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A Call to Go Beyond...

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
  1. Fuller, Andrew, Psychology and Religion-Eight Points of View, Littlefield Publishers, England,1994.
  2. Vaz, Dion, Psychology of Religion, Class Notes.
  3. Vaz, Dion, Novitiate Diary, Personal Notes.

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