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Namah Notes on counselling

violence, ethnocentrism, fanaticism, drug consciousness’ where universal forces play,
abuse, globalisation, class conflicts, crowd intermingle and interact with the individual
behaviour, gender issues and changing consciousness. In the cosmic consciousness,
familial values. The social dimension of one feels identified with the universe (in
a consciousness model should address the metaphysical sense), in other words, the
this collective consciousness vis-a-vis the individual self is identified with the cosmic
individual consciousness. self. The sense of the individual ‘I’ changes to a
poise of universality. When spiritual seekers
Indian spirituality has been conventionally in India tried to understand the raison-d-
criticised for having laid more emphasis être of this experience of ‘universality’
on individual salvation rather than on the vis-a-vis ‘individuality’, they discovered a
flowering of the collective consciousness. Sri poise of ‘transcendence’, which supported
Aurobindo dealt with this imbalance at two and surpassed both the individuality and
important levels. First, at the psychological the universality. They found that it was the
level, he envisioned how the inner freedom, same consciousness that expressed itself
liberty and equality could be harmonised simultaneously in the three different poises of
with the outer freedom, liberty and equality transcendence, universality and individuality
to construct a consciousness paradigm of and named it as the True Being or Brahman.
global human unity. Secondly, He charted a Yogis have described that on gaining the highest
progressive evolution of consciousness along mystic realisation, one makes an immediate
a transformative trajectory to describe how experiential contact with this Being or Brahman
transformed individuals would constitute as ‘pure consciousness’. This Being (Brahman)
higher-order gnostic collectivities. experienced as the ground of the universe was
also identified with the Self (Atman), the
The spiritual dimension ground of our psychological existence. Thus,
a consciousness-based model of psychology
The world belongs as much to the scientist has to take cognisance of this spiritual reality
and the pragmatist as to the mystic, the that is no less valid then the material reality.
saint and the seer. Psychology has not only
to concern itself with the consciousness of the Vignette
average person, but also with the consciousness
of Christ and the Buddha. Ordinarily, the A medical anthropologist from the UK,
term ‘oneself’ refers to the experience of who had some exposure to shamanism, was
an individual who is anatomically limited interviewing spiritual and occult healers in
by the skin, physiologically modulated by India to find out how they viewed psychiatric
the senses, psychologically organised around problems and whether they collaborated with
the ego and cognitively guided by reason. modern psychiatrists. She went to a remote
However, mystical and spiritual experience village near the India-Bangladesh border and
have testified that one can cultivate a poise interviewed a venerated Muslim spiritual
of universality in which the limitations of faith healer. He was in his late seventies but
the body, the senses, the ego and the mind still catered daily to a large clientele from all
disappear, and one becomes aware of a ‘cosmic faiths. He explained to the anthropologist

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