Wandering towards Transcendence
By John Van Hagen
In the last issue of The Fourth R (33-4, July–August, 2020), psychologist Steven Prasinos courageously told us about the God he believes in. He roots this belief in the profound experiences he has had as a therapist for almost forty years, experiences that he believes have a spiritual dimension. He sees in these invisible yet tangible experiences an essence he calls “soul,” and which has close parallels in other cultures as well as in religion itself. He uses another essentialist term, “construct,” to describe “oversoul,” a broader subjective field in which each soul exists, and which likewise has parallels in other cultures. He concludes that the essence of well-being is for the soul and oversoul to be in harmony. To facilitate harmony, Prasinos employees a psychological term, “ego,” as the force which helps negotiate attunement between the previous two constructs. He posits religion as the major resource for helping ego in its efforts, which leads him to the existence of his final construct, God. At this point, Prasinos is reflecting the great insights of the Axial Age, centered around the sixth century BCE. Visionary prophets not only from Israel but also from China, India, and Greece all imagined a way of being that was in harmony with some higher power.
As a clinical psychologist myself, I can imagine the stirring interactions he has had with wounded individuals whom he has seen face difficulties and overcome debilitating challenges. My own experiences in such encounters have also led me to postulate a spiritual dimension to the therapeutic work and to imagine a therapeutic one in the spiritual journey. However, I have drawn a different set of conclusions from my experiences both in therapy and in religion.
My experiences in therapy have led me to distrust the essentialist model in favor of tolerating uncertainty in the therapeutic work because such a wide variety of psychological models exists. Likewise, my life experiences with religion have pointed me towards a more communitarian model that emphasizes connections to others rather than to some ultimate being. Secondly, I have developed from those experiences a model for investigating religion, which does not depend on essentialist-like constructs, but rather looks to more open-ended perspectives drawn from science. I use these perspectives to offer an example of how an open-ended concept like metaphor can be helpful in appreciating both religion and psychotherapy.
Experiences of Therapy
In the mid-1970s, I was completing my PhD in psychology at a graduate school whose prevailing model of the ideal therapist as a non-disclosing guru was being strongly challenged by other emerging approaches that bypassed the psychodynamic triad of painful, repressed memories, which were revealed by timely, empathic interpretations, and which in turn led to insights that allowed patients to master psychological pain by bringing it to awareness. These emerging new models included family systems theory, gestalt psychology, and rational-emotive therapy. The newer approaches often claimed extraordinary success but provided little research to back up their claims. Years later, research would show that no approach could claim superiority over others. It was primarily the quality of the therapist combined with the resources of the patient that made the difference. With the right mix, something life-affirming happened.
I began my clinical work as a licensed psychologist at a Catholic-sponsored residential treatment center for seriously disturbed boys. I remember one seven-year-old who was referred to our center. As he passed a statue of a saint, he casually remarked that he did not believe in God. Because I knew about the abuse and abandonment he had experienced, I thought his remark spoke more about the extent of his psychological damage than the depths of his religiosity. I interpreted “not believing in God” as a stand-in for a serious difficulty in trusting others. In fact, we were unable to make any real progress; the youngster was shortly referred to a psychiatric hospital because of his self-harming behavior.
Residential treatment also offered another challenge to any more or less traditional understanding of therapy. Any recovery or repair exhibited by these young clients could never be attributed solely to any one source. Some were helped by individual therapy, but so many others by their connection with a teacher who supported their talents or a childcare worker’s generous commitment to assist in solving the everyday problems of living. Relationships matter and many contribute to the healing process.
In short, my early experiences as a clinician led me to appreciate that many clinical models could be valuable in the therapeutic effort and that sources of healing were ubiquitous and not limited to the therapy office.
Experiences of Religion
When I began investigating religion’s truth claims, I had a similar experience. What I found most refreshing in my introduction to the Jesus Seminar in Santa Rosa and articles in The Fourth R were the research-based descriptions of the varied attempts of Jesus’ early followers to put into words what their movement was all about. At a naive first glance, the gospels may appear to paint a consistent story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. A closer look exposed the inconsistencies and contradictions that tell of conflicted beginnings and thus different stories. Also, thanks to recent findings, some radically different descriptions of the early Jesus movement expanded even more the heterogeneity I was discovering. I felt freed by new scholarly information that challenged the dominant model that was built upon literal and traditional understandings of scripture assumed by most churches.
The messiness of early Christianity was isomorphic to my own struggles to provide a therapeutic environment for difficult and damaged youth. The good news of the Jesus Seminar, proclaimed by its community of (re)searchers, encouraged me to develop my own religious path, but also challenged me to address that flood of new information. Later on, when I was in private practice, I tended to see that psychological theories needed the input and challenge of research that suggested what approach helped a particular person with a particular difficulty.
Model for Investigating Religion
My experiences prompted me to continue to develop a psychological approach that was more widely focused, for example, considering a patient’s social context. This more horizontal model was something I took personally as well. The therapeutic power of relationships inspired me to join in starting a small intentional community that has lasted over forty years. The topics and format of our meetings have changed significantly over the decades, but we maintain our commitment to sharing our own journeys with one another. In the process we have found our own culture with its rituals and celebrations, all of it undergirded by a deep respect for each other. We are grateful for having these relationships in our lives.
Dr. Vivek Murthy, former United States surgeon general, observed that loneliness is a public health hazard and wrote about the dangers of lacking relationships. He quotes researchers who have identified three categories. Intimate loneliness is a longing for a partner with whom one shares a deep bond of affection. Relational loneliness is the yearning for friendships and social support. Collective loneliness occurs when someone is missing a community of people who share one’s purpose and interests. All three dimensions are significant social connections that we need in order to thrive. I believe that our intentional community addressed some of our needs for social support, while I have found attendance at religious services to address the collective dimension.
What social psychologists observe on an interpersonal level, neuropsychologists observe on an individual, intrapsychic level. In a massively documented tome, psychiatrist and researcher Iain McGilchrist argues that our left and right brains must work in harmony for true human flourishing. He warns that the left brain, with its prowess for linear and rational thinking, has become more dominant in our society at the expense of the right brain with its capacity for wonder and empathy. While he argues that both sides of the brain must cooperate, he acknowledges that they can be in conflict.
The scientific approach can also have a temporal dimension. For example, while the many contributions of the Axial Age offer insights into our spiritual and evolutionary development, that epoch remains only one of the myriad elements in that mass of experience and artifacts that we know as culture. Historian Yuval Harari writes that the moving and changing of culture over time is what we call history. He suggests that we are defined to a large extent by the historical epoch in which we find ourselves. While we might share the wonderful insights of the religious thinkers of the Axial Age, we do not share their scientific worldview, nor would they understand our context of late capitalism and its many social consequences, which to a great extent defines us at this time in our history.
My experiences of therapy and religion, combined with my understanding of the scientific approach, have led me to imagine a model that is more process than product, more a working tool than a well-defined concept. Because the fields of psychology and religion have so many moving parts and are always subject to paradigm-shifting information, open-ended metaphor is more helpful than a closed ideology. My approach to those two fields employs a working model that is more like an investigating process that tolerates ambiguity, encourages research, and privileges moderate skepticism. While I use models to make sense of the world, I often reflect that they are limited by assumptions and prejudices I may be unaware of because they are like the water I swim in but rarely focus on. Still, I find such a model helpful because it can be used to develop new insights into religion and psychology.
Religion and Psychology
On both individual and interpersonal levels, religion can provide a nurturing environment to help human flourishing. At the intrapsychic level, religion fosters empathy and wonder that nurtures the activity of the right brain and tempers the left brain’s push toward power and closure. At an interpersonal level, religion provides the collective attachments that foster altruistic behavior and concerns for issues of social justice. Beliefs by themselves are not helpful. It is only when a belief (for example, “I need to be good”) is put into practice by helping others that the believer will, over time, be transformed.
Of course, whether they take place with an intimate partner or reside in the unseen and unfelt drama in our brains, connections are messy and require upkeep. Yet because they are so important to our well-being, relationships contain an emotional pilot light that can relight a connection even after some time apart.
Religion’s call to community, at its best, provides a supportive context in which we are encouraged to face difficulties, seek forgiveness for our lapses, and do better the next time. Also, the reading of sacred texts and the engagement in ritual can nurture the right brain’s capacity for wonder. One of the challenges for those who leave organized religion is to find a meaningful community that offers support for spiritual development in an interpersonal context. Although many who leave religion still consider themselves spiritual, their spiritual activity is often individualistic, such as yoga.
Of course, traditional religions with their long histories and various incarnations have a lot more to worry about than the problem the spiritual but not religious folks have with community. Harmful religious ideologies continue to demonize the different and to justify violence toward those outside the tribe. Psychologist Milton Rokeach argued that people inhabiting such closed belief systems see the world as threatening. However, their religious leaders can also mask threats, as in denying the catastrophic effects of climate change or the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic. A religious organization basically demands obedience to whatever are its truth claims in return for the promise of security, a trade-off that blunts social-emotional development, which does not serve one well in a complex and ever-changing world. Despite the cost, the truth claims of dogmatic religious institutions are accepted and followed because the congregants believe in their religion’s basic premise, the foundational claim of divine revelation.
God
My own spiritual journey has left little room for that ultimate construct, God. If anything is connected to transcendence, it is the everyday effort to find moments of wonder in the midst of the rather chaotic push and pull of intrapsychic, interpersonal, and cultural forces. What I have found helpful is appreciating that the earliest followers of Jesus used metaphor to try to understand who Jesus was and why he died such a terrible and shameful death. Metaphors were taken from the Jewish religion and from their predominately Hellenistic culture in which they found themselves. These metaphors did not aim to provide truth so much as to give a glance at a mystery.
Searching for ways to makes sense of Jesus’ crucifixion, the apostle Paul employed a variety of metaphors such as: “the purchase of freedom,” relying on the concept of slavery; “substitutionary death,” found in texts such as the tragedies of Euripides (for example, Alcestis); the “securing of peace,” as in effective diplomacy; “procuring reconciliation,” like in ethics of friendship; or “atonement,” for which Paul appropriates metaphors from Jewish sacrificial rituals. The metaphors were an inspired attempt to bring meaning to what was for Paul both a scandal and a stumbling block. The metaphors and stories used language that fostered the hope of dramatic, even therapeutic, change that shaped community life and inspired a practical way of love.
The early Jewish-Christian writers and preachers used stories and metaphors to describe something indescribable. They used them to give a flavor or a momentary glimpse of something immeasurably powerful and ultimately beyond understanding. They were attempting to give meaning, not just to the crucifixion but to their own lives. They preached that individual sacrifice brings healing, that love ultimately wins out over fear, and that a caring community supports the vision of a better world. They were preaching about right action more than right belief.
The Loss of Metaphor
In time, the Jewish religion of Jesus and his followers became populated by Gentiles and was eschewed by the rabbinic Judaism that emerged after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 CE. Soon the inchoate religious movement faced a task more difficult than what Paul struggled with in trying to make sense of the crucifixion. Justin Martyr and other philosophically oriented apologists of the second century faced a dilemma: how could the group be Jewish and not Jewish at the same time? Their attempted solutions involved turning metaphors into metaphysics. In a world of supernatural beings, attributing some dimension of divinity to powerful and influential humans was not unheard of. Emperors, for example, had long been divinized in this way, so it is not surprising that Christians came to regard Jesus as a divine being. As long as they were allowed to function as metaphor, such claims about Jesus could exist comfortably within Jewish monotheism. However, when the apologists reified myth and metaphor into doctrines, they had to employ philosophical concepts such as nature and person to explain just how Jesus could be God and the Father of Jesus (and later the Holy Spirit) could be God without there being more than one God.
Later generations of Hellenistic apologists continued to take the “like” out of the metaphor. The crucifixion was not like healing, it was healing; Jesus’ death was not like being freed from slavery, it was freedom from slavery, which raised the question: healed or freed from what? It was more than making an intellectual mistake by making literal something that was intended to be suggestive. Those theologians were also introducing a belief in belief, namely that what was important was the construct that promised security rather than the metaphor that led to openness and continued searching. They were essentially combining two opposing forms of religion, one that emphasizes security and the other growth. Like the functions of the left brain and the right brain, both security and growth are important, although sometimes in conflict. However, overemphasizing the left brain’s functions at the expense of those on the right can limit the latter’s contributions to societal flourishing.
To emphasize metaphor is to make religion less certain and therefore to introduce uncertainty and vulnerability in times of conflict. A religious person whose beliefs are more tentative is forced to tolerate ambiguity and live with uncertainty. In particular such a person is more vulnerable to existential anxiety, which is in turn related to being agnostic about an afterlife. On the other hand, this “quest” perspective is also associated with an increased ability to cooperate with those who are different and to have lower indications of prejudice.
Self as a Metaphor
In his book The Self Illusion, psychologist Bruce Hood argues that all of us are under the illusion that we are more autonomous than we really are. He believes that we construct a sense of our own identity and our sense of self over our lifespan. However, the story we create is embedded in memories that are highly influenced by our relationships and change over time. Another psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, argues that we have two selves, an experiencing self and a remembering one, with the latter overriding the former. While it may be well and good to see metaphor as the basis for religion, psychology, or even God, it is a different matter when we turn that perspective onto ourselves. Yet social psychologists have done just that. In a variety of experiments, they have demonstrated how easily we can be influenced by social forces or by our brains’ own processes, especially in decision making. Yet our brains are wired to protect us from such debilitating self-knowledge. Is our sense of self more a metaphor that compartmentalizes such dependence in order to encourage risk taking and exploration?
This essay began with an appreciation of metaphors as our best descriptors of the intangible. And so much is intangible. The challenge is to tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty so as to celebrate the mystery of the unknown. Likewise, although connections to others may influence us in ways that remain outside our awareness, a variety of relationships supports our flourishing. Finally, we are built to be questioners and questers. It is as though part of our brain is celebrating the wonder of it all, while another part frantically tries to make sense of the wonder. Something like a remembering self tries to put words around the experience of awe occasionally found in a religious service or in a therapy office: it’s metaphors all the way down.
