating, that a man on whom the gallows is waiting outside would not be able to develop lewdness should the woman of his lucid dreams be introduced to him.

Need one be a therapist to know, for example, "that it is not impossible for such a man to cold-bloodedly plan to cut the woman into pieces for just the lust of it?" Kant, from the perspective of his mental heights, did not want to and could not imagine the rationality of total impurity, of total anti-rationality, of perversion. He could no longer recall, that there are a lot of different pleasures, because these would have brought his construction to falter. So, the results of Symington's analysis represent good, profound philosophy, though not a practical procedure as is discussed here. Though it is correct, when Freud says that complexes always involve guilt and shame, still, complexes may also involve the Shines/Speaks. However, Freud's complexes should not be called nonmoral, but rather imperfect, immature, and not ideal.

 

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