The Supplicate Order: Invocation of the Sacred

By Patricia M. Brown Ph.D.

Supplication captures a universal, cross-cultural approach to spirituality. Authored by Dr. Patricia Brown, The Supplicate Order defines supplication as an expression for the laws and principles that guide a spiritual aspirant toward communion with the sacred (mysteries), progressing toward an expanded perception of life and grateful reception of blessings, positive creativity, healing, and wisdom. It shows how humanity bridges the manifest explicate order and the unmanifest implicate order.

Offering a fresh perspective on supplication, The Supplicate Order carries four messages that pertain to spiritual aspirants at any level: Dont abandon yourself (to self-loathing or to another persons or groups absolute power over you) Start with what you know to do (dont be too eager to get exotic or far removed from your resonant spiritual persuasion) Never think you know everything Dont give up Brown explains how key universal principles verify the human capacity to bring forth gifts of the spirit, while psychological health and development determine invocatory efforts and receptive capacities. The Supplicate Order integrates global spiritual wisdom and psychological knowledge with the trends of new science, highlighting the human invocation of the sacred.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 10, 2009
• ISBN: 9780595886968

Patricia M. Brown Ph.D.

Patricia M. Brown, PhD, (Gayatri) is a licensed clinical psychologist and has practiced for thirty-four years since receiving her PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. Brown underwent a twenty-six-year Ayurvedic apprenticeship, studying spiritual and holistic principles. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with her husband.

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ISBN: 978-0-595-44367-3 (sc)

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iUniverse rev. date: 4/01/2009

Table of Contents

Preface

Prologue

Introduction

Book I.   PRINCIPLES OF SUPPLICATION

Chapter I :   Defining Supplication

Chapter II :   Supplication: Structure, Content, and Process

Book II.   THE HUMAN SUPPLICANT

Chapter III :   The Self as the Supplicate Mediator: Interlocking Maps

Chapter IV :   Toward a Balanced Personality with Applications in Psychotherapy

Chapter V :   Essential Principles of Character Growth and Higher Development

Book III.   THE INFUSION OF SPIRIT

Chapter VI :   Cross-Cultural Perspectives: A Ritual Frame Ancient Law, Sacred Culture, Ancient Cautions

Chapter VII :   Exploring the Holographic Perspective

Chapter VIII :   Cultural and Personal Constraints and Limitations upon the Supplicate Order

Summary of The Supplicate Order: Invocation of the Sacred The Psychology of Supplication—Reconciliation, Congruence, Resonance

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

PERMISSIONS

Thanks to Andrew Lehman for his cartoon artistry and permission.

Thanks to Susanne Cook-Grueter, PhD, for permission to use her writings from her dissertation (Harvard University), her draft of her book, and articles.

Thanks to Sandra Edelman for permission to use her writings in Turning the Gorgon, Spring Publications, Connecticut © 1998.

Thanks to Inner Traditions for permission to use Ervin Laszlo’s writings from Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything © 2004, Rochester, Vermont, www.InnerTraditions.com.

Thanks to Red Wheel/Weiser and Conari Press and Dr. Jill Mellick for permission to use her writings in The Natural Artistry of Dreams, Conari Press © 1996, Berkeley, California, www.redwheelweiser.com.

Thanks to Pia Mellody for her kind permission to use her post-induction therapy training material, The Meadows, Wickenburg, Arizona.

Thanks to Shambhala Press for permission to use Ken Wilber’s writings, from Integral Psychology by Ken Wilber © 2000. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston, Massachusetts.

And for permission to use excerpts from Ego and Archetype by Edward Edinger © 1992. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston, Massachusetts, www.shambhala.com.

Thanks for the use of Roger Walsh’s writings from Essential Spirituality © 1999. Reprinted with permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, www.wiley.com.

Thanks to Adyar Press for permission to use quotes reproduced from The Science of Yoga by I. K. Taimni and with permission from The Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Chennai 600 020, India © 1999, http://www.ts-adyar.org.

Thanks to HarperCollins Publishers for permission to use quotations from Michael Talbot’s The Holographic Universe © 1990, Huston Smith’s Forgotten Truth © 1976, and Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Tao Te Ching, Harper Perennials, New York © 1988, www.harpercollins.com.

Thanks for fair use of quotations in this scholarly work from the Tao Te Ching © 1988 translated by Victor H. Mair, Bantam New Age Books; also for the Lao Tzu translation by D. C. Lau, Tao Te Ching, Everyman’s Library, A. A. Knopf, UK © 1989; for the Lao Tzu translation by D. Lin, Tao Te Ching, Skylight Paths, Woodstock, Vermont © 2006; and for quotations from the Light of Asia, translated by Sir Edwin Arnold, (Bombay and Calcutta: Jaico Pub., 1949); a quote from T. S. Eliot’s Burnt Norton, T. S. Eliot: The Complete Poems and Plays (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1962); and quotations by the works of Tagore in Rabindranath Tagore: An Anthology, K. Dutta, and A. Robinson (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997). Thanks to Penguin Classics, UK, for the use of quotations from The Dhammapada © 1972 translated by Juan Mascaro, www.penguin.co.uk; to Ganesh and Company for information from Sir John Woodroffe’s The Garland of Letters; to Dover press for Author Avalon’s Serpent Power; and to the several East Indian works conveying the teachings of Mother Meera, Shri Anandamayi Ma, and Shri Aurobindo.

Thanks to Princeton University Press for permission to use quotations from Richard Wilhelm’s I Ching: The Book of Changes © 1950, Bollingen Foundation, Inc., www.press.princeton.edu.

Thanks to Yale University Press for permission to use excerpts from Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill, www.yalebooks.com.

Thanks to the many other references under fair use herein noted who allowed their quotations to be used for research and scholarship, in accord with the stated purposes of this manuscript.

Thanks also for artistic and photographic assistance in editing where noted including Gip Brown, Keegan Brown and his artistry, Sethuram Seshadri, and Richard Young’s artistry.

Particular thanks to Susan MacDonald, for her photographs and for her work composing the index and her help with the glossary.

Special thanks to the following collections:

Robert and Diane Adair, Vero Beach, Florida; Shrikrishna Kashyap, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Elizabeth Ruda, San Antonio, Texas; Rancho Ancon, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Andrea Seidel collection, Miami, Florida.

Front cover art: Photo by Patricia Brown of Shrikrishna Kashyap’s hands taken in the garden of Natasha Mansfield, PhD, Miami, Florida.

Back cover art: Photo by Patricia Brown of Zuni fetishes: Corn Maiden by Claudia Peina with Eagle, artist unknown.

Author photo by Natasha Mansfield, PhD.

Songs from Ave: A Folk Opera of the Two Marys and from Third World are printed with permission of the author [Patricia M. Brown, PhD (Gayatri)].

Case Studies are presented with strict observation of client and other’s confidentiality, according to American Psychological Association guidelines.

NOTE: Bolding in text and quotes are author’s boldings, unless otherwise noted.

The Supplicate Order:

Invocation of the Sacred

by Gayatri (Patricia M. Brown, PhD)

figure_1__kiva_ladder_at_bandelier.tif

Figure 1: Kiva ladder at Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico.

Photo by Gip Brown, edits PB.

How humanity bridges the manifest Explicate Order

and the unmanifest Implicate Order

to bring forth sacred life

The Supplicate Order:

Invocation of the Sacred

2008 © Gayatri (Patricia Brown, PhD)

Creative fire never tires

Throughout the day or night

Flowers draped in dewdrops

Reflect all the Lyte.

Lifetime’s throb longing sob

Lets go of memory

Limitation’s ending

Makes way for harmony.

Blessed grace slows the pace

For the mystic union.

Hands fold in stillness

Wait for communion.

Silent power of the hour

Life in life in death.

Giver of all strength

Never is bereft.

Holy grail, mystery’s sail

Transformer of the flesh

Circles ever upward,

The soul is born, afresh.

Excerpt of LYTE, song from Ave:

A Folk Opera of the Two Marys by © Gayatri

GRATITUDE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to: Gip Brown, my kind and generous husband; and our children for their willingness to take the right path and search for truth, beauty, and goodness; our magnanimous, ineffable teacher and well-wisher Shrikrishna Kashyap or Dr. Shyam; Susan MacDonald, MA, my adorable sister for her editing help, indexing, glossary help, and support; Sandra Phelps Canzone, MS, DOM, for her unselfish compassion and healing light; my supportive brother and sister-in-law Bill and Ann Faulkner; David Canzone, DOM, for his compassionate and lighthearted example; Steve Fawcett and Kate Shane for their inspiring music; Natasha (Toby) Mansfield, PhD, for her lovely garden and photography; Susanne Cook-Grueter, PhD, for her profound work and insights; Larry Dossey, MD, for his endorsement and kindness; Sandra Edelman, MS, for her editing support, writings, and warm encouragement; Cathaleene Jones Macias, PhD, for her amazing insights and editing help; Joe Neidhardt, MD, for his editing commentary and supportive advice; Scott Nelson, MD, for his thorough review and patient advice; William Braud, PhD, for his supportive commentary; James Fadiman, PhD, for his incisive and helpful feedback; Ira Iscoe, PhD, for his lifelong humanism, support, and wonderful guidance; Lizabeth Langston, MEd, for her lifelong friendship and magnetic confidence; Jill Mellick, PhD, for her shining example and poetic soul; Pia Mellody, RN, LISAC, for her inspiration, enthusiasm, and encouragement; Jeanne Shutes, PhD, for her unfailing goodwill and backing; Charlie Sokolof for his help in editing a portion of the manuscript; Lynn Walters, MS, for her steady confidence and sure insight; Andrea Mantell Seidel, PhD, for her lifelong friendship, artistic soul, and unflinching encouragement; William Vania for his ever unselfish assistance in every way; and Zuleikha for her deep inspiration and faith in me; and all our friends at Wisdom Wave who encouraged me and so patiently listened to and/or reviewed the material, while I sorted out these ideas.

Further thanks to Brenda Griffiths, MD, Elliott and Susan McDowell and Kashi Rai, MD, for their unfailing love for and confidence in Dr. Shyam and Wisdom Wave; thanks also to my friends Sheila Fling, PhD; Daryn Curtis; Ananda MaGee, MA; Mary Roessel, MD; Deborah Kesten, MPH; and Larry Scherwitz, PhD; and the great artistry of Richard Young.

PREFACE

Why I had to write this book

Like many spiritual aspirants, I have been struggling with my own self-integration, how to adapt soundly to the strains of living and a multiplicity of messages and teachings as well as contradictory longings, confusing instincts, and clashing emotions. This voyage began with my birth into a military family stationed in Japan immediately after World War II. With Japan having only recently been pounded with exploding atomic bombs, I grew up with a pervasive chill down to the bones. This dark hollowness arose from the ubiquitous terrors of war, cruelty, and hatred. In spite of this lifelong sense of foreboding, there remained a persistent contention that life meant something, that it had meaning, purpose, even magnificence. Influences from Eastern cultures stayed with me. Underlying a global worldview and intimations of universality, there grew a tearful supplicate longing for beauty, healing, peace, and ecstatic glory. The opposites were all too clear to me and their reconciliation elusive.

When a person, even vicariously, lives close to the theme of death and suffering as daily fare in childhood, the satisfactions and intrigues of socialization do not suffice. For one thing, it changed all too often. For another, we moved all too often. Add severe paternal alcoholism, family disruption, and the absence of communal roots to the mix, and essential questions about life, affliction, suffering, and fatality arise. With ongoing internal or external warfare, desperation permeates the life process, and the human being often turns toward the mysterious originator or the transcendental beyond for deliverance. These struggles and many other developmental confrontations propelled me to investigate the secrets of growth and healing, leading to profound experiences with sudden creativity as in the writing of two musical plays with no prior training in music. Later states of ecstatic bliss in the form of the Sabija Samadhi of sacred love melded together the masculine and feminine within, answering the call of my heart’s longing. Advanced spiritual practitioners know that Samadhi, or the union with the sacred comes in many forms, with the ultimate being Nirvikalpa or Nirbija Samadhi,¹ the final stage of enlightenment possible for a human being. What this means to me is that the journey is not over, but now my footing is secure and I cannot turn back. There is literally no place else to go. Nonetheless, I know life will continue to throw out its tapas or deprivations and austerities to heat things up to a high degree, which is the actual translation of the Sanskrit word tapas. If not dispersed by addiction, acting out, or unloading on others, this heat inside has the power to transform psychological complexes and outworn factors of personality. Even disappointment can lead to the fire of self-reflective remorse, a fire of tapas in itself. Aurobindo’s words resound² in this characterization of Yoga, meaning yoking oneself to and arriving at union with the divine:

All life is a secret Yoga, an obscure growth of nature toward the discovery and fulfillment of the divine principle hidden in her, which becomes progressively less obscure, more self-conscient, and luminous …

Four messages come into view, no matter what level the spiritual aspirant may be:

1.   Don’t ever abandon yourself (to self-loathing or to another person’s or group’s absolute power over you).

2.   Start with what you know to do (i.e., don’t be too eager to get exotic or far removed from your resonant spiritual persuasion).

3.   Never think you know everything, and

4.   Don’t give up, even to your last breath. Here’s why.

Most global religions avow that the sacred will reciprocate the call, entreaty, or supplication of an earnest seeker. The Bhagavad Gita,³ Chapter IX, of India asserts the assurance of divine dispensation in this way:

Even if the most sinful worship Me, with devotion to none else, he too should indeed be regarded as righteous, for he has rightly resolved. Soon he becomes righteous and attains eternal peace … know thou for certain that My devotee is never destroyed. [Author’s note: Obviously that does not mean the physical body.]

Swami Chidananda⁴ echoes those consoling words, quoting again from the Bhagavad Gita:

This inevitable death, O Arjuna [the human being in the scripture, author’s note], is not for you. It is only this outer vestment that has a beginning and an end. Within you, you shine as the deathless, the eternal, beyond time, the ever-permanent Reality.

That my early spiritual search sometimes took bizarre, pathological, and unwelcome outlines perhaps goes without saying in our modern new age of false prophets, misinterpreted or inflating psychic experiences, and mixed wonders. These experiences with the darker side provided a well-taken warning punch, demanding a clearer direction in how to live a spiritual life. Paramahansa Yogananda’s⁵ book Autobiography of a Yogi, with Yogananda’s mahasamadhia picture, thankfully saved me in many ways, because gazing on the face of pure love stirred something deeply profound within. Still, a friend’s relationship to Yogananda’s material struck me as illuminating one of the pitfalls of practice. She decided she would be like Saint Therese Neumann and see if she could live on no food. When she ended up in a mental hospital, I began to reflect that spiritual pursuits were not a shoo-in to enlightenment but rather could result, with misplaced handling, in disaster. The spiritual life seemed to require more ego strength in terms of discriminating awareness and good judgment than even regular life. The psyche must traverse through an even wider range of phenomena: internal experiences and states, on the one hand, and amazing claims by others, including charismatic, but not always ethical or even practical, teachers and guides encountered along the way. To my reflections, the path(s) seemed already fraught with disturbances. With a clinician’s training, I saw that these pitfalls were most probably the result of the interaction between spiritual practice and personality maladjustment. I suppose I could have been a proper psychologist and abandoned the undertaking altogether, but no other option—not analytical psychology or cognitive behavioral therapy or systems approaches or depth psychology or even an eclectic mix—coalesced sufficiently to resolve my own impossible dilemmas. As the only recourse to my imbalances, what followed was a strict Yogic devotional practice that brought the gifts of balance and increased sanity, unexpected creativity, and profound delight, following in the wake of decades of practice. I am ever grateful to Mantra Yoga, which has allowed me to dedicate myself to an intensifying spiritual practice, without producing experiences that would drive me insane. I know the journey is not over, but I am happily embarked upon it. Now my footing is secure, and I cannot turn back. There is literally no place else to go.

The continuing impact of environment figured strongly in shaping a sense of dedication to the spiritual life. My second year of graduate studies led me to Dale Carnegie’s book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, which I found in a pile of used books someone dropped at my door. What astounded me was that Dale’s material, particularly his chapter on the St. Francis Prayer, was so much more helpful to my mental health than all my studies in psychology. I began to wonder what was wrong and right with this picture. Other friends introduced me to meditation, the Kabbalah and its gypsy cousin the Qabalah, as well as Yoga, Mystic Christianity, and Chinese philosophy. These systems became companions in steering a course through the bewildering political passages of graduate social life, the politics of psychology departments, coursework, and my dissertation. Deeply impressed by the scientific method, I scored highest in my graduate class in the qualifying exam on research, which I mention only to assert that science with its search for truth was always very dear to me, although I did not share the cynicism of colleagues who scoffed at the mention of spirituality. Nevertheless, I was intimidated by persons with a more competitive and perhaps more ruthless streak than I had and baffled by political antipathies among professors, who like all human beings, occasionally covered up their personality conflicts under the guise of intellectual criticism. I began to turn toward the spiritual philosophies I encountered through intriguing synchronistic messages and reaped a wealth of wisdom.

New cultural dimensions opened up upon my arrival in New Mexico. I continued my philosophical studies in the context of politically challenging work in public health and bureaucratic institutions, including the federal Indian Health Service and local public schools. My sociopolitical, clinical training in community psychology with the beloved and brilliant humanitarian, Ira Iscoe, afforded a context of political analysis not generally available to more traditionally trained clinical psychologists. Also reaping understanding from metaphysics in ways to assess political phenomena, I found these studies helpful in evaluating social forces and discerning the proper course of action in defending mental health services, developing new ones, and advocating for the needs of the underdog. Spiritual scriptures served as preceptors toward a deeper interpretation of social and political clashes. How these helped is a long and winding story. Kabbalah, Native American, Yogic, Buddhist, and Chinese studies gave rise to an appreciation of the dance of opposing influences, interpersonally and intrapsychically, that reinforced the model I present in this book. Metaphysics and spiritual practice gave me a measure of wisdom and spiritual fortitude in navigating toward service goals, including writing and obtaining three-fourths of a million dollars in grants for biofeedback, family interventions, juvenile justice and protection, and early childhood intervention. While a community and hospital mental health director, I increased program staff size from seven positions to twenty-two and in an entirely different vein, produced a controversial folk opera in a resistant pre-Renaissance Catholic community. Although I could dismiss invisible reciprocity in favor of materialistic explanations, nothing can really shake the conviction that the spiritual provided genuine support and scaffolding in the face of perplexing oppositional pressures. Some of these pressures only abated at the eleventh hour through acausal meaningful coincidences.

Meanwhile, the darker underbelly of the environment and my psyche played a corresponding role. Living on a three-hundred-year-old adobe hacienda compound generated an abundance of bewildering meditation images and experiences. Reluctantly and skeptically, I realized I had been exposed to and targeted by some of the dark arts mostly through angry child abusers, who availed themselves of some of these services in the local community. Such haunting feelings at home paralleled thirty-two years of public health and Indian Health Service work. Northern New Mexico is replete with ancient indigenous Pueblo cultures; exposure to other tribal groups through the educational and art worlds; traditions of shamanism, witches, and Spanish curanderos; pre-Renaissance and fifteenth-century inquisitional roots of Catholicism; and Sephardic Judaism. These were all juxtaposed alongside Los Alamos, the home of the mushroom cloud and the Atomic Age. No doubt, in this land, potent forces compel the consciousness to acquaint itself with the between-lands of spiritism, psychicism, and black magic. Paradoxically, Santa Fe is also a mecca for highly enthusiastic, occasionally dogmatic health, psychic, and spiritual practitioners of all kinds, which can create a terrible indigestion of assimilation. The present so-called New Age practitioners brought a proliferation of self-help books and techniques, ranging from psychic, shamanistic, and spiritual training to complementary medicine and its collisions with allopathic techniques. Run-of-the-mill egotism, the old wine of self-inflation coupled with ignorance, can still fill up the new bottles of so-called modern spiritual culture. The propagation of so many points of view into the mainstream has also created a lot of confusion. Writers such as Joan Borysenko, Susanne Cook-Grueter, Jim Fadiman, Robert Frager, Jean Houston, Robert Johnson, Ervin Laszlo, Jill Mellick, Pia Mellody, Huston Smith, Roger Walsh, Ken Wilber, Francis Vaughn, Marion Woodman, and many others help sort out this baffling modern mix.

Such a conflicting profusion can wreak havoc upon psychological balance and sanity, as well as interpersonal relations—intimate couples, families, communities, and professional and work relationships. I have observed the impact of diverse spiritual practices not only among my professional peers but also among working class and poor people of various cultural backgrounds, who may turn to their local churches or cultural practitioners: medicine men, shamans, and indigenous priests. The plethora of cultural viewpoints, with resulting indigestion, led to my conviction that there must be general principles more critical to healing and supplicate practice than simply the cultural shells encasing them.

My own New Age shadow is tempered by the fact that I have worked with a broad range of psychotherapeutic clientele. This range is not only cross-cultural but also replete with ordinary persons facing dire circumstances. Many of these folks are poor or barely middle class, trying to eke out a living while they cope with broken communities, deranged relatives, and recurrent hardships. Many do not have any kind of explicit supplicate practice, but some do and the wonder of its applications in their lives leaves me with a sense of veneration and awe. Along with a no-nonsense spiritual teacher, my clientele has kept me from becoming too swept up by the fads and pressures of the day, although I continue to hunt for any techniques that have the capacity to help relieve desolation and make meaning out of suffering. My therapeutic approach is individualistic, a blend of the spiritual and the practical, and rests on a strong belief in the inherent ability of each individual to self-heal. I provide insights when I can and suggest practical interventions. Theoretical formulations include the application of neo-analytical and interpersonal approaches, family and social systems theory, Jungian and other depth psychologies, EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy for trauma), and a mind-body-spirit program with various stress mastery and biofeedback practices. Having researched such techniques for a self-mastery program at the Santa Fe Indian Hospital in 1978, I expanded upon the mind-body-spirit theme in later years with the Integrative Medicine Foundation’s oncology patients, as subsequent findings honed these approaches.

From generic research for what is most universally inclusive across religions, I begin this book with the supplicate perspective. Other sections represent scholarly expansions from many years as a cross-cultural psychotherapist. In spite of my own struggles in applying scientific thinking to unusual phenomena, I have seen positive, even miraculous, outcomes in the lives of persons of faith. Common themes emerge that seem to help establish personal and collective sanity, response-ability, and sanctity, as well as an active connection to the affirming principles of life. By providing a working system of spiritual supplication and mental health, I hope to help those counselors and spiritual directors who lend a hand to their clients in navigating through psychic and spiritual worlds to continue growing in a healthy, humane way. There are often many traps and entanglements in what I would call group-mind. Regardless of a person’s developmental level, it is possible for a person to return to their original self/sense and basic awareness. This return to the little-self/greater-Self axis is a comfort and consolation amid conflicting intra- or interpsychic pressures. The pitfalls of social demands and politics seem to abound in every kind of spiritual group, and I find this alarming and unproductive, albeit grist for the mill. Nearly phobic about others proselytizing or pressuring me, I am weary and wary of people who think they know something when it is clearly only a small piece of an infinite pie.

When I became a mother, the health needs of my babies and collisions with Western medicine’s inadequacies started me on a path of alternative medicine. In this climate of bleak searching, my life teacher, whom I saw in dreams before our meeting, appeared. In spite of this premonition, I still threw his lovely and profound book, The Shoreless Ocean, into the trash, thinking to myself, Not another Indian guru! Kindly, he invited me to attend his series of classes in Ayurveda and later allowed me to consult with him about my psychotherapeutic cases. He invited my husband and me to attend a satsangb where we studied Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras and the great realized sage Shankacharya. We went through the Bhagavad Gita, line by line in Sanskrit. His interpretations were luminous and thrilling. I found myself respecting his Krishnamurti-like discrimination and freedom from doctrinaire approaches. Also impressive was his assiduous adherence to the Ayurvedic principles, only accepting money that came to him, without asking. He became our family doctor and heard an earful of some rather serious childhood and adolescent complaints. Nearly ten thousand patients passed through his door, receiving unexpected healings.

It is impossible to describe a genuine spiritual guru, and he discourages us from describing him or recounting some of his amazing visionary experiences, which he rarely but sometimes shared. He has the most insightful, creative mind I have encountered, and I am eternally grateful to his talent for stalling out my thoughts. Doing so led me to an appreciation of wisdom as opposed to intellectual knowledge alone. Through his patient guidance, I found my present path of supplication. He has assumed an essential role in the dialectic in my life, consisting of intense personal yearning and a pursuit of empirical truth, with respect toward currently evolving practical and researched findings. Shrikrishna Kashyap (Dr. Shyam) has influenced me in so many personal and professional ways another volume would not suffice to describe them. He has stressed the importance of the self/Self as the ultimate touchstone of life, disempowering my naiveté that searched for answers outside. Many times, he has casually tossed out a gem of teaching that I picked up and developed over several years. My supplicate enthusiasm found some outlet in consolidating some of his teachings, as evidenced by the Little Book of the Self: Jewels in the Crown of Self-Realization.⁶ This book implicitly sketches the foundation of the model in the present writing, percolating throughout professional and personal struggles.

INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTERS

A primary reason I have chosen the theme of supplication is that it can capture a universal, cross-cultural approach to spirituality. Here is a preliminary operational definition of supplication:

Supplication is a human process characterized by a humble, sincere appeal or entreaty to one’s self-defined divine, marked by faith or a conviction in the reciprocity between unseen mysteries and the petitioner. Rendered effective or fulfilling by an increasing perception of reciprocity, supplication leads to the reception or manifestation of gifts of the spirit such as wisdom, comfort, fortitude, healing, and grace, as experienced by the practitioner (supplicant).

Perceived reciprocity is a faith-driven impression or intuition of resonant connection with the higher self or the divine, as defined by the petitioner (supplicant). It implies a meaningful mutual exchange between the supplicant and the unseen. The supplicant devotes attention and actions toward the unseen, which responds according to higher wisdom or laws of divine dispensation, sometimes called the will of God, the truth and the way, the ultimate good, the Tao, the Dharma, etc. The perception of these dispensations depends upon the supplicant’s awareness. The interpretation of these dispensations depends upon the level of development in the supplicant’s understanding.

Derived from the Gospels of Mark (11:24), Luke (11:9), and John (16:24), the following adage sums it up: Ask and you shall receive … with the admonition added by James (4:3) provided that you not ask amiss. (See chapter 1 for more complete quotations.) Some of the fruits of supplication extract the flavor of words like redemption, recovery, salvation, restoration, and a deliverance from life problems or reconciliation of them or with them. How a person follows spiritual teachings seemed more essential to me than simply what a person practices in their religious life. Contemplating the difference between the how, the way, and the what led to many of the concepts conveyed in chapter 1, Defining Supplication, and chapter 2, Supplication: Structure, Content, and Process. These chapters will get to the heart of and the keys to supplicate practice, with an essential cross-cultural core that shares commonalities among all faiths.

In brief, The Supplicate Order is an expression for the laws and principles that guide a spiritual aspirant toward communion with the sacred (mysteries), progressing toward an expanded perception of life and grateful reception of blessings, positive creativity, healing, and wisdom.

The general model is encapsulated in the prologue, A Synthesis of Eastern and Western Creation Mythology, and the introduction, An Extension of Creation Mythology for Human Beings: The Reconciliation of Opposites, which are optional reads for those who would like to see the composite cosmology that couches some later theoretical formulations. In a more applicable fashion, this model is described in chapter 3, The Self as the Supplicate Mediator, that emphasizes the importance of the personality self as the supplicate mediator within the dynamics and structure of self/Self-development, related to developmental theory and cosmic perspectives. I take a stab at an integrative model of these, which I hope adds additional structural and dynamic considerations to the tremendous knowledge base synthesized by Ken Wilber, Suzanne Cook-Grueter, Robert Kegan, and other cosmically oriented developmentalists. Harvard’s distinguished developmental chair, Robert Kegan,⁷ encapsulates the process underlying the growth toward self-integration: The psychological meaning of evolution [is] a lifetime activity of differentiating and integrating what is taken as self and what is taken as other.

Chapter 4, Toward a Balanced Personality with Practical Applications to Psychotherapy, outlines some self/Self-harmonizing and psychotherapeutic models that connect to the general model’s synthesis of ideas on personality, which I consider critical to the healthy success of supplication and without which supplication will follow an even bumpier road. This merger of critical therapeutic elements seems to conform to the general model of cosmology and structure of the Anthropos and human personality previously outlined. First referenced in the prologue, some structural and dynamic parallels in personality include the Kabbalistic pillars, related spiritual traditions, and Ken Wilber’s integrative developmental model, blended with a framework acknowledging Pia Mellody’s important practical and theoretical prototype. Many therapists in hospitals and recovery programs find her contributions integral in their work with others. I also outline the tremendous difficulties in overcoming trauma and the impact of early attachment issues and implicit learning upon human supplication. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Pia Mellody, who lives her insights with grace and wisdom. She has gifted psychotherapy with an integrative, but accessible model for functional living that addresses our society-wide problems of addiction and immaturity. Her key constituents in healthy self-harmonization correspond meaningfully to the cross-cultural cosmological paradigm given here. Again, with myself as the primary participant-observer, her valuable insights helped me to establish better boundaries and communications with my guru, my family, and in my professional relationships.

Chapter 5, Essential Principles of Character Growth and Higher Development, shows the primary ethical prescriptions of behavior and the necessity to transmute negative characteristics in the service of growth. The higher reaches of development show differences from normal healthy development, in that certain concerns are reversed, minimized, and/or no longer needed.

Chapter 6, Cross-Cultural Perspectives: A Ritual Frame, Ancient Law, Sacred Culture, and Ancient Cautions, approaches the supplicate order in terms of shared cultural admonitions regarding process and extends the composite model into a global prototype. In this endeavor, I realize I risk pleasing no cultural or ethnic group, but I feel impelled to acknowledge shared realities. Someone else can debate whether this makes sense within a particular system.

In chapter 7, Exploring the Holographic Perspective, I present cosmic perspectives as they relate to the Anthropos or basic self/Self-structure. In earlier chapters, perspectives on self-identification are offered from Aurobindo, Yoga, Kabbalistic pillars, Ken Wilber’s Great Nest of Being based upon Kegan and Cook-Grueter’s research and to lesser extent Native American, Buddhist, Chinese, and a bit of Sufi viewpoints. From these, I try to incorporate David Bohm’s Implicate-Explicate Order of the holographic paradigm along with Laszlo’s wonderful work on science and informational-energy fields. Shrikrishna (or Shyam) Kashyap was the first to introduce me to Bohm and Pribram’s work on the holographic model. His witticism that there was an intermediate Supplicate Order was the constellating catalyst for this book. He went on to say that: The Supplicate is not the duplicate which leads to duplicity. Certain cultural and personal forms shared by many individuals and cultures coalesced into a broad-spectrum structure. These find a home in some of Ervin Laszlo’s works on the resonance of similar elements, including the view that the personality and cultural factors bring in unmanifest (or implicate) energies into explicate (or manifest) formations in a person’s life. The holographic perspective and Ervin Laszlo give us a scientific basis to present this model as a way to consider the questions of supplication: how and why it is expressed in a certain way in someone’s life or culture, the deeper meanings of serendipitous manifestations of spirituality and creativity, and what might help a practitioner or therapist hone in on or refine a person’s spiritual quest.

Finally, chapter 8, Cultural and Personal Constraints and Limitations upon the Supplicate Order, gives an outline of cultural and personal constraints, how they impact upon the Supplicate Order and determine our perception and expression in the Explicate Order. Case studies and examples illustrate principles of congruence, resonance, coalescence, and isomorphic similarity that determine the workings of the Implicate Order and its being pulled into the Explicate Order through principles of supplication.

For further clarification, I have divided this whole volume into three books, with BOOK I including chapters 1 and 2, which outline the general Principles of Supplication. BOOK II covers The Human Supplicant as personality, psyche, and Core Self. It includes chapters 3–5 with the personal self/Core Self theories and psychotherapeutic applications I consider most useful and which most clearly tie in to the general model mentioned in the prologue. BOOK III follows with chapter 6 on cross cultural commonalities, chapter 7 on relevant approaches in modern science, and concludes with chapter 8 summarizing a general paradigm for The Infusion of Spirit.

Our age is full of interpretations of wisdom traditions and modern research findings. I think I have actually written my own quirky version of a scholarly textbook. I can only hope that this book will be useful to those thoughtful readers, psychotherapists, spiritual directors, and practitioners who need another, hopefully fresh, perspective on the subject of supplication. Because of my own life passages, I had to cross many boundaries of science and religion, traditional and sectarian interests, cultural differences, and human conditions. In spite of suffering, the elevation, moments of grace, and profundity of human life point to an ultimate and ongoing fulfillment. The present study is a way of saying that this commotion of life and baffling bewilderment is not for naught, but hides a beauty and grandeur we can only respond to with awe.

Patricia M. Brown, PhD

(Gayatri)

Santa Fe, New Mexico

July 4, 2007

PROLOGUE

A Synthesis of Eastern and Western Creation Mythologies:

A Composite Creation Mythc in a Capsule

A ritual frame circumscribes and describes all of creation, the involution of spirit into form and its liberation from identification with form. This liberation occurs with the evolutionary return to sacred identity. The return of sacred identity occurs when the sparks of spirit realize their being as identical with Absolute Spirit. A virtual theater of dynamics, the interplay of life takes place within the mysterious ground of Cosmic Being.

In the beginning was the Word, the first vibration OM, or Amen. The creative source sought to create a companion, something to behold or someone who would reflect its being—something or someone to love. Out of this initial desire came forth the first vibratory disturbance in the totality and perfection of the Absolute. It is noteworthy that desire originally meant of the father. Some Vedic as well as Christian interpretations of the Vedas⁸ call this act of circumscription, or division, Krs. The root of Krs, in Greek and Sanskrit, connects to the identical root word to Christ, as it relates to the primordial sacrifice of oneness into duality.⁹ This division is the original sacrificial energy, the Christ consciousness of the Godhead. The Kabbalistsd call this dividing act the mother letter Shin, or the circumscription, the circle of sacrificial fire that created the first womb. Inherent in manifestation is the imperative of duality, the necessity for opposing forces to bring about the changeable, relative reality derived from the Absolute Reality. Kabbalists emphasize the need for duality to enable energy to flow toward directionality, from the unmanifest to the manifest and back again.

The first vibration proceeded to differentiate itself into multifarious lawful principles, from the most subtle, even yet undiscovered principles of quantum physics to the more densely apparent principles, such as the coalescence of matter and gases into a sphere or the principle of simple gravity. The primordial dualistic principles are spirit and matter or spirit and nature. A culturally shared trinity is some version of energy, intelligence, and form. Principles of the hidden substratum are those that the scientists of all epics and eons attempt to envision deeply. These lawful principles began to differentiate, replicate, intricately combine, and diversify into visible and invisible universe(s).

World scriptures assert that the sacred spark of the primordial being is immanent and transcendent, residing in every corner and manifestation of the universe(s). There is one body, one spirit … one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of all, who is above all, and through all and in you all (Ephesians 4:4–6). Esoteric teachers of most world religions uphold that the universe is divinely permeated with pure awareness as a cosmic truth. Hidden in every manifestation is the immanent primordial creator life energy or being. For created being(s) to be able to contact and commune with this immanence is a question of growth. As a locus of consciousness, each created being travels on the journey of manifestation from localization to universality, from a specific awareness of a circumscribed identity as this or that (person, place, thing, micro-thing, etc.) to a return journey toward the totality and oneness of absolute consciousness. Infinite numbers of manifest forms contain this spark of the absolute, which remains transcendent within each form, floating above the turbulence and changes of manifestation, at one with All-That-Is. The bliss of being, a conscious joyful union of the manifest being with the absolute being, arrives with the supreme evolution of individual consciousness. Bliss and love provide the penultimate reassurance that each person is a created manifestation voyaging upon the waves of inner space toward one home and true being. Vedic, Kabbalistic, Western philosophy, and ancient and modern teachings all point to this essential connection between created beings and the absolute being. Many of them describe the pinnacle of the journey to be overarching joy and expansive awareness.

If there is or was any kind of beginning to this created universe, Kabbalists say that a swirling energy coalesced to a mathematical or insubstantial abstract point, or as the Vedas would say, a bindu, endowing creation with the concept of individuality, undividedness. Out of that point emerged infinite points, a you, or to put it similarly, an I. Out of that point of emergence comes the first division, which extends itself into time and space. Here, the Tree of Life begins to form, creating all life manifestations, including human beings. Kabbalistic principles work through polarity.

The swirling energy coalesces itself into a mathematical point, or God the Father. 12803.jpg

He then creates, extends, divides, and overflows into God the Mother. Whereas God the Father (or Shiva in the Vedas) is the creative consciousness of life, God the Mother (or Shakti in the Vedas) is the door of life, out of which are born all the templates, or you might say, prototypical patterns of all forms, including human beings. The mathematical point and the door (or womb) of creative form are the supernal parents, inseparably united but differentiated in cosmic function. From the door of creation comes the idea of the specific form of you and I, before you and I had bodies, minds, or personalities. This bestows unitary entelechy, the essential vital, purposive force of individual development, the primary note of the universe that the individual spark is destined to manifest and express. The essential note is that which best describes the person’s true self and true purpose, who he or she is and what they are here to do. As the creative energy continues to pour itself out, it passes through the Abyss, which protects the sacred from the ordinary, or what the Pueblo Indians call the profane levels of understanding present in normal human life. In the Abyss resides the unitary knowledge of all dualities, their mystery and unseen unity, hidden from lesser understandings and mundane grasping desires for power. The Abyss also protects the seeker from premature elevation, or in Sandra Edelman’s words premature immaculation, before the individual consciousness is prepared to encounter the immense cosmic energies inherent in the cosmic parents and their creative union.

figure_2_energies_inherent_in_the_cosmic_parents_copy.tif

Figure 2: The cosmic energies inherent in the cosmic parents and their creative union, displayed in various ways by Eastern and Western cultures.

The Supplicate Order: Invocation of the Sacred

The Psychology of Supplication

INTRODUCTION

To restore a heartfelt vision of life connected to the beauty, harmony, and grandeur of our magnificent origins, this book offers a cosmic ritual frame of dynamic elements and how they relate to a humane human life. Beautifully simple spiritual themes in all cultures all too soon fade under a burden of stress and strain, adaptation, human intellectuality, doubt, and skeptical manipulation. I hope to help restore these beautiful themes to their mislaid but primary status. To this aim, I have struggled, pondered, researched, and synthesized a scaffolding for their renewal. We have to ask: Who is really happy? And why? Perhaps those great teachings passed on by the major religions of the world show us the way, but then again, why haven’t we listened? And why do they seem so hard to apply? What prevents us from growing and expanding into the sacred wholeness of our being? Some great ones do. Why can’t we? As we gaze at the stars and look into a baby’s eyes, wonder, awe, and natural joy well up inside of us. Why do we discard our inherent joy so casually? What terrible trade-off have we made, and how do we take back that unscathed authenticity we so long for? To help us recover, restore, reconcile, realize, find, and hold on to a resplendent vision of our lives is the aspiration of this book. It is a big stretch, but here goes …

Along with concerns of development and health, human supplication coalesces around broadly shared, unifying themes. The cosmic ritual frame, issues of supplication, and relational resonance to the spiritual comprise a model for growth, well-being, and human fulfillment. The model of the human being suggested in the prologue involves the three mother letters or the Kabbalistic pillars, with their potential for a centralizing synthesis amid the play of opposite forces, and the ladder of development of self/Self-identity. The central model of this book extends the creation mythology presented in the prologue into human applications.

AN EXTENSION OF CREATION MYTHOLOGY

FOR HUMAN BEINGS

The Reconciliation of Opposites

Worldwide creation stories affirm that creation evolved through the pouring forth of energy from the interplay of the sacred creative principles, spirit and nature, or the Sacred Father and Sacred Mother. Many stories assert this pouring forth occurred through the action of vibration and sound. In the Kabbalah, the original sounds are the three primary mother letters. The Vedas and other systems also emphasize that creation evolved from primary seed sounds, which corresponded to primary elemental energies. In the Kabbalah, these primary energies are water or Mem, fire or Shin, and air or Alef. They form the three pillars within the infrastructure of the Tree of Life, on which is arrayed the human being (see Figure 3). The pillars compose the framework upon which the Tree of Life is suspended. Water or Mem is that misty energy, which flows downward. This is the Manna from Heaven. Native Americans, such as the Hopi and other Pueblo people, consider the essence of water to be the essence of all life. Water gives sustenance to life, to our physical being, and sustains all our activities. Inherent in the idea of water is giving, the giving of the creator to its life forms. In the Tree of Life, water creates the Pillar of Mercy. This pillar lays down the conduit or channel whereby the cosmos feeds and sustains its progeny. It sets forth the means for the receiving of sustenance, to take in care, food, love. The receiving pillar determines how each manifestation takes in all the gifts that sustain.

The opposite pillar is that of Shin or fire. Something is always burning up or being consumed. Here is the Pillar of Severity. Fire is the principle that burns up fuel, which converts matter to energy in the form of heat and light. Every moment, each created being receives, and each is also compelled to give, to sacrifice toward another, toward a cause, toward the whole.

At each stage of development, each being receives and also sacrifices in order to grow into another level of increasing challenge or difficulty, toward more expansive awareness, mastery, and understanding, as well as specific skill acquisitions. Sometimes, great resistance marks these growth periods, but the pressures of the life process propel us toward new challenges nevertheless. Briefly, this is the gift of fire, the principle of sacrifice that underlies every life process and event. As each receives, so each must give. What is given can bring light and warmth to others, as artists who pour out their hearts onto an attentive group of recipients, who receive the blessing of feeling, warmth, beauty, and energy, through the medium of music or art. As new life and sustenance comes, so each being is impelled to give back and expend energy. Energy expended is substance. Energy transmutes into different forms of energy. Matter is burned to produce light and heat. Some people revel in the gifts of life, forgetting that they must give. A rock star who revels in drug-induced states may enjoy their gifts, but eventually, what gives a sensation or experience will also take. Many feel uneasiness in facing the demands of life, requiring continual change and progress. Most, from time to time, resist the idea that all must give to get; all must work, put forth, do, and produce to receive, whether it is a paycheck, peace of mind, or cosmic bliss.

Polarity is a law of life. The all-giving mother pushes the baby out of the nest. Individuals beware: unconditional love on the most primal level is that which sustains the sanctity of the whole universe, not just one form. Built into the construction of the Tree of Life, or one might say the human constitution, are the forces of resistance and propulsion, the immovable object (i.e., one’s present state of growth) and the irresistible force (i.e., life events and challenges that compel each person to grow beyond one’s present state). There is no choice. All have to grow.

How to mediate between these two pillars, or the opposing forces of fire and water, is the secret gift of the element air or Alef. Here is the Pillar of Mediation, Mildness, or Reconciliation that also describes the modulated ascension of the consciousness of the self toward its home of origin, the cosmic self. Air is associated in various cultures with the flute, the flute of Krishna, the flute of the Native American hunchback Kokopelli, and the ancient flutes of South America. The flute itself further denotes the fertilizing, creative power (as a phallic symbol). Alef is also associated in some Egyptian Qabalistic literature¹⁰ with the unthinkable life/death abstract principle of all that is and is not … or the beat or pulsation of life/death as eternal life, implying that eternal life contains this principle of a continual transmutation of form, whilst ever conscious and alive. Alef is the scintillating, pulsating energy divided into the elements water and fire, producing the dynamic polarity of receiving and sacrificing. Alef also contains the secret of their reconciliation.

The center pole of the Tree of Life is critical in terms of self-development and connection to the higher power. It affords the means or the centering principle available to each person to regain balance, equanimity, peace in turmoil, and connection to the mystery of the cosmic being, which remains immanent and present in some guise¹¹ in every circumstance and state of being. The element of air shows us how to synthesize and create new meanings, innovations, and revelations which consolidate our experiences and help each of us reflect upon expanded repertoires, fine-tuning responses to the vicissitudes of life. The center pillar allows each to come to the still point (T. S. Eliot’s Burnt Norton) where no matter what the level of development; a person can sense the ever-present connection to the greater being and the whole of life.

Ken Wilber’s extensive series of books outline the universal stages of development confirmed in innumerable research studies around the world.¹² This line of research, started with Piaget, Erikson, and Kohlberg and continued through researchers such as Cook-Greuter, Kegan, and Loevinger, sustains a startling continuity of results. Essentially, the stages remain the same across cultures, which only influence rates of development and variations of form.

The central pillar reconnects us to the sense of self-entelechy, of life purpose and directionality. It allows each of us to acknowledge, I can’t be and don’t have to be like that other person. I must find out who this ‘I am’ is and what I am here to do, or What is it that I truly long for and what does the cosmos want from me? Here is Jacob’s ladder of self-development, which implies a rebalancing of one’s participation in the rhythmic alternation of the oppositions of water as receiving and fire as sacrificing. Self-development leads each person from a sense of self-identity that starts with identification with the physical body, moving up toward an emotional self and desires of wish fulfillment and wanting, toward an egocentric self-concept, then toward a socio-centric or role self (good or bad girl/boy, student/teacher, worker/boss, husband/wife, musician, etc.). By dashing up against the turbulent social world, the person must grow toward a broader-minded, more mature ego, which can find its place in the social world and still balance its individual propensities, personal needs, and particular life circumstances.

Ego in this terminology simply