Tell me how you suffer and I'll tell you....
Author: Fredinand Wulliemier

This paper is based upon three main theses which have been developed from my experience with personal suffering and my witnessing the suffering of other human beings and from the teachings of my spiritual guide, Shri Parthasarathi Rajagopalachari:

I. Normally, in life - while we are incarnate beings - there is no way to escape suffering of one form or another. Popular sayings express this, as in the well-known dictum, "Everyone receives his part of suffering." Buddha himself confirms this with his saying "Suffering, all is suffering."
I will call "non-specific suffering" that universal suffering which is "the underlying structure of all existence" [1], as Shri Parthasarathi Rajagopalachari recalls.

II. The forms which this suffering takes vary according to our own particular way of decoding life experiences in general, according to the value we confer to them, and the value we also confer to the particular experiences we call pains, difficulties, miseries, sorrows or sufferings. Now, the values that we give them, or our ways of decoding them are themselves dependent upon the evolutive stage we have reached at the time at which we have these experiences.
I will call these experiences "specific suffering". Here we can illustrate them with the popular saying: "Everyone has a cross to bear", that is a specific, (individual) personalized cross.

III. A spiritual psychology should be able to provide us with:

- a theoretical model that is both noteworthy and effective, to be able to account for the different types of suffering;

- therapeutic principles which are both coherent and differentiated, which allow us to help our clients to handle their suffering in the most appropriate manner (assuming that we ourselves have validly preceded them along this path).

First of all let us consider non-specific suffering: it is not very difficult to bring them to the fore which will allow us to be brief.

Throughout our existence, two possibilities are open to us, and generally we "benefit" frequently and largely, from one as well as the other:

- Either we face the suffering which is linked to the fact, more or less acceptable to ourselves, that we are turning around in circles, that we are stagnating. At a minimum we suffer from boredom, and at a maximum we suffer so much that we need to be hospitalized in a psychiatric unit with depression. On this subject, Shri Parthasarathi Rajagopalachari teaches us that if we have the wisdom to look deeply into ourselves, we have to admit as a last resort that this suffering corresponds to a nostalgia already present at birth, the nostalgia of the soul which yearns to return to its source, to its original dwelling.

- Or we evolve by successive stages, from our childhood and ideally until our death, and our evolution at each of these stages is always a little painful. For instance, a child suffers when learning to walk and a mature adult suffers also when reaching the existential stage, hence becoming aware of his physical and intellectual limitations and of his insignificance. Growth is inevitably mingled with successive processes of mourning and adaptation syndromes which we very well know are both occasions for a certain and unavoidable amount of pain and suffering. Here we recognize another popular saying: "Suffering is a part of growing up."

We can now pass on to the specific suffering of the different evolutive stages through which we go, or ideally through which we should go, in the course of our life. Here there is no question of giving details of each evolutionary stage and their characteristic sufferings, for example, the nine stages which Ken Wilber describes in Transformations of consciousness [2]. We will content ourselves here with five examples presented in a rather schematic manner:

For someone who navigates essentially in deep pregenital waters, who is looking for the quickest possible satisfaction of his desires, reasons for suffering are, of course, multiple and intense. This is because everything that undermines his quest for security and pleasure will be seen as a menace, a narcissistic blow, a frustration, a deception, an attack. In other words, that person is living in a sort of prison, in an infernal place from which he could probably not even imagine it possible to escape. His suffering will be decoded as blows unjustly administrated, which maintain him in the role of a passive or aggressive victim. This is because his principal egoistical illusion consists of believing that the world is not honouring its contract, just as that same world exists solely for his personal satisfaction.

Now we know that this serious misunderstanding is on one hand very tenacious, and also very widespread in the human population, notably amongst our clients. Consequently, these human beings suffer enormously and most of all, as Arnaud Desjardins so rightly says, "they suffer from suffering", they are "unhappy to be unhappy" [3-4]. Their suffering is directly linked to the limited functioning of their immature ego, to the archaism of their narcissistic economy. In more usual terms, if these "tragic men" as says H. Kohut [5], suffer at this evolutive level, it is because, to their mind, the world does not obey their desires, well enough or often enough. Their pride is profoundly afflicted. In other words it is their ego that essentially determines their suffering, even though that is very difficult for them to admit, because their consciousness is open so little.

We shall not linger over the only too classic description of the neurotic suffering of the "guilty man" [5] extensively studied by psychoanalysis of course. The guilty man suffers from anguish and from his feeling of guilt and he creates some particular symptoms because he feels torn between his drives, his desires, and his duties (according to his moral consciousness). In psychoanalytical terms, the guilty man is an object of psychological conflicts between his id, his superego and his ideal ego, which are arbitrated for better or worse by a too weakly developed ego.

Let us now study the case of a being a little more evolved. Let us call him "the reasonable" or "conventional adult" who has more or less, acquired different roles in family, professional or social life; someone who has integrated the triangular relationship. This person suffers also but more moderately, as he is capable of delaying the satisfaction of his desires - an ability which Sigmund Freud optimistically called "the principle of reality". But in fact, in the view of spiritual psychology, it is simply "the principle of deferred pleasures". At this stage one feels the common place suffering known to all: the frustrations and deceptions of everyday life, rebellion more or less contained against the fact of having to suffer, rancour due to the inability to forgive completely, fear of death and of suffering due to illness etc. To sum up, at this stage one still "suffers from suffering" but one tolerates more easily what is called "the hand of fate" or misfortune, or predictable feedback, or yet still "the inevitable consequence of certain deeds". Therefore, there is a net diminution of the pregenital experiences: drama occupies less place and suffering is sometimes even used as a signal to correct past attitudes. This is the reason why most psychotherapists appreciate these clients because they collaborate rather actively.

At the existential stage (or centauric stage after Ken Wilber) [2,6] which is the final stage of our psychological development, personal (therefore still individualistic), suffering is linked to the understanding of our human finality, both in our brief life, and in our minute dimension in comparison with the Universe; awareness of a particular absurdity has been largely described. This particular form of suffering may be understood as the inablility to grasp certain aspects of life through conventional thinkings which provokes a charateristic quest for new explanations. This quest is often pathetic and moving to observe. The uneasiness can become intense and lead to a state of depression in which the suffering is felt both as personal and as linked to the entire human condition, giving it a philosophical dimension. At this stage, suffering and death are met with courage or resignation, as hard realities which cannot be avoided. This is why cynicism is one of the defensive models here when the person is incapable of going beyond this stage of evolution to approach the spiritual realm. Many therapists are ill at ease with these patients, for they have not transcended to beyond this stage themselves and therefore do not have sufficient answers to offer.

For the candidate approaching transpersonal states, new suffering is at the rendezvous, for he will lose one illusion after the other, as his ego becomes refined little by little, or peeled like an onion. Furthemore, there will now develop a type of suffering that is specific to the spiritual quest not yet achieved. It is a painful nostalgia, which in devotional tradition is considered as inevitable as long as physical life incarnation lasts, in the measure that incarnation prevents the total merging or laya avastha with the divine beloved. Another specific suffering may begin at this stage, the suffering caused by the "opening of the heart", the suffering of transmutation. It is experienced also in the physical body as it absorbs more and more of that "energy without energy" which is called by various names, such as divine light, holy spirit, universal love, pranahuti. Once again, the individual decoding of these happenings makes the difference, determining the specificity of this or these different types of suffering. Some suffering reduce in intensity at this evolutive stage, since the "suffering of suffering" has clearly diminished for the serious seeker, once his capacity of absorption (or resilience) has increased along with his inner space. As a matter of fact, the symptoms of this person's suffering will most probably be interpreted as signals indicating errors to be corrected, trials to be passed in order to become stronger and more confident, or even blessings which he can ask for himself with the purpose of using up his karma as quickly as possible, or to get rid of what he could call, for example, his samskaras which have become bhog. Now on the whole, the candidate takes full responsability for all that is happening to him, for he has understood that all this is a result of that which he himself has created in this life or preceding lives, and that he must now get out of, and unprogram his old habits. Therefore, at this stage, suffering is not only understood as a secondary effect of growing, in the sense of "there is no growth without suffering", but is now also considered as the motor of his (spiritual) growth. This is why that it is only at this stage that I propose to situate access to reality, which one could call the true "principle of reality", had the expression not already been employed with another meaning level of consciousness by psychoanalysis.

Such persons engaged on the spiritual path have not on the whole much need of a psychotherapist, but more of a spiritual method and a spiritual guide. As it happens though, therapists with a spiritual orientation receive often enough requests for help from clients who declare themselves on a spiritual path. This is the case when the latter have been insufficiently prepared psychologically and meet a momentary acute difficulty on their journey. To help such persons is often very delicate because of the tendancy frequently used of playing hide and seek between psychological and spiritual levels.

Finally, let us try to complete this rapid review of a few types of suffering which the human being can encounter, by approaching, however briefly, at the particular cases of a wise man, a Saint or a spiritual Master . It is not necessary here to differentiate among these three levels of spiritual attainment. There is not, of course, at these stages, any more personal suffering or duality: therefore there is neither suffering or non-suffering but a state which transcends these two real life experiences. Nevertheless, can one say that these particular human beings do not suffer anymore, that they experience no moral suffering or physical pain at all, when on the other hand they are reputed to take upon themselves the suffering of their disciples or even the suffering of the entire human race? They do indeed suffer, but they have completely mastered their personal suffering and have become capable of such a degree of compassion and even of universal love, that they can now truly partake of the sufferings of their fellow beings and alleviate them. On this, one of the definitions that Shri Ram Chandra gives of a Saint is: "A Saint is the target for the world's sorrows" [7]. In this case, the suffering which is felt only appears to be coming from others, for they are not only considered as brothers and sisters (equal to himself) but mainly as part of himself in a united universe, where there is neither interior nor exterior, where there is no defensive shell. In a Reality where there is no more subject-object relationship, that is no distinction, there can only be a question of "universal suffering", of "impersonal" suffering. That is, the Saint's suffering no longer deals with ego, with its pleasure or its pride, but solely with love which such a person cannot avoid diffusing, not because he or she loves others but because he or she has become love!

Two more of Shri Parthasarathi Rajagopalachari's quotations illustrate this level of consciousness:

"Without pain there is no love, the greater the pain, the greater the love, (....). It is easy to suffer from your pain, but if you love somebody so much that their pain affects you, that pain is going to be worse than your own pain. (....) When I see you eating an ice-cream, I cannot enjoy your ice-cream, but when I see you suffering, I can suffer with you."
"You cannot avoid pinpricking me, I am like 'a pincushion'."
One can understand therefore, why certain gurus of lower calibre choose their disciples very carefully and limit their number. But one can also understand the probably irreplaceable usefulness of suffering for one who aspires towards universal love: suffering which has now become altruistic is a signpost in the quest for that love. It should be obvious that this suffering has nothing to do with neurotic masochism.

Having described different types of suffering, we must now ask ourselves if there is a standardized method of understanding them, of putting them under the same heading, and if spirituality can help us in such a venture. Indeed it would be logical that spiritual psychology and spiritual psychiatry, which are true sciences of the soul, try slowly but surely, to bring our discipline back to its source, to its historical and etymological origins. Indeed, due to their elevated hierarchical position, they should be able to supply us with a global, coherent model [8].

In this perspective, I would like to propose here to take account of the concept of samskara which appears to me fundamental for a spiritualized vision of psychology and psycho-pathology in general.

I will therefore use this concept in explanation and support for the existence of the different evolutive stages and the different types of suffering previously described.

For simplicity's sake, I propose to define a samskara as a sort of program or a sort of blocked memory, situated in our causal body and made up of impressions of the same nature that we have stored up in the course of successive incarnations. This is due to the lack of the possibility of cleaning them or of actualizing them sufficiently.

In traditional Indian philosophy, the actualization of a samskara is bhog. It does not, of course, concern only suffering. As a matter of fact, these phenomena are in themselves neither agreeable or disagreeable: it is we ourselves who taint them with pleasure or suffering because of the attachments and emotional reactions produced during the actualization of our samskaras.

Indeed, if we make an element of fundamental theory out of the notion of samskara we admit, ipso facto, that samskaras determine our karma. That is, they determine our repeated joy and difficulties, our habits, our recurring choices, our attractions, the elementary features of our character, and our symptoms. In spite of our after-the-fact justifications or rationalizations, we have only a very limited hold or even no hold at all on the effects of these samskaras (bhog). This is the case as long as we stay below the threshold of our liberation, which correspond to a lightening of our load of samskaras until its weight no longer requires us to reincarnate.

Now to link up samskaras with evolutive levels, we could say that the heavier the load of samskaras, the stronger will be the affective attachments of the person in question. Or, to be more exact, the nature of these samskaras, their number and their "weight", will determine the level of development of the ego, in particular, the level of the psycho-affective and moral development of the person [9], the type of defensive shell and the particular sort of joy and suffering.

Therefore, we can easily explain why a person heavily laden with certain samskaras will preferentially function at the pregenital level, in other terms that the person will have very strong emotional reactions towards many life events, which will be decoded, as already said, as narcissistic wounds, knocks on the head or bad luck which has fallen upon himself. This person will desperately try, of course, to avoid suffering, and because of this will fall even more systematically and heavily into the infernal cycle or the vicious circles of bhog (experienced as pleasures and sufferings), which will provoke in this case strong emotional reactions and new impressions. These will, in turn, sedimentate new layers of samskaras ready to be actualized and so on and so forth.

What will be the result of all this for the ego? Inevitably this will harden, get thicker and thicker in proportion to the stronger and more frequent mobilization of the defense mechanisms, that contributes to the construction of a protective shell for the emotions which will become more and more impermeable. This allows the person to continue to ignore the evident truth that this way of understanding what is happening, by the reaction of hiding his head in the sand or by an active and aggressive avoidance, is in fact appalling and aggravating.

But trying to avoid suffering appears, especially to us westerners, as very human, natural and justified: we have so often done it ourselves and continue to do it that it may be useful here to add a little extra information to minimize this tendency. Indeed, we should have every interest in getting rid of this tendency, which is more or less instinctive, and learn to accept, contain and master greater and greater quantities of suffering if we seriously wish to undertake a spiritual path.

From a historical point of view, it seems that once upon a time this wisdom was more widespread, but was lost in the West during the Middle Ages, when one still often spoke of one's life being consecrated to preparing and making a success of one's death. This supposition is in every way compatible with the historical development of the meaning of the word "suffering" which would tend to show that things have been modified (or degraded) during this period in the course of which we have probably made our load of "samskaras" heavier, at least in the West: indeed, etymologically speaking, suffering at first meant "to hang on tight" or "put up with" and during the 11th century it was also used in the sense of "to allow". It was not until the 16th century (perhaps in relation to the Renaissance?) that suffering began to be used in the sense of feeling pain, in equivalence to the French verb "douloir", which has since fallen into disuse, to the point where at present one doesn't even know how to conjugate it.

If we now consider pleasure, which is the concept and experience directly opposed to suffering, but just as directly determined by our samskaras, we are forced to admit through experience that it is at the same time difficult to resist pleasure and to bear it for a long time, as if we were not built or intended for an endurance in that sphere. Therefore even if we regret it, we should be aware that it is for us practically impossible to master pleasure, suffering's opposite, at least in a direct way. Indeed, because of pleasure's very nature we experience it as being agreable, we search for it, we are attached to it, and we even have the tendency to give ourselves up to it more and more. We have therefore created desires within ourselves which can be very strong, more so if they are on the point of achieving or in the midst of satisfaction; we can ask ourselves for example if it is easy to interrupt sexual intercourse - the supreme sensual pleasure since all the senses are implicated - by a simple voluntary act!?

But it is completely different from pain and suffering, which on the whole have a tendency of lasting longer in our bodies. With suffering, we are able to deliberately learn to endure a growing amount of it and for longer and longer periods, to finally and ideally be able to master that suffering when we are sufficiently evolved, to encounter universal love, which is coupled with suffering as we have already seen. We can therefore represent suffering like the head of Janus, attached on one side to pleasure and on the other to universal love.

From a neuro-psychological point of view, we can easily understand that if our load of samskaras is modified, which changes our level of conciousness, consequently the interpretation that our brain makes of pain and pleasure is also modified. This can been seen in spectacular manner in the case of that particular state of consciousness which is a coma, when most neurological activities are blocked. But it is also true in those states in which we are particularly interested, such as the state of spiritual awakening. Then, mental activity is regulated, inner silence prevails in such a way that the swing between the opposites, such as suffering and pleasure, is now reduced and thereafter insufficient to produce the usual emotions or sensations, in other words, insufficient to pass the synaptic barrier and pass on or decode the information according to our old conditioning. Shri Parthasarathi Rajagopalachari makes the following remark concerning this point: "The swing between the opposites is minimized until I don't know even the difference between pleasure and pain." [1]

So am I now liberated?

In fact, a sincere seeker will have every hope of making his personal load of samskaras lighter, thanks to the effectiveness of his practice and the help of his Master, by absorbing more and more suffering: his state of consciousness will determine the way in which these expressions are decoded, for example, as presents from his Master or quite simply as opportunities to evolve. This attitude does not spring from a masochistic attitude or ascetic fanaticism but from a perfectly realistical attitude, which consists of quite simply recognizing that suffering has an evolutive value, of understanding it's deep meaning, which results in accepting difficulties and suffering, which happen all by themselves without our having to go and look for them. Therefore, the seeker accepts both pleasure and suffering without making a fuss, without producing emotional reactions, by creating minimum swings and minimum interference. He has understood and experimented the truth of Shakespeare's words: "Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so." He puts this into practice by training himself to think less and less, for example, by the use of meditation ideally until this become a generalized, permanent meditative state (sahaj samadhi).

With this attitude, it is possible that the seeker continues to unload his samskaras until he is liberated at the same time from both pleasure and from suffering, and as a consequence achieves a truly spiritual state which can be called beatitude, felicity or ananda. Shri P. Rajagopalachari teaches us that we can compare the way to approach this state to a river with one bank representing suffering and the other bank pleasure. Wisdom consists of staying in the middle of the current, which avoids us from being diverted from our destination.

This state of beatitude must not of course be mixed up wih a sensation of pleasure, which could be desired and obtained. It should rather be considered as a new way of living, which can even easily exist side by side with a physical pain for example. But, in this case, the liberated person will not personally suffer from this pain because he will have no more fear for his personal well-being. Indeed, fears have disappeared at the same time as his fundamental fear of death. This is why a person who is liberated is given the name of a living-dead person or jivan mukti in sanskrit.

Intoxicated by this beatitude, liberated from pleasure and suffering, one could, of course, be tempted and even be successful for a time in escaping completely from suffering, one's own and that of others. Meanwhile as it would be, of course, a way of avoiding, and therefore of a defensive, egoistical nature, I would have no other issue than to drop down again below the threshold of liberation. That is why it is generally advised that the seeker does not stop on the way, but continues in the direction of a higher goal such as God Realisation or fusion with the Ultimate (laya avastha), and if possible to also start looking after others, because one is now truly able to help them.

So what happens to the ego during such a propitious development, that is, of a spiritual or transpersonal nature?

The expressions describing the ego's state vary of course according to the spiritual traditions. On the path that I follow - Sahaj Marg system in the frame of the Shri Ram Chandra Mission - one talks of the refinement of the ego. The self is not broken, it does not disappear, but is lightened by successive stages, corresponding to the level of its maturation and according to its load of samskaras. In clinical examination, if I still dare use this terminology, in general one notes that the character has grown milder, that the defense mechanisms have softened and lessened until, in the ideal case, the seeker finishes by being stripped completely bare ("naked state"). As for the instrumental faculties of the ego, they are not touched and the intelligence on the contrary becomes more acute, quicker and more creative because it is more intuitive. This from the moment that personal, family, social and cultural priorities and limitations have diminished at the same time as the defense mechanisms for these all together had a tendency to preserve individualism , i.e. the specific separatism produced by the ego.

Therefore it is the defense system of the ego which undergoes what I called an "involutive evolution" [10]. This process is both inevitable and necessary as explains Chögyam Trungpa who calls the ego "the watcher":

"You do not have to regard the watcher as a villain. Once you begin to understand that the purpose (....) is not to get higher but to be present, here, then the watcher is not efficient enough to perform that function, and it automaticaly falls away" [11].
From the perspective of a spiritual psychology, it is only from that stage of evolution that one can consider a human being as normal or adult, or more modestly as having achieved a certain maturity, since evolution can continue a long way beyond this and possibly indefinitely....

Ferdinand Wulliemier,
M.D.

1. Rajagopalachari P., The heart of the lion, Shri Ram Chandra Mission, North American Publishing Commitee, Molena, 1993
2. Wilber K., Engler J., Brown D.P., Transformations of Consciousness, Shambala, Boston and Shaftesbury, 1986
3. Desjardin A., Au-delà du Moi, Table ronde, Paris 1979
4. Desjardin A., Pour une mort sans peur, Table ronde, Paris 1983
5. Kohut H., The restoration of the self, International Univ. Press, N-Y, 1977
6. Wilber K., The Spectrum of Consciousness, Theosophical Publishing House, Wheaton,1977
7. Ram Chandra, Thus speaks Shri Ram Chandra, Shri Ram Chandra Mission, Shahjahanpur, India
8. Wulliemier F., The Roles of Psychology in Spirituality, Shri Ram Chandra Mission, NAPC, Molena (In Press)
9. Kohlberg L., Essays on moral development, vol. I, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981
   Wulliemier F., Our involutive evolution or the invertendo of our growth process, International Association of Spiritual Psychiatry, 3, 1995, p. 10-13
10. Chögyam Trungpa, Cutting through Spiritual Materialism, Shambala Boston & London, 1987 (p.74)