Removing_the_Mask_of_Religious_Identity_-_a_Psychological_Assessment_by_Jalaledin_Ebrahim_Ph.D_(C)

Removing the Mask of Religious Identity: A Psychological Assessment. In this age of globalization on an ever shrinking planet, can humanity expect to survive as a species by holding on to our notions of religious identity' Will it come down to your God versus my God, your sacred scripture versus my sacred scripture, your sacred places and worship practices versus mine' Can these conflicts and tensions really be resolved by interfaith and ecumenical dialogue and collaboration resulting in a plausible appreciation, if not a celebration, of our diversity as a species or do our hopes for a common humanity require a complete deconstruction of our religio-cultural myths and a removal of our masks of religious identity, while our civil and human rights continue to be guaranteed by a more “just” secular order' This paper aims to explore 1) the structure and meaning of religious identity within the context of various psychological definitions of the self. 2) whether a religious identity is a form of cultural conditioning that can be transformed or transmuted into one which fully embraces the Other in an “I-Thou” relationship or whether a religious identity is merely a sub-personality as defined by the transpersonal psychiatrist, Dr. Roberto Assagioli, founder of Psychosynthesis. 3) the psychological consequences of the Psychosynthesis process of “dis-identification” within the context of Fowler’s stages of faith and assess the care and caution needed by pastoral counselors and spiritual directors to mediate what can often appear as disturbing transpersonal processes which may present as a crisis of faith but which are possibly a break through to a development of a higher stage of faith. 4) the psychological consequences of a contraction of one’s affiliation to a particular religious school or denomination, in terms of Jung’s notion of individuation and how this process itself might support or be supported by interfaith “engagement”. The paper will finally seek to present the psycho-spiritual development of Rumi, Hafiz and Ibn Arabi as ideal exemplars of the unmasking of religious identity, a process by which these mystics were able to further the extinction of the self towards annihilation in the Beloved. So, let us begin with Rumi (1207-1273 CE), since he is now a well considered spiritual icon in American popular culture. He says in his famous Mathnawi: “One who sees without distortion, free of prejudice, has light in the eyes. Self-interest blinds you and buries your knowledge in a grave. Lack of prejudice makes ignorance wise; its presence makes knowledge perverse. Accept no bribe, and your sight is clear; act selfishly, and you will be enslaved.” - Jalal'uddin al-Rumi q.s, Mathnawi II, 2750-53 - Could Rumi be talking about a person’s religious identity in these verses when he cites distortions, prejudice, self-interest and bribes' How do we understand “religious identity,” what does it comprise of, and how does it develop' As a case study, I would like to present a middle-aged Palestinian woman from Lebanon, whom I was seeing in a final therapy session in 2005. Dressed respectfully in a hijab, my client would always greet me warmly with “Asalaam Alaikum.” She had come in for therapy as a result of a deep depression and anxiety attacks. She had agreed to invite her husband for a final session to explore a higher level of psychiatric care or some culturally optimal alternatives. Her husband suggested that Islam was the only answer for her problems. "Don't talk to me about Islam!", she shouted at him, and he gently backed off. In retrospect, I wondered to myself how it was that this wonderful, sensitive woman had initiated litigation against her employers for unlawful termination because of her insistence on wearing a head-scarf to work, which was her "personal narrative" of the cause for dismissal. The repeated negative outcomes of her legal efforts were at the root of her depression. But she could not let go of the need for legal vindication of her right to wear a head scarf at work. It was as if she was entrapped by her religious (or was it "cultural"') identity and yet it appeared that she was in a crisis of faith. She was evidently frustrated with Islam but not with the symbols of the faith in which she was raised. Ciaran Benson, Professor of Psychology at University College, Dublin and author of “The Cultural Psychology of Self” offers a comprehensive explanation of the process of the development of self, which sheds light on the subject of religious/cultural identity: “Cultural Psychology argues that we understand ourselves to be who we are through the richness or poverty of the languages of expression which we come to acquire. We emerge from and become who we are over many years through transactions with our families, churches, schools, friends, enemies, books, films, governments and others. A task for psychology is to explain how these transactions lead to a fabricated world of individualized subjectivity within the world of networked minds and collectivized subjectivity which is our culture. The self to whom we may be true is a self whose very being is collective, so that to be true to oneself invariably means being true to something other than oneself. A psychology which fails to recognise this in its formulation of an ideal of maturity occludes a crucial part of the picture.” (2001, p. 225). In striking contrast, Oxford Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, Richard Dawkins, in his controversial attempt to unravel "The God Delusion" implies that one's religion evolves by meeting the human need for a group affiliation: "The present Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society, Martin Rees,” he offers as an example,"told me that he goes to church as an 'unbelieving Anglican...out of loyalty to the tribe'.” (2006, p.14) On the other hand, his colleague in arms, Tufts Professor of Philosophy, Daniel Dennett, in his study of religion as a natural phenomenon, "Breaking the Spell", makes the case that "Religions are transmitted culturally, through language and symbolism, not through the genes. You may get your father's nose and your mother's musical ability through your genes, but if you get your religion from your parents, you get it the way you get your language, through upbringing." (2006, pp. 24-25) These literary protestations of the Divine or the Sacred in human experience by both contemporary intellectuals seem fundamentally misdirected because they not only fail to make the distinction between “religion” or “faith” and “religious identity”, or what Carl Gustav Jung would refer to as the “persona,” but they also fail because they limit their definition of religion to either social/environmental or “natural” phenomena. Jung makes the case, in his Terry lecture on Psychology and Religion presented at Yale University in 1937, that a “psychologist, in as much as he assumes a scientific attitude, has to disregard the claim of every creed to be the unique and eternal truth. He must keep his eye on the human side of the religious experience quite apart from what the creeds have made of it.” Jung makes a clear distinction between religious experience and religious identity. He defined “persona”, in his work The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, (CW 9, i, pp.122f.) as being “ the individual’s sytem of adaptation to, or the manner he assumes in dealing with, the world. Every calling or profession, for example, has its own characteristic persona....Only, the danger is that (people) become identical with their personas – the professor with his text-book, the tenor with his voice....One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is.” In fact, for Jung, the entire process of “individuation” is one by which one becomes a single, homogeneous psychological being that is a separate, indivisible unity or ‘whole’, and, “in so far as ‘individuality’ embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one’s own self. We could therefore translate individuation as ‘coming to selfhood’ or ‘self-realization.’” In an anthology coordinated by the Social Science Research Council of New York, on “Understanding September 11”, Timur Kuran, King Faisal Professor of Islamic Thought and Culture at the University of Southern California, provides the component parts of such a persona in his essay on “The Religious Undertow of Muslim Economic Grievances”: “Islamists believe that to be a good Muslim is to lead a distinctly Islamic lifestyle. In principle, every facet of one’s existence must be governed by Islamic rules and regulations – marriage, family, dress, politics, economics, and much more. In every domain of life, they believe, a clear demarcation exists between “Islamic” and “un-Islamic” behaviors.” (2002, p.68) Clearly, this is a reference to the Muslim persona which is a mask that one can become so accustomed to wearing that we forget it is really there, until we are confronted with the incongruity between our extrinsic religious identity and the deepest intrinsic values we espouse. This has been the journey of the controversial retired Bishop of Newark in New Jersey, John Shelby Spong who had to come to terms with his personal discomfort with the notion of homosexuality and his faith as a Christian. Spong was finally able to gain insight into his own “prejudice” (his word) and begin to make the case for gay marriage and the ordination of women and gay priests. He has reflected deeply on the scriptures, still reads the Bible every day, but can no longer accept the patriarchal assumptions of a previous era in human history. Concurrent to his own evolution as a Christian in Exile (his words) was active inter-faith participation in engaging the Jewish community in his own church life to unravel the depth of meaning and shared spiritual insights of the Hebrew Bible. This is clearly but one aspect of the removal of the mask of religious identity. On the other hand, interfaith activist and co-founder of the Chicago-based Interfaith Youth Corps, Dr. Eboo Patel, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the sociology of religion at Oxford University, voices his concerns in his autobiography “Acts of Faith” about the fragility of religious identity for young persons. Dr. Patel, a progressive liberal Muslim voice advocates for the importance of maintaining one’s faith identity within the context of a religiously plural world: “The problem is that today’s youths – Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, or whatever – no, longer live in the so-called ‘banquet hall’ of their faith communities...They are coming into contact with kids from different backgrounds all the time. If they don’t have a way of understanding how their faith relates to the Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Evangelicals, and others that they spend most of their lives around, then there’s a good chance that their religious identities will atrophy.” (2007, p. 165). It is important to make a cautionary note, for therapists and pastoral counselors, that the argument is being made here for a strengthening of religious identity, but within the context of religious pluralism, so that one is able to hold to one’s own religious affiliation and/or conviction as the case may well be, while at the same time being able to respect, value and fully appreciate the beliefs of the Other, in an inclusive manner. When religious identity becomes exclusive and begins to invalidate the Other, one has to seriously assess the potential for conflict which this type of masking can instigate. Perhaps it is this kind of “masking” in certain parts of the world of Islam, which is being evoked in the Quranic verses warning about the rusting of our hearts (83:14-15): “No indeed; but that they were earning has rusted upon their hearts. No indeed; but upon that day they shall be veiled from their Lord,” because, it is conceivable that the mirror of the heart is too clouded by distortions and prejudice to receive the resplendent image of the Face of the Beloved. And yet, clearly, one cannot underestimate the complexity and difficulty of this process to removing the mask of religious identity, because our sense of identity is perhaps one of our very first lines of psychological defense when we feel threatened or exposed. Dr. Marc Howard Ross teaches courses in conflict theory, conflict management, and the politics of ethnicity and race. His recent research focuses on the role of culture in ethnic conflict and its management. I In his essay entitled “A Political Psychology of Competing Narratives” in the same anthology by the Social Science Research Council of New York, Dr. Ross offers an explanation of the relationship between the individual and the narrative of the individual’s group identity: “In bitter conflicts, amongst the strongest feelings people have are fears about attacks on their identity. Usually these fears result from perceived denigration and humiliation, evoked from past losses and linked to present dangers. In violent conflicts, the fears also include concern for physical security and fears of extinction of the self, family, and the group and its culture, including its sacred icons and sites. All groups exert conformity pressures on their members, and these are greatest in high-stress conflict situations. In times of uncertainty, narratives connect individual and group identity, heightening in-group solidarity and a sense of a linked fate that inhibits social and political dissent. As part of this dynamic, disagreement quickly becomes disloyalty, and often those holding dissenting views are careful not to express them publicly, and sometimes even in private.” (2002, p.306) This relationship between the individual and the group is clearly a dynamic one so that the individual also derives ego-strength and a sense of protection from group affiliation whether it is a family, a religious group, an ethnic group or a national group. To summarize, we can assert that the factors which make up one’s religious identity include heredity, family and cultural influences, the formation of a persona, group affiliation and religious narratives. There is a clear distinction between religious identity and religious experience. And we also know that as a result of the individuation process, the mask of religious identity can be pierced or removed, with some resulting alienation. One might then ask the question: at what point in the development of the self or in the development of one’s faith does one’s religious identity become so ossified that the Other becomes “objectified”' A series of stages of faith development was proposed by Professor James W. Fowler, a widely regarded developmental psychologist, in his book “Stages of Faith.” This elaborate study proposes a staged development of faith (or psycho-spiritual development) across the lifespan. | | Faith, from Fowler’s perspective is seen as a holistic orientation, and is concerned with the individual's relatedness to the universal: • Stage 0 - "Primal or Undifferentiated" faith (Infancy, birth to 2 years), is characterized by an early learning of the safety of their environment (i.e. warm, safe and secure vs. hurt, neglect and abuse) • Stage 1 – "Intuitive-Projective" faith (Early Childhood, ages three to seven), is characterized by the psyche's unprotected exposure to the Unconscious. • Stage 2 – "Mythic-Literal" faith (School years), stage two persons have a strong belief in the justice and reciprocity of the universe, and their deities are almost always anthropomorphic. Symbols are taken as one-dimensional and literal in meaning. • Stage 3 - "Synthetic-Conventional" faith (Adolescence) characterized by conformity acutely tuned to the expectations and judgments of significant authority figures with the emergence of a personal myth and formation of identity. • Stage 4 – "Individuative-Reflective" faith (Young Adulthood, usually mid-twenties to late thirties) a stage of angst and struggle. The individual begins to take personal responsibility for beliefs and feelings with critical reflection. • Stage 5 – "Conjunctive" faith (Mid-life crisis and beyond) alive to paradox and transcendence, recognition of one’s social unconscious and, myths, ideals, prejudices and symbols of inherited systems • Stage 6 – "Universalizing" faith, trans-narcissistic love, self-transcendence, "enlightenment" or transpersonal unitive consciousness. (1981). It is clear from Fowler’s model of faith development that one’s religious identity begins to form in the school years at the Mythic-Literal level of Stage 2, it then coalesces in adolescence in Stage 3, which is precisely the psychological stage of identity formation. It becomes concretized through young adulthood at stage 4, only to be revisited during mid-life at stage 5. It is interesting to note that the majority of the Taliban were recruited between Stage 3 and Stage 4. These are clearly the critical stages for identity development. And this is the stage in the lifespan when Dr. Eboo Patel and other interfaith activists argue for an appropriate level of interfaith engagement within this context of religious pluralism so that one’s religious identity does not atrophy. From the perspective of archetypal psychology, the formation of an archetypal connection or motif occurs as early as the pre-adolescent school years of the Mythic-Literal level and the Synthetic-Conventional level of the adolescent years. Jung suggests in one of his Terry lectures on “Religion and Psychology” at Yale University in 1937 that these “archetypal motives presumably start from the archetypal patterns of the human mind, which are not only transmitted by tradition and migration but also by heredity. The latter hypothesis is indispensable, since even complicated archetypal images can be spontaneously reproduced without any possible direct tradition.” (1938). However, based on Fowler’s model, the emergence of an awareness of our persona or what I call “the mask of religious identity”, or any group identity, for that matter, does not, therefore, occur until one approaches mid-life. Carl Gustav Jung would obviously agree with this. But one of his younger contemporaries, Dr. Roberto Assagioli, (1888-1975) an Italian psychiatrist and founder of Psychosynthesis advanced the concept of dis-identification from what he termed our “sub-personalities.” We are, after all, not just a religious identity but a multiplicity of identities – a mother, a daughter, a wife, a doctor, a mentor, a chef, a poet, a musician as well as other selves that remain in shadow, the darker selves, such as the discreet adulterer or gambler or alcoholic. So rather than becoming attached to and identified with our various personae, Assagioli’s model of the self is centered in our very core. The crux of this matter, for a psychotherapist or a pastoral counselor then, is clearly to assess whether it is safe and possible to dis-identify from these parts of ourselves, these masks, personae or a false self. If we can remove the mask of religious identity, are we susceptible to a psychotic break or do we open ourselves to places of vulnerability which we are not mentally, spiritually, emotionally or even physically equipped to handle' To fully and completely dis-identify, we cannot be in denial about our shadow and all our multiplicities. Assagioli and practitioners of Psychosynthesis, (I count myself amongst them), suggest that it is not only possible to dis-identify, safely, but that it is in fact the most challenging yet effective way to achieve optimal well-being and self-realization. Assagioli’s clarifies this in his own formulation of “Psychosynthesis”: “To make this point clearer: the last and perhaps most obstinate identification is with that which we consider to be our inner person, that which persists more or less during all the various roles we play, that which is also a person in the etymological sense of Persona (Mask) as the ultimate mask of the self. This “Persona” or “person” has to be discarded in the sense of our no longer being identified with it and limited by it. This is important, because every identification with it tends to make us static and crystallized. It is a kind of image or pattern or model of which we are apt to become prisoners. This “person,” even the relatively most intimate one, is in reality in process of constant change, of flow. There is a continuous intake of experiences which modify it and an output of energies from it. So, it too is changeable, fluid, impermanent and therefore cannot be the pure self-identity which persists unchanged through all that flow.” (p. 121, 1965) It is no accident that many spiritual teachers have recommended this path to psycho-spiritual development, from the Buddhist tradition to Krishnamurti. But one such master from the era of Convivencia itself was the Sufi Shaikh al-Akbar. Ibn al-Arabi was not just interested in dismantling the personality for the experience of well-being and freedom, but for the very experience of gnosis and extinction of the self in the Beloved. In contrast to Fowler’s six stages of the development of faith towards a Universalizing faith, Ibn al-Arabi (1164-1240 CE) recommends a graduated path of seven stages to self-transcendence. In his book, “The Philosophy of Ibn Arabi”, former Professor of Islamic Studies, Dr. Rom Landau, outlines these stages of the mystical path: ”In his endeavour to give an objective assessment of fana', Ibn 'Arabi delineates it as a gradual process which he divides into seven stages. These are as follows: 1. Passing away, from sin. This Ibn 'Arabi does not interpret in the usual Sufi manner as the abandonment of all sin, but as a realization that all actions are right (not in a moral sense but as coming from God). That which is sin, is to regard one's actions as coming from oneself. 2. Passing away from all actions in the realization that God is the agent of all actions. 3. Passing away from all attributes of the 'form' in the realization that they all belong to God. As Ibn 'Arabi puts it; 'God sees Himself in you through your own eye and, therefore, He really sees Himself: this is the meaning of the passing away of attributes.' (Fusus, p.198). 4. Passing away from one's own personality in the realization of the non-existence of the phenomenal self, and the endurance (baqa') of the eternal substance which is its essence. 5. Passing away from the whole world in the realization of the real aspect which is at the bottom of the phenomenal. 6. Passing away from all that is other than God, even from the act of passing away (fana' al-fana'). The mystic ceases to be conscious of himself as contemplator, God being both the contemplator and the object of the contemplation. (This is very different from the common Sufi view of the disappearance of consciousness which Ibn 'Arabi defines as mere sleep.) 7. Passing away from all Divine attributes. The universe ceases to be the 'effect of a cause' and becomes a 'Reality in appearance' (Haqq fi Zuhur). This seventh stage represents the fullest realization of the oneness of all things, and must be the final aim of all mystical endeavour. (pp. 52-53, 1959). Note that Ibn Arabi specifically elucidates how in his Stage 4, “passing away from one’s own personality” is an essential process towards attaining that Companionship on High which all the mystics have sought to achieve. It is surely from this vantage, when all his masks have been removed, that he can write these verses about his faith and how it becomes transmuted into an I-Thou relationship of love: “My heart has become capable of every form: It is a pasture for gazelles and A convent for Christian monks, and a temple for idols and the pilgrim's Kaa'ba, and the tables of the Torah and the book of the Quran. I follow the religion of Love: Whatever way his camels take, that is my religion and my faith.” Ibn al-`Arabi, Tarjuman al-Ashwaq, in The Mystics of Islam, translated by Reynold A Nicholson There is some question as to whether the mystical stages of faith follow a particular developmental pattern related to ages in the lifespan. Ibn Arabi himself was gifted with numinous experiences at an early age (one biographer cites the age of sixteen for his first spiritual retreat). Many of these experiences were gifts from the Divine, including remarkable imaginal encounters with Moses, Jesus, Muhammad and Khidr, but he was clearly on a path of devotion that aspired to self-transcendence. These numinous experiences confirmed for him the transcendent unity of religion, so that all separations became extinct in the Unity of the Divine. This is what Fowler considers the final stage in faith development, a Universalizing of faith, which is inspired by Richard Niebuhr’s descriptions of radical monotheistic faith. As Fowler describes it, “radical monotheistic faith has powerful ethical correlates. With roots deep in the Jewish tradition, yet in a manner resonant with Eastern ideals of nonattachment, radical monotheism interrupts all attachments to centers of value and power that might be prized for ego or group-ego reasons. The sovereign God of radical monotheistic faith is an enemy to all idolatrous gods. This includes the gods of nation, self, tribe, family, institutions, success, money, sexuality and so on……. Any claims of ultimacy for them or by them must be avoided or relinquished. In radical monotheistic faith the commonwealth of being, unified in the reign of God as creator, ruler and redeemer, is universal. This means that principles by which human beings divide themselves from each other – and from other species in the orders of creation – are not divisions that finally determine their relative worth and value. The sovereign God of radical monotheistic faith intends the fulfillment of creation and the unity of being.” (p. 205, 1981) The experience of removing the mask of religious identity was and continues to be for many Sufi mystics, in real terms, more a ‘falling away’ of religious identity through their spiritual practices and devotions, an experience, as Rumi describes it, of “seeing without distortion”, “free of prejudice” and “self-interest”, and accepting “no bribes.” In conclusion, what is noteworthy for all of these seekers is that the dis-identification process from their religious identities did unfold. In the 21st century, the process of dis-identification from our religio-cultural myths and narratives, the cherished forms of our archetypal figures, our cultural/racial/ethnic identifications, our ‘inner jihadists’ and our multiple selves is imperative, if not ultimately inevitable given the present trajectory of the evolution of human consciousness. These veils of separation between our personal and collective religious traditions will need to fall away before we can achieve a true sense of a common humanity. Many of the mystics achieved these post-ecstatic states of clarity and sobriety, an experience which was shared by Hafiz (1320-1389 CE) who celebrates what this “I-Thou” condition of consciousness must be like for those who have been stung by the Ineffable, in his poem “Would you think it Odd'” translated by Daniel Ladinsky: "I am in love with every church And mosque And temple And any kind of shrine Because I know it is there That people say the different names Of the One God." Would you tell your friends I was a bit strange if I admitted I am indeed in love with every mind And heart and body. O I am sincerely Plumb crazy About your every thought and yearning And limb Because, my dear, I know That it is through these That you search for Him. Renderings of Hafiz (translated by Daniel Ladinsky, p.27, 1996) As we continue to contemplate together the depth of the REFERENCES Assagioli, R. (1965). Psychosynthesis. New York, N.Y. Penguin Books. Benson, C. (2001). The cultural psychology of self. London and New York. Routledge. Calhoun, C.; Price, P.; Timmer, A.; Eds. (2002) Understanding September 11. New York. New Press. Dawkins, R. (2006). The god delusion. New York, N.Y. Houghton Mifflin Company. Dennett, D. (2006). Breaking the spell. New York, N.Y. Penguin Group. Fowler, J. (1981). Stages of faith. San Francisco, CA. Harper San Francisco. Jung, C.G. (1938). Psychology and religion. New Haven, CN. Yale University Press. Ladinsky, D. (1996). I heard God laughing – renderings of Hafiz. Oakland, CA. Mobius Press. Landau, R. (1959). The philosophy of ibn arabi. London, England. George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Parfitt, W. (2003). Psychosynthesis – the elements and beyond. Glastonbury, England. PS Avalon. Patel, E. (2007). Acts of faith. Boston. Beacon Press.