Inner Life

The text discusses the importance of exploring one’s inner life in a materialistic and chaotic world. It highlights the challenges and rewards of this inner journey

By Roberto Assagioli, MD^[i], (Assagioli Archive Doc. #1279 – Florence). Transcribed from an Original Written Document by Istituto di Psicosintesi. Original Title: Vita Interna. Translated and Edited with Notes by Jan Kuniholm

Abstract: The text discusses the importance of exploring one’s inner life in a materialistic and chaotic world. It highlights the challenges and rewards of this inner journey, emphasizing the need for guidance and support from spiritual teachings, psychology, and the experiences of others. The text outlines various aspects of psychospiritual work, such as self-study, self-mastery, and communion with the Spirit, as essential for personal growth and transformation.

I do not think that many words need to be spent to show the desirability of a guide devoted to Inner Life.

Our civilization, which is entirely mechanical and materialistic and focused on the conquest of earthly goods and powers, has absorbed the attention, interest and energies of people and diverted them to external activities.

Thus it has come to pass that modern man, who has increased his knowledge of the external world so much, probing the mysteries of the infinitely small and the infinitely large with wonderful instruments, finds himself perplexed and lost before the enigma of his own being. He, who has shrewdly enslaved and exploited powerful energies of nature for his own needs or pleasures, is rather a helpless laughingstock and a slave to the dark passionate forces that stir and burst into his own soul.

This painful and humiliating contrast between external and internal knowledge and powers had remained unnoticed during the period of triumphant materialism. The intoxication of discoveries and achievements in the world of nature had mostly hidden modern man’s spiritual misery from himself.

But this is no longer the case. Materialism has everywhere gone bankrupt in the theoretical and practical fields, and in social life as in individual life its failure is complete. In science the physicists, by resolving the atom into a system of minute electrical charges — and metapsychic researchers, by achieving the dematerialization of organic substance — have stripped materialism of its basis and its very raison d’être, namely, the supposed “substantiality” and permanence of matter. 

In the biological and moral fields, the materialistic conception of life has led to disastrous consequences. The persuasion that earthly life is all there is, and that it has no further end, that it is not ordered and justified by any higher law of moral compensation and not governed by any spiritual Principle or Entity, has unleashed selfishness and appetites and a frenzy to enjoy and to forget. It has also aroused bitter denials and desperate rebellions. Thus the number of neurotics, insane people, alcoholics, drug addicts and suicides has increased dramatically. And in social life, the exasperated thirst for possessions and domination has produced on the one hand the bitter and violent class struggles, and on the other the mad contests among states for world hegemony, which has led to the tragic finale of war.

Now, however, the situation is changing rapidly. Although the majorities of all classes are still deluded and fascinated by the mirages of outward attractions and material goods, one everywhere finds ever-increasing numbers of people who, awakened by grief and taught by events, are shunning that harmful fascination.

We begin to discover the reality and value of the inner world, and to realize that peace and happiness can only be found within ourselves; therefore we feel the need to rebuild our lives on a new basis, and yearn to drink from the pure eternal fountains of the Spirit.

But unfortunately the sincerity of aspiration and the fervor of these intentions are not generally matched by the wisdom and power needed to implement them. When we set about that work of internalization and reconstruction we soon find ourselves lost, perplexed and troubled. As we begin to return to ourselves, we painfully discover how great are our ignorance and powerlessness in the inner world.

An initial examination of our soul reveals a fearful chaos: we discern a hodgepodge of disparate elements, an alternation of contradictory feelings, a tumultuous clashing of conflicting impulses. We discover weaknesses, miseries and faults that our superficiality previously allowed us to ignore. And our first, inexperienced attempts to bring some order to that chaos are in vain: we try to stop the thoughts that beset us by meditation, but the mind does not obey us and continues its unrestrained race. We want to kill our passions, but they escape our grasp and react with violent irruptions and exhausting guerrilla warfare.

This first revelation, however, should neither terrify nor discourage us. Indeed, by deepening the examination of our soul we also discover riches, lights and latent  energies waiting to be harnessed. We understand how even the lower passionate forces that undermine and bring us down can be disciplined and transformed so as to serve higher purposes, and that in every evil there is a seed of good to be developed.

Thus we discover an inner world to explore and conquer: a world vast, rich and far more fascinating than the outer world. A whole vast work is to be done: a work of knowledge, rearrangement, progress and regeneration. And we feel how many benefits it can bring to us and to others: the relief of liberation from so many moral bondages, the beauty of new harmonies, the holy joys of ascending to the spheres of peace and spiritual love, an unsuspected power to awaken and uplift other souls — and then still more intimate and mysterious revelations . . .

This inner work is individual work; each person must do it in himself and by himself. However, we are not left to it without guidance and support. The mountaineer must ascend the arduous peak using the strength of his own muscles, but he finds the way to follow indicated on a map drawn by those who have gone before him, and he can often avail himself of the guidance of an experienced mountaineer who climbs with him, lending him a hand or guarding him with a rope at the most difficult points. Thus for inner ascents there is no lack of similar assistance for the mountaineer of the soul.

Valuable teachings and indications are found in the words left to us by the great Sages and Spiritual Instructors of mankind, in the works of yoga, Eastern and Western mysticism, and in the best studies of modern applied psychology (especially those of psychagogy,^[ii] psychoanalysis and psychotherapy). Very instructive and encouraging examples are given to us by the biographies, autobiographies, letters, and diaries of mystics and other awakened souls who have left us the testimony of their travails, struggles and victories. Sometimes then we are allowed to meet an “older brother” to accompany us for a few stretches — and usually he comes to meet us, offers us his friendly, strong and pitiful hand, just at the most dangerous points, when we were about to get lost in the fog or plunge into ravines.

Aware from experience of the value such assistance can have, especially for those at the beginning of the path, we thought it appropriate to begin this guide in which we propose to indicate gradually in a simple and clear way the most important principles, laws and methods of psychospiritual work.

Thus we would like to deal gradually with the following topics: 

• Internal study: the study of self 
• General and specific programs of internal action 
• The elimination of inhibitions 
• The methods of self-mastery 
• Transformation and sublimation of psychic energies 
• Communion with the Spirit: prayer and meditation 
• The yoga of daily life.

^[i] This document is clearly the introductory comments for a series of talks, or for a course, and should not be confused with other writings by Assagioli bearing the same or similar title, which were written for Ultra or The Beacon. —Tr.

^[ii] Probably the best description of the word “psychagogy,” which Assagioli has borrowed from Plato, is “psychology as applied and practiced,” or “the art of inner action.” He has written on this topic in other essays. —Ed.