CLINICAL FORMS OF LOVE INSPIRED BY MEHER BABA’S MAST WORK AND THE AWE OF INFINITE CONSCIOUSNESS

ABSTRACT: Meher Baba’s work with India’s masts (‘‘God-intoxicated ones’’) in the 1920s–40s helped inspire Laing’s ‘‘anti-psychiatry’’ in the 1960s of a medication-free kindness in treating the mentally-ill and predates by decades the concept of ‘‘spiritual emergence’’ developed by Sannella, Perry, Grof and Grof in the 1970s and thereafter. His concept of the salik conveys the essence of Wilber’s ‘‘pre-trans fallacy’’ (mistaking enlightenment for an immature forerunner). His view of ‘‘God intoxication’’ appears to be a culturally-dependent, extreme instance of a potentially non-pathological ‘‘Depersonalization/ Dissociation’’ as noted in the DSM-IV-R. From Meher Baba’s saintly perception of an essential holiness (awe- and love-inspiring nature) of consciousness itself, I derive inspiration for a psychotherapy of ‘‘clinical forms of love.’’ I also introduce the concept of ‘‘spiritual surpass,’’ problems attendant to successful spiritual maturation, in contrast to ‘‘spiritual bypass,’’ problems related to egoic immaturity.