Criticism Volume 44

#1: The Problem of Dr. Blechner
#2 Nina Farhi

Nina Farhi - Images Across the Void (orig.pdf)

While it’s amusing to see the Mah-Jong set rhapsodizing on mysticism, it is even more remarkable to see Dr. Farhi being treated by her patient for so long. Being myself at one time paranoid schizophrenic for 15 months inside an unlocked ward in 1969, I can assure you it’s not difficult to lead certain doctorial personalities in that way, and I’m sure that accounts in no small way for the patient’s eagerness to be on time. See RD Laing for similar observations. I do however, compliment Dr. Farhi on at least trying to get out of her own head and into another’s.

You see, the ability to share fears most of us would be embarrassed to mention triggers the empathetic shadow realities in the very human doctor, and the schizophrenic patient is often very keen in sensing where empathy marries concern on the part of the doctor regarding his or her own life's condition in such matters.

And, yes, Dr. Farhi, it is true that in the original pre-ego state a "void" exists. Welcome to the journey. That 'void,' far from it being - as you surmise - the boring land Adam abandoned for self-consciousness and sensuality, is actually something else:

'Realization of Beauty’s creator; realization of the Voidness, the Unbecome, the Unborn, the Unmade, the Unformed; implications of eternity from the state of divine mind. This is the AWARENESS OF ENERGY TRANSFORMATIONS WITH NO IMPOSITION OF MENTAL CATEGORIES.' (See my chapter on 1967 experiencing the sexual unconscious.)

Refrigerator-magnet "Winnicott-isms" waltzing within intellectualizations mixed with infinite projections of infinite levels of 'anticipated loss of self-esteem' on the part of the patient, and resistance is repeatedly accomplished by "leading" the doctor to identify with related (dark) experience(s) within her own shadow personality. This 'see how it feels' business lines up very readily with Dr. Sullivan's idea that schizophrenia is, indeed, a human process, but one needn't spend ten years in neutral. After a decade passes, the patient ultimately improves under the auspices of what Sullivan has coined “mutual exhaustion.”

Sullivan gives an admonition to avoid getting involved in the patient’s projections. He points out how easily it is “for the doctor to wind up being treated by the patient, as schizophrenics are very insightful into those things that you are dealing with yourself, and one can easily and unexpectedly be “unhorsed.” (Sullivan’s word).

Nevertheless, you have ventured into my territory, Nina, so I will hold the Lantern high for you, as I do for all who come my way. I hope my gentle prodding has not unnerved you, nor given you the impression of hostility. However, you made certain comments regarding Paradise that need to be addressed. I have to offer you something you are not familiar with, but you will get to (at the very least) glimpse when you pass on.

I will, however help the reader - for the first time in the English language - understand a concept of "the void" or "Paradise" and the etymology of ego from that place (see also "Back From the Other Side"). I have taken the work of Dr. Sullivan through his insights into the ‘disparagement of others in order to boost ego esteem,’ and have demonstrated the link heretofore unseen in the legendary “Garden of Eden” experience spoken of by our ancestors. I await the comments of all capable of thinking ‘outside the box.’ This is NOT religious, by the way.

I pick up within a chapter from my novel, "Back From the Other Side":

Please see my “Awareness” video in which a consciousness, in the midst of schizophrenic panic and terror, “decides” to call a halt to deterioration at the door of hebephrenic onset. It is essential to understand the mountain-moving power of awareness if one is to understand that a working therapeutic technique exists by which the sufferer may expand his or her awareness even within a vulnerable schizophrenic state. I refer to the “Observation Exercise” found at www.trailopen.com. However, anti-psychotic drugs may actually be contraindicated to success in the meditation.

As you approach behavior conducive to facing thoughts, voices, hallucinations and seemingly overwhelming emotions, a choice has to be made who you want to you’re giving your allegiance to, because the voices become louder, more unreasonable: your sickness doesn’t want you finding the medicine that will destroy its royal authority; the darkness does not want you finding the light; and all the forces of the dark side enter into your consciousness with that one motivation: to keep you listening to the voice – an argument against which you cannot win. The biggest problem with schizophrenia is this difficulty in the sufferer understanding that the voice(s) that speak(s) in his head as “I” has the Dark Side as it’s master. You can’t argue with it. You don’t argue with it. You just be calmly aware of it.
See / listen to “Awareness/Exorcism” (www.trailopen.com/) to see some esoteric results.

The The Bard deals with this very issue when he says:
But tis strange, and oftentimes,
to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles,
To betray us in deepest consequence.
It ‘s no accident that Shakespeare has the noble Banquo asking in the same scene:
Were such things here as we do speak about?
Or have we eaten on the insane root,
That takes the reason prisoner?

Living Without Disparaging Others:
What’s Love Got to do With it?

I remember as a young teen noting my older cousin’s graduation from Yale University. He would soon be assuming his role in his father’s (my uncle’s) multimillion dollar company. My father brazenly responded to my mother, “Marty could put him in his hip pocket.” He implied that any success this young man achieved was because of his privileged position as the son of my millionaire uncle, and I, barely able to cope with high school at the time, was alleged to have whatever qualities were necessary to put this older, admired cousin “into my hip pocket.” Within my father’s insecurity, people who succeeded did so because of ‘connections,’ or through circumstances we were not lucky enough to have.
Sullivan goes on to state that an entire snapshot of a human being may be had by the amount of weight he gives to the disparagement of others:

“In this (juvenile) era there is the learning of disparagement, with the possibility for chronic defect in one’s self esteem. This disparagement has its beginnings for the most part in influence exerted by the parental group, who teach the juvenile to notice the shortcomings of others. And this necessity of maintaining self-esteem by pulling down the standing of others, if uncorrected in subsequent developmental eras, has unfortunate later outcomes. In the juvenile era this kind of security operation literally and importantly interferes with adequate appraisal of personal worth. Since one has to protect his feeling of self esteem by noting how unworthy everyone else is, this fails to provide any convincing data as to one having any personal worth; and one is left to think: ‘I am not as bad as the other swine.’”

“These are important influences exerted by the parental group… This is a parental morbidity of security operations, such that the juvenile is taught to disparage others–a common phenomenon on the American scene. It may be the way, for instance, that the significant figure in the house handles “misfortune,” such as being average instead of superior. It may occur because the parental figure has always disparaged all people who made him or her uncomfortable. It may occur because one or both parents feel threatened by the revealing nature of juvenile communication and so disparage teachers and other people with whom they feel compared. This disparaging business is like the dust of the streets – it settles everywhere. It is perhaps not so disastrous in the juvenile era as it is from then on; but it is very disastrous at any time.”`

“…If you have to maintain self-esteem by pulling down the standing of others, you are extraordinarily unfortunate in a variety of ways. Since you have to protect your personal feeling of self worth by noting how unworthy everyone around you is, you are not provided with any data that are convincing evidence of your having personal worth; so it gradually evolves into that same “I am not as bad as the other swine.” To be the best of swine, when it would be nice to be a person, is not a good way of furthering anything except security operations. When security is achieved that way, it strikes at the very roots of that which is essentially human – the utterly vital role of interpersonal relations.”

“In other words, if another boy does well and little Willie reports it to his mother, and mother promptly knocks the spots off the other boy and his family, that tends to indicate that little Willie’s impression of how the other fellow was behaving was groundless, or the rewards which the other fellow’s behavior got from teachers, and so on, was undeserved. In other words, one is encouraged to feel incapable of knowing what is good.”

“Learning from human examples is extremely important, as I have stressed; but if every example that seems to be worth emulating, learning something from, is reduced to no importance or worth, than who are the models going to be? I think that this is probably the most vicious of the inadequate, inappropriate, and ineffectual performances of parents with juveniles–this interference with a sound development of appreciation of personal worth, by universal derogatory and disparaging attitudes toward anybody who seems to stand out at all. It is in this way that parents are apt to very markedly handicap the ‘sane’ development of standards of personal worth in their young. To that extent – barring great good fortune in subsequent eras of personality development – they literally will guarantee that their children will be barely better than the other swine.” (Sullivan, pp243)

Self Respect and Human Maturity

“From all that I have suggested you may see that it is of no extraordinary use of inference to presume if you cannot respect others, you cannot respect yourself. And people who are very high in self-respect; that is, whose life experience has permitted them to uncover and demonstrate to their own satisfaction remarkable capacity for living with – and among –others- are people who find no particular expense to themselves connected with respecting any meritorious performance of anyone else. One of the feeblest props for an inadequate self-system is the attitude of disparaging others. In a good many ways, one can read the whole state of a person’s self-respect by his disparagement of others.

The disparagement is built on two ingredients, that which one despises about oneself, and a great many “not” operations. Thus the person who greatly respects himself for his generosity, which is probably always of a very public character, finds an incredible amount of people not-generous, instead stingy, mean and so on.
I think it has been known since the beginning of recorded thought that a person who is very bitter towards others, very hard on his fellow man for certain faults, is usually very sensitive to these particular faults because they are secret vices of his own. Insofar as self-respect has been permitted to grow without restrictions, because of comparatively un-warped personal development or because warp of personal development has been remedied, there is no expense, no feeling of impoverishment, no hints of anxiety connected with discovering that somebody else is much better than you are in a particular field.

It is lamentably true that in so highly specialized and intricate a social organization as any extant culture is, it is virtually certain that there are very few top figures in any complex organization. Most people are not as good as the very few, and many people are much worse than average. But there is such an enormous field for living, one does not have to depend on what one is not good at, and therefore one has no particular need for keeping a bookkeeping record on how many people are worse in a field in which one is bad. But some people, because of certain warps in personal development, make this an outstanding operation, in order to reduce anxiety from invidious comparison with others.

Anxiety: Conjunctive and Disjunctive

“My conception of anxiety is in point here. While we may be unaware, at least temporarily, of milder degrees of any one of the other tensions connected with living, we are never unaware of anxiety at the very time that it occurs. The awareness can be, and very often is, fleeting, especially when an appropriate security operation is called out. The awareness can be most variously characterized from person to person, or even from incident to incident, excepting that it is always unpleasant.
At the moment that anxiety occurs, one becomes aware of something unpleasant; but whether this seems to be a mere realization that all is not going so well, or a noticing of some disturbance in the activity or postural tone in one of the zones of interaction – a change in one’s facial expression, or in one’s voice, for example – a feeling of tightening up in some group of skeletal muscles, a disturbance of the action of one’s heart, a discomfort in one’s belly, a realization that one has begun to sweat; as I say, whether it be one of these or yet another variety of symptoms,  one is almost at least momentarily aware that one has become uncomfortable, or more acutely uncomfortable, as the case may be.

No matter what might have followed upon this awareness of diminished feeling of well-being, there was the awareness. It best serves in ordinary interpersonal relations to “pay as little attention to it as one can,” and to “forget it.” But if one is intent on refining oneself as an instrument of participant observation, it is necessary to pay the greatest attention, at least retrospectively, to these fleeting moments of anxiety. They are the telltales that show increased activity of the self-system in the interpersonal field of the moment concerned.
They mark the point in the course of events at which something disjunctive, something that tends to pull away from the other fellow, has first appeared or has suddenly increased. They signal a change from relatively uncomplicated movement from a presumptively common goal to a protecting of one’s self esteem, with a definite complicating of the interpersonal action.

To the extent that one can retrospectively observe the exact situation in which one’s anxiety was called out, one may be able to infer the corresponding pattern of difficulty in dealing with others. As these patterns are usually a matter of past training or its absence, detecting them is seldom an easy matter, but I repeat, it is by no means impossible – unless there is an actual dissociation in one’s personality system, in which case there will be prohibitively great difficulty in recalling anything significant in the actual situation which invoked the anxiety.”

Two things more remain to be said about this, shall I say, self-observation of disjunctive processes in interpersonal relations.
“Anxiety appears not only as awareness of itself but also in the experience of complex ‘emotions’ into which it has been elaborated by specific early training. I cannot say what all these are, but I can use names for a few of them which should ‘open the mind’ to their nature: embarrassment, shame, humiliation, guilt or chagrin. It is peculiarly difficult to observe retrospectively and to subject to analysis the exact circumstances under which we are moved to act as if the other person “should be ashamed of himself,” is “stupid,” or is guilty of anything from a breach of good taste to a mortal sin. These interpersonal movements which put the other fellow at a disadvantage on the basis of a low relative personal worth are extremely troublesome elements in living and very great handicaps to investigating strange people.

Disparaging and derogatory thought and action that make one feel “better” than the other person concerned, that expand one’s self-esteem, as it were, at his cost, are always to be suspected of arising from anxiety. These processes are far removed from a judicious inquiry into one’s relative personal skill in living. They do not reflect a good use of observation and analysis but rather indicate a low self-esteem in the person who uses them. The quicker one comes to a low opinion of another, other things being equal, the poorer is one’s secret view of one’s own worth in the field of the disparagement; …and if one customarily entertains a low opinion of oneself, a great handicap is imposed on what I call conjunctive motivations.
By this term I refer to those impulses which integrate situations in which needs can be satisfied and security enhanced. The great classic example of conjunctive motivation is love, which however rare in itself, has its great root tendencies in the many impulses which make up our need for intimacy. (Sullivan 380) Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry; Sullivan pp351, 380

It has always been a reflection of the secure (accomplished) to offer praise to others. Britney Spears says that she wishes her voice was as good as Christine Aguilera’s. Michael Jordan does not feel diminished to compliment other basketball players. “Oscar” winners offer accolades to others. Only those who secretly resent because they have not accomplished their own inner goals must tear down others. Sullivan comments on these people: “If I’m a molehill, then, by G-d, there will be no mountains.””

One can’t help but associate with the saying of Jesus in Luke 6:41:
Why behold the splinter in your brother’s eye?
First get the beam out of your own eye.
How can you say to your brother;
Brother, let me get that speck out of your eye,
When you cannot even see the beam in your own eye?
O false one ; You hypocrite , You fraud , you actor; pretender

Within this infinite maelstrom of life’s opportunities mixing with the character flaws of parents and siblings, I choose to engage this area we’ve now investigated – this concept of ‘disparagement of others’–  and link it into another, higher dimension; one that hearkens back into the ancestral voices of our Western civilization. Since ‘disparagement of others’ is a character-trait instilled in us by parents, let us now relate this concept to the earliest legend and myth concerning the first parents in our human race.

You don’t have to go too far down this road to realize thinking about an attractive or unattractive aspect of your emotional structure will have very little effect on altering it. For all our university wisdom, we, as a western civilization, are, by and large, no closer to self-control in these matters than Jim Carrey’s character in Ace Ventura’s When Nature Calls, when he mutters to himself “bad thoughts out, good thoughts in,” when faced with a temptation he doesn’t know how to handle.

The “self” that’s helping you run from the truth is the “self” that would be exposed by the very truth it’s seeking to prevent the objective “you” from finding. Your thoughts become like the bad-guys in movies seeking to thwart the progress of the good detective. It is that which was created and nurtured from the early trauma, which replaced that which was created in the image of G-d in the first place. It has been created in the pride of the lie which our father Adam fell to. Because the new “father” for Adam was the father of lies, and the father of pride, this trait gets passed down from parent to child unwittingly, unconsciously, inescapably.

We are thus "missing the mark:" (aka 'born in the sin') of our proud self’s “ego.” Our ego will do anything to prevent us from seeing ourselves (itself) as wrong. It’s the spirit of darkness helping you not to turn on the light. It’s like a dishonest guide trying to keep you from your healthy destination, for this “guide” who speaks in your head will be terminated when you find the truth in your enlightened destiny. It torments you using your hidden resentment of the gods-of-this earth – in this case your parental authority figures – and we writhe like voodoo dolls, victims impregnated by the waspish anxieties of parents and culture.

Adam was born a fully grown man. We come into the world as utterly helpless babies, and our ego does need to grow from that state to adulthood. Sullivan points out a most interesting point of view by creating a series of personality stages or “growth cycles” from infancy to late adolescence, leaving the subject of “adult” conveniently missing, as in a spiritual shout of silence.
Yes, we do have to learn how to grow our ego with combinations of standing up for ourselves, behavioral accomplishments, sexual adventures and the like, but at a certain stage of our growth, the yearning soul no longer finds nourishment in these self-glorifying activities, and turns, as the salmon seeking its home, towards that which created it.

It’s like you have a dark companion who is talking in your ear 24/7. You know your ancient ancestor left you a treasure somewhere, but whenever you seek to uncover it, your dark companion is always suggesting an alternative behavior. When you find that treasure that is your inheritance, that dark companion is going to be out of business.
This was my challenge when I started meditating. It is still my challenge every day. Jesus was tempted. You will be too. This will be your challenge as well, should you choose to journey with me.

But what had ‘disparagement of others” to do with all of this? Everything. Forgive those so you will be forgiven. How can one walk through life without disparaging others? By not resenting and puffing up as a result of ‘judging,’ but certainly discernment may disparage a true approximation of worth. For example, “he’s a crooked politician…  a pedophile priest.” But you don’t resent. To not hate, to not resent, is “love.” True love that comes from the spiritual rebirth is much more the expression of the character of Mr. Spock in Star Trek’s “Wrath of Khan” then in some mealy-mouth syrupy preacher. He is never emotional, and thereby with benign insight void of anger, he guides his love with a spiritual logic by which he lives. In the end, he also lays down his life for his friends; an act that Jesus said “No greater love exists than this.”
It is the biological Pineal gland; it is the angelic “flaming sword that turns every way” spoken of in Genesis 3:24, and it is the ‘Third Eye” sought by Eastern mystics.

*****

As the stillness floats the dark qualities of my soulish exploration up to my awareness/consciousness, if I could be aware of that even for the slightest second, it would start to disintegrate its negative effects, but the ‘light’ is like looking into the sun, or like the spiritual forces spoken of in Genesis 3:24.

* * *

In a momentary experience of the ego-death inherent in Samadhi consciousness, I surrender to the non-me. The entire consciousness here is beneath grammatical experience. Since grammar is necessary to communicate to the reader, I will approximate the experience as best I can. As the mental categorization began anew, the scene in the river changed into a picturesque garden. The river itself became a small pool, the area around it taken up by this huge tree, which took up 90% of my garden-like revelation.
The right and left parts of the tree mirrored each others’ basic architecture of limbs off the main tree trunk, there appearing to provide a general equality between the left side of the tree and the right vis-à-vis the number of branches, their thickness, etc.
Crackling energies went up into the outer limbs of one side of the tree. I saw that the energies – like small lightning crackles of electrostatic charges, were thought; in the case the merest hint of the beginning of a thought that would need only the slightest regard or paying-of-my-attention in order for it to become conscious.
The sense that I was about to think specifically about something appeared as slight breezes through the branches. “Small” or “insignificant” thoughts crackled up through outer thin branches and twigs. Heavier limbs would represent more major belief systems in a tree of logic which was not difficult to comprehend. A type of ‘spirit-wind’ would create emotion which would color the tree’s instantaneous offerings.

We all experience multiple dimensionality within our thought-sets, in that seemingly insignificant questions may take up our whole world in a moment-to-moment reality. So we can all easily understand that there are literally infinite “sets” or “combinations” of thought-associations relating to the architecture of this tree. Anything the mind of man can create, can, will or does appear through this tree, and looking at our modern world, we might add the philosopher’s adage that “anything the mind of man can create, can be done.”

My eyes were closed. It was as if “I” was “seeing” the tree in my foreground, in the stage-like setting in which the inside of my forehead functioned as a viewing screen of sorts (looking at it objectively from inside my mind) while the ‘no-mans-land’ gave the impression of an infinite ether which floated out from my innermost being out past the horizon into infinity. Coming from over the horizon toward “me” was thought which could enter the ‘no man’s land’ coming towards the tree, but it originated in, through and from the tree branches at the same time as well.
The pool of water morphed into the suggestion of a female hourglass figure.
This is also part of the multidimensionality of the spirit world. In this case, it was reacting to the hourglass female figure hinted at by the morphing behavior of the pool of water that was now definitely hinting a sexually charged image. The pool of water had morphed into the kind of figure suggested by those tacky trucker’s mud flaps or in the neon abstractions of the female form outside of strip joints.

“You could use some relief,” indicated one thought, the word “relief” barely coming to conscious fruition from out of the breeze of spirit drifting through the leaves of the tree. It had been below full consciousness in emotion filled with unspoken sexual innuendo as it floating out of the ozone. Now it was an entire conscious thought as I gave it my attention.
The right side’s energies sent up its own electrostatic current: “You’re a spiritual being.”
The “good cop - bad cop” routine within my own branches expanded rapidly, as the subject matter was too attractive for my egocentric hunger to ignore.
‘You can find a nice woman,” suggested another branch of reason, its smaller twigs ready to bolster this conclusion with supportive hinting consciousness on dating, patience, honor and chivalry. It directed my attention with the hint of an image of a pleasant and interesting discussion with someone attractive, mature, soft and female concerning a movie we had just watched, and we were walking outside on our way to a restaurant where we could discuss it further. This branch of reasoning was in-between the polarity developing between the “I need to get laid” branch and the second branch of reasoning maintaining my identity now should be one of complete celibacy. This latter thought represented an entire different tree structure as existing under the heading:”If I’m going to remain celibate,