Page 44 - NAMAH-Jan-2018

Namah Vol. 25, Issue 4, 15th January 2018

the turbulent 1960s — the decade of Che cultivate certain virtues. Among many things,
Guevera, Chairman Mao, Fidel Castro and the She says:
Vietnam War. In India, it saw the surfacing
of the Naxalite movement. It was an era “Let him strive to conquer poverty, the cause of
of the revolutionary spirit of freedom, the hunger, which makes so many mothers grieve
triumph of the weak and the strength of the because their children have no bread (1).”
downtrodden. It was a decade of a whirlwind
of high emotional fervour. It attracted the best Our client was taken aback. Here was the
of the intellects and the more adventurous of Divine Mother, an exalted spiritual figure,
the romantics. When it passed, many of its echoing the sentiments of the Communists!
votaries were left wounded, forlorn, forsaken.
Our client was one of those who had been He was more impressed when he read one
psychologically affected when all hopes of of Sri Aurobindo’s aphorisms:
social equality came crashing and capitalism
reared its head with the lure of a consumerist “Help the poor while the poor are with thee;
culture. but study also and strive that there may be no
poor for thy assistance (2).”
In India, many of the champions of the
ultra-left movement of the 1960s became For the first time, he was confronted with a
demoralised and quite a few suffered from spiritual world-view that did not eulogise
depressive spells. Among this group were charity but sought to rise above the necessity
some whose suffering started in an existential of charity. He shifted his focus from the
mode but switched to endogenous depression study of Marxism to developmental economics.
if there was a vulnerability for it. It was
difficult to treat such clients, as there was Our client felt reassured that, though
an existential void that could be neither the revolutionary spirit of the 1960s
fully mitigated with drugs nor resolved by had waned, the ideals could continue to
standard counselling techniques. A therapist exist. The denouement shifts but the Truth
could not easily impose a positive world- persists.
view to someone whose vision of a new
global order based on social and economic His mental agony improved; the drugs
equality was shattered. Our client was worked better and the compliance in
such an individual who even when deeply counselling got strengthened.
depressed would not be satisfied with the
usual counselling sermons. Nearly a decade after this interaction with
the therapist, the Berlin Wall fell down and
Knowing the client’s passion for children’s subsequently the Soviet Union collapsed.
literature, the therapist gave him to read the The leftist mindset in general tried to cope
book, Tales of All Times which chronicled with this crisis by employing the defence
stories narrated by The Mother to the children mechanism of rationalisation. Nothing
of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. There is a point seemed to click. Our client had a fresh relapse
where She extols children to appreciate and of depression.

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