In this biographical article, psychotherapist Diane Freund talks about her meeting with Roberto Assagioli. They provide a good insight into some of the methods he used, especially in connection with transpersonal psychosynthesis.
By Diane Freund, Translation Kenneth Sørensen
This article is from Psychosynthesis Digest, Spring 1983. Diane
Freund is a psychotherapist in private practice in Beverly Hills, California. At the time she traveled to Italy to gather material for this article, she had been in practice for five years. For the past ten years, psychosynthesis has been the fundamental philosophical and structural basis for her work with groups, couples, and individuals.
Introduction
I traveled to Italy in March 1973 to study with Roberto Assagioli. This article is an excerpt from the book I wrote about the trip. The book actually developed out of my desire to share my experiences with friends and other interested parties. It is based on the transcripts I have from the tape recordings I made of my conversations with Roberto Assagioli. It is written as if we were actually having conversations with each other, but in reality I wrote all my comments and questions to him, as Roberto was practically deaf. So apart from an occasional grazi or bene from me, all you can hear on the tapes is him speaking. When I had to write down the transcripts, I had to insert my written questions to make his answers meaningful.
This article contains excerpts from the first and seventh sessions. I have preserved his words as he spoke them, making only minor changes for the sake of clarity. I think it is important to note that the following are my own very personal impressions. They are in no way an objective description.
Roberto’s words, as reproduced here, were intended to respond to my points and not as messages to the general public. That said, I hope these selected conversations will give the reader a sense of him and the way he worked—or at least the way he worked with me.
It was November 1972, after I had finished my training at the Psychosynthesis Institute in California, that I decided to travel to Italy to meet Dr. Assagioli. I had been warned that he was old, about 85, and sick. He saw few people and was busy with his own important writings. I was also told that it would be months before I would receive a negative answer, as the Italian postal service took its time and Roberto was not the fastest and was also busy. It took courage to write to him, but at the same time I also felt strength from my professional background and the quality of the work I was doing.
I wrote down everything in my letter that I thought he would find interesting. My training in psychosynthesis, the workshops I had given, and the work with psychosynthesis therapy I had done. I told him how I experienced the work with psychosynthesis and the experiences I had had in connection with my own training and self-development. The surprising result was a quick reply telling me when he had time to see me. He sounded so approachable and inviting that I immediately made plans for my departure.
Arrival at the Istituto di Psicosintesi
On the first day in Florence I checked into the Pensione Monna Lisa (spelled with two n’s) and the second day I called the Istituto di Psicosintesi. They were expecting me and I spoke to Ida Palombi, Dr. Assagioli’s right hand and we arranged a meeting in the afternoon.
I took a bus to Via San Domenico no. 16 and was there in 20 minutes. I rang an old-fashioned bell next to a brass sign that said “R. Assagioli” and was able to enter when the door lock buzzed. At the top of the stairs, Assagioli’s servant, a plump woman in her sixties, was waiting, and she let me into the living room.
Dr. Assagioli lived in what, to my American eyes, looked like a very European apartment. It was located on the third floor of a fairly old building in a good neighborhood, where this building was similar to many of the other buildings. The first floor was occupied by the institute, the third by Roberto, his wife, and their servant, and the fourth by Ida. I never met the residents of the second floor or found out if they were affiliated with the institute.
Roberto’s apartment was dark and Italianate, with dim lights, faded colors, and old furniture. Mixed in with the heavy Italian items were some pieces that looked oriental. Among them was a carved chair, a small upright desk, and a Chinese rug. On the walls or standing on tables were framed photographs of family and friends.
I waited only a few minutes when the waiter returned and indicated that Il Dottere was ready to see me in his study. The study was small, high-ceilinged, and wonderfully packed with books, papers, writing implements, and small rectangular cards. He called them rousing billboards, and there were words written on them, such as PEACE or PATIENCE. On his table and bookshelves were small figurines in porcelain or brass, and there were jars of pens.
When I entered, he stood up from behind his desk and extended his hand to welcome me. There were smiles, bows, and nods as I sat down in a chair close to his, facing him.
The meeting with Roberto Assagioli
At first glance, he might have been an elderly doctor/scholar with a pedantically quiet life and a small limited practice. But as I got to know him I found that far from being isolated, he corresponded with people all over the world. There was a constant flow of materials coming to the apartment on Via San Domenico. Whatever new ideas came out in his psychological field and in related fields of science, literature or world events, he immediately heard about them through books, journals, magazines and all sorts of periodicals that were sent to him. He kept himself well informed.
On the first day he was dressed in a maroon velvet tuxedo jacket with a matching satin handkerchief, and around his neck he wore a silk scarf. How old-fashioned and formal it looked, and yet he was friendly and straightforward from the start. He was a man of slight build, small and sinewy, and with his pointed goatee and piercing eyes he was a full-grown elf – a pixie with a gigantic intellect and soul. I had heard him described as tall and fair – both were apt descriptions. He spoke English with a pleasant Italian accent, carried by a thin but resonant voice. His speech was lyrical, and he made his words sing.
I was told in advance that it would be advisable to record our sessions, so I brought my Sony cassette recorder. Since Roberto Assagioli was almost completely deaf, my questions and comments were written separately on a separate piece of paper that had been prepared in advance. I also used an oblong yellow writing board for my notes along the way.
“Can you hear me?” he began, “I don’t have much of a voice. I’ve talked too much in my life and my throat is rebelling.” Then, “Are you recording the conversation? And do you think there’s enough voice?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” I responded to my board.
He took out a large handkerchief and held it to his mouth while coughing up mucus from his chest. Then he said, “I don’t think you need any real didactic training in psychosynthesis, you’ve had a lot of it, almost too much.”
“Wait until you read all my questions,” I wrote, “then you will find out how little I know.” Feeling shy, I became self-deprecating.
“OK,” he replied, “maybe not too much, but still I think it would be better to focus on a few basic problems or tasks.”
“That sounds good,” I said, nodding so he could see I agreed. I realized how hard it was not to speak out loud. The fact was, I had responded without thinking. (Why did he think I had almost had too much training? Were there any negative implications in this? Did too much mean I should stop the didactic work and move on to the more broadly based spiritual work? He called it focusing on a few fundamental issues.)
I doubted my preparation. All he had to judge me by was what I had told him, and even though I hadn’t lied, I hadn’t proven what I had learned either. I had only told him what I had studied. OK then, I’ll trust his opinion for now.
As he had requested, I had written down what I hoped to get out of our sessions:
A good sense of myself; a correct perception of my worth; experiences with meditation; the correct use of the will – especially in connection with anger and impatience; recognition, assimilation and use of the higher energies; activation of the superconscious functions and the ability to master my difficulties with saying no and my need to achieve.
Meditation – the central technique
“I will give priority to this,” he said, pointing to meditation on my list, “because it is the central technique that helps to use all the other techniques effectively. Do you understand that?”
“Yes,” I said again and nodded.
“So we’ll start with this. Meditation, generally speaking. Next, I think you want to have a better relationship with your transpersonal Self.” He interrupted himself to ask, “You understand the language, of course?”
To that I nodded “yes”. This care with language, I later found out, was an important issue for Roberto. He wanted to make sure that the words we used were precise and not shocking or repulsive, and that the concepts we dealt with were scientific.
He continued: “Previously, the Self was called the spiritual Self, but now it is better to call it the transpersonal Self, it is a more neutral and scientific concept. … And the transpersonal is included in the higher practice of meditation.”
“I also want to work on my impatience and intolerance” and demonstrated the impatience for which I asked for help.
“Meditation,” he said, “will help you work on it, as a side benefit.”
“I would also appreciate a positive self-image and a correct understanding of my self-confidence.” I wanted to make sure he didn’t forget anything on my list.
“That will come later. It is best not to create a self-image from the beginning, because through the new perception and growth, the image will change. It is best not to fix it from the beginning. Do you agree with this?” he asked, “to wait with the self-image as a result of all the previous? We can address that specifically, but later.”
“Yes,” I agreed.
“Now for meditation. Have you seen the little booklets published by the Meditation Group for the New Age ?”
I shook my head.
“I will give them to you as reading material, as the first step. Rather than just reading them, you should study them slowly and comment on them. I cannot give them to you, but you can get your own in the USA.” (The meditation material has been translated into Danish and can be purchased in the webshop as the e-book: Creative Meditation).
“These booklets will save us a lot of time, as I don’t have to explain the many things that you will find there. Then we will practice what is written.”
“The New Age Meditation Group is a group that has spread widely. There are thousands who belong to it. It is called a group, but it has no obligations to any school or society. It is a group for inner action and not theory. Therefore you will find that there are no doctrines, only practice.”
Dr. Assagioli handed me six small booklets, bound in yellow covers, and asked me to read the titles. When I showed interest in the one on the will, he told me that he had just written a book on the will and offered me the opportunity to read some chapters. (It is called The Psychology of the Will).
“I can give you something for your impatience right now,” he began, as I put down the little yellow booklets. “It’s easier to be patient here because there’s not the same busyness in the collective unconscious as in America. In America there’s hustle and bustle, stress and excitement.”
“Isn’t this what it is?” I asked, after experiencing the hustle and bustle in the middle of the center of Florence. At that very moment, through the window came the sound of horns honking and motorbikes roaring in the streets outside, which of course he didn’t hear. I wondered if he was referring to some special Italian peace that overlooked the external cacophony I was witnessing. Did he mean simplicity? He had said hustle, stress and tension, which to me means noise.
“There are many here who go to the other extreme, but generally, …” he gestured with his hands and I guessed that meant the underlying pace, “here is calmer”.
During the weeks I spent there, I did not experience the Italian peace that he spoke of because my own inner pace was almost always very active.
Disidentification and the self-identification exercise
“OK now,” said Roberto, “you know about the dis-identification and self-identification exercise?”
“Yes, it is very difficult for me,” I wrote on my board and showed it to him.
“Be confident,” he chuckled, “it’s difficult for everyone, because if you really want to use it effectively it means identifying with your transpersonal Self. But it’s a completely natural process of inner growth, and there’s nothing magical or special about it.”
I was used to using the dis-identification exercise as described in his book and an easy mantra was:
I have a body.
But I am more than my physical form
I have emotions.
But I am more than my emotional nature
I have an intellect.
But I am more than my thinking mind
I am a center of pure consciousness, capable of mastering and directing all my energies – physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.
But Roberto described another path: “there are some techniques that can help with disidentification. The first and most effective is the realization of infinity, eternity and universality. And this is completely scientific. The universe is practically infinite. The universe has no end or beginning, perhaps for millions of years, but it is an eternity for us. Next, it is universal because everything acts and reacts to everything. If you meditate or just think and try to recognize this fact of infinity, eternity and universality, then it will create an atmosphere of peace, of serenity in which impatience cannot exist.”
He took out a book called: The Universe, by’Rohr, which contained a series of photographs of stars and galaxies taken by an electric camera.
The replacement technique of psychosynthesis
“This is a vivid and factual visualization. I can lend it to you for a few days. Read it and just sink into it. This is one of the most important rules of psychosynthesis, we should not go for a frontal attack against things that we want to get rid of but use the technique of substitution. It has been called the expelling force of a larger interest . In a sense, this attitude is completely different from other methods and techniques. We do not focus on the problem, on what needs to be eliminated; we focus on the positive side and the larger context.
“Without dwelling on impatience,” he said, “cultivate the opposite, the calm and peace of eternity. It is to create an atmosphere, or, you could call it a magnetic field, in which these things”—he pointed to the words impatience and intolerance on my paper—“cannot exist. They are filtered out. This is fundamental to psychosynthesis for everyone, but especially for you. You know so much about all the other techniques. This is quite a different approach. Problems are not solved, they are dissolved. I mean exactly what I said. You don’t have to solve problems, you get rid of them by working from a higher level, from a vantage point. (See important note 1.)
Do you know my pamphlet The Balancing and Synthesis of Opposites?
“Yes, the one with the triangles.”
“Well, to create a synthesis of opposites by going higher is a general and consistent attitude, it is to ignore the difficulties and work on a more expanded level, to put something else in its place. It is also a joyful thing. To be in tune with the infinite, with the universal is joyful and expanding.” He almost sang the words. “The effects will come of themselves. Some of them will arise immediately, although they do not last, but with repeated practice they will gradually become integrated. A transformation can be accomplished in this way without a direct effort. It is not an act of will in the normal sense of the word, it is more of a will that is in accordance with the Taoist attitude, but applied specifically as a technique.”
Participating in the flow of life
Ignore difficulties! I never ignore difficulties. I was so afraid to let things go and I was obsessed with every problem. If I let it go, it might go away – unpunished or unresolved, and then I might get into trouble later because of it. When I did what Roberto suggested, I could see the problem in a bigger perspective or focus on an important theme in my life and let the problem dissolve itself, due to the natural flow. As he said, create an atmosphere in which the problems could have no influence.
“So it will be important for me to go with the flow and listen to my inner voice?”
“Let me make sure you understand this correctly, because it is important that you do not become too passive.”
When he saw my face reflect the completely unlikely attitude that I would become too passive, he laughed and said:
“Well, there is no danger of you becoming too passive, is there? Well, participate in the universe and its rhythm. There is a fundamental difference between the flow of manifestation, the emergence of the cosmic plane, and the transcendent. The transcendent does not participate in any flow – the core, the inner jewel and the real center, is not in any flow, it radiates.”
“Let me give an example. When you consider only the solar system, which is a smaller size, the sun is the center and it radiates on all the planets. It is the planets that move in circles around the sun. For them the sun is static. Of course the sun moves in the larger universe, but seen in relation to the solar system, the sun can be seen as a center around which the planets move. It is exactly the same with the inner sun, with the Self.”
“It is a fact,” and his voice rose in this now, “our Self is life and the personality is in the flow. The qualities of the personality must go with the flow, but not the Self. The really great thing is, although it is difficult, it is nevertheless possible to live in the eternal and the temporal at the same time.”
“The self radiates?” I wrote on my board. Before he answered, he leaned over and tapped his finger on the word “self,” with a capital S – please.” Then:
“Of course, the Self radiates. It radiates downwards towards the personality, horizontally towards other living beings and vertically towards the one Self. That will be one of the themes of your meditation. By establishing that, it will give you a few basic concepts.”
We spent a few minutes discussing practical details, my address and telephone number in Florence, which he carefully noted down in a leather-bound book.
“You can stay in Florence for a while?”
“Six weeks,” I wrote.
“Six weeks. That gives us plenty of time.”
Preparation for the sessions
Dr. Assagioli suggested that we work together twice a week during the time I was there. I was very excited that he would see me so often and not leave me to a collaborator, as he had originally suggested in his letter. In my mind, I immediately canceled a trip to Switzerland that I had otherwise planned. I wanted to stay in Florence. I wanted all the time I could get with him.
“OK,” he said, “I think that’s enough for today. Always bring your written questions and comments for the purposes stated on this paper.”
He handed me a paper titled: Guidelines for Communication and Questions for Dr. RA . I read them on the bus on the way there.
The paper expressed a desire that all communication with the RA be written down in advance before the sessions for many reasons not limited to Assagioli’s hearing problems. Writing down required reflection and clarity, and often the answer came when the questions were written down. Written questions and reports gave Roberto time to reflect and allowed the unconscious and “let’s hope the superconscious” to process the problem in a better way. Writing down saves time and the guidelines cited this as a practical reason.
Roberto loved to call his work practical and it was with his many guided exercises and procedures. In addition, the written work allowed for later interviews and communication based on the records. I was therefore asked to make two copies. I was pleased with the parenthetical statement: (“if there is anything private or intimate that you do not want kept, please tell me and it will be destroyed immediately”). It seemed like a very dramatic statement. I naturally expected that much of what I wanted to talk about was of a private nature and therefore I also trusted that it would be kept confidential.
It was also necessary for me to take notes of Roberto’s words because, “although we have the illusion that something very vivid is always remembered, it is not. It can be displaced by the flow of other impressions or by resistance, and the cunning of the unconscious often consists in making us forget. Let us always remember this”. In my case, I did not need to take notes, because I had brought my tape recorder. The instructions were simply signed, “RA”
Between sessions
Those were remarkable days between our first and second sessions. I was exploring two worlds, the inner and the outer, and somehow I had to integrate them. I chose the yellow meditation booklets as my first priority, since meditation and the transpersonal Self were Roberto Assagioli’s main interest in relation to me. Every night I dreamed a riot of images, one on top of the other. But it turned out that Roberto was not very interested in dreams:
“You can get completely lost in a labyrinth of symbols and things,” was his comment. Instead, we worked with drawings.
I described to him my discovery of Botticelli in the Uffizi Gallery and Fra Angelico in the San Marco Museum. I explained that I had been so overwhelmed by it all, especially Fra Angelico’s “Annunciation at the Top of the Cloister Stairs.”
“Pictures and drawings, you see…,” he started to say, then stopped the sentence and asked instead, “Have you worked with freehand drawing?”
“No,” I shook my head.
“Don’t you like it?”
“Yes, I like it, but I haven’t worked with this.”
“OK, then make some and bring them next time because they are messages for me and you.”
I bought papers bound with an impressive sticker across the front, Carta Bianca per Schizzi (white paper for drawing). The 4 x 18 inch paper was large enough and, together with a box of pastels, was intended to create what Roberto called “pictures of my psychological state.”
Working with spiritual psychosynthesis
As our time progressed, he told me again and again amidst all my doubts:
“You are here to work with spiritual psychosynthesis. You know you are ready for that.”
At the end of the second session, we began to meditate together. Roberto asked, “Do you want to turn on the universe?” Next, I was to turn on the switch on the globe of the universe, on which were planets, stars, solar systems, and galaxies, which he used for our focus. After a quiet ten minutes, he gave me a kiss on both cheeks to say goodbye in the right way. I left feeling peaceful and invigorated, which was a delightful combination of emotions. Sometimes Roberto offered a topic for our meditation:
“The great evolutionary process is a joyful return to the source, enriched and powerful.” Or the radiating of energies to all corners of the world: Love, compassion, joy and serenity, “to all beings, north, south, east, west, above, below; let it be so and help us do our part.”
Once when I complained about being alone he said:
“Excuse me, but that is nonsense. One cannot be alone in the universe. It is an illusion, a fundamental separatist illusion, one cannot be alone. It is a great conquest to rise above the feeling of loneliness and separation… Hundreds of millions of suns and all connected to each other. They are not lonely. No. The radiation from the most distant suns reaches us here. There is an enormous interplay of currents that are not psychic. What seem to be immeasurable distances do not count. The cosmic rays arrive from distant places. These stars are only the bodies. There are trillions of beings that live in the cosmic rays and are in constant interaction and presumably they are sometimes” I saw a beginning smile, “in conflict with each other.”
“OK, now we have recognized the immense scope of the physical plane, let us now rise to the second plane of reality and go to the Self.”
In the darkened room, we both sat with our globes of the universe lit, our eyes closed, our bodies relaxed, and we were in a comfortable position ready to meditate. Roberto began to speak slowly:
“More brilliant than the sun (Let me comment on this: It means that the spiritual radiance, the radiance from the higher plane is greater than the enormous radiance from the physical sun. Do you realize what that means, more brilliant than the sun?)
“Purer than the snow. (This means complete disidentification from all forms of lower content. The self is disidentified from even the purest thing we can imagine, such as snow.”
“More subtle than the ether (for a being on the high plane of being, the vibrations are thinner and more powerful) is the Self, the spirit within us. (But we are in spirit and in truth and we are for eternity.) I am this Self, this Self is I. (By realizing the Self within us we realize our oneness with the Universal Self, for on this level there is no separation, no loneliness, no distance.)
“Now you better realize the significance of this. Let us therefore meditate on it and realize…”
Quite slowly he intoned:
” More radiant than the sun”
Cleaner than the snow
More subtle than the ether
Is the Self, the spirit within us
We are this Self,
This Self is us ”.
Life in Florence
It was early April and I had been in Florence for almost three weeks and had had six sessions with Dr. Assagioli and was feeling quite settled in his lovely home away from the Pensione Monna Lisa. I saw him twice a week and spent the rest of the time drawing and writing, visiting galleries, cafes and also having a hobby with a local playboy. My daughter had come to stay with me but was currently away travelling. I met people from all over the world at the pension and spent a lot of time reading the materials that RA gave me.
Printing the tapes from the sessions as they progressed was a powerful tool for deepening our experiences together. The topics we addressed during the sessions were closely woven into the rest of my life in Florence, and I experienced the movement toward balance, integration, and synthesis that psychosynthesis teaches. Florence proved to be a perfect metaphor for my inner conflicts, spiritual as well as worldly. It was preoccupied with the present and the eternal, and was therefore an outward manifestation of the contrasts within me.
I was admitted to Dr. Assagioli’s study at exactly 6:00 p.m. I had the same impression as the first day I saw him. It always struck me that here was an old man struggling with congestion in his throat and chest and that perhaps I was disturbing his rest.
But as the work progressed and he spoke, his eyes, always intense, began to sparkle with humor and joy. His face brightened and he seemed a much younger man. It was his liveliness that made the greatest impression on me.
The work with exemption
“Buon giorno,” I said, handing him my drawings.
“Did you feel relieved when you made them,” he asked. “That’s one of the purposes of making them, just one of them, but a useful one. Always remember to write a date on them,” he added, and then asked if they had been interpreted? “I usually ask the person who drew them to interpret them themselves.”
“No,” I shook my head, they were not interpreted.
He looked at my pictures one by one, commenting on them along the way, “Oh, that’s good, nice, yes that’s good.” Then he returned to one with many black spirals and he asked:
“How do you interpret this? Would you please write your interpretation?”
I quickly wrote, “I was very excited when I drew this. Little angry swirls… I think that’s what came out and it was nice that it came out.”
“I didn’t like it at all and at the last minute I unconsciously inserted a cross.”
“It’s an important symbol, personally, planetaryly, cosmically, it’s about the whole manifestation.” He picked up another sheet, “And this, how did you make this? What were your impressions?”
“I didn’t like it, even though I enjoyed drawing it. I enjoyed drawing them all, but this is not pretty.”
“Well, you see, for psychological purposes, beauty is not important. It’s the meaning that matters. Is there anything else that comes to mind?”
“This is the sun,” I replied, pointing to a large orange and central golden figure.
“All the energies flow through and are concentrated there,” Roberto said.
“Every time I managed to get my anger out through these big black doodles, I immediately felt comfortable again and made big wavy lines.”
We looked at the last two, side by side, and I could remember when I drew them. The first on Friday, the second on Sunday, both while sitting at the card table in the sunlit garden room. These were quiet moments while I listened to my inner voice and gave it expression. I enjoyed using oil pastels, thick chalk-like pieces that transferred to the paper with a chalky consistency. With the pastels I could make sharp edges or smear color on my finger and then blend and stroke.
As for a quiet center of growth, green ivy leaves represented the inner youth of my unconscious. Roberto wrote, “Psychological wealth from an inner storehouse eager to be developed.” When I pointed out some dark brown areas that I had drawn, he said:
“Oh, it doesn’t mean anything, it’s just leftovers from the past. Often there’s a period of frustration before we get anywhere. It’s part of the game. Don’t identify with passing moods that are just momentary winter moods… It’s important.”
The positive and the Self were his primary focus.
“How many energies there are,” he could say about my pictures, “there are so many energies in you that are pulsating and active.”
He often told me that my feelings were better than my mind because the pictures showed it. “You see how the unconscious is astute.” We used drawings instead of dreams. I was too eloquent and too experienced in dream interpretation. “Drawings are often more meaningful than dreams!” I wasn’t sure, but I could see that my drawings were expanding my soul in new directions.” After a while, Roberto put the drawings aside and said:
“Let me see what you wrote.” I handed him my notes for this session.
The interaction between the higher and lower self
“If the self is a reflection of the higher Self,” I wrote, “then I should act and experience myself more elevated as I come into contact with the higher Self and recognize it. Yet you said, as an example, that if I met Fra Angelico, I might not like him personally. That his best side might be expressed through his paintings. Why don’t our personal lives reflect our best? I want my personal life to reflect all my inner beauty. You seem to live the ideals that you write about.”
“You go straight to the heart of things,” Roberto responded with his twinkling smile. “Why don’t our personal lives reflect our best sides? Because there are so many things in between. Between the personal self and the higher Self there are all kinds of things – opaque and not transparent. It blocks the light or refracts it. It’s all kinds of obstacles. But we are here precisely to eliminate these obstacles and at the same time have a lot of joy!”
Yes, I thought about so many things in between my personal self and my higher self: my need to perform professionally, my social need for popularity, to be loved, cared for, appreciated. “You look like you live the things you write about, don’t you?” I repeated.
He laughed, “No, not quite. And certainly not perfectly, but I’m working on it. For your comfort, I can tell you that I don’t. On the other hand, when you reach my age – that’s a good benchmark.”
Should I measure my height for my age against his height and his age? Was that what he asked me to do?
“Not really,” he continued, “Making your personal self reflect your higher Self is not something stable or permanent. Sometimes you manage to get there through the obstacles, but it goes up and down. Even if we get there, we often can’t stay there and we fall back down, then we have to go up and down again. Other times, when we are at a specific level, there is an influx for some reason or another that I can’t explain. It’s very complicated and often we can’t trace the reasons. But we know what we have to do.”
I thought, what am I supposed to do? That’s the eternal question. What am I expected to do with the uplifting energy that’s pouring down on me? Listen to it and let it guide me? Am I one of those people who is led by an inner pull or is this pull more caused by external circumstances?
“Now you understand,” he continued and I felt as if he read my thoughts.
“It is normal for the personal ego to be only a weak reflection of the transpersonal Self. You are perfectly normal. Of course, we do not want to remain normal, in the ordinary sense. But we have to start somewhere.”
I had spent the last few days reading the writings he had written, some of which were published and some not. Now I commented on some of them:
“You say that on the one hand there are methods of liberating oneself from the painful conditions of life and on the other hand there are ways of simply escaping from them. Liberation comes from building individuality and from a positive realization of the Self. Escape can come in many ways: by burying oneself in relationships, by taking on a discipline of rules and regulations so that one does not have to think for oneself. One can also escape into an all-consuming neurosis.”
(I had my own musings, “Do I use social activities even here in Florence, my relationship with Ottavio, as an escape from the painful conditions of life that keep me ego-bound with less time for inner growth and Self-realization?”)
“Yes, that is absolutely true,” said Roberto, “there is an escape from inner growth, individuality and a positive realization of the Self and, let me add, from the coherence between the transpersonal Self and other Selves and the Universal Self. This escape can occur through relationships, disciplines and neuroses. You see, the personal self is trying to escape all the time. But now you are no longer fooled by it. At least it shows that you have recognized it.”
“And I struggle against this realization?”
“Of course,” he laughed, “of course, it’s part of the game. But the important thing is that we don’t let ourselves be fooled. That you know better. Even if you’re involved in these things for a short period of time, you’re aware of it. Attention is the most important thing. Not success and triumph, that will come later, but here and now, presence, the observer and the knower.”
Invocation is the royal road
“I have also read the booklets, “ Meditation for the New Age ”. Am I working with invocation (invocation) now without knowing it? If not, how would you suggest I do it? Can you say something about invocation?”
“I am very happy that you are asking the question yourself, because it shows that you are mature for it. I would have suggested it later, quietly, sooner or later, but it is much better that it comes from yourself. You see, it answers a spontaneous authentic need that comes from you. It is one of the higher needs of humanity.
Invocation is the royal road. Invocation clears the channel. The thread that exists between the personal self and the transpersonal Self is in reality a channel of communication. The most effective method of communication is invocation.”
“There are two main methods of clearing this channel – one is to ascend to the Self through techniques and discipline. The personal self aspires and rises towards the transpersonal Self and sometimes reaches the superconscious level and there can be a peak experience, an expansion of consciousness and an enlightenment. The other method is to attract the descending energies, what religious people call grace, but it is not grace, it is scientific.
It is a response to an appeal. This appeal can often be made even more effectively when the personal self is in difficulty. You know the expression: man’s last need, God’s opportunity . Translated into scientific terms, this means: In a psychological crisis, the appeal of the personal self can give the transpersonal Self an opportunity to send down its energy or its light and love. Can you do that?”
Roberto interrupts himself to say that of course the two ways are not separate. The channel they both cleared was the same, it was only the approach that was different.
“Often it is the case that the personal self tries to rise to a certain point and succeeds, but then it cannot go any further. At this point it calls.
“How do I invoke,” I said, “I feel like a doubter.”
“I’ll get to that. There are different ways to do it. Sometimes you can formulate your own invocations. There’s one I usually recommend to those who are skeptical and doubting, it goes: God, if you exist, help me if you can. Could you accept that?”
I laughed and nodded my head yes.
“Well, there’s a chance he exists and can help. It’s more or less a joke. In any case, it’s a fairy tale, you don’t have to believe it first. You call, you invoke and then something will happen and you’ll see,”
There were suggestions for invocations in the yellow booklets. Roberto asked if they were too general and too impersonal. “Tell me honestly,” he asked, “don’t you really feel for them?”
“Yes, you see, I don’t use them, they don’t seem that relevant to me.”
“You continue to feel doubt in your personal self. You continue to feel doubt.” He continued.
“Yes, sometimes I doubt if I will ever make contact with my higher self or my inner intelligence.” I was touched by his care and honest interest in my process. He did not feel repelled by me, nor was he judgmental about what I perceived to be my lack of progress.
“Receptive meditation is easier for me than reflective meditation,” I wrote. “It is easier for me to allow what wants to come in than to keep my concentration on what I want to bring in.”
“That’s correct,” he said, “receptive meditation comes immediately after invocation. First you invoke, and then you tune in to receive.”
“I am present with myself and waiting to receive,” I wrote.
“What do you mean by being present? Would you like to explain that?”
“I mean, I listen inside.”
“Yes, but if you invoke, it will be easier. I think with your concrete intellect it will work better if you have a specific invocation that invokes what you need at the moment.”
At this exact moment there were spectacles outside the door and the waiter came in with papers. Minutes earlier I had heard the doorbell ring and someone calling from below the door. Shouting—what was probably the normal communication with Roberto and completely disturbing to me—she came in and placed her papers on his desk, exclaiming, “Company, company.” He signed them and she left us while I wondered what had been so important that she had to interrupt our session. Nothing, I concluded. Roberto, undisturbed, his world quiet, continued with his examples of specific invocations I could use.
“May the light of the Self enlighten me”
“May the love of the Self permeate me”
“May the peace of the Self surround me”
“I think these three encompass the most important personal needs.”
“I can feel the light and the love, but when I worry, I can’t feel the peace,” I summarized.
“It is not a question of feeling them, at the moment you may not be aware of a response, but it will come later. Do not look for immediate results. If they come then well and good, but that is not the most important thing. Trust that a response will come. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said, nodding my head.
“After the invocation, you enter the receptive meditation, into the silence, and in that silence, things happen; even if it doesn’t reach the level of the conscious self. Certain things are set in motion. Can you accept that?”
“Yes,” I said, “thank you very much.”
“What?” he asked. He saw me speak but didn’t hear it.
“Grazi,” I repeated, this time very loudly. Then he smiled.
The Science of Service and Blessing
“Yes,” I wrote, “things are happening. In my meditations I send love to my son and today I received a letter from him that was full of his good feelings about himself.”
“Another day we will talk about radiation. When you send love to your son, you know that you can radiate and that it is an act of spiritual service. It also distributes the excess energies of the personality. I think you can become a very effective radiator.”
“It’s me!” I said it loudly so he could hear it and I didn’t have to write it.
He heard me and asked, “Do you like it?”
“Yes,” I said a little more subdued.
Elimination of personality resistance
“See, one of those little booklets on the other bookshelf? One of them is about radiance. Would you like to see it?” Roberto turned in his chair and said, “I’ll see if I can find it.” He leafed through a row of papers and found a thin paper-bound publication entitled: “The Science of Service and Blessing.” I took the booklet and Roberto continued:
“Your main problem is not with the superconscious. It is clear that your superconscious is active through the results you have with others and equally your inner experiences. The problem is to eliminate the resistance of your personality. So let’s work on that a little, if you like, because then the superconscious will take care of itself. I will make some suggestions and you think about them and respond to them.”
“The most common resistance among many is that the personal self is tied to personal experiences – tied to the experience of joy and much else and therefore afraid of losing them. It is often based on a religious misconception that you must lose, eliminate, renounce and kill something. That is directly negative. That is not reality either.
What needs to be given up is the fear of losing a bond or of having to put something on hold every now and then. Then you can have it again, but in a much freer way. You see, bonds limit. Sometimes what is perceived as something good on the personality level are obstacles because they function as escape routes when you are too absorbed in them or too satisfied.”
“It’s a big difference that you don’t have to give up the thing, it’s an inner liberation. It’s a fundamental difference. Do you see the point? It’s a fear of losing something. But you don’t lose anything. It may be necessary to put it aside for a while, but then we can have it again, but with much greater freedom and joy and in its rightful place. That way we are not dominated by it.”
“I can see that there are activities and interests that one can become too attached to – sports, food, motherhood, fatherhood, helping others, yoga, meditation and even sex.”
He nodded, “The whole problem is that we are obsessed with certain things and therefore we are prisoners of the habits of the past. Some very fine idealists are obsessed with their ideals. They are trapped by them. They can only see it and cannot sacrifice it. They are not free and do not have the higher experience. It is a question of freedom, of being in control, of being a master and not a slave.
It is a process of liberation that involves willingly putting something aside and consciously taking it up again. Do you see that? All the forms of fear that the personal self has are a misunderstanding. It is the old moralistic, dualistic and religious language and attitude. It has provoked a reaction that goes in the opposite direction and that is also slavery.”
“Yes, I know that. The old attitude says that you have to give up everything to achieve spirituality. So the extreme reaction is that in that case I don’t want anything spiritual or religious.”
“Therefore you can safely say to your personal self – Be quiet, you will lose nothing, just let me do the work. The outcome will be the joyful union with the Self. You have everything to gain . Try to experience it more and more. Not only intellectually but also in your whole being.”
“A really simple example is in relation to food. There are some people who enjoy their food so much that they become gluttonous and in that way they become obsessed with food.
Then there are the type of dieters who limit themselves too much because they believe in some diet. They end up obsessing over it. Food is a perfectly natural and necessary thing. But it doesn’t need to be given any special attention. You can enjoy it, taste it, praise a good fruit or something like that. Do you see that?
Food is perfectly natural and good until it is given an unnatural amount of attention and importance. Look how many people ruin their health and shorten their lives out of stupidity by giving in to the pleasure of food. This is an attachment to the pleasure of food, it is desire. I think I have made that quite clear, so keep your personality in mind. It is all right at the right time and in the right amount.”
The key is wisdom
“The key is wisdom. It’s not so much about will and forcing it. It’s about wisdom – an understanding of the right proportions, of beauty. Beauty is about the right proportions. You make your life a work of art, a work of beauty, if you have the right proportions of all things.”
“I have a card here that I sent out for New Year’s. Have you seen it?”
He handed me a folded card in cream with a rough surface. On the front were three interlocking rings, followed by the words: Love and Will on the outer rings and the word Wisdom in the middle ring. Inside the card was written: “May love and will expressed through wisdom shine through each and every one of you in the new year – and always. With all good wishes and blessings.”
It was signed “Roberto Assagioli”.
“You can have it,” he said when I wanted to return it.
“Thank you,” I said and then louder, “Grazi,” which he saw and confirmed.
“It really solves the whole problem both individually and socially. Many people have a lot of love but no sense of proportion and no will to balance it. Wisdom is the whole key. Wisdom makes it possible to have it all. Meditate on that.”
“Work on without giving your feelings excessive attention. Don’t suppress them, let them express themselves, especially through your drawings or if you hit your bed or… But don’t take them too seriously. They are passing moods. It’s about the right proportion. Be genuinely happy, even if your feelings are disturbing. Remember the sea, the waves come and go, but deep down at the bottom, the sea remains motionless.”
Roberto signaled for me to turn on the globe with the universe, which I did, and when I had settled myself calmly in the chair with my eyes closed, he said: “Let us now meditate on the eternal and on the present. Bathe in it.”
“The moment is here and now. You are here, I am here. There is an interaction. This is the present and let’s make the most of it. Reject everything else and live this with joy and appreciation. Let something happen. It is a moment that is connected to all of your past and my past and is gathering into this now. Now that you leave it, it continues. Can you see the specific use of the past?
You are here with your past and I am here with mine. From there we continue into the future. But in our souls, in our Self, we are one in another sense. Can you see how that relates to the current life?”
“In the gaze there is something you recognize. The eyes connect with each other. They are not only a sensory organ, they are also an organ for projection.”
His eyes were both laughing and intense, and at one point they sent a strong and powerful connection to me.
“Well, that’s another time I’ll talk about it. Let’s…” he intoned slowly and sonorously: “From eternity into the present to the future.”
NOTE:
In Chapter VI of The Psychology of Will, Assagioli describes this technique in detail. Here he also includes a warning, which is important to include, so as not to give the impression that psychosynthesis does not work with the same cathartic methods as many other psychotherapies – that is, techniques that aim to release the pent-up energies in, for example, a complex. Assagioli says:
“Like any technique, substitution can be misused if it is used without a clear understanding of an individual’s existential situation or without a good sense of timing. Certain recurring images or thoughts that are negative and disturbing may be indicative of an emotional blockage. In such cases, substitution, if used before the difficulty has been adequately explored, understood, and dealt with, may tend to suppress the material that is trying to break through to consciousness.”
How to move forward
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Also read the article Psychosynthesis an Integral Psychology and the biography of Roberto Assagioli
Read the introductory article about integral meditation
