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Psychosynthesis: A Collection of Basic Writings

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This book is written for and more useful to therapists but is worth reading by anyone who wants to become familiar with psychosynthesis. Assagioli was the founder of psychosynthesis, which sees humans as tending naturally toward harmony with self and the world.

This is just a brief summary of central Assagiolian doctrines:

We may divide spiritual/life "paths" according the the question: who is the chief protagonist of psycho-spiritual process ? Basically, it's equal to answering the question: who am I ?

1. The Transpersonal Self (TS)-the sun presiding over the "egg/field" of psyche. ( Transpersonal or Higher Self is different from Jungian definitions; it is not totality of psyche. It is Atman, containing & governing psychological life, but in essence, albeit reachable, utterly beyond & above. It's completely "other" & "closer than your jugular vein" at the same time ). This is the position of non-dual schools like Advaita Vedanta or Ch'an ( Zen) Buddhism.

2. The "I"-radiant ray of the Self ( TS ) This is the position of various schools, having different goals. For brevity: Buddhist & Hindu ( not Kashmir Shaivite)Tantra, Taoist alchemy, some forms of Sufism. "Modern" schools & teachers include Psychosynthesis, Gurdjieff or Hazrat Inayat Khan.

3. The psyche- the psychomental complex; in the diagram, it's the "egg" as if cut off from the the sun of TS ( of course, it never happens: just, in this process psyche/soul is an entity longing to contact & fuse with TS/God, who is experienced as "the other"). This is the way of majority of traditional mysyicisms, as well as some modern therapies ( Jung ). In Jungian school, "soul"/psyche, not pure "I", nor the Self ( especially as ego-consciousness ): so, the Jungians would say- I'm psyche currently reduced to ego consciousness, but passing through process of cleansing, maturing, expansion...

Transpersonal consciousness

The 2nd path, that of Tantra, is achieved by disidentification technique aiming to isolate the "I", empower it by activating its most essential attribute, will, and with this new, enriched & more efficient "I", mould the psyche & ascend the ladder of more & more heightened awareness, with the final goal of blending "I" with the source, the TS. In contrast to the Zen or Jungian approaches, it is an "activistic" one, projecting the "I" into a variety of states of mind/psyche. In Buddhist Tantricism there is a technique of identifying the dis-identified principle of consciousness/"I" with the multitude of real or imagined objects ( heart of guru; identifying with Boddhisattva of, say, compassion; entering the yantra/mandala signifying some aspect of Trikaya/Buddha Nature ). This is similar to Assagiolian Psychosynthesis. After achieving a degree of d-i and relatively balanced psyche in personal PS, the ascent of crystallized "I" begins, in course of which "I" controls, moulds & expands areas of awareness. On the way to & through the superconscious, the liberated "I" reshapes fields of conscious life, achieving a new position of center of conscious life & widening the channell through which the influx of spiritual energies feeds the psyche. The Assagiolian approach, as contrasted to orthodox ones ( Tibetan, Taoist, Shaivite,..) has a few novelties to offer: 1. It is free from culturally conditioned symbols ( better, it uses them freely without being confined to a specific symbolism ). 2. Its exercises are given in "distilled" form ( especially in "The Act of Will"), hence not burdened with extremely complex & superfluous visualisation trappings which impede the spiritual progress. 3. In the true Western fashion, TS is not just the target of "I", the impersonal Self-it is the living source, the fount of symbols, messages and the guide. In this respect, Assagioli merges Eastern Tantric tradition ( d-ied "I" who becomes the chief actor of "projective" experiences of identification with various symbols of the superconscious/Bardo) and Western tradition of TS as living guide ( Inner God, Christ, Lapis).Also, Assagioli draws on wide field of experiential material of existential psychology ( Maslow, Frankl,..).