Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

psychoanalytic parallels in the Bhagavad Gita (Reddy 2001) and Rao’s discussion of this
concludes, we are ‘likely to unearth psychoanalytic truths in unexpected places, and at the
same time enliven our clinical understanding by challenging the existential limit we set on
our basic assumptions’ (Rao 2001: 194).
Secondly, an evolution of a ‘parallel truths’ approach is the offering of different languages
to describe the same experience. Here the experience becomes more important than the
descriptive language from either psychoanalysis or Hinduism. There is a unity of pluralistic
experience. An early paper by Fingarette uses religious and psychoanalytic language to
define the mystical experience, including reference to the Bhagavad Gita, so there was some
awareness of the value of both (Fingarette 1958). Neki compares the Sikh belief in asuar,
(kairos, the right time or moment), as a vital practice in psychotherapy and ‘as such,
psychotherapy is a co-partner of spiritual therapy’ (Neki 1981: 437). Parsons compares
psychoanalytic concerns with those found in various religious traditions, including the
Katha Upanishad, that focus on transcendence and immanence and finds they are
attempting to describe ‘dimensions of experience … a process of internal evolution’
(Parsons 2006: 122). This is also seen, Grier suggests, in the experience of adoration, found
in the early gaze of the baby to the mother and in many religious traditions, including
Hinduism. Grier quotes key Hindu sacred texts and poetry from Ramana Maharishi,
Tukaram, Mirabai and Tagore concluding ‘Hinduism seems to express the fluid and infinite
varieties of unconscious human relating, i.e. the transference, much more fully than any of
the other principal world religions’ (Grier 2006: 170). Symington identifies the core aspects
of all religions as a discovery of ‘oneness’ and ‘love’ that find parallel expression, though
using different terms, in psychoanalysis (Symington 2006a).
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