Introduction
We
live in a professional world today. People around are busy trying to make their
future bright by doing more, through their efficiencies. Hundreds of new age
spiritualities are emerging daily. New medicines and new sicknesses are found
every other day. People are stressed and strained. Crime tolls are rising daily
despite stringent laws. Human being is restless. Money wealth and pleasures do
not seem to satisfy. I wonder what this human life is really about.
Human
life has its own ups and downs, desires and aspirations, joys and struggles.
One of such important, essential gradient of human life is – the need to go
beyond. Quite often in my own life I too have found a kind of restlessness,
which when reflected, unconsciously calls me to move beyond the immediate. I do
find this kind of restlessness in the young, adults and the old. All have a
pull from within, which quite often doesn’t satisfy them by remaining in the
periphery of life. It’s an inner urge to live a fully alive life, moving away
from the lethargy that sets in daily.
Thus I would call the human restlessness that I find in the society
around, either in doing good or not so good, is the result of human longing to
go beyond, human desire to transcend or in the words of Maslow it’s the attempt
to fulfill the basic need of self actualization. It’s more and more a call ‘to
be’ than ‘to do’.
On
this process to understand human restlessness or call to go beyond , I am
considering the ideas from Abraham Maslow, Eric Erickson and Sigmund Freud.
Abraham Maslow
Maslow
sets before us as a model of healthy human beings-self actualized human beings
able to show others what they are capable of.
His whole concern in his theories is lives based on values and call the
greatest problem of the present generation as valuelessness. For him, values are give a reason to live and
a reason to die and the growing value free culture takes away from us this
essential life force.
Human
life is self transcending. Human life as a whole is oriented to the good, the
beautiful, the true, the just and the like. As humans, we look for certainty
and order in our lives. This indeed reveals
certain amount of spiritual hunger of people, even when they have
everything. This shows the importance of values in once own life. When there is
something to reach for, - life is meaningful. He also feels that we are in a transitional period, where
older values no longer serve.
Value is what is
important to people, what motivates them and what they live for. Values are needs. People look for an
intrinsic good – that is, a value. Basic needs are those, which when thwarted, either actually or by way of
threat, issue in psychopathological outcomes.
Talking
about the basic human needs he presents with five needs in the order of hierarchy.
1.
Self
actualization
2.
Esteem
3.
Belongingness
and Love
4.
Safety
5.
Physiological needs.
Need for Self Actualization
In
the words of Maslow, the highest human need is need for self actualization and
the highest human values are associated with it. These can be described as-
search for identity, autonomy and the yearning for excellence. These express
the need for self actualization. Self
actualized individual is psychologically healthy. He feels that what a human
being can be, they must be.
Being self actualized
Self
actualization can also be thought of as an experience in which all one’s
energies are concentrated and one is totally absorbed, as experiencing fully
and selflessly. In a self actualizing moment individual is fully and wholly
human. This kind of an experience can be had by anyone. An average person can
work at attaining it. Human nature is not a blank slate. Rather there is in
each, a self, to be actualized and that is our deeper self. Self actualization
is an ongoing process and we need to make growth choices rather than fear
choices. Right choices are a step towards self actualization and we know what
is right by listening to our inner voice. Therefore self actualization is not
an end state, rather a process.
Actions
of self actualized people are not for any other end, rather than the present
one. These persons are gratified when they give love. Strictly speaking, these
people have no needs. They act out of fullness than deficiency. Self
actualizers have a taste for what is right for right, true and beautiful and
tend to agree among themselves on what is right and what is wrong. These people
posess faults and problems. They are sometimes found ruthless. Only difference
is that they are progressing from unreal problems to real problems.
Self
actualizing love is being love- it is nothing but he complete acceptance and
liking of the object as it is, as an end in itself. . If you love selflessly, you will be able to
see things as they are. Self actualizers perceive facts clearly. Quite often,
this clear perception calls for action.
Eric Erickson’s Psycho Social
stages of development
Erickson
is one of those psychologists who has inspired and affected my life most. He
presents us with the theory of
psychological growth from the perspective of social influence. It
consists of eight stages
through which a healthily developing human should
pass from infancy to
late adulthood. In each stage, the
person there is a challenge to be faced. Failing to do that might lead into a
prolonged crisis affecting life. One’s present life is always the result of my
earlier choices in life. But now the person has a choice either to move forward
or backward.
The
8 stages of growth and the crisis
involved in it.
1. Trust
Vs Mistrust - Infancy ( Birth – 2 Years)
. This is the time of basic emotional growth.
2. Autonomy
Vs Shame and Doubt ( 1-2 Years). This is
the stage of learning self control and the child is more into imitation.
3. Initiative
Vs Guilt -( 3-5 years). At this point thre is a growth of self esteem. As this
is the stage where child tries to take some initiatives and if it meets with
opposition or threat at this stage, its likely to develop guilty conscience to
carry on for the future.
4. Industry
Vs Inferiority ( 6- Puberty). Feeling incompetent and unimportant at this stage
can lead to lasting inferiority, which would affect rest of one’s l;ife and
functioning.
5. Identity
Vs Indentity confusion ( 13-20 Years): the questions of belongingness take top seat here. Who am I? Whom do I
belong to?
6. Intimacy Vs Isolation (
20-30 Years) Intimacy is the need of every human. If one’s own identity is poor
then the Intimacy level may be
curtailed.
7. Generality Vs
Stagnation ( 40-50 Years): At this stage there is a possibility of a gap
between the ideals and the real in one’s own life. This is more a time for reevaluation
of life.
8. Integrity
Vs Despair ( 60 and above): this is a time of looking back at life. This look
may lead one to a mature living with satisfaction or bitterness and despair.
Integration:
In
my own life quite often I feel dissatisfied when am not able to do something
well. But surprisingly even when I do well the tendency is to go still further.
There was a time when small victories would give me joy and happiness. But as
the time has passed I have realized that my choices of the past have made me
what I am today. But the inner urge continues in my day today living even now
to do soothing different, to live a fully alive life and above all to become what I potentially
am. In the words of Maslow, I find myself in the struggle to be what I really am-
struggling to be a self actualized
person.
I
am much inspired by Fr Joseph Pulickal, a Kerala Jesuit. He is one of the rare
Jesuits I have ever met. He looked to me
a person beyond the ordinary. His needs are minimum. A very pleasant person to
live with but at times he has his own struggles, which look silly for others. I
often found that he was able look at things at their reality. Though a senior
man, he still tries to keep abreast with new ideas/ knowledge even now. Though
I see him living a fully alive life, he still keeps trying to live better every
day. Self actualization is a process and not an end in itself, is what I
perceive from his life.
Working
with the youth I have quite often found in them seeking for something
different, something perfect. They want
to be somebody. They want to keep growing everyday in every aspect of their
life. But just like me, in this process of trying to transcend the immediate, there
are struggles. I do believe even a hard core rapist, in the midst of heinous
crime, is seeking for something unconsciously often, which is beyond him
Maslow
gives beautifully the characteristics of a self actualized person. But in the
process of becoming self actualized, we often struggle being the prisoners of
the past. Freud says most part of what one becomes is decided by the age of 6
or early childhood, of which person himself/ herself is not in control of. Much
of this stage depends on our parents or guardians. Most importantly maturing of
a human person does not happen in isolation. We are an essential part of the
society around us. This society plays a vital role in our growth.
As Erickson says there
is a conflict or crisis to be faced at every stage of life. In today’s world
most parents have no time to care for their children. Thus the child that lacks
the touch of parents is into crisis at the very early stage in life. Meeting
the youth, many a times, the biggest problem that I find these people facing is
the question of ‘Who am I?’ and whom
do I belong to?’ many failing to find
answers to these basic questions of life ruin themselves being addicts to
various evils. Many times, there is hardly any room left or help is available
to work on one’s own crisis. Thus people are busy looking for instant solutions
and creep in many new age spiritualities, which are largely money making than being
genuine help.
But as Maslow says, we
need to look at the models of Self actualized persons and learn. Recently I
have been reading the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi. He did have deep struggles
in his own life but the person was determined to achieve mastery over him. Thus
an extremely shy, frightened to utter a word in the public eventually turns out
to be the voice of the nation against the mighty empire of Englishmen. What was
different in Gandhi is his spiritual life and sense of reflection in whatever
he did. His process of becoming a self actualized person was accompanied by the
principles or a value system, which he thought, good in itself. Amidst the daily struggles Gandhi kept advancing
towards becoming a self actualized person. As I read through his life, I realize that he had come to a point, where he started to see
things as they are. That’s where he could move beyond the immediate and see the
purpose of the creator in the created reality.
Thus,
what I deeply believe, diverting a bit from these thinkers is , what helps one
in actualizing his or her own self, is the deep spirituality built on
principles and value systems and above all, trust in God. Often Psychologists and philosophers like,
Freud, Nietzsche have argued God as a mere infantile wish fulfillment or
illusion. I have grappled with this question for long. In the past two years I
have met people in the villages extensively, listening to their experiences and
struggles of life. I have also kept a track of my own experiences in life. And
I do firmly believe that God is not the making of one’s own mind rather an
objective reality that sustains us all. Names could be different but there is
someone who sustains cares and fosters everything. I believe there isn’t any
human who doesn’t have crisis. And the complete resolution of such crisis is in
Meeting God.
Conclusion: “Our hearts are restless until they
rest in you”, said St Augustine. This
restlessness is nothing but a call of a loving God to be with him. It is
intrinsic to be pulled towards self actualization, event in the small little
events of life but human will find his total actualization in his redeemer God.
The earthly ongoing struggle for self actualization is only a sign of this
final union. Principles and values, on this journey of self actualization help
one to make meaning of one’s own life. As St Paul puts it in Ephesians 1,10, when the
time is fulfilled , he will draw all things t him and that will be the moment
of complete self actualization of every striving being.
Bibliography
- Fuller, Andrew, Psychology and Religion-Eight Points of View, Littlefield Publishers, England,1994.
- Vaz, Dion, Psychology of Religion, Class Notes.
- Vaz, Dion, Novitiate Diary, Personal Notes.
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