by Bruce Wilson<\/p>\n
The main purpose of this blog is to discuss the science of primal therapy, but I want to address a question that goes beyond science: is primal therapy compatible with spirituality and is spiritual practice compatible with primal?<\/p>\n
First, let\u2019s define those amorphous terms, \u201cspiritual\u201d and \u201cspirituality.\u201d To scientific skeptics, they often elicit a gag reflex. At worst, spirituality is condemned as \u201cwoo,\u201d at best, it\u2019s put in scare quotes<\/a>, held it at a distance like some stinking, dead animal with comments like, \u201cjust what the hell is \u2018spirituality\u2019?\u201d Check out the many blogs and websites devoted to skepticism and you\u2019ll see that spirituality is usually equated with religion, God (or Satan), magic, the occult, mysticism, new age, ghosts, souls, spirits, fairies, angels, or a number of other supernatural concepts, and often scorned as \u201cwoo,\u201d \u201cspooky stuff\u201d or worse. In my former life as a hard scientific skeptic, I had this same response, and I admit, I still have a visceral revulsion to the words, \u201creligion\u201d and \u201creligious.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, I often use the word, spirituality, but not in the supernatural context. In fact, I think the word needs to be updated to fit the scientific worldview. I\u2019m certainly not the only one who feels this way\u2014Tom Clark<\/a>, Ursula Goodenough<\/a>, Stuart Kauffman<\/a>, Mark Vernon<\/a>, and other scientists and scholars are developing their own version of naturalistic spirituality that has nothing to do with spooks, deities, ghosts, spirits, or the supernatural. In fact, Kauffman\u2019s recent book is called, Reinventing the Sacred<\/em><\/a>. (Sorry about that gag reflex, skeptics.) Another great book in this vein is The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality<\/a>,<\/em> by French philosopher, Andr\u00e9 Compte-Sponville.<\/p>\n Arthur Janov regards all religion and spiritual seeking as neurotic. He believes, as John Lennon did, that \u201cGod is a concept by which we measure our pain.\u201d Anything associated with religion, spirituality, meditation, or other spiritual practices is \u201cbooga-booga,\u201d nothing more than a defense against primal pain. But in Why you Get Sick, How You Get Well<\/em><\/a>\u201d<\/em> (1996), Janov gets closer to what I think is a reasonable definition of spirituality. He writes:<\/p>\n I am often asked whether primal therapy is spiritual. I never know what the question really means\u2026. If spiritual means having decency, kindness, and generosity and being loving and caring, then to be spiritual is to be fully human, which means fully feeling. The more feeling the patients become, the more human they will act. (p. 248)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Here I believe Janov is close to the mark, but he doesn\u2019t go far enough. Indeed, first and foremost, spirituality is a state of deep feeling<\/em>. But I would take it beyond simple feelings of decency, kindness, generosity and caring to others and extend it to a longing to connect with others, nature, and the universe at large. Taken to the extreme, it can manifest as a mystical experience<\/a> where the sense of self drops away and one feels united with what\u2019s \u201cout there.\u201d The self-other duality vanishes and one becomes \u201cOne\u201d with the universe. In their book, The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience<\/em>,<\/a> neuroscientists Eugene d\u2019Aquili and Andrew Newberg refer to this state as \u201cAbsolute Unitary Being\u201d and speculate about the brain changes that occur during such states.<\/p>\n \u201cWhoa! What\u2019s this?\u201d the primal sceptic may ask. \u201cMystical experience? One with the universe? That sure sounds like booga-booga to me!\u201d To this I say \u2013 not necessarily.<\/p>\n Rather than viewing all spirituality as a defense against primal pain, which I think is a very diminished view, let\u2019s consider that spirituality may actually be a normal, healthy part of human nature, something that evolved in our psyche during our long prehistory. In his book, Dismantling Discontent<\/em>: Buddha\u2019s Way Through Darwin\u2019s World<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> biologist Charles Fisher writes that our preverbal, hominid ancestors experienced life in \u201canimal harmony with nature,\u201d largely free of the cognitive noise we humans experience because of our self-centered, conceptual, thought-obsessed, dualistic minds. In Fisher\u2019s view, \u201cit is this duality of our evolution that sets us apart from other species and inspires our most profound intellectual and spiritual yearning.\u201d In my view, that spiritual yearning is an attempt to reconnect with our prehistoric nature and know the world in a non-rational, intuitive, feeling<\/em> way. In other words, it\u2019s as natural as breathing, eating, and sex. I call it primal spirituality.<\/p>\n Primal spirituality is rooted deep within our emotional brain centers and by far predates our cognitive notions of spirituality, religion, etc. Affective neuroscientist, Jaak Panksepp<\/a>, has said that spirituality is likely an expression of our biological drive to be socially connected with other humans. In a Philoctetes Center roundtable<\/a> entitled, \u201cMind, Brain, and Spirituality: Toward a Biology of the Soul,\u201d Panksepp defined spirituality as \u201cbeing in the world as your self and completely as your self and not someone else. As soon as you\u2019ve achieved that, you\u2019ve achieved a deep spirituality.\u201d How primal.<\/p>\n We all have different predilections for spiritual feeling and it\u2019s not surprising that those who have less of it might view it as delusional or childish. But even Daniel Dennett<\/a>, one of the most outspoken atheists of our time, has admitted to a fondness for hymns, ceremony and ritual. He says they evoke a religious feeling that he defines as natural, as long as it doesn\u2019t involve the supernatural<\/em>. In this sense, spiritual feelings and spiritual beliefs <\/em>are worlds apart and I believe (but can\u2019t prove) that strong spiritual beliefs <\/em>are a sign that our natural tendency toward spiritual feeling <\/em>has been hijacked to serve as a defense against primal pain. Primal pain distorts <\/em>spiritual feeling rather than evoking it, and it usually takes the form of supernatural beliefs. As long as we can believe that God or Jesus or Mohammed or whatever deity du jour is living \u201cup there\u201d in heaven or some other supernatural realm watching down on us, we can feel secure that we are safe and death loses its sting. Belief tries to make the unknowable into the known.<\/p>\n Religious zealotry, fundamentalism, and extremism are examples of spirituality gone very wrong. The more intense the primal pain, the more intense is the need to believe and to enforce <\/em>those beliefs on everyone around you. In these cases, God really has become a concept by which we measure our pain.<\/p>\n However, I would also include radical scientific skepticism in this category. Rationalism<\/a> as the sole arbiter of reality can itself become a belief system, and in its most refined state it is expressed as scientism<\/a> \u2013 the belief that science and reason can and will eventually answer all questions about life, the universe and everything. Rationalists are intolerant of uncertainty and demand evidence for everything, but as the Victorian poet and novelist George Meredith wrote, \u201cwhat a dusty answer gets the soul when hot for certainties in this our life!\u201d<\/p>\n Both forms of extremism \u2014 religious or scientistic \u2014 often diminish with primal therapy. As one opens to one\u2019s deepest feelings, strong ideologies and beliefs lose their importance and one becomes more tolerant to the unknown and the unknowable. The wisdom that lies deep within us is liberated and we can once again be guided by our instincts in harmony with reason. One does not take precedence over the other. Science becomes a tool, not an ideology. And rather than being antithetical to primal feeling, some spiritual practices are not only compatible with it, but are enhanced by it, and vice versa. On his website, Primal Zen<\/a>, Sam Turton has a wonderful essay on how Zen medition and primal can work together to improve well-being. Ironically, the end states of primal therapy and Zen practice are remarkably similar \u2013 one becomes who one is, here and now. In the last words of a dying Zen master, \u201cthere\u2019s just this and nothing more!\u201d<\/p>\n And here again I come back to primal spirituality, which more than anything is characterized by doubt and wonder. When I look out at the old growth maple forest outside my window and watch two hawks weaving and dodging through the trees in search of prey, I can only marvel at their beauty and ask, \u201cWhat is this? How did this beauty and complexity come to be? What caused it?\u201d And answering those questions is\u2026silence. No words, no thoughts, just silence. Silence is not a feeling, but primal feeling can allow access to that silence, just as can meditation. And from the silence comes creativity, which I believe to be a fundamental property of nature. (For more on this, I recommend Kauffman\u2019s book noted above, and Albert Low\u2019s, The Origin of Human Nature<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Bruce Wilson The main purpose of this blog is to discuss the science of primal therapy, but I want to address a question that goes beyond science: is primal therapy compatible with spirituality and is spiritual practice compatible with primal? First, let\u2019s define those amorphous terms, \u201cspiritual\u201d and \u201cspirituality.\u201d To scientific skeptics, they often … <\/p>\n