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AumBoy
Registered User
(6/1/02 8:27 pm)
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ezSupporter
 NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FEAR
www.integralscience.org/c...WS2001.htm

This is a recent article I came across. It partially describes the experience someone had with SRF. Excerpt:
Quote:
When I read the Eastern religions they reflected almost word for word much of what I was experiencing— only they said it was supposed to be FUN. But for me it was more like hell. Once I attended an SRF convocation in Los Angeles. There were thousands of people there. I started to get disoriented and the fear came on. So I went to a novice monk and tried to share with him what was happening. I said, "I feel like this is God, but God's not blissful. God is kind of scary." He said, "I think you've got psychological problems, because if you're having a true spiritual experience, it's peaceful. You're not peaceful, so you must have a problem. You need to see a psychiatrist." I was pretty upset by that. Later, I talked to a senior monk. He was a little more sympathetic, but still he couldn't offer any really useful advice.


The answers for each individual are not "out there" (in monks) somewhere. What would these individuals have said to Arjuna if Arjuna described his experience to them. Recommend psychological counseling?

(The above article is about 1/3 of the way down the above web page.)

gardendiva
Registered User
(6/3/02 1:08 pm)
Reply 		Re: NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FEAR
I read the article too...thanks for the link.

It was interesting, because much of this person's fearful experiences in meditation were not unlike my own experiences with anxiety disorder. And the process that he went through, getting beyond his fears, was not unlike some of the therapy that I've read about for anxiety disorder.

What does this all mean? To me, it means that spiritual development and psychological development are many times very closely related. While I think the monastic that just bluntly told this man to go see a psychiatrist, was being rude and uncompassionate, I don't necessarily think that that advice was totally invalid.

It feels, to me, as though a person who may have horrific experiences in meditation, might have those experiences at some point or another regardless of meditation, because that is what they're predisposed to, based on karma, psychological, physical and spiritual make up. Perhaps what we're looking for here, is to have SRF be prepared to help people through such difficulties, without making them feel crazy or that they must be doing something "wrong" in their spiritual practice.

Personally, I've always felt that the "spiritual" advice given by monastics has been pretty pat and out of the book, so to speak. I haven't ever heard anything very profound...but then again, I haven't asked much.

Muziris 
Registered User
(7/15/02 9:14 am)
Reply 		Re: NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FEAR
This situation sounds quite like the "Spiritual Emergency" experiene as defined by Dr. Stanislav Grof. Probably you might have heard of his Transpersonal Psychology and Holotropic Breathwork.

Such fearful, terrifying and traumatic experienes it seems have been studied by him in much detail, and he and his wife Christina go around helping people undergoing such unsettling experiences. They themselves have been influenced much by the Hindu and Buddhist philosophies.

There is this book "The Stormy Search for Self" written by them which is quite a luid account of such experiences and how to handle them.

You say "...spiritual development and psychological development are many times very closely related". I wonder many a times whether these spiritual experiences of mystics are just the manifestation of that person's psychological state of mind, that has nothing to do with an extra-body "entity" (or the "Inner Self" for that matter) - termed as cosmic consciousness or God by many? I would really love to hear the members' views on this.

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