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.

Hypomanic Experience and SHINES

When dreaming or during meditation, I experienced a condition of observing ‘swarms of stars’ several times. They flew through space in quick formations as if they were swarms of birds. Of course, such has to do with a completely subjective and slightly hypomanic experience of a SHINES.

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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.

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Other's Attention and the 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. As much as Kirpal Singh strived to unify the Gods of different religions into one, especially when he chaired the presidency of the ‘World Fellowship of Religions’, he was bound to fail.

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Personal Note on Dreaming

When dreaming or during meditation, I experienced a condition of observing ‘swarms of stars’ several times. They flew through space in quick formations as if they were swarms of birds. Of course, such has to do with a completely subjective and slightly hypomanic experience of a SHINES.

Read more: Personal Note on Dreaming

Metaphysics and God

The term 'light' and 'sound' alone has an overly mystical/mythic ring to it. In addition, these terms are too contradictory. Contrary to those terms, the expression mirroring is often used in psychoanalysis and describes earliest identifications (as in: seeing oneself as being identical to, or knowing oneself as being identical to), and may be considered a consequence of the unconscious scopic-drive).

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Cling tightly to your dreams for when they die, life is but a bird with broken wings, unable to fly.

Langston Hughes

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