The bus episode

I took a bus to get home from the gym this evening. I like to use public transport even though I live within a walking distance from that place. In Russian buses there is usually a special person, the ticket collector, who both sells tickets and checks whether you have one. As I was standing inside the bus looking into the window I suddenly heard the ticket collector's yelling at someone.

She screamed, "Get off the bus now! You want the entire bus to smell like you?"

I looked there and saw that the ticket collector was yelling at an old homeless man who sat there; and there was indeed that garbage stink of a person who haven't washed himself for weeks. The homeless man looked at her and said stubbornly and somewhat fearfully, "But I have paid for a ticket! I can leave where I want."

As the bus was approaching the bus stop the woman started to scream hysterically in the loudest way possible, "GET OFF NOW, YOU STINK! IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO BEAR YOUR STINK ANYMORE! DO YOU WANT ME TO CALL THE BUS DRIVER NOW TO GET YOU OFF THE BUS BY FORCE?"

To which the homeless man repeated, "But I bought the ticket. I can leave where I want. I will leave on the next stop."

The woman continued yelling; and the man said, "Calm down, I'm leaving on the next stop anyway." The ticket collector understood that she can do nothing to get rid of this dirty old man and went to the farthest part of the bus.

The man left the bus on my bus stop. This particular old homeless man looked intelligent, he might even had a university education (as many people who lost their homes do), and I wonder how hard it was for him to get money to pay for one ticket to use the privilege and ride wherever he wanted. I also wonder whether he left the bus on the bus stop he originally intended or he just felt uncomfortable and didn't want to annoy the ticket collector.

In Russia, as in so many parts of the world, homeless people have no rights at all. It is in  a huge contrast with the developed Western countries such as Finland where homeless people receive money from the government (about €500 per month in case of Finland). Once, when I was in Helsinki, my friend pointed a person in the street to me and asked whom do I think he was. I had no clue; and he said that's a hobo. I was shocked because most Russian professors dress worse and look poorer than this Finnish "hobo." (In fact many Russian professors barely receive €500 per month while the prices are not that different.)

When I told someone about this bus episode I had tears in my eyes.

What about the day we stop slaughtering our finest impulses?

A beautiful quotation I read a few minutes ago in the blog of one of my favorite fiction writers and magicians Johnathan Carroll. Carroll quotes Henry Miller who said,

Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.

In my observations we most certainly do slaughter our finest impulses on a day-to-day basis. It doesn't necessarily refer to writing a poem or painting something beautiful. The finest impulses that we suppress may include the things we want to say, the moves we want to perform, the feelings we want to express. In some cases it emerges as a blockage in the throat, as if you were about to say something but then started to clear your throat and remained silent. In many cases we don't claim the destiny for greatness that belongs to us and settle due to our damaged self-esteem, an attachment to a false self for a lesser path or a path that is alien to us.

I hope an occasion will emerge to write extensively about Jonathan Carroll's magical novels that  helped me to rediscover my soul and make my soul presence stronger. His books have been very influential in my life—and I'm speaking of the magnitude of influence that at some point equals to that which, for instance, Ken Wilber's ideas have had on me (which is huge). Incidentally, in one of the older blogs Carroll writes about Wilber the following:

I was listening to a lecture by Ken Wilber about consciousness. He mentioned something I had never thought about. Yet as soon as I heard it, my mind jumped on its horse and rode off in all sorts of interesting directions. Wilber said one of the profound differences between mankind centuries ago and today was that in the past because a person was born, raised and usually died in one community and rarely left, their exposure to religious/spiritual ideas was limited to what was taught or believed only in that community. In modern times, particularly now with the ubiquity, width and breadth of the internet, a child in a remote community in, say, Mali, can learn in an instant about Buddhism, Christian Science, or Zoroastrianism. Sure, in the past missionaries from the various religions were sent out to the four corners of the earth to try and convert the heathen. But they were only individuals here and there. Now all that's needed is a computer and a modem and huge numbers of people can have their most fundamental beliefs challenged or changed—in an instant. I have always been fascinated by the idea of what we might be or have been if we were simply exposed to it. We would have been firm Catholics if we'd learned about that belief when we were most receptive to religious teaching. Or a great chess player if someone had only taught us how to play as children. How about a world class baker if we hadn't had a Mom who hated to cook and anything to do with the kitchen. Wilber extends that idea way way out—to God. Never in a million years would I (says the person in Mali, for example) have thought God or religion could be conceived in ways that contrast so hugely with my own. But now that I have learned about some of them, my world view and life could change profoundly (June 28, 2009).

I remember how amused I was when I accidentally opened Carroll's blog and found this post. I even spontaneously wrote him an email expressing my gratitude for his books and a joy that he, too, is getting somehow influenced by integral ideas as expressed by Wilber. Don't know if the email ever reached him though for I haven't received a reply (probably, it got lost among the tons of other fan mail). Let me quote most parts of it here:

Dear Jonathan Carroll:

I'm clinical psychology student from Russia (if I manage not to drop out on my senior year, of course). But that's not the point of this letter. The point is rather different. I'm in love with your books. I read everything I could find translated in Russian… and I'm waiting for an opportunity to buy your English books and re-read everything once again. It also happens that I'm scholar of Ken Wilber's works. It also happens that my life, my dreams, my soul, and the fabric of whatever happens in my world seems to me as being closely interlinked with the things I read. And I still can't quite figure out whose works influenced my today's consciousness more -- yours, Ken's or Neil Gaiman's. (Sorry, but I gotta admit that I'm a big fan of Neil's works, too.)

Anyway, during these two weeks, among other things, I finished reading three books. Your Bones of the Moon, Neil's InterWorld (actually, finished reading it just an hour ago), and Ken's One Taste and The Marriage of Sense and Soul (it was the first time I read those in English [and I read the former some years ago in Russian]). Freaky enough, I find that the taste of all these books is somewhat similar. I have that bad habit of immersing into whatever I read and attempting to intuit the possibilities towards greater and deeper dimensions of psyche and consciousness in it. For instance, I always sense a lot of transpersonal and transrational stuff (which doesn't look prerational to me) going on in your books, not to mention the play of Jungian-like archetypes and so on; and when I read your books, Neil's books, and Ken's books there's that unmistakable state of deeper translucence that makes all the dimensions of dream-and-reality dialogically interpenetrate—at least in my worldspace. For me your stories are keyless gates to deeper, broader states of consciousness. Believe it or not, this unmistakable recognition of the great story narrative supportive towards awakening of one's own deeper potentials is what I have always found as striking features in both your, Neil's and Ken's books. And it's even that I have been wondering whether it is possible that the art you're all working on is essentially of the same transcendental and transformational nature, pointing towards deeper dimensions and depths of the soul.

I am pretty sure that what both you and Neil are doing as artists is what can be called a contemporary transcendental art, transcendental because it transcends and integrates fragments of realities, be it the realities of waking & dreaming or realities of persona & shadow or realities of ordinary and transordinary. Ken Wilber, when speaking of integral art (you can find an essay on art here and there; see also two beautiful chapters in his The Eye of Spirit), said an interesting formula: Bad Art Copies, Good Art Creates, Great Art Transcends. Alex Grey, a famous integral artist (whose paintings have been of guidance for me), writes:

Ken has stated numerous times, and I agree, that art is an essentialized worldview, or as Bachelard called it, "a metaphysics in a moment." Over the millenia, culture has embodied worldviews that both express and guide the attitudes of the people. As artists, we need to be conscious of and responsible for the views we transmit through our work. We need to use all the tools available to re-invent and invigorate our field, and to my mind, Ken provides the amazing tool of a worldview that makes peace between the quarrelsome territories of science, art and religion. After the dissociation and alienation of artists and their communities over the past 120 years, Wilber's integrative approach holds much promise. He has lead the way beyond current post-modern thinking toward an integral approach to art, toward an art of the soul.

I would say that your art has done exactly that to my injured Russian soul that wanders in the wastelands of a collapsed country which has been experiencing a cultural disaster for more than 100 years. Your stories have been very helpful in terms of healing my soul and awakening it towards the deepest potentialities of its individuality. I remember thinking: there's gotta be something in common among these guys, I feel it with my heart, now what I need is evidence that I'm not making this up... So it was quite a surprise to read your CarrollBlog 6.28, in which you mention "listening to a lecture by Ken Wilber about consciousness." I was very delighted, because synchronicities play a very profound role in my life stream. It was "an accident" that I decided to browse your website (which I usually don't do), after reading that Neil's book in the period where everything I do is closely intertwined with Ken Wilber's philosophy. This is no accident that Ken calls himself not a philosopher... but a storyteller, a Kosmic storyteller. And I think of the universes you unfold in your stories as of the Kosmic stories as well; for me, they are visionary stories that open doors to something which is ready to emerge but is not yet here. . . .

I hope this email reaches you; and you'll have time to read it and perhaps even to respond, if it touches you. As for myself, I'm relieved, for I knew that I'm not crazy in sensing that what you do isn't simply an art confined into its own boundaries, and what Ken does isn't simply a cognitive philosophy confined to its own boundaries... everything becomes fluid, dialectical, and translucent. Which is groovy, indeed! Whenever I get your book or Neil's book or Ken's book, they always and instantaneously become my top priority in reading list; and I basically stop doing everything else besides reading, because these stories always offer gems of a deeper awareness. This is why I'm very grateful for being able to enjoy the brilliance and writing genius of all of you.

Kind regards,
Eugene Pustoshkin

Now I'd like to come back to the first point about slaughtering our finest impulses. After I posted what you have hopefully read above I went on reading Carroll's blog. There is one post that he wrote that I find right on money, so I am going to quote it:

I was reading an issue of MEN'S JOURNAL magazine. The lead article was "100 Things To Do Before You Die." On the list were things like climb Mt. Everest, parachute from a plane, hand feed a shark, etcetera. I skimmed the other things they suggested should be on everyone's list. I had no desire to do even one of them. So then I thought is there anything I'd like to do before I die that I haven't done yet? Hypothetically if someone is living fully, they're doing what matters (or is important) to them whenever and however they can. There's something pathetic about having to make lists of tasks to do before you die so you can be sure that by doing them, you will have really "lived." The Japanese say "live every day as if your hair was on fire" and within realistic bounds, that sounds just about right. Most of the time we know almost as soon as a situation arises whether we will later regret not doing it. We also know most of the time that despite the many fearful, well behaved inner voices telling us not to do something, that we should ignore those voices and just go ahead and do it. Because when we do it and it works, it makes us bigger and life richer. If it fails, we hurt for a while but generally then heal and move on. You don't need to climb Mt. Everest to have led a fulfilled life. You only have to have the courage, and usually it is only small courage, to say yes. Say yes and do something when your first, second and third instincts may be to say no because that frightens me (March 18, 2010).

Indeed.

Psychopathology of everyday life

I have been writing a lot about many different ways pathologies exist in personality and society. This interest of mine in pathological states and conditions didn't emerge out of simple curiosity; these are the practical questions asked by life itself to figure out. Since there is a spectrum of consciousness (that is, our consciousness is multilevel and multidimensional) it appears that there is also a spectrum of pathologies that can emerge at any stage of development and then progress through our being-in-the-world. Any kind of behavior, including pathological (with corresponding interior states), seems to be in some way an adaptive response of the mind-body system to certain circumstances in life. Post-traumatic stress disorder, for instance, characterized by the dissociative defense mechanism seems to emerge in an attempt of psyche to chunk traumatic experiences in pieces so as to defend the structure of the conscious self from the experiences it can't digest yet.

In classical psychiatry there are "bigger" psychological pathologies that structure the entire life around them (psychotic to borderline) and there are "smaller" pathologies (neurotic) that, even though they affect the matrix of experience, allow one to live more or less adaptive social life to some point. Wilber and some other authors argue that the continuum of psychopathology isn't limited by the psychotic to borderline to neurotic sequence and there are also role/script pathologies, identity pathologies, existential pathologies, and various spiritual pathologies (each corresponding to the stage of development where it emerged). In fact, Wilber divides psychopathologies into three broad categories: prepersonal (psychotic to borderline to neurotic), personal (role/script to identity crisis to existential), and transpersonal (psychic to subtle to causal). The last category is still not well-studied in terms of its cohesive integration with the prepersonal and the personal which are more conventionally known levels of pathology; and Wilber's model of consciousness and its pathologies has been in its own development, so certain aspects of the transpersonal category must be revisited (to my knowledge, no official work has been published yet introducing the last installment of Wilber's view on spiritual pathologies; the world is still waiting for the revised edition of Transformations of Consciousness, a book that Wilber calls one of his most important works, to be published).

In order not to distract us from the simple point of this post (those of the readers who are not interested in a technical psychological talk can skip to the next paragraph), I will just briefly mention here that, since there has been a new understanding that we can speak of vertical and horizontal development, with the former being a structural (structure-stage) development towards higher altitudes of consciousness and the latter being a state (state-stage) development that is characterized by an increasing access to various spiritual states of consciousness that can be occurring to some extent at any altitude of consciousness, what Wilber previously saw as pathologies in the transpersonal structures of consciousness (which are very advanced stages of vertical development) now can be seen rather as pathologies in the ways individual consciousness (being at any level of development) embraces spiritual states of consciousness. To my opinion this is very important because it leads to the conclusion (in a form of hypothesis) that in the worst cases one person can combine both structural and state pathologies. For instance, if a neurotic person undertakes meditation practice (such as, e.g., vipassana or Transcendental Meditation), is stubborn enough, and doesn't receive care from a really qualified teacher, he or she can actually succeed in adding a spiritual state pathology to his already emerged structure pathology of neurosis; and those ought to be treated simultaneously. Not to mention that his neurotic self will be interpreting all state experience accordingly to the already pathological (i.e. incorrect, false, lying) view of the self and others. It doesn't necessarily take a conscious spiritual practice, there can be spontaneous awakenings towards deeper states dimensions.

Now, what's probably the most important is that if structural and states pathologies can emerge simultaneously in one psychological system then they will be naturally forming a kind of interpenetrated unity, something like a states-and-structures knot, and it can be very hard to untie this knot and to hermeneutically make sense of it. I know of one case when a probably borderline/narcissistic individual, let's call him S., had a series of spiritual experiences that led him into thinking that he, and he only, was Jesus Christ and others ought to listen to him and follow his commands for he, and he only, came to save the world. S. was already wanted by Interpol for crimes he committed in a different country (in Russia; the European country where he resided gave him asylum because he was a citizen of this country) but he thought that since he was Jesus Christ himself he will not be arrested. This led him to actually attempting to leave the asylum country and travel to Russia; and, as one would rightly guess, right on the border he was arrested and imprisoned (this is where my knowledge of the story ends). This JC experience (which may or may not be considered a some kind of false satori) wasn't initially a part of the pathological phenomenology of this individual; it was appropriated by his borderline "self" (actually, it can hardly be said that there is any self in a conventional sense in a person with the borderline psychopathologies) later on.

This case seems to present a person with a psychopathic personality disorder (Hare characterizes psychopaths as following: "Lacking in conscience and empathy, they take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without guilt or remorse") who for several years was able to create a kind of predatory/criminal business in Moscow based on lies, manipulations, and so on; and for a few years he had been a millionaire until he lost everything and had to flee the country which led him into a crisis of personal insignificance and an idea that if he prayed to God enough his previous life would return to him. For his self-sense it has been absolutely okay to lie, manipulate, exploit, betray, show aggressive/destructive tendencies, etc. without any remorse for most of his life. The series of mystical experiences that emerged in his attempts to undertake a spiritual discipline to recover from the shock of losing everything was appropriated by his pathological self and led to emerging of what conventional psychiatrists would call a delusional idea ("I am [i.e., my ego] [virtually] Jesus Christ; and you must obey me"), which, if that person were under psychiatric care, could pose a serious problem for differential diagnostics (e.g., he could be treated as a schizophrenic psychotic rather than a borderline psychopath that he probably was which are different diagnoses requiring different treatment modalities—and without this delusional idea, thanks to his well-developed social mask, he could be misdiagnosed as borderline-to-neurotic or even neurotic).

I recall as one of the people who knew that individual personally and suffered from his actions for some years characterized S., "You could meet him and speak to him for some time and think that he is a nice person who is worth your friendship; and then he would suddenly hit you in the back with a knife by stealing from you or framing you or betraying you in any possible way—or even attempting to actually beat you or kill you." The most peculiar thing was that from the exterior point of view for long time this person seemed to have no problem adapting to his social environment; and he could have been that rich John Smith living in a private house that you pass by while driving into the city suburbs.

And yet encountering such a person in life and communicating with him/her is no game at all because in order to survive in the childhood such a person had to develop a ruthless psychopathic personality that subsequently became effective enough to betray and manipulate dozens of people and get a house in the most expensive place in Russia—which is incidentally one of the most expensive places in the world (the notorious Rublyovka district in Moscow, where all leaders and large businessmen dream to live; perhaps, this district can be called a psychopathic paradise, a place where the densest and the richest population of psychopaths in the world resides because most of the people living there earned their capital through 1990s in the times when there was no law, only brutal force and deception reigned). He could literally ruin your life; especially if you are a lay person not familiar with a complex compound individuality of a psychopath you will not be able to correctly recognize a psychopath as such. Survival drives such people to developing sometimes a very charismatic personae system (system of social masks) so as to hide the dark passenger beneath the social mask from the world. (Dark passenger is a term from the brilliant Dexter TV series which are based on novels about a charismatic serial killer written by Jeff Lindsay.)

I remember when I tried to convey these my insights about psychopaths and how deceitful they can be for the first time I encountered a blank stare or even an aggressive response; and I have pondered what would that mean. And then I realized that since there is that spectrum of consciousness and corresponding pathologies it is actually very easy for all people to develop a pathology of their own. So almost everybody has a skeleton hidden in his or her own closet. In many cases such a pathology isn't severe, it can be a common neurosis or a script pathology; but since most people are not familiar with classifications of psychopathology they irrationally fear that the little shadow monster that they have been trying to hide in the depths of their psyche is actually a big scary monster, the kind of monster that, if revealed to people, would destroy their lives.

At some point in life almost every individual has to go through a process of coming out (initially, coming out was the term for revealing one's own sexual orientation but I believe it to be a much broader process relating to any system of self-experience that one tries to hide from oneself and others; in the broadest sense it could mean coming to terms with one's identity and the way it is interrelated with the social world). We think of our "huge" monster as of something to hide from everybody; but in most cases it appears that if we actually have this "huge" monster to come out of the closet we encounter that it is a small, cute, and perhaps a little bit angry boy or girl who is not scary at all; and, in fact, no one actually cares about your little boy or girl because everybody is so much obsessed with their own closeted boys and girls (that they falsely perceive as monsters), some personal problems of their own that are common to everybody, that they simply don't see you and build excessive systems of defense just to avoid the pain of a small girl being left home alone or of a small boy being yelled at by a parent.

We experience this closeted and alienated chunk of experience of ours as something disturbing to us so we do our best to be blind about it and not to see it or hear it or feel it. So any time I attempt to speak about this psychopath issue openly there is a chance that another person would projectively identify with the psychopath in question (even though he or she probably has just a little and harmless neurotic subpersonality) and sense immediate danger of one's own coming out. This results in prematurely shutting down of any kind of such talk and triggering all kinds of avoidance mechanisms.

The difference between a psychopathic personality and a neurotic subpersonality within a more-or-less well-adapted self-system, however, is that while the latter senses its neurotic symptoms as egodystonic (something in my own existence that is dangerous or inappropriate for my sense of self) to the former it doesn't even occur that his or her psychopathy must be cured (the psychopathological—psychopathic—structure is so embedded into the personality system and self-sense that it is completely egosyntonic); and it is actually totally okay for a psychopathic manipulator to stay a psychopathic manipulator for the rest of the life; and for a psychopath there would be no compliance (willingness to be healed) in regard to the core features of his psychopathology. It's as if these individuals say, "My psychopathy is who I am, doctor, don't you even dare to touch it, and I want to stay the way I am; what I'm interested in is why I have this headache and also why I get divorced three times, please help me with that." (But, actually, since psychopaths are so identified with their psychopathology they can't even say that because they are that, the exploiting/manipulative maniacs, and it is what they do for a living; it's not observable for them.)

The mistake that we all do in communicating with psychopaths is that we are so blinded by our little closeted monsters that we do our best not to see somebody who is a real monster and a social predator; and it seems that psychopaths tend to be extremely dexterous at using this blind spot of ours that we so carefully sustain. They are experienced masters of exploiting our weaknesses. When meeting another person we usually think that he or she thinks and feels the same way we do or deny ourselves of doing instead of putting ourselves into his or her shoes and hermeneutically understanding that this other person that we meet is a microcosm of its own. Thus, we tend to simplify other person's behavior and personality while overemphasizing the complexity of our own. Why we do it? One of possible explanations that I can think of is that in order to actually recognize the complexity of other person (not necessarily a psychopath) we have to empathically understand him or her, dialogue with him or her, and cognitively reconstruct his or her experience in our mind-body system; in turn, this could lead to our meeting with some closeted aspects of our own self (the same principle works within Gestalt therapy; and initially there is always resistance to letting go of one's habitual responses, scripts, and patterns which manifests, for instance, as an anxious struggle against doing the Gestalt dialogue and fighting against the therapist or facilitator who offers you to explore such an opportunity).

This seems to be one of the complex reasons why it is so hard for us to address difficult problems openly and honestly and directly. It simply causes anxiety; and we tend to be too serious about our experience, so we resist feeling anxiety and the truth beneath it.

Last point I would like to emphasize about psychopathologies is that they seem to be cross-culturally widespread (even though in different kinds of societies they can take different forms). My examples are not limited just to Russia; the psychopathic S. that I described above actually grew up in a European country; furthermore, this post itself was inspired by a news article saying that Rodney Alcala, an American serial killer and rapist, was "sentenced to death as police fear he could be behind 130 murders." The news article goes on describing this person as extremely smart and charismatic and seemingly socially adapted:

The photographer, who is said to have a genius IQ of 160, often boasted of his winning an episode of the American version of Blind Date. However, the woman who chose him later canceled their date because she found him "too creepy."

I strongly encourage you to read about the crimes he committed and his behavior in the court. See below a footage of his participating in a famous American TV show after he was already a psychopathic serial killer. Look him in the face. It is not necessary for a person with a severe psychopathology to be a murderer, he or she may enjoy pathological lying, emotional or sexual abuse, spoiling or tempting an innocent, and so on.  There are different types of personality disorder. He or she can be more or less dangerous than this particular case (it can be a historical leader figure like Stalin or Hitler whose actions and narcissistic struggle resulted in deaths of millions and karmic consequences for the entire planet).

The striking thing is that they will show no remorse. This is not that rare and far from your life; this could be your neighbor. This is what the real monster in a human flesh looks like (and this is where non-judgmental relativism ends). I am convinced that we have no luxury to continue being blind about difficulties of life and avoiding to take the darkest sides of the Kosmos into the fullest consideration that is only possible. We have to come to terms with difficult aspects of reality and how we can be compassionate even towards these poor souls and yet always keeping in mind the whole picture, including all the evils they do to others.

Anaesthesia psychica dolorosa

In order to complete my graduation research I interview and conduct psychological testing of depressive patients at the V. M. Bekhterev Psychoneurological Research Institute, which is situated in an industrial district of St. Petersburg, Russia, the city where I live. Some time later I want to tell here the story of Vladimir Bekhterev (1857—1927), the founder of this institute, who in the beginning of the 20th century embraced a truly integral framework, attempted to integrate individual and social psychology, neurology and behavioral studies, materialism and spirituality in a unified gesture of his works. Bekhterev was a person of profound spiritual insight, possibly having a stable access to witnessing consciousness; he is also known for his studies on the subjects of telepathy, clairvoyance, hypnosis, and  other altered states of consciousness. He was a founder of some of the major schools of the Soviet psychology. It is rumored that he was murdered by Joseph Stalin after assessing him as mentally ill. But all of this in a hopefully forthcoming post; right now I want to speak about something else.

With depressive patients I conduct a simple semi-structured interview that I designed based on The Integral Intake form created by Andre Marquis. Since I am doing an empirical research at this point and, therefore, am not working with the patients as a consultant or a therapist I significantly shortened the number of questions. In general, however, I am attempting to make a survey that touches some points that are essential to my research in all quadrants (psychological, behavioral, social, and cultural, including inquiries regarding patient's current state of consciousness, education, professional background, sleep behavior, destructive and self-destructive tendencies, sociocultural activities, religious attitudes, the meaning of life, and so on). (Initially, I wanted to do a different kind of research involving the state of consciousness assessment but it appeared that I didn't have enough time, tools, and support to complete such an investigation prior to graduation. As you may see, I still inserted some of the questions regarding the first-person experience into the qualitative part of my study.)

In the beginning of the week I interviewed a patient diagnosed with recurrent depressive disorder. A woman, 27 years old, has two kids. One of the striking features of her current state, based on her first-person account, was acute depersonalization, a condition that was historically called anaesthesia psychica dolorosa. This condition is characterized by painful mental insensibility, apathy, anhedonia, alienation from the self and others, lack of emotions, feelings, and concerns for oneself and relatives (in this case, including husband and children). She characterized her state as the state of "emptiness," "lack of feelings," "lack of love." This lack of feelings causes acute psychic pain, an overwhelming feeling of loss, of missing something important. This leads to intensifying questioning of the purpose and meaning of life and whether it is possible to continue living in such a disturbed state of consciousness.

During the clinical interview I asked a usual question in this case, which is about whether she currently experiences suicidal thoughts. She replied affirmatively and stated that in February (before being hospitalized) she actually made a suicidal attempt (took some pills) because she didn't want to live anymore, life was meaningless. After the interview, when I read her case file, I haven't found any mention of suicidal attempts or dangerous self-destructive tendencies, which was surprising because these are foundational data that must be gathered during the medical history examination by a psychiatrist (and, in the case, it is repeated over and over that there are no dangerous behavioral tendencies observed). I informed the local clinical psychologist, a graduate student with whom I collaborate on this research, and asked her to tell the doctor about these findings of mine, that this woman's behavior should probably be observed more closely. I also rated her very high on the clinical depersonalization scale (it was actually the first time I used that scale); and the tests results came also with very low scores in all essential indexes. All of it I sent by email right away. The response I got was that the doctor was aware of the suicidal attempt and "it was demonstrative" (no mention of it in the case file) and he was also aware of her suicidal thoughts (while the case file stated no dangerous behavioral tendencies). Today, I received an email from the clinical psychologist saying that in the morning the patient attempted a suicide by cutting her wrists (fortunately, unsuccessfully), so I was right when raising my concerns regarding her current psychoemotional condition. The patient is now under a special observation. 

Now I'm left with mixed feelings. It was the first patient whom I interviewed of whom I am aware that she attempted a suicide afterward. In fact, I read a case file of another patient whom I interviewed on the same day in which there was a doctor's note (dated the next day after my interview) that the patient feels better. Obviously, I don't think that the simple interview and attention of psychologist (i.e. me) was the crucial factor, but I think the change was at least in some ways supported by the interview because usually by the end of the interview patients leave seemingly in a better state than that which I observed in the beginning (as in that particular case). In the case of the suicidal patient she was very fixed on her depressed emotional state and showed little, if any, improvement by the end of the interview. (Pharmacotherapy, according to the patient's subjective account, didn't seem to help alleviating her interior pain either.)

Every time I meet patients for an interview it is always a challenge for me, because on the subtler level of communication I become increasingly aware of the qualia of the state of consciousness the patients are in; and I attempt to give full space to this state in my awareness. Most of the time after meeting especially strong cases I recognize shifts in my own mood and state of consciousness. I haven't learned yet how to minimize these effects; and I am not sure they must be minimized. As one my friend said, in the process of any kind of healing the most valuable gift is the pain one suffers. Pain is what is usually an authentic connection to experiencing reality; anything else may be more of an illusion.

My struggle towards integral life

As I was around turning 14 I realized I wanted to study psychology. Prior to that I was reading science fiction and fantasy literature extensively, hated school, and loved computer games. Around that age I encountered that there was this huge amount of serious literature called philosophy and psychology; and it dawned on me that I want to grow intellectually and socially rather than drinking vodka at disco parties as most teenagers do.

I wanted to choose my life, to make rational decisions about it, and not to delude myself—which, as I thought at that time, was what the most people did. I had an example of my family and many people around who made decisions according to their irrational biases and fears and eventually didn't win anything in the long term. I also started to write poetry and stories for myself because I found creativity to be the most important value at that time. I loved the flow state that tended to emerge during writing or drawing something I liked.

I naturally decided to embrace conscious atheism, for I saw and read how misleading and hypocritical herd mentality and conformists moral standards (associated, in some literature that I read, with fundamentalist religions) were. I looked for rational self-interest since I saw that most people around weren't actually following their own interests, they were playing mostly a passive role in their life; in fact, they seemed to be constantly acting stupid and making decisions that made their life only worse. And, of course, what I saw around myself at school was mostly ignorance, yelling teachers, drinking students—for whom to be called "smart" was considered an offense because it made them look different from the rest of the herd. I grew up in a low-income district where people live with few expectations from life and low self-esteem. It seems that most of my classmates from the first school where I studied have followed a path of studying at a poor college (or no college at all) and settling for a conventional altitude of life (one boy, who had been my best friend for a few years, now is something close to being a skinhead or at least ultranationalistic). 

In fact, for most students of the first school where I have studied during my early teens being accepted to a large university, such as St. Petersburg State University, seemed almost impossible. And yet I said to my parents that I wanted to study psychology at this university. I was lucky to embrace a rational framework that allowed me to envision my future life and set goals and achieve them. I was driven by my ambition and confidence in that I can achieve everything I want. Studying psychology at the university was my dream. I insisted on changing my school for a slightly better one. There I won an opportunity to study in USA for one academic year. A year that changed me because I saw a completely different life, the kind of life that was much more positive, much easier, made more sense than the constant struggle for survival that I witnessed in Russia.

By the time I was selected to go to America (I was 15) I already started to read different psychologies and philosophies. I attempted to read Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and so on. I found books on transpersonal psychology to be interesting, so I started to read a bit of Stan Grof. I started to attend introductory courses in psychology for the university. I decided that I have to pursue an academic career of clinical psychologist because this discipline seemed to provide the widest spectrum of knowledge, including both psychological and biological factors. It seemed like the most natural decision for me at that time, it came to me lightly, like a common sense.

Upon my return from the US I was devastated by seeing how dull life was in my home culture. I saw people doing meaningless actions in a meaningless state that doesn't care even a dime about its own citizens. I had to formally finish school, so I spent half a year re-adapting to the cruel reality of Russian hopelessness while pursuing my own studies and enjoying some private creative writing.

Second half of that academic year I devoted to preparing for the entrance exams to the university (in the Russian university system, if you pass the entrance exams with an excellent grade, you can get the full scholarship with a little stipend; and since my family wasn't able to pay for education, I had no choice but getting the scholarship). I was accepted by two universities, including, of course, St. Petersburg State University (the second university was just in case I wouldn't be accepted to the University so I wouldn't be drafted to serve in the Russian military which is notorious for breaking boys' lives and health); and I remember how surprised some of my relatives were who thought that I wouldn't be able to pass these exams.

At that time there was an experiment introducing new national examination system, something like American SAT, and in one subject I ended up scoring almost the highest grade, ending up being in the top 2 % nation-wide. My exams scores were much higher than it was necessary for getting a scholarship for studying the clinical psychology specialty at the University's Faculty of Psychology. I was 18 at that time; and it took me 4 years of life to achieve the dream that emerged in my life as I was becoming increasingly self-conscious. I was sure that I would find myself a good place in the academic system and would be able to have an excellent research career, most likely abroad, and I thought the university was connected enough with the world academic system for me to leave the country in two or three years and follow my individualistic enterprise and journey in the world.

Life turned out to flow in a different direction than my plans. The first thing that struck me as I started attending lectures and seminars at the university was indifference that permeated the system throughout. I was shocked to see a professor who obviously drinks a lot being rude to the first-year students (this professor was fired some years later). I was shocked to see a completely outdated curriculum with literature written around 1940s, clearly under the influence of Marxism-Leninism. Few of the teachers were actually interested in their interactions with students; and all of them received a salary that was (and still is) too small for them to bother about any quality or meaningfulness of education. There were some bright aspects, too, but the dark side was just too much to bear. I have quickly lost any interest in studying the university program. Instead of following the drive to fulfill my deepest dreams I felt that my ambitions get sucked into the Soviet swamp of "why would you care at all? Just do what we all do."

I was enraged, I was frustrated, I was depressed. Then, on my second year at the university, I had a series of profound mystical experiences that changed my life because from now on I knew what Stan Grof and other transpersonal psychologists were writing about in my own experience. I was buying all the books I could buy on the topic; and my friend told me about an integral psychology group in Finland that he was going to attend. I thought the very notion of the possibility of Integral Psychology (a kind of psychology, as I was explained, that integrates all the different schools of Eastern and Western psychology into one coherent system of knowledge and practice) was so splendid that I went to a bookstore and bought Russian translations of Ken Wilber's books, including Integral Psychology. I actually had some of his books on my book shelves before—but never read them—simply because I was purchasing everything that was related to transpersonal psychology; and the amount of books I bought quickly exceeded the amount of time I could have devoted to them. So I started reading Wilber and thought it was quite a challenge to grasp all these different concepts (different quadrants, stages and lines of development, states, spiritual traditions, psychological schools, philosophers and so on) that he mentions. Russian translations were hard to read, so I switched to articles and interviews published in English; and it was then when it dawned on me how clearly Wilber writes, how it all makes sense, and brings meaning that I lost somewhere during the first year of university back into my life.

On my third university year I already decided that Integral Theory and Practice was something that I want to connect my life with so I invested all the money that I had from the monthly stipend for subscribing to the Integral Naked website, a website where one can download lots of interviews and audio. I was listening and reading virtually everything I could have found on the Integral Approach; and it often happened that I was skipping boring university classes just to spend more time studying Wilber's works. By the end of my third academic year at the university I was so depressed by being increasingly aware of the gap between what I learned and knew and what I actually did and embodied in life that I provoked a conflict with a teacher (together with friends we wrote a complaint regarding extremely low quality of education at a specific course) and was seriously thinking about dropping out.

At the critical point, when I decided that I am going to follow an integral dream at any cost, I received an invitation to meet owners of one Russian company who expressed their interest in the integral approach. I don't want to announce publicly the name of the organization or its leaders because there are some serious private issues related to that whole situation that require a lot of sensitivity. Even though I had a creepy feeling during the first moment I saw one of the owners (the kind of a look in the eyes of the person that tells you how it all is going to end the very moment you see it; only some time later I read a book about rapid cognition that explained much of this creepiness), they stated their interest in the Integral vision and invited me to equally collaborate with them helping to transform the organization towards the Integral (there were some underlying reasons for their invitation because I had some previous contacts with them for a few months and previously declined their proposals for collaboration due to my university  schedule and a general disbelief in Russian businesses), and I found no rational reason not to explore whatever could emerge from this occasion. They were charismatic and interesting; and I was curious. I started to participate in that company's projects and offering my advice regarding the Integral framework.

After a few months of what evolved into a very close relationship, during which I got to know them better, I couldn't help but notice that one of the owners had a peculiar capacity to forget about any promise or agreement he made on the next day after making that promise or agreement. In fact, I got in such a deep ("friendly," as I thought) relationship with him that he started to tell me about some of the tricks instrumental in manipulating people into doing what he wants and eventually proclaimed that he wasn't actually interested in neither spirituality nor the Integral vision—which was in such a complete opposition to his public mask that I was shocked. (What I didn't understand until much later was that I was subject to his manipulations, too. This person has a gift to blind people and fool them into doing for free what they initially didn't want to do at all; and the long list of those who were fooled—in fact, were asking to be fooled due to any personal reasons—included me as well.) At first I thought it was a little subpersonality of his speaking the things that negated basic presuppositions for our collaboration but then I realized that it was actually the pathological core of his manipulative and exploiting self that guided his actions. (How can his interest in the Integral be explained? It's very simple:  the developmental model, such as Spiral Dynamics, that is incorporated into the Integral vision, if used inappropriately and improperly, especially by a non-specialist, allows one to "prove"—to rationalize and feed the illusion—that he or she is intrinsically better than the rest of the world and not a bad boy/girl—hence, the food for the superiority/inferiority complex. It can be very "nicely" used to label and pigeonhole people so as to prove one's own worthiness.) In any case, any projects we tried to do were stopped by constant quarrels among the owners; and they had no interest in actually doing what they were speaking about. Their words parted with their deeds significantly. No progress, running in circles, and profound frustration was the atmosphere.

But by the time I understood the total picture of this pathological environment our relationship went into a decline (later on I learned that the same situation with the same kind of broken relationships has been happening to that person for years—i.e. he keeps finding new partners/friends and then breaking agreements with them and making scape goats out of them). I still had a hope that the catastrophic situation can be changed and the pathology healed by integral care; but I was forced to leave the organization, mainly due to some tricky manipulations by that person; and I promised myself from now on to be more cautious, insightful, and wise at choosing partners in business and life. It was an important lesson on the necessity of coming to terms with the cruel reality and considering all the factors involved without ignoring anything, even the most sublime things. It was also a lesson that if one proclaims oneself spiritual/integral/etc. it is not necessarily true. Especially in Russia where everything that can go bad goes even worse. I realized how important it is for me to live my life as honestly as I can.

My collaboration with the company died prematurely nine months ago. Meanwhile my fourth year at the university successfully ended and the fifth year, the senior year, started. I am still considered a savvy and talented student with somewhat peculiar interests in the science of consciousness. It is three months before my graduation; and I am conducting my final empirical research assessing self-esteem in the structure of self-consciousness of patients with bipolar disorder and recurrent depressions. Next week, I will turn 23; and I don't want to spend my next five years fulfilling only half of my soul's deepest potential and wasting most of my life continuing to postpone the deepest visions I desperately want to embody. I enjoy talking with patients, I meditate daily, I have had profound spiritual and therapeutic insights, and my consciousness transforms rapidly; but my current Russian academic path is dissatisfying, for I always have to explain myself. How can I better manifest my inner abundance in the world? What can be the next chapter in my integral life? How can I live honestly and integrally and at the same time abundantly?

I don't know what my life is going to be in the following years. Sometimes I fear that I will never be able to realize my potential and follow my daemon, my soul purpose. Many things that I'm interested in I can't share with people around. Frequently, I feel like being lost, for what at the moment I want to do and what I can do to earn a living differ dramatically. It's a big challenge. But I'm happy to be increasingly embraced by the spaciousness of the World Soul. The treasures I have found on the path of the inner journey home are beyond any price. Without this Silence and Bliss anything else is meaningless.

Russia is not a "normal" state

There is a pretty interesting news article that points to the unfortunate "uniqueness" of Russia. See below the excerpt from the article:

Norway urges cooler heads

Earlier, Norway's foreign minister urged all polar allies to keep a cool head and work together to solve disputes in the Arctic.

"We sometimes analyze Russia with old mental maps, with the mental maps of the Cold War, where we have instinctive reactions to what we see and hear," Jonas Gahr Store said.

"One should not put all mental maps to the shredder. But I think updating mental maps … analyzing it coolly is the responsibility of modern government."

Store didn't refer to Canada directly, but the Harper government has criticized Moscow in recent years over what it views as provocative conduct in the Far North. A Russian submarine planted a flag on the seabed of the North Pole and Moscow has sent bombers close — but never into — Canadian Arctic airspace.

"Not everything Russia does in the Arctic, not every flag they plant, which is a symbolic gesture, has legal meaning," Store said. "And the more you react to that … you give it meaning."

Valuable natural resources

As much as one-fifth of Earth's undiscovered oil and gas is believed to be in the Arctic and climate change is causing the rapid melting of Arctic ice, opening resource-exploration potential.

Store said Russia has legitimate interests in the Arctic and much of the resource wealth is in its sovereign territory, which should minimize future disputes.

However, maintaining relations with Moscow is complicated because Russia is not quite a "normal" state, he added.

"Russia is in transition, and as some of their able analysts are saying, they are lost in transition.… It is not certain in what state they will be when that transition ends.

"We are all served by seeing that transition landing softly into something where Russia can still be called a democracy with rule of law, civil society, freedom of press and freedom of expression."

Russia is not a "normal" state, indeed, as I have been arguing in a few posts here, in this blog. The Norwegian minister seems to be very insightful.

I like to say that when Europeans or Americans visit Russia for the first time they meet white people of European outlook who live in a seemingly industrialized country and think that due to surface, exterior similarity they understand the culture very well. And yet Russia seems to be so alien—and even alienated—from the European and the Anglo-Saxon civilizations (don't forget that the country was isolated from the rest of the world for 70 years during the period of Communism) that this often-occurring misleading reliance on culturally insensitive extrapolation of one's own cultural experience to the Russian culture causes a lot of trouble and misunderstanding to both sides (not to mention the fact that Russians themselves are extremely ignorant of the interiors of the Western civilization; for instance, if for Americans the complex notion of liberal freedoms and principles of healthy individualism is built into the cultural background and is perceived as a social given, for Russians these signifiers have different signifieds—something that was learned from Hollywood movies, perhaps; in any case, something far more primitive). 

In Russia, it is completely normal for owners of large and not-so-large businesses to have a personality disorder (personality disorder—or  previously psychopathy—is called a "shadow syndrome" due to a difficult diagnostics), a borderline or narcissistic condition, and so on. I have met a couple of cases (who seemed to be spiritually oriented at first but then appeared as full of lies and manipulation) which shocked, terrified me enormously. Needless to say I've had to go through a difficult period integrating such an experience. If America has long ago transcended the stage of a chaotic capitalism, Russian "capitalism" is built on lies and power struggles rather than rational self-interest. It is absolutely okay to lie extensively in each and every aspect of business, to break agreements, to make decisions according to one's short-term impulses and personal neuroses. Your business can always be taken away; law doesn't work; courts make decisions in favor of those who have the most power and bribe with the most money. Stealing is okay and is a social norm—in fact, those who don't steal are poor, those who steal are rich. Same goes for bribery. If you don't bribe, your business will most likely be closed or  invaded because no one needs somebody who doesn't conform to what everybody does. The politics works the same way.

So, you may see that figuring out the integral picture of Russia and its place in the world is one of my current fascinations. This fascination was brought forth by realization that most foreigners, even those who live here, don't quite understand the true nature of the Russian culture the way it is now in its complexity and, well, abandonment; neither Russians themselves have enough self-reflection so as to get to know what is going on better (due to so much of dissociated and undigested history, including a comprehensive and unbiased synthetic vision of the 20th century). 

As a friend of mine, Dr. Elke Fein, argues, Russian politics comes mostly from self-protective action logic, which is a very early stage of development discourse. At first, when I read her arguments, I was trying to disprove them but the more I'm looking into the data the more I feel the truth of the theory that the dominant mode of discourse in Russian society and politics is that of the self-protective level. Here is the abstract of Elke Fein's paper, highly recommended:

Adult Development Theory and Political Analysis: An Integral Account of Social and Political Change in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia

Elke Fein

Abstract: I propose a reading of social, political and discursive change in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia which is inspired by an integral, above all developmental perspective. In view of explaining Russia’s current political trajectory, I make several arguments. First, I claim that Russian politics are still to a large extent determined by the effects of a threefold crisis of sense-making. Neither the collapse of the Soviet empire, nor the question of how to define democratic government nor the lack of a resilient national identity have so far been resolved and re-appropriated in a transformative manner. Second, I try to show how this affects various aspects and dimensions of Russian politics. Third, I engage in a brief overview of a number of adult development models, asking to what extent and how the characteristics of consciousness development, particular stage characteristics, and the general logics and dynamics of successful and unsuccessful development these models describe can be helpful to the analysis of Russian politics. Also, I discuss their compatibility and parallels with discourse theory and analysis as an increasingly popular methodology in Russian Studies. Of the developmental models reviewed, the theory of political development by Stephen Chilton and the self-protective action logic in Susanne Cook-Greuter’s model of self and identity development are particularly relevant for my purpose. On these grounds, it is argued that since Vladimir Putin’s taking office as Russian president and later prime-minister, politics and (official) political discourse have increasingly come to follow self-protective action logics as conceived by Susanne Cook-Greuter. This diagnosis, which could either be understood as a regression or as a realignment of internal and external dimensions of political development, can be explained as a reaction to Russia’s crisis of identity followed by a loss of internal stability and international influence connected to the dislocations mentioned above (Integral Review, 2010).

It is dramatic that such a great culture is in such a decline for such a long period—and there's no hope, or so it seems.