In this volume, Sudhir Kakar once again brings an extraordinary depth of psychoanalytic and Indian sensibilities to bear on topics of sainthood, religious ritual, and healing in India, as well as the profession of psychoanalysis itself. Here he seeks explicitly to explore not only the psychological but also spiritual dimensions of these topics, and the ways in which these dimensions are entwined. Kakar links this expanding agenda to a “romantic resurgence” in the West of a vision of life as a quest for union with a higher power or spirit and a realization of the fundamental connections between oneself and the universe.
In the first part of the book, Kakar explores the lives and teachings of four of South Asia's modern and, in some respects, “divinely mad” spiritual virtuosi: Rajneesh (also known as Osho), Tibetan Buddhist Tantrik Drukpa Kunley, Hindu saint Swami Muktananda, and Mohandas Gandhi. Beginning with the iconoclastic, “spiritually incorrect” guru Rajneesh, Kakar engages Self Psychology to identify a profound sense of deprivation and sadness that gives rise to compensatory grandiosity and a narcissistic character. The darker dimensions of the guru's past and person are, nevertheless, intimately linked to the emergence of a spiritual life that outstrips its traumatic origins. Kakar turns then to Kunley, who, in one legend, demands of his mother that she perform the duties of a wife, and to Swami Muktananda, who finds his spiritual progress impeded by erotic visions of Mother Kundalini. In each case, Kakar suggests, the resolution of a crisis of sexuality between mother and son is vital to spiritual progress and demonstrates for the devotee something about the path of sainthood. Each extraordinary life is marked by the interplay of desire and spirit.
In his thoughts on Gandhi, Kakar avoids both pathologizing and idealizing the man; though to avoid the former is an especially difficult task for a psychoanalyst, he says, given Gandhi's struggle against his sexuality, his overweening conscience and his ruminations surrounding food (one prominent Indologist is known to refer to Gandhi as “the neurotic ascetic”). Kakar seeks to understand the Mahatma's spiritual or “true” self in spite of, and even within, these qualities that invite psychoanalytic skepticism. He explores Gandhi's “practical” spirituality of altruism and empathy, one that draws on the Bhagavad Gita to advocate for a “passionate but non-narcissistic” involvement in the world as the avenue to spiritual progress.
In much of the second half, Kakar re-examines his own discipline of psychoanalysis, often from the standpoints of Indian religious traditions. He begins with the notion of empathic responsiveness, an essential capacity of a good healer, whether therapist or guru. Psychoanalytic understandings of empathy, says Kakar, have much to gain from a close look at the empathic features of the spiritual guide in Hindu, Buddhist and Tantric traditions. Advanced levels of meditative experience in those traditions entail a kind of “metaphysical openness” that has something to offer to the Western therapist's empathic awareness of her patients. Next, in a largely autobiographical chapter on the psychological uses of ritual, Kakar argues that while ritual action often functions to establish and protect individual and collective identities—i.e., to “close off” the psyche, as per Freud's analysis of religious ritual as obsessive action—it can also serve to open the mind to experiences of awe and wonderment. In his final chapter (subtitled “reading Freud's The Future of an Illusion in Goa”) Kakar evokes a Hindu critique of Freud's analysis of religion. In a manner reminiscent of Erikson's psycho-historical study of Gandhi, in which at one point Erikson directly addresses the Mahatma in a letter, Kakar speaks directly to Freud in the voice of a “thoughtful Hindu who is otherwise in sympathy with Freud's project of a psychological deconstruction of religious ideas.” This thoughtful Hindu encourages Freud to soften the severity of his belief-centered take on religion, arguing for the centrality of ritual rather than belief in Hinduism. He cites also the relative absence of fatherliness in Hindu deities, the parental rather than paternal qualities of their protectiveness, and the fact that for Hindus, deep ambivalence tends to be focused on the mother rather than the father. Freud's view of religion, says this Hindu, reflects dominant attitudes toward God in the three Semitic religions. For a Hindu, even illusion is not such a bad thing, for it is ultimately a manifestation of God's lila and creative power. In response, Kakar speaks in Freud's favor, assuring the Hindu that Freud was not a dogmatic thinker, but willing to change his views on the basis of new evidence and experience.
Beginning with his early and perhaps most influential book, The Inner World: A Psychoanalytic Study of Childhood in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1977), the depth and vitality of Kakar's writings emerge from a creative tension between his Western psychoanalytic and South Asian spiritual selves. More fully than his previous works, Mad and Divine places spirit on equal footing with psyche, while never allowing for any simple resolution of the dissonance. At times Kakar seems clearly to apprehend the spiritual dimensions of both ordinary and extraordinary human lives. At other times he seems, like William James, to stand at the doorway to these dimensions, looking on with insight and empathy, but unable to enter. We shall wait eagerly to see where his efforts next take him.
