I found myself one with the universe, only to find that we live in a multiverse universe.

Image Courtesy: Nandita Komaravolu

The field of psychology is currently experiencing a lunar eclipse. Here, the illuminating light of the sub-consciousness is occluded by the celestial body of the consciousness, casting an umbra on the process of individuation.

It is hard not to imagine the profession being practised in some deserted, dimly lit alley where anonymous figures appear and disappear without leaving a trace of their stories of success and struggles. Sadly, medical therapy remains an alien concept for the poor, a waste of resources for the working class, and a fad for the rich.

Let us surpass this rule and follow an exception and build some street lights and bring the profession out in bright daylight, shall we?

Until a few years ago, I was intrigued by the concepts of psychiatry and psychology, or, to say, the brain or mind. Psychiatry is a purely medical field that considers the brain as an identity and believes that it can be influenced through chemicals, both internal and external, and that only manipulation of the contents can cure a person.

Psychology, on the other hand, studies the fundamentals of the mind. The mind is something intangible, like your identity, character, and personality.

Now take a running train as your brain with all its compartments, engine, and spare parts, and your mind as the concept of physics in motion—running that train. The mind is the fuel—the energy that is driving and pushing all the lifeless steel of the train. We can see the train, while the concepts of speed, time, distance, and motion can only be experienced inside the running train.

What is it, then?

Mind over matter? Or matter over mind?

I’d rather say it’s mind and matter over the individual!

For most of our lives, we are quite comfortably sufficient within ourselves. It is only at a certain point in our lives that we feel that the axis of reality is shifting from its centre and that the connection from within has fused out. The voices in our heads either become too weak or grow extremely heavy. We feel at a loss of direction and seek out our lost purpose or a new one to cater to the current circumstances. This is the stage when we need intervention, retrospection, and introspection!

Sadly, most of the population considers this distortion of reality a minor rebuttal of our inner selves in response to the process of growing up. It is just assumed to be a phase and a casual norm. They fail to realise that things can only go downhill from here; the gap keeps widening, and the last few neural connections holding the dying cells together of the self die an untimely death.

In psychology, there are primarily two kinds of practitioners. One who is very well trained in the field and knows all the tricks and twists of the trade He is deeply versed in the literature and scripture on the subject. He would mostly go by the books and help you become the person you were before you required counselling.

Then there are these healers who have all the qualifications of our former professionals, but in addition, they have a miraculous gift for their clients: the gift of philosophy. They not only heal us from all our past traumas and help us cope with life, but they also give us a recipe for life! In therapy, they would sense our vibes and overall mental structure, and in making suggestions, they would pass on the necessary ingredients. Just as a gardener would implant the seeds in fertile soil, so will the healer inject them into our mind’s womb and impregnate our identities with a new self.

Throughout our experience, they would be with us, nurturing and guarding us until we gave birth to our own infant philosophy. The new-born philosophy would have our own DNA and would then guide us for the rest of our lives. We now have our own elements to pass on this child’s philosophy and legacy to the entire world.

These healers are first philosophers and then psychologists; as we know, psychology itself is in its adolescence stage and every now and then looks up to its mother field, philosophy, and alloparents in various other fields. These healers rewrite the scriptures of psychology and change the face of the process.

The lost individual sits at the centre of a labyrinth (chakravyuh), hopelessly awaiting its doom. It is the duty of the healer to choose one of the multicursal ways—dodging all the defence mechanisms and walls that have been erected by the individual while going forward into the maze—and reach the patient, hold him by his hand, and transform him out of the puzzle and into the process of individuation of the outer world.

There are a few fortunate ones who go through the rejuvenating process of Kintsugi, the Japanese art form of putting together broken artefacts with gold and silver. They acknowledge their damaged parts and go very deep within themselves, finding the appreciation and courage to face the impaired self and allowing their open wounds to be filled with precious metals and pious healing, finally emerging more treasured and valuable than they were before the occurrence of the breakdown.