What does it mean when people say they talk to God? Fifty years ago when I was a resident in the VA Neuropsychiatric Hospital in West Los Angeles, it usually meant that someone was psychotic or schizophrenic. Obviously that stigma has passed for certain politicians who are also members of certain evangelical groups say it without qualm. It should not be dismissed. It would be useful if any such person would sit down with a psychiatrist or psychoanalysis to describe exactly what they mean. It would provide a measure of sanity or a foundation in the process of discourse.

Indeed what does it mean when religion is attempting openly to infiltrate the political process when it is expressly stated in the Constitution there must be a separation between State and Church.

I hope some curious historian somewhere in academia is pursuing this problem of when religion, and which religion, began to feel it had to get into the political process and also to bring a bagful of injunctions given by God. They say or think that the rest of the body politic must obey these injunctions by law. That civil law must bow to some religious idea of law. Obviously these are serious questions that must be addressed. I hope these researchers are working somewhere. And we must remember the Constitution states that church and state are to be separate.

To my knowledge the Bible does not put forth ideas as to how people are to live their lives or how they are to use their bodies. As far as I know every person is in complete charge of his/her body and mind and responsible for what they want to do with these entities.

It is also true that my 60 years of being a psychoanalyst leaves me a little skeptical when men say they bring a message from God as to how to conduct themselves in life. It seems to me that the messages that “God” has given mankind have to date been ignored. I would want to know how God gave these people the messages and I would want to know something about their psyche.

We do know that in the time following Jesus Christ many sects formed and great tracts were written. We know that in 323 A.D. Bishop Eusebius held the Council of Nicea to decide which tracts or books should go into the Bible. My skepticism is very strong about a group of men meeting, deciding an agenda and having an agenda that I think has little to do with God. It has a lot more to do with the further establishment and growth of the church, as they knew it then. As far as I can determine, the mind of Man has not changed psychologically for thousands of years. Today people would be asking the same question - what is it this group was pushing and for what reason? It also raises the question of why so many people, that is however many subscribe to a particular service, find it appealing and why is there an attempt to push their beliefs on the rest of the people many of whom have their own churches which have their own agendas? What is the “civil population” doing about the encroachment of these groups on civil liberties?

All the above is open to many questions. In this essay I would like to talk about a patient who did, in this dream, achieve a contact with Divine mind. The dream describes the history of it. I can say it was not an easy climb. It was done alone, as such journeys are, and the joy that the patient felt was hers alone for her achievement.

This is the patient in my essay “The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same”. This is the session which reveals the process.

SESSION

Patient: So I think what happened last night has to do with my dreams.

I was at my Mom’s house last night and we were talking about my brother. He isn’t sure whether he should continue at the law firm or branch out and go into business for himself. He just isn’t sure. He complains all the time about how his boss demands long hours and doesn’t give him the credit he deserves, but I don’t think he stands up for himself enough at work. My mom was talking about how she feels he just gives all his coworkers the credit and works so hard and she couldn’t figure out where he got that tendency. Then she was telling me about how her back was hurt and I was trying to get her to do some things that might actually help her feel better and it was like for each thing I suggested, she had a reason why it wasn’t going to work. I told her to go to the acupuncturist and she didn’t think it would work. Then I told her to take this homeopathic pain reliever and she told me that actually made her feel worse, which I find hard to believe. It was so clear she had to stay in pain.

Patient: Then I had two dreams last night that I think go together and I think further what we were talking about yesterday.

DREAM ONE

In the first dream I was going to a high school reunion and somehow my brother was there and two of my cousins as well. I was wearing a really casual outfit and flip-flops and I had to walk up this sort of dirt or gravel road to the gymnasium where the reunion was. There was a place in the road where it suddenly got very steep and everyone around me was saying that it was very hard to get up that part and I just decided that I would hold on to the chain link fence at one side. I held the fence and then took the three steps necessary to clear that part of the road. Then it was easy to get up the rest of the way. The others around me commented that it was a good idea to use the fence and I was surprised that no one else did. They were congratulating me for making it up the steep part. Then I go the gymnasium and there is an arts and crafts festival there. I walk around and buy a bracelet with green gemstones. Then I go to another stand and a woman wants me to try on another bracelet, also with green stones. There is a price tag hanging from it, but I can’t see how much it costs. She fastens it around my wrist and I like it. I am wondering whether I can buy it and how much it will cost. Then she says she wants to give it to me. Normally I would not feel comfortable accepting it and would feel like I couldn’t accept a gift that nice from a woman I don’t know. A little voice in my head tells me that it is ok to take the gift. I tell her I like it and I accept it. It is beautiful.

DREAM TWO

I had a dream that I was on a city bus and there was a guy on it and he was flirting with me. He seemed to be nice and was friendly and then at some point he started to hit me. He hit me and hit me over and over. I tried to fight back, but I knew that I wasn’t strong enough to actually hurt him because he was a pretty large man. I think I finally found a way to kick him in the stomach and I kept yelling at him and saying that it wasn’t ok for him to hit me and I would not stand for it and I was not ok. I knew the whole time that he wasn’t going to hurt me in a serious way, but he was going to bruise me quite a bit.

ASSOCIATIONS

In the first part of the dream there was this dirt path. Maybe it was dirt and gravel and I had on this really casual outfit and the flip-flops and I was trying to get up the hill. It was difficult and it seemed like the people standing around didn’t really think I could do it, but then it seemed very easy once I grabbed onto the fence. I had to take these three steps up the steepest part of the hill and then it was easy. In the next part, I am actually in the gymnasium and the reunion is happening. It is more like a craft fair and there are all these stands and I buy a bracelet. It is really pretty and made of these nice green stones. Then I go to the other stand and this woman wants to give me the other bracelet. It is beautiful and I usually don’t feel comfortable accepting something in that way, but I think I have a conversation with myself and decide that I can accept it. It was such a beautiful bracelet.

So all that is going on in the first dream and then in the next dream I am being beaten up on the bus. It all started out fine and I was standing there on the bus and maybe someone moves or exits and I am able to sit down. A guy starts talking to me and almost seems like he is flirting with me and it all seems friendly and then out of nowhere he just starts to hit me. He keeps hitting me and I sort of have this feeling like I will be okay, but I am upset and it hurts. I am yelling at him and telling him that he can’t do that anymore and I keep yelling. No one on the bus helps me. I can’t believe it. No one even stops him.

Dr. B: I think that the woman that gives you the bracelet is the Divine Mother. You are able to accept it. It is what you get for going up the hill. It is very simple; you just walk up the hill. I think that I am the chain link fence and if you hold on to me, through the interpretations I give you, you can walk up the hill.

Patient: I thought that you were the chain link fence. That feels right.

Dr. B: It is very simple and no big event. No fanfare. You just have to keep walking and then the Divine Mother rewards you. It is really very simple.

Patient: The bracelet was really beautiful too. It was just so pretty and I was very happy to have it. I actually couldn’t believe she was giving it to me, but I loved it.

Dr. B: The second part shows you that your mother does not like the change. She wants to keep her suffering and turns all the things you offer for help into things that don’t work or are negative. So now help is negative and the suffering, the pain is to be kept. She does not like the change in you and we see it in the unconscious. She is beating you up, although it is good that you are telling her that it is not okay and you will not stand for it.

COMMENTARY

For the patient, reaching the top of the hill is a great achievement. It indicates the possibility of her retaining her high self. The question is can she maintain that high state.

It has been remarked that the price of liberty is only obtained with constant vigilance. This country has seen, almost unknowingly, a decline in liberties. To maintain this state of contact with one’s high self and, consequently with Divine Mind, requires that kind of vigilance. The more one does it, the easier it becomes. One must keep in mind that it is very easy to fall away. The call of the imprint is ever with us. The internal saboteur is lurking. These two issues are put into pale power the more one lives at the top of the hill. But the rewards are great.

As an adjunct on discovering this problem, I believe it is much like the toxins that inhabit the physical body. It seems everyone knows that our environment is toxic, that our food may be adulterated. This accounts for the great allure of organic food and why stores like Whole Foods in America, and whatever they may be called in Europe or elsewhere, are greatly in vogue. Likewise the mind has to be cleansed with similar anti-oxidants and probiotics. In psychoanalysis we call these “interpretations” which alleviate or destroy the psychic toxins - the ones that come every day in the form of fear, frustration, anxiety, stress of any kind. These daily insults to the psyche always find a connection to the unconscious and to the unconscious dramas lying untouched. These are linked to the experiences of early infantile and pre-natal life and early childhood.

Needless to say, interpretations are effective only when they hit these areas of trauma illuminating them and diminishing them bit by bit so they no longer are putting out negative vibrations and causing negative provocative behavior.

The accumulation of these negative vibrations over a lifetime is considerable. The mistakes people make in their lives are also considerable. Everyone has erred. The problem with many wrong turns in life is that they accumulate. Many times it is difficult for a person on his/her own to state their specific problem let alone find the right solution. Everyone.

Is it any wonder that when life ends the question is what happens? Some people think nothing happens. One goes away, dies. However, in the history of the world some people have thought deeply about this question. For example the Tibetans have a written text – the Tibetan Book of the Dead – that articulates the soul’s journey when the body dies. It is not an easy journey. It is one full of pitfalls resembling real life. Wrong turns get one into deep trouble.

I mention this because one can shrug and say “those crazy Monks”. However there is a Christian church in Bulgaria with frescos on its walls depicting the soul’s journey after death. I would imagine this would have been common. What it means is that there was a time when such knowledge was widespread. Today the haste and buzz of our culture eschews it. That does not mean it does not exist.

My belief, apropos this spiritual knowledge, is that men carry a heavy burden not only to be responsible for what we have done in our personal lives but for what we may have done in past lives to women. It is clear from the essays I have written that the feminine consciousness in the female body and mind has been battered for thousands of years. They have been mistreated in every conceivable way. Man has been afraid of the femininity of woman. Man has been afraid of woman’s beauty, creativity and sexuality.

Even in our modern times, in our modern America, strenuous attempts are being made to curtail women’s rights to their minds and bodies and to their private lives. Could it be the reincarnation of those who might have been the men who burned witches in Salem or burned witches in the Middle Ages? Those women who go along with this credo are culturally indoctrinated, indeed familiarly. How else to explain a woman giving up her right to her natural feminine self except by such indoctrination fueled by fear.

It is along the line of blue-collar workers voting with the Republican Party, which openly says it will take away workers rights and impoverish them as much as it can. These are issues deep in the unconscious of the psyche of these people.

These actions on the part of the religious right, who advocate their philosophy with God, provoke the question of proof. The best and only proof is not a written paragraph in some manuscript but in the mind of the person who puts that proposition forward. I say, let me see your unconscious mind. Let us determine scientifically how that idea has arisen and why it has taken hold. It evokes suspicion to hear “God has spoken to me”. To my knowledge the one thing that God has said metaphorically through his sole begotten son, Jesus, is love. To control another person, a woman, to make stringent laws infringing on any persons psyche or body is not love.

As the young people say, mind your business and give it a rest.

To return to the patient’s account of the session, I want to add that the associations of the man on the bus, the flirting, were the links made to her father. The beating, which fundamentally she knew was not going to hurt her, was a psychic one. She was picking up the disapproval of her gains by her father who had also assumed a maternal role in her life. Both parents had not liked the change, unconsciously. Families, that is parents, do not like the changes in their children. I have gotten accustomed to patients who have made profound changes in their lives only to visit their parents or siblings and the changes are not noticed. I believe that since only the patient has changed, family members continue to hold the old imago of the patient in their minds and speak to this; change is a jolt to the people who have known the patient before. Patients are often thus crestfallen because they come with their newfound character and there is no applause. If there is to be applause, the patient has to give it themselves.

In the context of this dream, I am reminded of a dream by another patient, Dr. Dombrowski, who has been the subject of a number of my essays. His history can be reviewed by looking at any one of my essays about him. I want to remind the reader that his father, a self-made millionaire, was a violent and unpredictable man. At the same time it turned out his mother was no less violent or predictable. The mother’s mother saved the patient’s life by loving him.

Suffering from a serious sleep disturbance as a small child, he could sleep only with his grandmother. She was an exceedingly religious woman. She could quiet him down by reading stories of the saints. As she read to him, he could feel safe enough to fall asleep.

DREAM

In a recent dream he was walking on a farm and inadvertently fell, up to his thigh, in muddy water. He got out and continued on his way to the barn. His objective was to get to the loft. There was a square hole, two feet by two feet. He tried to get through. He got his arms through and, although a very strong man, he couldn’t seem to lift himself up. This is where the dream ended.

His associations led to his grandmother and her house, which had a lot of land. She farmed some of it. His father, on coming into the family, acquired the property, renovated the house and turned the land to a different use. In his dream the leg covered with mud was seen as the part identified with his grandmother’s love and her devotion to the saints. It would appear as if the rest of him was dipped in his parent’s pathology. This is entirely true. He has been identified with each parent and, in his life, he has mostly followed the imprint his mother has given him. If it had not been for the analytic work, the consequences of this imprint would have been death. Three younger siblings have already died. In his life he has made many mistakes and he has spent a good number of years retracing his steps to start anew.

Only one thing has kept him alive. This is an adherence in a small part of him (grandmother) to his analysis and he profoundly acknowledges that. He shows here an attempt to achieve the “loft” which is no easy job. His physical exertions are an indication of his emotional ones. It is noteworthy that he has occasionally dreamt of being in a state of mind to be able to receive that emotion feeling. I suppose religious people would name that state “grace”. In that state, each time it happened, he began to cry. This cry is not a superficial tearing but a catch in the chest overcoming one so that speech is impossible. That is what people seem to do when they feel humble and joyous that the Divine has noticed them. I might add that Dr. D is one of the most vehement anti church, anti religion people that I have ever met, with good reason. It came as a shock to him to have these spiritual dreams. They all called him back and connected him with his grandmother as his savior.

Of course, the only other noteworthy item is the link fence, as it pertains to the first patient’s dream, which requires no comment.

That sense is there for everyone.

November 2011