Let’s look more closely at the process we’re engaged in here. We’re saying that this Work is basically a process of learning to grow up. It is not a matter of getting better or becoming a more perfect person. It is a matter of growing up, with all that growing up requires. A neurotic human being is a childish human being. A psychotic human being is an infantile human being. A healthy human being is an adult. What is the difference between a child and an adult? The most important feature is that the baby is unable to feed and protect himself. The parents do these things for the child. Then the child grows up and does these things for himself and for his children. An adult is a person who can do these things for himself and does not expect somebody else to do it for him. An adult is one who is aware of the situation as it is, sees what is there, knows his capacities and limitations, and acts accordingly. An adult is realistic and knows what to expect from a situation and what not to expect. Instead of acting according to his unconscious beliefs, an adult sees what a situation actually provides and what it does not. 

This does not mean that one cannot have access to spirit and experiences of enlightenment without clarifying all of one’s structures or resolving one’s neurotic manifestations, a fact that has been recognized for ages and has recently been formulated in the language of transpersonal psychology, as demonstrated in the following quote: “To believe spiritual attainment is the right only of the psychologically ‘well adjusted’ does not square with the facts. There are a number of very disturbed or crazy, borderline, and highly neurotic saints and spiritually advanced or enlightened beings . . . The suggestion that all shamans, psychics, clairvoyants, saints, and sages have worked through their childhood wounds and neurotic distortions is not supported by historical or clinical evidence.” (Brant Cortright, Psychotherapy and Spirit, pp. 77–78.) This fact does not mean, however, that spiritual attainment is independent of one’s mental health. The perspective we have been unfolding is that of how the rigidity and opaqueness of ego structuring obscure our true nature from our awareness. The more transparent are the structures of the self, the more access we can have to the dimension of true nature. There can be breakthroughs when for one reason or another one’s obscuring structures are not in force. This may result from making some of the structures transparent, so they allow access to essence, but other structures may remain unclarified and manifest in neurosis or distortion. 

Some individuals have developed another and more subtle rationalization, due to this wrong view, which is the belief that one can be enlightened but neurotic. This is the view, of the “sick gurus,” that takes it to be possible that one can be fully realized (enlightened) but still exhibit aberrant and neurotic behavior. This view also reflects an inaccurate understanding of what self-realization is, assuming that self-realization can be an attainment separate from the structures of the self, where there can be full realization that does not influence one’s neurotic structures. It is our understanding that spiritual states, in general, require disidentification from psychic structures, normal or neurotic, and that self-realization, in particular, means the absence of these structures, at least in the duration of the experience, as we have discussed in very specific details. Full self-realization—enlightenment—requires the complete and final dissolution of all psychic structures. There cannot be neurotic manifestations in full self-realization, because any neurotic manifestation must be the expression of some psychic structures, which, by their representational nature, will limit the realization. So what is called a “sick guru” must be an individual who is spiritually developed but not fully realized or enlightened. 

Now that we know what the situation is, and how it started, how do we go about dealing with it? How can we regain our original innocence and develop the ability to discharge? How can we enhance our confidence and our capacity for self-regulation? As we have seen, rejecting our experience makes it worse. True, the child needed to do it for a time, but if it continues, more and more tension accumulates, and the capacity for regulation decreases until the child becomes neurotic. If we can regain the capacity to spontaneously charge and discharge, if we can change the rejection pattern and reconnect with our natural confidence and trust, we call that self-realization. Obviously everyone longs to regain that harmony and relaxation. So how can we learn to accept our experience? First, we need to know that we do not know how to accept our experience. Personality doesn’t know how to accept. Ego personality began as a rejection and that is what it knows. Even the presence of personality is rejection, it is saying “no” to your being. What you think is you, your personality, is covering up your truth even when you are not actively rejecting your experience. Personality came into being in order to cover up the real experience, to avoid pain and frustration. The personality is a “no”; it can’t say “yes.” 

However, even neurotic and normal personalities have features similar to these severe pathologies. Sometimes the difference is only in the degree of pathology. The extent of the presence of borderline, narcissistic, and psychotic features in neurotic and normal personality structures is just beginning to be acknowledged in psychological circles. It is still very far from being seen objectively. From our perspective, everybody has neurotic, borderline, narcissistic, and psychotic features in his personality, each stemming from its developmental anlage in the process of ego development. People differ in the preponderance and intensity of the different developmental features in their personalities. Diagnosis in terms of neurotic, borderline, and so on is useful only for the practical purposes of applying technique and judging what is the best sequence of development for a particular student. For instance, a normal person with borderline tendencies might need to deal to some extent with some of the features of his ego structure before it is possible or even desirable to deal effectively with his superego. 

So to support our realization, to support our heart in terms of loving truth for its own sake, we need to actualize the life of the truth. We need to start living according to the truth that we know. We need to live according to what we have experienced and what we have understood. We need not only to love with sincerity but to act with sincerity. Otherwise, not only will we waste our time, but we will also create trouble for ourselves. Often, if we experience deep realizations without working to actualize them in our life, without trying to live according to them, we will create a profound split inside ourselves. We’ll drive ourselves crazier. If our life doesn’t embody our experience, doesn’t reflect our sessions, our work in the group, our personal inquiry, then we’re being psychotic. We will experience a profound schism between the wonderful things we know and the neurotic way we live our lives. This gulf between what we know and how we live will make us miserable. It is important to examine how seriously we are doing this work. Do you really want to live according to what you’re learning? Or are you learning these things in order to support how you’re already living your life? If you’ve experienced yourself as strength, then what does it mean to continue living your life as a wimp? What good is your realization if you discount it? Of what value is your nature if you forget it? 

The second observation is that we find in our work with students that those with more rounded ego development find an easier time with the experience of the Personal Essence. It is, generally speaking, easy for these individuals to experience the Personal Essence, and their process of developing and integrating it runs smoothly. Individuals with neurotic fixations or with more structural deficiencies have a much harder time in experiencing and realizing the Personal Essence. It takes them longer to get to the initial experiences, and they usually deal with a great deal of conflict in the process of integration. The third observation is that individuals with structural problems of the ego and those with neurotic conflicts undergo different processes while integrating the Personal Essence. Students with structural difficulties seem to be able to reach the experience of the Personal Essence faster than those with neurotic conflicts, but they usually cannot retain the experience. The more neurotic individuals, although it is more difficult for them to have the initial experiences, are usually more able to integrate the Personal Essence with the passage of time and the increase in understanding.

The above hypothesis clearly takes into consideration the findings of depth psychology, especially those of object relations theory. The major point in it is the introduction of the concept of Being or essence. We can easily deduce the following points from our hypothesis:

1. The ego structure, with its sense of identity, contain within it a deficient emptiness. This is true for any person whose identity is with self-image instead of with just Being. This includes individuals with normal, neurotic, or pathological personality structures. Clearly, this refers to virtually all human beings.
2. The extent of the sense of deficient emptiness depends on how complete the loss of contact with Being is.
3. Also, the sense of deficient emptiness depends on how vulnerable or incomplete the personality structure is. For normal and neurotic structures—where there is a stable sense of identity—the deficiency is very much unconscious and successfully defended against. For those with severe mental disorders, the weaknesses or rips in their structures expose them more readily to this deficient emptiness and the anxieties and pains accompanying it or in reaction to it . . . .  

Self-reflection is necessary for the development of ego structures, and becomes a factor in the soul’s self-conscious awkwardness and neurotic self-criticism. It also tends to dissociate the soul from her ground, for by reflecting back on herself, the soul takes the position of a subject that observes an object. Thus self-reflection develops into the dualistic mode of experiencing oneself. Yet it is necessary as a stage in the development and maturation of the soul toward self-realization. In the total self-realization of true nature, the soul is not self-reflective, for true nature does not look at itself. It recognizes itself by being itself. This capacity for discrimination is not present in early infancy. (See The Point of Existence, chapter 35, for a discussion of essential self-seeing and self-recognition.) The soul does not lose her capacity for self-reflection when she realizes her true nature. She retains it as a capacity, rather than as the only way of knowing herself.

As we see, space leads to Being, which is a fundamental transformation of the totality of the individual. However, we are here considering only the restricted question of the relationship between space and sexuality. We have seen that the unconscious self-image of having a genital hole is a universal phenomenon. This means that for the majority of humanity, there is no real sexuality; the majority of humankind, normal or neurotic, is not connected and integrated with their sexuality. How can there be complete, full, and integrated sexuality, if unconsciously there is the deep and powerful threat of castration? The defenses against the hole create all kinds of deep tensions and contractions in the pelvis, which greatly hinder the flow of energies and bodily fluids in the area. It is not only bodily fluids and energy that are hindered in the genital region; essence itself, the true substance of our being, is blocked. This is so prevalent that the average person does not know what it means to have real sexuality. The average individual is not a complete man or woman. Almost no one completely and fully experiences his or her genitals, owns them, or values them. Because full experience of the genitals would bring to consciousness the genital hole, experience of the genitals is partial, incomplete, and superficial. The average individual does not know what it’s like to have integrated genitals, or to have essence flowing and filling them, so real sexuality is rarely experienced. 

Furthermore, enlightenment is not only spiritual attainment. Enlightenment is the completion of the attainment, its perfection. One is then a buddha, in Buddhism; a perfect master, in Hinduism; a complete human being, in Sufism, and so on. When one is truly enlightened one cannot be neurotic or suffer emotional pain. To not see this is to dilute the concept of enlightenment, the possibility of complete integration of psyche and spirit, and all other dimensions of existence. This dilution might seem compassionate and gentle, but it is ultimately uncompassionate for it robs us of the view of true spiritual maturity, which has been seen traditionally as completeness, balance, integration, wholeness, inner health, and liberation. 

But our concern here is not therapy. Our aim is much more fundamental; it is the return to being. From our perspective, anybody who has lost the merging essence and wants to regain it must go back to the symbiotic stage and deal with its issues. And this is true for normal people, those who are neurotic, and everybody else, not just for the severe psychopathologies. In fact, we will see that if a person involves himself with the journey of return using the psychodynamic approach, the issues explored will be mostly what are usually considered in psychoanalytic circles as borderline, narcissistic, and psychotic issues. This means that all people, not just the ones afflicted with pathology, are narcissistic, borderline, and psychotic. However, these tendencies, termed the psychotic core, are buried very deeply in the unconscious, and the normal person never really deals squarely with these underpinnings of his character. Neither, of course, does he come to live the life of essence, unless he sincerely embarks on doing the work.