The new psychology

Question: what do you do when you are caught between two worlds? You are aware that God is watching you, but you do not have the momentum to stop yourself from doing things you do not want to do.

Answer: Continue thinking about Him. Do not be occupied with your shortcomings and failures and mistakes. Do not think about them.

The psychiatrists, psychologists, our teachers, our ministers, our confessors do something very obnoxious. They say, “Think of how many bad things you have done in the past. Realize them.” And you get more and more identified with your failures. You become more obnoxious.

Leave the failures alone. Let them go and think about the Highest. Suddenly, the Highest will come like an eagle and take you to the highest peak.

This is the new psychology. The old psychology is dead, but there are millions and millions of new psychological offices opening to say the same thing: “How stupid you are.” Well, we know it! I am sick of hearing that I am bad. Can’t you tell me something better? Can’t you tell me that I am good? “Yes, you are good.” Thank God! There is hope now. I can be somebody! By making people condemn themselves, you are killing the Divinity in them. Raise them up and tell them how beautiful they are in spite of failures, etc.

Some husbands belittle and criticize their wives from morning till night. You are dressed wrong, you are walking wrong, you are thinking wrong, you are doing wrong things. Wrong and wrong and wrong. The woman does not know what to do anymore. She is lost. But some women are also like that to their husbands. They pick, pick, pick at them for everything. “You didn’t shave, you didn’t pick up, you didn’t do this or that,” and the husband becomes so frustrated that he looks at another woman who praises him.

Why do people want to be praised? I was asking a psychologist this question. He said, “Because they are stupid.” I said, “No. In your heart you know that you are something worthy of worship. You want to be praised because you feel that you are divine in spite of all the trash around you.” This is the deeper psychology, and this is why every person wants to be respected, loved, praised, exalted, even worshiped.

Once, in a Buddhist temple, I saw the great Teachers come and bow to the students. They said, “We bow to the greatness in you.” Imagine what would happen if husbands and wives would do this to each other for two or three days. Either the neighbors would think they were insane, or they will create a new family for themselves.

-Torkom Saraydarian
One Hundred Names of God