Page 35 - NAMAH-Jan-2017
P. 35
Namah Notes on counselling
presented. Then I have to impress upon them One need not have to deconstruct one idea to
that just as irrespective of class, caste, gender, admit a supposedly better idea but new ideas
religion and colour of skin, they enjoy equal get added up without destroying the existing
status as students of counselling. Similarly, ones. If our educational and counselling
somewhere in the domain of ideas, all curriculums could devise ways and means
contradictory and complementary thoughts to tap the resources of the Higher Mind, we
have equal status and every idea has the could deal more effectively with ‘exclusivism’
right to co-exist with other ideas. This means in individual and public life. At the end of the
that as counsellors they are expected to be day, it is exclusivist thinking that nurtures
perfectly non-judgmental in client-work. In inequality and facilitates dogmatic thinking
fact, clients should not be looked down if and fundamentalist mindsets.
they hold opposite world-views. The subject
with HIV will have to be treated equally like Equality in the vital
the pious moralist. It is the mind which is
the altar at the counselling arena and the Obviously the counsellor has to have an
mind of the sage enjoys equal status and experiential knowledge of the equality in
importance as the mind of the psychopath thinking if it is to be transferred to the client.
in the counsellor’s therapeutic work. This This acting and counselling from experience
implies an abandonment of the prejudices, is a sine qua non of a counselling paradigm
biases, generalisations, parataxic distortions1 that acts through consciousness. Even more
and stereotypes carried by the counsellor that important is to inculcate the discipline of
have accrued through time, got bolstered by equality in the vital plane of consciousness,
cultural inputs and justified by some rationale the domain of passions, desires, ambitions
or the other. and dynamism. This would need a handling
of one’s desires. No desire should be given
Of course, this is too tall a thing to be expected precedence over other desires on the plea that
from counsellors unless they have some there are better desires and baser desires. In
exposure to yoga psychology. By rigorous fact, all desires should be equally rejected
practice that constantly exposes one’s and equally surpassed for establishing true
shortcomings, a counsellor can cultivate equality. Instead of forcefully suppressing
some amount of equality in outlook and the desires or succumbing to their passive
attitude. However if, as has been described in repression, the energy constituting the stuff
yoga psychology, one can shift to a status of of desire has to be sublimated by aligning it
consciousness beyond the ordinary cognitive with the Higher Will or Divine Will.
field, one can have some true experience of
equality. This is because even higher up The conquest over desires takes time; it
is what Sri Aurobindo described as the cannot be achieved instantaneously as the
Higher Mind where all contradictory and subconscious is always prone to send its
complementary ideas co-exist in harmony. pernicious influences as if it has the right
1 Parataxic distortion refers to a general abnormality in emotionality where ideas, thoughts,
feelings and attitudes are not fairly integrated.
35
