Analytische Psychokatharsis

The book offers a brief overview of the different types of Yoga and then provides a comparison with the modern science of psychology. Laya Yoga, a comprehensive physical and mental method, seems to be the best pick for such research. Laya Yoga, as it was taught by the late Sant Kirpal Singh (1894-1974) in Sant Mat (Rhadasoami, Ruhani Satsang, India), is widely known as a modern method of meditation in India. There, a yogi is no longer expected to live in the forest, or to subject himself to asceticism. He is rather free to have a normal profession, have a family and children, and is expected to include modern scientific aspects into his teachings. Kirpal Singh's Surat Shabd Yoga (his name for Laya Yoga) is also related to Patanjali's yoga. 'Yoga is chit vritis nirodha', is being in command of 'chit' (the conscious) and 'vritis' (vibrations, transformations), which Kirpal Singh set forth as being equivalent with his 'light' and 'sound' principle in meditation.

We come across such terms and principles in Psychoanalysis, the most significant form of scientific psychology found in the western world today. Especially in French psychoanalyst J. Lacan's version of Freud's drive-structure concept do we find perception drives (drive to perceive, to look) and invocation drives (drive to express, to speak) that function in the unconscious, and which are predominant. Actually, the drive to look is nothing other than 'chit', a kind of primary conscious, an immediate gaze, or better and simply put: an IT SHINES. IT SHINES means that something primarily visual, a primary visual awareness, or primary visibility is constantly at work within and around us. It is at work when images are being produced in dreams as well as in 'light' experiences in meditation, and last but not the least, this is also the most subtle of physical reality.

After all, the conscious is nothing other than a 'reciprocated gaze', a reflection, or a 'primal form' of looking or of perception. In the same way we can substitute 'vritis' with the drive to speak, which is the most substantial form of invocation: the IT SPEAKS. Lacan says: "The unconscious is structured in the same manner a language is...", it behaves like an IT SPEAKS within and around us. A combination of the SHINES and of the SPEAKS actually requires to be taken under command and setting yoga and psychoanalysis into relation with one another supplies us with a simple tool to do just that.

In Surat Shabd Yoga command is taken of the combination of the SHINES and SPEAKS by applying and reverberating mentaly Sanskrit formulations. But for a scientifc method we can use linguistic styled formulations which I call FORMULA-WORDS.

A knot of SHINES/SPEAKS

So it happens to be the Other within ourselves, a language structure, structure of symbols, or representantative of the symbolic order. It is surely related to God as the hypothetical One of the SHINES / SPEAKS. But God was always taken much too personally.

Read more: A knot of SHINES/SPEAKS

How do Master and Follower relate?

These 'names': Jotnirenyen, Onkar, Rarankar, Sohang and Sat Naam are Sanskrit words, and in saying that they are ‘loaded’ with a type of force is again, of course, a mystical way of expression. Psychoanalytically we are again impelled to speak of transference, instead of ‘load’.

Read more: How do Master and Follower relate?

Primal Principles

“I have been swimming in rivers. I’m very fond of rivers”, Kirpal Singh often said.1 In India, rivers are always something special, the country basically being dry and hot, and so, a narrow river glistening in blue appears as a lifeline providing for an elixir. So, we are fully authorized to track the ‘light’ and ‘sound’ principle at a very early stage in his life, or his ‘background’, even though this may yet seem to be rather superficial.

Read more: Primal Principles

Loaded Names and Echo Discourse

Speaking to a ‚master’ in meditation and yoga is established on the echo of the teachings (on his ‘mental’) he previously announced. But the repetitions of Sanskrit names are also involved in the exercises, as representations of linguistic elements. Kirpal Singh constantly stressed, that such names actually have no significance, but that their being loaded with his ‘strength’ were substantial.

Read more: Loaded Names and Echo Discourse

The Universe: Sum of all Signifiers?

We have here another indication as to why a biography from the perspectives of western psychology, history and science is not necessarily appropriate in describing the life of an Indian saint, on the one hand. But, on the other, there is a special incentive in it, namely in writing a biography in a different manner than is usual. Subsequently, the task encompasses not only narrating on the pure biographic of daily data, but rather even taking into consideration such things as the references of events to areas of his teachings, to the development of theories in general, or to western science, such as to psychoanalysis.

Read more: The Universe: Sum of all Signifiers?

Subcategories

Höhere Bildung, die heute so sehr von nöten ist, wird nicht in der Schule angeboten, kann nicht auf dem Markt gekauft werden, sondern muß vielmehr durch den einzelnen in sich geschmiedet werden, es ist der stumme Einfluß von Charakter auf Charakter.

Sir William Osler

You are here: Home Analytische Psychokatharsis