As now practiced, psychology is no more a way of life than medicine and surgery. Physicians and surgeons have to know the structure of the body down to the last detail, but it is not necessary to have that knowledge to lead a healthy physical life. In the same way, the practicing psychologist has to know the psyche just as thoroughly; it does not follow that the same intimate knowledge is necessary for mental health. No sensible doctor who is not a shark advises the removal of a patient’s appendix, tonsils, adenoids, teeth, ovaries, and anything else that may occur to him just in case they might give trouble. Only a faddist goes to his doctor every day to discuss his insides and make sure that he is living in accordance with the rules of health. Nevertheless, both the doctor and the psychologist are in a position to make certain observations about healthy living, to lay down certain principles which do not involve constant preoccupation with the more intimate details of the internal organs. Therefore it seems most unwise to make any deliberate attempt to bring the deeper contents of the unconscious to light, unless for strictly scientific and professional reasons—which are not the same as spiritual reasons. For one’s degree of spirituality does not depend on how much of your unconscious you have assimilated; it depends on how ready you are to accept and assimilate it when it comes in its own time. Which is another way of repeating that knowledge and experience are not to be confused with wisdom.
The Aims of Psychotherapy
This is where the psychology of the West can take a lesson from the psychology of the East, which pays more attention to the way of acceptance and less to the things to be accepted. It is interested in creating a state of mind that will be prepared for all eventualities, all surprises from both the outer and from the inner universes. It does not go out of its way, looking for things to accept. Far too little emphasis is laid on this aspect of the work by ill-advised practitioners of the psychology of the unconscious, and as a result analysis can easily have a certain remoteness from life. Analysis is not something on which one can work only at night, in dreamland, and psychological health cannot be bought at ten dollars a visit every Thursday afternoon. A friend who called on me one evening suddenly announced that he had to go home early because his analyst had instructed him to “face a problem.” When the facing of problems and the acceptance of life is too studied, when it requires that you go home early, shut yourself in your room, and solemnly sit down, take the problem out of a drawer and face it, we begin to wonder what has become of a certain indispensable quality called humor. Analysis is not intended to be remote from life at all, but when overmuch emphasis is laid on the dream, on unconscious symbolism, unconscious drawing and painting, and on the life of fantasy in general there is a danger of dividing life into two halves and neglecting the relations between them, as if the whole process required nothing more than development in the dream and fantasy world.
Many of these difficulties would be overcome by a clear understanding of the aims of psychological work by those who are unable to avail themselves of a wise analyst, and here again the view of such Oriental systems as Taoism and various forms of Buddhism is very suggestive. For here the object is not to reach any particular stage; it is to find the right attitude of mind in whatever stage one may happen to be. This, indeed, is a fundamental principle of those forms of Oriental psychology which we shall be considering. In the course of his evolution man will pass through an indefinite number of stages; he will climb to the crest of one hill to find his road leading on over the crest of another and another. No stage is final because the meaning of life is in its movement and not in the place to which it moves. We have a proverb that to travel well is better than to arrive, which comes close to the Oriental idea. Wisdom does not consist in arriving at a particular place, and no one need imagine that it is necessarily obtained by climbing a ladder whose rungs are the successive stages of psychological experience. That ladder has no end, and the entrance to enlightenment, wisdom, or spiritual freedom may be found on any one of its rungs. If you discover it, it does not mean that you will not have to go on climbing the ladder; you must go on climbing just as you must go on living. But enlightenment is found by accepting fully the place where you stand now. Modern man finds himself in the stage of human evolution where there is a maximum division between his ego and the universe; for him, enlightenment is the complete acceptance of that division. Psychological techniques may fail because people do not accept fully the various stages involved; they accept them with the sole object of reaching a certain goal, as for instance the state of “individuation” symbolized by the mandala. In such circumstances they may indeed reach that state, but without finding what they inwardly desire. As a result, some people who imagine that they have completed that phase of psychological work are often as unhappy as ever.10
Mere exploration of the unconscious is no road to wisdom, for a fool may learn much and experience much but still be a fool. He becomes wise only when he has the humility to let himself be free to be a fool. As Chuang Tzu says, “He who knows he is a fool is not a great fool.” For the fool always gives himself away by his pride, by the delusion that greatness is to be measured by mere psychological bulk, and that by loading himself with new experiences he will become a sage. The psychology of the unconscious is his happy hunting ground. “After some five years of analysis,” he thinks, “if I work very hard and go through all the necessary stages, I shall become a real person, a genuine, free man.” Indeed, that five years’ work (the attainment of which will necessitate fooling the analyst too) may teach him something if it happens to show him that he is like the dunce who looked for fire with a lighted lantern. Sometimes the longest way round is the shortest way home.
The way of acceptance and spiritual freedom is found not by going somewhere but in going, and the stage where its happiness can be known is now, at this very moment, at the very place where you happen to stand. It is in accepting fully your state of soul as it is now, not in trying to force yourself into some other state of soul which, out of pride, you imagine to be a superior and more advanced state. It is not a question of whether your present state is good or bad, neurotic or normal, elementary or advanced; it is a question of what it is. The point is not to accept it in order that you may pass on to a “higher” state, but to accept because acceptance in itself is that “higher” state, if such it may be called. By way of illustration, here is the story of how the Buddhist sage Hui-neng enlightened Chen Wei-ming who had chased him in order to steal the robe and begging bowl of the Buddha. Hui-neng had put them both down on a rock, and when Chen tried to lift them he found that they were immovable. At once Chen was terrified, and protested that he had not come for the robe and bowl, but for the wisdom they represented. “Since the object of your coming is for the Dharma,” said Hui-neng, “think not of good, think not of evil, but see what your true nature [literally, ‘original face’] is at this moment.” At this Chen was suddenly enlightened; breaking out into a sweat and saluting Hui-neng with tears of joy he asked, “Besides these secret words and hidden meanings which you have just given me, is there anything else which is secret?” Hui-neng replied, “In what I have shown you there is nothing secret. If you reflect and recognize your own true nature, the secret is within you.”11