Perhaps no poet in the world has ever written about the mysteries of life as has Rumi. After being rendered unconscious by Shamas, who questioned him, he woke a God-intoxicated man.

Whereas other luminaries of the poetic guild of the world are symbolic of their country, such as Shakespeare in England who reformed and forged a new language or Dante initially, it seems to me no one can equal Rumi's knowledge of mankind in its complete density into the coarseness of life, in its sensuality, in its cunning and trickery or in its potential spirituality.

He knew all peoples - the bakers, the shoemakers, the goat and sheepherders, the soldiers, the rulers - those who make up the fabric of a culture in its daily life. He knew of the "mysteries" and wrote endlessly of his thirst, his hunger, his desperate reaching toward and drowning in the endless ocean, in the endless light, in the delight of the ineffable greater than any physical pleasure. He was not a religious man. He declares,

"Not a
Christian or Jew,
Muslim, not Hindu,
Buddhist, Sufi or Zen
Not any religion."

He was a spiritual man - beyond all pigeonholes, beyond all captions, beyond every attempt to shackle and imprison him.

He was one of those blessed few that God shines his unseen light upon in the darkness of the night and anoints them with the ability to apprehend Him directly. He was a man of two worlds, that is he knew all about worldly seductions and they weighed very lightly upon him. He knew the mysteries and in these he plunged effortlessly, everlastingly. We are lucky as people of the world for he speaks to all people in these poems, telling us, informing us, imploring us, deploring us, urging us, encouraging us to plunge into that ocean we seem to fear so much. There is nothing to fear. There is only freedom there. He writes later,

"I belong to the beloved
Have seen the two
worlds as one
That one
call to and know
first, last, outer, inner
only that breathe, breathing
human being."

In another poem, "The Prophet", he says,

Just don't be one of those merchants
Who won't rush to the ocean......
You can't imagine what profit will come

When one of those generous ones (Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon)

Invites you into the fire.
Go quickly.
Don't say
But will it burn me? Will it hurt?

In the words of the poet, this is really what analysis is all about, tearing down the house built of false conviction, false perception, false beliefs, of ego and arrogance and the fear beneath it all. We must not be afraid to sail in the ocean of the unconscious. The returns will be immense, beyond imagination for you and for everyone. I could go on and on with Rumi's poetry. Those from which I quoted are for me the essence of psychoanalysis and important for the future of mankind; Rumi knew that in the thirteenth century in Konya, Turkey (now Afghanistan). We have not learned it today. None of our leaders have learned it so there are endless stupid wars, stupid rivalries, stupid jealousies, stupid intrigues coupled with national patriotic clamor that blots out the world unseen and yet the greater part of a person and the world until the world will just fall apart in its stupidity, in its intellectual arrogance, in its egoism. It is already beginning to break apart. Can't you see it - feel it, know it?

The cynical part of wars, all wars, is that the countries, the powers, calling for peace and cease fire, are the very countries that manufacture and sell those arms. This kind of cynicism breeds distrust and disbelief toward any efforts of peace.

I can rail at the stupidity. We can all do that but Melanie’s dream says why. The mud-man in her dream has been locked up tightly for thousands of years and has become simple minded and stupid. Yet one thing is certain. Beneath this lies an immense rage beyond conception. It is the intuition of the rage in the unconscious that frightens us. However, we must talk to it, acknowledge it and deal with it.

PATIENT HISTORY

Melanie is in her early 30's with blond wavy hair, attractive, shapely, intelligent and a Harvard graduate. For her age she is well along the academic ladder and currently teaching in another well-known Ivy League school.

Her complaint was that nothing was working in her real life. She meant love affairs were not working out and her physical body was not working well either. She had intermittent bouts of constipation and sometimes bloody stools for which she had not consulted a doctor. A new friend, on hearing of these physical problems, persuaded her to seek appropriate help. This she did.

She is the younger of two children the older being a brother, Michael, three years older and married with three small children, one of which is already emotionally and mentally very challenged. They live near New York and Michael commutes to the city to a computer company. He is not very happy. He was the center of attention from his birth on and only recently he broke off all relations with his family feeling that the mother was stifling him, binding him, burdening him with her problems. He couldn't solve them. The father is a professor in fine arts at a western college. He is affable but not really close to his wife or to either child. He seems quite eager to go off and spend time teaching at comparable schools in Europe without bringing his wife along, who herself is a high school teacher. The mother is Irish and, though once beautiful, has fallen into a depression since her son has severed his connection with her and the father.

Throughout the patient's life one thing was stressed - intellectual achievement with the aim of going to an Ivy League school and making your career. Being an obedient child and to get her parent's attention and love, she achieved everything they could have wanted. She also majored in Fine Arts and became thoroughly grounded in all the academic wisdom available. She is also a film devotee with a vast knowledge in that area. She plays the violin almost like a professional. Her mantra for life was excellence in all things.

However, none of her achievements really interested her parents. They simply forgot her in almost everything. She suffers the abuse of neglect as she once suffered a physical neglect by her mother. This required visiting a physician.

It would seem her destiny was to go higher academically and in her personal life pick people, especially love partners, who would use and abuse her not so much physically but emotionally.

Her friends were likewise Ivy League women with great academic facility and achievement. They were equally ignorant of the part that the emotions play in life. They were smart, attractive and hip, ready to climb or claw their way to the top, some already corrupted by the lure of money and high position in the slick, glossy world they inhabited.

At the time of this dream Melanie had been in analysis five months and she was increasingly dismayed that she could not get A+ or 100 percent in the sessions she brought for us to talk about. She was dismayed and frightened that her intellect could not control the emotional truths that were coming from her dreams. In fact, metaphorically, her intellect collapsed before the unconscious. She was also appalled with what she had put up with in the last ten to fifteen years of her life, especially in terms of boyfriends.

This is a very brave woman.

I recount this dream because it so accurately portrays how she was treated in her family. It is a marvelous dream. This would be the first fragment which hardly needs any explanation. The further point of this part is in her surprise at the growth of her oldest nephew which had to do (she offered this explanation) with the child realizing he was at the mercy of two incompetent parents and he had better grow up as quickly as he could. I agree with this interpretation.

Again it was clear the brother treated her as he had been taught by the parents. She was of no account and there was no need to keep her informed about events his family planned even though the patient always kept in touch with him and them and even though she tried to be a real aunt to her nephews and nieces.

DREAM

John got my Xmas note and so he and Rose have decided to reconnect with the family. I’m at the Mall and have just gotten a haircut from Aunty; I wander into California Pizza Kitchen on a hunch that I might run into Rose, knowing that she likes to eat there. Sure enough, she’s there, pushing a baby carriage. She’s cool but civil to me, and it turns out that she’s meeting the family (me included) for lunch, and was therefore expecting to see me. Now everyone’s at the table, and Helen runs up to me, smiling, talking, all signs of autism gone. Walter is walking, and George is so much older that I don’t recognize him at first – he has hair on his chest! Helen seems to like being around me. But the weird thing is, nobody told me about this gathering; luckily, I had had the hunch and found them. [This used to happen all the time in real life; I’d be the last to know about anything in John and Rose’s family, as well as mom and dad’s life.] My whole impression of the lunch is that John and Rose are very pleased with themselves and their happy children.

Coinciding with this lunch is a bizarre occurrence – a guy who reminds me of Chris takes me away from the table because we have to open this old stone sarcophagus-like chest with iron locks on it. Somehow, I am able to open the locks, but it is still sealed tight; in fact, it looks like a solid block of stone with the outline/impression of a lid carved on it. A team of scientists, engineers and military personnel are now standing in a cave-like space, at a distance from the stone chest. I watch as they blow up part of it; I worry that the explosion will extend beyond our cave and hurt my family in the restaurant, which is just outside. The explosion is contained, and there is now a hole in the chest. And out comes a demon! It’s a mud-colored, long-limbed humanoid who stumbles around, addled and wide-eyed. It looks like a brown Gumby and has no fingers, toes or ears, just a mouth and big eyes. (Like a gingerbread man with hard angles.) I see that it’s not really scary at all; in fact, it looks frightened and addled. However, it is 8-ft tall. It manages to lurch out of the room. I ask somebody if we should follow it, detain it, but they say no, we have to just let it go. I get the sense that they are going to open more and more of these stone chests and that more of these “mud-men” will be let loose. I worry about the damage this mud-man will cause in the world.

Dr. B: Who is Chris?

Patient: An old boyfriend.

Dr. B: And what of the sarcophagus?

Patient: Egyptian. A lot in the British Museum. I didn't know why all those people were there - scientists, engineers, military? Well, I can understand the scientists. They would be archeologists, Egyptologists. Engineers maybe because the sarcophagus was locked. It had iron locks. Their expertise would be needed.

Dr. B: The military?

Patient: I don't know.

Dr. B: The location of these two dreams is important because to open up the chest may bring out revelations even more frightening because in a sense this psychoanalysis is opening up the chest of your unconscious. Already we see you welcome the knowledge but at the same time you are frightened by it.

She was quiet.

Dr. B: What's in the sarcophagus also represents the unconscious of mankind. It has been locked away for thousands of years. You know about the discovery of a new pyramid?

Patient: Yes, I know but not really.

Dr. B: The engineer is there to open up the sarcophagus and it is a friend, Chris. The name represents that of the Christ who leads you to the scene. It is the Christ who will bring the knowledge he had, the knowledge that was not listened to by any of the religions of the world.

So about this mud-man. The mud is like ur-man. It's ur-adam for wasn't Adam mud before touched by the spirit to become Adam. So this is the unconscious, which has been locked away for thousands of years, and as you describe, he is looking confused and addled and stumbles away. Now tell me, why didn't you follow him?

Patient: I don't know why. I just stood there like the rest of them and did nothing.

Dr. B: I think the reason you or any of them didn't stop him is because none of them want to become acquainted with the unconscious which has been locked away for thousands of years. I also guess that the military was there because the authorities must have felt there would be a danger to the state. Finally you say there was many more waiting to be opened.

Patient: I think it scares me just as I was scared by the impact of the explosion on my family.

Dr. B: What damage can the mud-man or the unconscious being free cause except to right things, to correct things that have been wrong for centuries. What damage can following Christ do?

COMMENTARY

I found it interesting that a person so new to the work of analysis could come to this concern that has been voiced by many of my patients older in treatment. The dream does reveal the absolute hiddenness of the unconscious and the fact that it must be considered dangerous because the sarcophagus had not been opened from this stone chest and because iron locks had to be put upon it as the stone itself was not enough.

If the patient fears what the damage will do to her family, it is akin to everyone worrying about the damage to their family - that is all the families in the world.

It seems to me that the families of the world have not fared well in this state of ignorance of the greater part of themselves. Why should any of us fear if Christ leads the way?

Simply yet eloquently he was the apostle of union with Source, the apostle of eternal love from Source to man and that each person is connected to Source. Why the fear?

I believe this comes from the many years in which men have not thought or felt that they would be held accountable. I remind the reader of the jaguar in the paper "Tear Down This House". The jaguar is emblematic of the law of cause and effect. If anyone thinks he or she is exempt from this law, he or she is mistaken. I believe what everyone’s fear is the price of that accountability and is being brought to balance. One is brought to balance willingly (it is in one's best interest) or unwillingly, these latter people will continue to be locked in the sarcophagus of timelessness - as they choose.

January 2009