Alcoholism and Addiction: A Transpersonal View

"(The) craving for alcohol (is) on a low level the thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: union with God."

(Carl Jung to Bill Wilson, letter dated January 30, 1961.)

In the attached must-see video, noted transpersonal psychologist, Christina Grof (author of "The Thirst for Wholeness: Attachment, Addiction, and the Spiritual Path") shares her insights on the spiritual crises underlying alcoholism and addiction, as well as the insights she garnered from her own descent into alcoholism after she had already established herself as a successful psychotherapist and a noted "spiritual teacher".

Ms. Grof's story brings to mind that of the person "full of faith but still reeking of alcohol," and she tackles this issue, as well as issues about powerlessness and those revolving around the personal crises that evolve well into sobriety when repressed or forgotten incidents, often from far into childhood, emerge.

Speaking about the irony that alcohol and other drugs brings about what she calls "a pseudo-mystical experience," and tipping her hat to William James and Bill Wilson, Grof notes that "addicts and alcoholics are seekers," and that "they want to know about the mysteries of God and life, but they make the mistake of looking in the wrong places."

"Unless the spiritual aspect of addiction and alcoholism is addressed," she notes, "the quality of recovery is really limited."

Carl Jung: On the Benefit of Self-Examination

In explaining the nature and necessity of the spiritual (or religious) experience that he saw as requisite for the successful treatment of alcoholic addiction, the great psychologist, Carl Jung observed that "(t)he only right and legitimate way to such an experience is that it happen to you in reality, and it can only happen to you when you walk on a path which leads you to higher understanding."

"You might be led to that goal," Jung continues,"by an act of grace or through a personal and honest contact with friends, or through a higher education of the mind beyond the confines of mere rationalism."

Written in the last year of his life, Jung's letter to Bill Wilson (from which the above is extracted) was an explanation in many ways of the sum of his experiences treating not only alcoholics, but in treating his patients in general. In his letter to Bill (attached below), he observes:

"I am strongly convinced that the evil principle prevailing in this world, leads the unrecognized spiritual need into perdition, if not countered by a real religious insight or by the protective wall of human community. An ordinary man, not protected by an action from above and isolated in society cannot resist the power of evil, which is called very aptly the Devil. But the use of such words arouse so many mistakes that one can only keep aloof from them as much as possible."

Just what did Jung mean by these observations, and why (other than Bill's evident open-mindedness) did he confide these observations to A.A.'s co-founder? Much insight into Jung's meaning may be gained from the close perusal of a slim volume, 'The Undiscovered Self,' which Jung published several years earlier, in 1957. In it, Jung states that the fundamental question that one must answer in life is: "Have I any religious experience and immediate relation to God and hence that certainty which will keep me, as an individual, from dissolving into the crowd?"

"To this question," he points out, "there is a positive answer only when the individual is willing to fulfill the demands of rigorous self-examination and self-knowledge." (Thus, the necessity of taking, and continuing to take, a searching and fearless moral inventory of one's "self.")

"If he follows through on this intention," Jung continues, "he will not only discover some important truths about himself, but will also have gained a psychological advantage: he will have succeeded in deeming himself worthy of serious attention and sympathetic interest. He will have set his hand, as it were, to a declaration of his own human dignity and taken the first step towards the foundation of his consciousness - that is, towards the unconscious, the only accessible source of religious experience."

"This is not to say," he cautions, "that what we call the unconscious is identical with God or is set up in his place. It is the medium through which the religious experience seems to flow. As to what the further cause of such an experience may be, the answer to this lies beyond the range of human knowledge. Knowledge of God is a transcendental problem."

[Jung, 'The Undiscovered Self,' pp. 100-102.]

"There is a direct linkage among self-examination, meditation and prayer," writes Bill W. "Taken separately, these practices can bring much relief and benefit. But when they are logically related and interwoven, the result is an unshakeable foundation for life. Now and then we may be granted a glimpse of that ultimate reality which is God's kingdom. And we will be comforted and assured that our own destiny in that realm will be secure for so long as we try, however falteringly, to find and do the will of our Creator."

['The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions,' p. 98]

The process of taking the 12 Steps - i.e., engaging in the process of "self-examination, meditation and prayer" that Bill writes of - is the process that opens the alcoholic addict (or any other addicted person) to "a religious (or spiritual) experience and immediate relation to God." And it is this experience - the solution to Jung's "transcendental problem" - that relieves the alcoholic of his or her sole reliance on a limited self-consciousness to get by in life. And by opening him or herself to a higher, dilated consciousness, this process relieves the sufferer of the obsession to transcend self-consciousness with alcohol and/or drugs.

Thus, through membership and participation in A.A. (or its sister 12 Step organizations), the addict is opened (a) to "an act of grace", and provided with (b) "a personal and honest contact with friends," and (c) the opportunity for "a higher education of the mind beyond the confines of mere rationalism."

"The religious person," as Jung points out in 'The Undiscovered Self,' "enjoys a great advantage when it comes to answering the crucial question that hangs over our time like a threat: he has a clear idea of the way his subjective existence is grounded in his relation to 'God.'"

Fear and Fearlessness

"Fearlessness is the first requirement of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral."

-- Mahatma Gandhi --

Over and over in the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous the subject of fear crops up. Indeed, the original A.A. members represented in the 'Big Book' do not ask, suggest or demand that we be fearless in working the 12 Steps, they beg us "to be fearless and thorough from the very start."

Why this emphasis on fear and fearlessness? I suggest that it is because there are two visceral reactions to life that shape and sustain the ego - fear and its conjoined counterpart, desire. Indeed, we read that the alcoholic addict is "(d)riven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking and self-pity."

[Alcoholics Anonymous, page 62.]

In describing how to make a moral inventory, we read that: "We (review) our fears thoroughly. We put them on paper even though we had no resentment in connection with them. We asked ourselves why we had them. Wasn't it because self-reliance failed us?"

[Alcoholics Anonymous, page 68.]

Looking at my own fears, it is clear that some - like fear of snakes, large barking dogs, and immense heights - are just instinctual. Recognizing that fear in such instances is just part of an instinctive "fight, flee or freeze" reaction, it is easy enough to overcome such fears, or at least to act in the face of them. Why do I have such fears? Because humans have always had such visceral reactions to imminent danger. They are hard-wired survival mechanisms.

But what about those other fears on my list - seemingly non-instinctive and secondarily-instinctive angsts such as a fear of the opposite sex, fear of speaking in public, fear of financial insecurity, fear about what others think of me, fear of the abstract concept of my own mortality? Such anxieties are not inherent, but rather are produced by the fear-based thought processes of the human ego.

Such self-centered (i.e., ego-centric) fears are symptomatic of the restless and egoic thinking of the addictive mind, and it is thus necessary to address such fears from a different mode of thought and consciousness than mere self-consciousness. Reliance on the "self" or "ego"  (i.e., "self-reliance") indeed fails me with respect to such fears. (It was Einstein who famously said: "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.)

What is always required when dealing with these purely egoic fears is a recurrence to the God-consciousness wherein the voice of the ego disappears.

It is, I believe, in this sense that Gandhi says the first requirement of spirituality is fearlessness. So long as the ego is active the spirit is absent. And absent the courage - i.e., the purity of heart - that is inherent in the higher state of God-consciousness, it is impossible to act sanely in the face of such fears, and experience shows that instead I react to such anxieties.

Remember: "(T)he main problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind." And the only solution lies in the deeper recesses and higher consciousness of the soul. Therein is a Power greater than one's "self" that will, when found, restore one to sanity and allow one to do or say that which was unthinkable before.

On Restlessness

"Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol.  The sensation is so elusive that while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them their alcoholic life seems the only normal one They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks - drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery." 

-- Dr. William D. Silkworth, M.D. --
(Alcoholics Anonymous, pp. xxviii-xxix)

 Restlessness is the state of mind of the alcoholic addict when he or she is not drinking. The inner dialogue of the entirely self-conscious mind jumps from calamity to imagined calamity, from this desire to that desire, and from this memory to that fear continually. As a result, the alcoholic addict - clean and sober for the moment - is acutely self-conscious, and is irritable and discontented with the state of his or her being and lot in life. And, unless he or she "can experience an entire psychic change" there is but small chance of his or her recovery.

In this, he or she is not alone. There are multitudes of so-called "ordinary" people who go through life in just the same manner - irritable, restless and discontented during the largest part of their waking day - but without the physical, addictive craving for alcohol or more drugs once some is ingested, it is unlikely that they will ever fall into alcoholic addiction. Most of these non-alcoholic types could perhaps use a drink or two to get over their all-too-common restlessness and discomfort. More aptly, they too require a psychic change, and not a mere expedient, if they are to live a happy and contented life.  The alcoholic addict, by way of contrast, and absent an entire psychic change, will remain addicted to that expedient.

This basic human problem is recognized in the Bhagavad Gita, a discourse between Arjuna, a highly developed warrior, and the self-realized master, Krishna, who acts as his charioteer.

"Thou hast told me of a Yoga of constant oneness, O Krishna," Arjuna says, "of a communion which is ever one. But, Krishna, the mind is inconstant; in its restlessness I cannot find rest. The mind is restless Krishna, impetuous, self-willed, hard to train: to master my mind seems as difficult to master as the mighty winds."

"The mind is indeed restless, Arjuna," Krishna replies, "it is indeed hard to train. But by constant practice and by freedom from passions the mind in truth can be trained. When the mind is not in harmony, this divine communion is hard to attain; but the man whose mind is in harmony attains it, if he knows and strives for it."

[Bhagavad Gita, 6:33-36]

Thus, Krishna affirms to Arjuna that the basic nature of the unawakened mind is restlessness. but he recognizes also that the mind can be trained through "constant practice and by (a) freedom from the passions" in order that it may be harmonized.

It is precisely this basic retraining of the mind in order to precipitate an "entire psychic change" that the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (and its sister organizations) are designed to fulfill.

At page 27 of Alcoholics Anonymous, the great Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung, describes the "huge emotional displacements and rearrangements" that have been know to effectively treat alcoholism in the following way: "Ideas emotions and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side and an entirely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them."

Absent such a psychic change, the restless, egoic and wholly self-conscious mind is dominated by seeming "calamity, pomp and worship of other things." This inner narrative blocks off all possibilities of a higher, dilated consciousness in which the alcoholic addict can effect a contact with a Power greater than his or her "self," or, if you prefer, a conscious contact with God.

Thus, the uncontrollable consumption of drugs and alcohol can truly be said to be a mere "symptom" of a far greater underlying condition - the ordinary, restlessness of the human ego. And until, that restlessness is abated, there can be little hope for "permanent sobriety, and a contented and useful life."
Working the Twelve Steps is one methodology - "we have no monopoly" - to bring about the necessary psychic change, in this instance via a spiritual awakening from within.

Going Broke on Spiritual Pride

Bill W. was the recipient of a sudden and tremendous spiritual awakening. It is attested to by his work with Dr. Bob and the millions of individuals who are clean, sober and addiction-free today because of Alcoholics Anonymous (and its sister programs). But he was a man who wrestled with spiritual pride and the sudden and complete disappearance of all humility - and he knew it.

Writing in the June, 1961 Grapevine, he observed:

"There can be no absolute humility for us humans. At best, we can only glimpse the meaning and splendor of such an ideal. As the book Alcoholics Anonymous says: "We are not saints . . . we claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection. Only God himself can manifest in the absolute; we human beings must needs live and grow in the domain of the relative. We seek humility for today."

"Therefore our practical question is this: "Just what do we mean by 'humility for today' and how do we know when we have found it?""

"We scarcely need to be reminded that excessive guilt or rebellion leads to spiritual poverty. but it was a very long time before we knew we could go even more broke on spiritual pride."

Bill was, after all, by profession a stock promoter. Immediately after his spiritual awakening the thought came to him that his experience might serve as an illustration of how to get over alcoholism, and that one drunk working with another could spread like a "chain reaction" sobering up everybody who needed help. And he immediately set out to start such a chain reaction, but with absolutely no success until, in desperation to hold on to his own tenuous sobriety, he told his story to Doctor Bob.

Doctor Bob seems by all accounts to have been temperamentally a far more commonsensical man than Bill, who admittedly suffered the tendency to power drive in his quest to be "a number one man." It was Doctor Bob who coined and epitomized the A.A. slogan "Keep It Simple." And, though a fellow Vermonter, he seemed to have epitomized a mid-Western simplicity and humility. (Perhaps, as a physician, he was more acutely aware of our universal mortality, including his own.)

On his desk, he kept a plaque bearing the following inscription about humility:

HUMILITY

Perpetual quietness of heart. It is to have no trouble, It is never to be fretted or vexed, irritable or sore; to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me.

It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised, it is to have a blessed home in myself where I can go in and shut the door and pray to my Father in secret and be at peace, as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and about is seeming trouble.

The ego is a sneaky, subtle force and foe. Having a spiritual awakening, it is far too easy for the ego to to take the position: "O.K. You want to be spiritual? Look how spiritual I can be!" And off goes our egoic self-consciousness, obsessed now with spirituality and our riff on what spirituality is, how it can be attained etc., instead of its usual wants, desires and fears.

It may be that the only time we are wholly free from the wiles of the ego is in meditation and contemplation. And this takes hard work and practice. "Perpetual quietness of heart" is a very high ideal, a rarefied consciousness that we are progressively alienated from as we age. That downward shift into pure self-consciousness is only accelerated by our years of addiction, alcoholic or otherwise.

Today, for me, I have to be just as aware of the inner dialogue going on about spirituality as I do of the "painful inner dialogue" of the usual ego-stuff. Though it is much more interesting to think about, it equally robs me of the experience of the here-and-now going on all around me. The time that I spend in quiet meditation and contemplation is inversely proportional, I find, to the amount of time I spend uselessly chattering away in my own head.

It is helpful to know that I have a "blessed home in myself" where I can go in and "be at peace." Particularly with my family and friends, I need to spend more time there than I spend trying to tell them about a "spiritual solution" to each of their "problems." It is, as Bill notes, far too easy to go "broke on spiritual pride." And I usually do so without noticing that I've already spent all the spiritual currency that I've set aside in the hours of quiet.

The Tavern of Ecstatic Experience

"In the tavern," writes Rumi translator and poet Coleman Barks, "are many wines - the wine of delight in color and form and taste, the wine of the intellect's agility, the fine port of stories, and the cabernet of soul singing. Being human means entering this place where entrancing varieties of desire are served. The grapeskin of ego breaks and a pouring begins. Fermentation is one of the oldest symbols for human transformation. When grapes combine their juice and are closed up together for a time in a dark place, the results are spectacular. This is what lets two drunks meet so that they don't know who is who. Pronouns no longer apply in the tavern's mud-world of excited confusion and half-articulated wantings."

"But after some time in the tavern," Barks observes, "a point comes, a memory of elsewhere, a longing for the source, and the drunks must set off from the tavern and begin the return. The Qur'an says, "We are all returning." The tavern is a kind of glorious hell that human beings enjoy and suffer and then push off from in their search for truth. The tavern is a dangerous region where sometimes disguises are necessary, but never hide your heart, Rumi urges. Keep open there. A breaking apart, a crying out into the street, begins in the tavern, and the human soul turns to find its way home."

"Alcohol in Latin," Carl Jung pointed out to to Bill W., "is 'spiritus" and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison. The helpful formula therefore is: spiritus contra spiritum."

In the attached video this recognition of alcohol as a surrogate (or in Barks' case, a symbol) for spiritual awakening is continued. In it Dr. Robert Johnson, a Jungian analyst and author, notes that "if we do not get our ecstasy, which is an archetypal quality, in a legitimate way we will get it in an illegitimate way, which accounts for much of the chaos in our culture now. We have to have an ecstatic dimension of our lives."

The following poem by the great Sufi poet, Rumi, who is often called "the Shakespeare of mysticism," is from the first chapter in Coleman Barks' "The Essential Rumi."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

THE MANY WINES

God has given us a dark wine so potent that,

drinking it, we leave the two worlds.

God has put into the form of hashish a power

to deliver the taster from self-consciousness.

God has made sleep so
that it erases every thought.

God made Majnun love Layla so much that

just her dog would cause confusion in him.

There are thousands of wines
that can take over our minds.

Don't think all ecstasies
are the same!

Jesus was lost in his love for God.
His donkey was drunk with barley.

Drink from the presence of saints,
not from those other jars.

Every object, every being,
is a jar full of delight.

Be a connoisseur,
and taste with caution.

Any wine will get you high.
Judge like a king, and choose the purest

the ones unadulterated with fear,
or some urgency of "what's needed."

Drink the wine that moves you
as a camel moves when its untied
and is just ambling about.

"Ego-Deflation" and "A New State of Consciousness and Being"

"Maybe there are as many definitions of spiritual awakening as there are people who have had them. But certainly each genuine one has something in common with all the others. And these things which they have in common are not too hard to understand. When a man or a woman has a spiritual awakening, the most important meaning of it is that he has now become able to do, feel, and believe that which he could not do before on his unaided strength and resources alone. He has been granted what amounts to a new state of consciousness and being. He has been set on a path which tells him he is really going somewhere, that life is not a dead end, not something to be endured or mastered. In a very real sense he is transformed because he has laid hold of a source of strength which, in one way or another, he had denied himself. He finds himself in possession of a degree of honesty, tolerance, unselfishness, peace of mind and love of which he had thought himself quite incapable."

"The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pp. 106-107 --

In William James' "The Varieties of Religious Experience," a book that Bill W. was referred to in order to reassure himself as to his sanity and the authenticity of his sudden spiritual awakening, the author convincingly points out that there are many, varied states of consciousness and being of which we are usually quite unaware.

"(O)ur normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it," James observed, "is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness. . . . No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded."

[Wm. James, "The Varieties of Religious Experience," p. 388.]

Of course, for the alcoholic addict the requisite stimulus that beings about the mental rearrangements that are requisite to experience this "new state of consciousness and being" - in reality - is "ego-deflation at depth."

"Ebby brought me a book entitled "Varieties of Religious Experience" and I devoured it," Bill recalled in a talk he gave to a medical committee on alcoholism.* "Written by William James the psychologist, it suggests that the conversion experience can have objective reality. Conversion does alter motivation, and does semi-automatically enable a person to be and to do the formerly impossible. Significant it was that marked conversion experiences came mostly to individuals who knew complete in a controlling area of life."

Thus, it is no mere coincidence that the opening words of The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions ask: "Who cares to admit complete defeat?" It appears to be only through complete ego-deflation, the convincement that of our own self-conscious thinking we have no solution to our addiction, that the alcoholic addict may open himself to the same "conversion" or "spiritual awakening" that can, if acted upon, restore him or her to sanity.

In one of the stories in the back of the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous, the author states that we "hit bottom" only when we stop digging. It appears, I would suggest, that so long as one has any reliance upon the twisted, self-conscious thinking of the ego, one is still "digging" and, therefore, does not have the requisite "open mind" that is necessary for spiritual awakening and recovery. Indeed, the first 44 pages of the 'Big Book' are devoted to shattering all the possible "outs" that the alcoholic addict may be considering.

Yet, remarkably, through this process of "ego-deflation," when the alcoholic admits to his innermost self that he has no further "Plan B," he opens him or herself up to a radical shift in consciousness, the requisite "stimuli" of utter desolation and despair has then been applied.

"In the extreme of melancholy," William James observes, "the self that consciously is can do absolutely nothing. It is completely bankrupt and without resource, and no works it can accomplish will prevail. Redemption from such subjective conditions must be a free gift or nothing, and grace . . . is such a gift" - the free gift of "a new state of consciousness and being."

[Wm. James, "The Varieties of Religious Experience," p. 244.]

"But for the grace of God," the alcoholic addict in recovery often remembers, "there go I."

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

(* From the pamphlet, "Three Talks to Medical Societies by Bill W., Co-Founder of A.A.," pp 14-15.)

Spiritual Conceit and Prejudice: From Closed to Open-Mindedness

"Instead of regarding ourselves as intelligent agents, spearheads of God's ever advancing Creation, we agnostics and atheists chose to believe that our human intelligence was the last word, the alpha and omega, the beginning and end of all. Rather vain of us, wasn't it?"

"We, who have traveled this dubious path, beg you to lay aside prejudice, even against organized religion. We have learned that whatever the human frailties of various faiths may be, those faiths have given purpose and direction to life. People of faith have a logical idea of what life is about."

[Alcoholics Anonymous, page 49.]

Religion - from the Latin 're' + 'ligare' - means to retie or reunite, and all of the world's great wisdom traditions lay out methods and practices by which this reunification of the individual with a Power greater than his or her "self" may be accomplished. Thus, there is nothing in the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous that need threaten the religious newcomer. It is more often than not, I suspect, the non-religious or decidedly atheistic newcomer that is threatened by all this talk of a God of one's understanding. I am sure that many, like me, were nearly fatally put off by all mention of a Higher Power.

When I got my first sponsor in A.A., he told me that I had to look beyond the First
Step and its admittance of alcoholism and unmanageability, that I had to look at the Step Two. Being swift on the uptake, I immediately asked him the absolutely wrong question: "What is God?" Of course, at this stage I was not even concerned with God. Step Two merely suggests belief in a power greater than one's "self." I would have been far better served, it turns out, to have asked him what was meant by "self."

As it was, my first sponsor gave me the old fob, by explaining that "God" in his view was "Good Orderly Direction." Don't get me wrong, my first sponsor thus made A.A. "acceptable" to me. But for ten years after his premature death I chased after getting some kind of "good orderly direction" in my thinking, and the two university degrees and professional training I received culminated in a near-fatal suicide and admittance to a psychiatric facility. This is the power that "self" unchecked can have - without picking up a drink.

I was fortunate, indeed, to have an A.A. "old-timer" - not ironically, my first sponsor's best friend - reach out to me and reclaim me from the ash heap of the life I'd burned through. With a new sponsor, one who had drank after 15 years, and at that time had achieved another 15 years of the very best sobriety, I worked through the Twelve Steps again, this time with a truly open mind. With his assistance, and the later assistance of two 35-year A.A. veterans - one who showed me "what" it was I was in need of, and the other who taught me "how" through meditation and prayer I could find it - my eyes were finally opened, and I was able to experience the spiritual awakening others had experienced.

My mind had been closed by "prejudice" towards all things "spiritual" or "religious." While we are told to "be quick to see where religious people are right," I could not get beyond where they were so clearly wrong.* After all, with my education and scientific background, I knew that dinosaurs had existed, and that all the evidence showed the universe to be about 13.8 billion years old. But I was wholly ignorant of the "religious experiences" that have manifested in individuals since time immemorial, nor was I a believer that just such an experience was what restored alcoholics to sanity and emotional sobriety. I did not know anything of higher states of consciousness (other than being an alcoholic and drug addict for 20 years!), nor did I have any notion of the connection that these higher states of consciousness and being have with spirituality, the God of my understanding, or my recovery from alcoholic addiction and final restoration to sanity. But I was set to learn.

"There is a state of mind, known to religious men, but to no others," wrote the great psychologist, William James, "in which the will to assert ourselves and hold our own has been displaced by a willingness to close our mouths and be as nothing in the floods and waterspouts of God. In this state of mind, what we most dreaded has become the habitation of our safety, and the hour of our moral death has turned into our spiritual birthday. The time for tension in our soul is over, and that of  happy relaxation, of calm deep breathing, of an eternal present, with no discordant future to be anxious about, has arrived Fear is not held in abeyance as it is by mere morality, it is positively expunged and washed away."

[Wm. James, "The Varieties of Religious Experience," page 47.]

An eternal present. Who would have thought?

Of course, many had. Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman Emperor more famous for his Meditations than his victories on the Teutonic battlefield, pointed out that "all we have to live or lose, is this ever-passing present moment."

Could it be, I wondered, that what science, psychology and religion all point to is a spirituality of the present moment, and that consciousness itself, is an integral (or, perhaps, the integral) component of the universe? Could we be, in fact, as Bill describes above, "spearheads of God's ever advancing Creation?" It sure seems, I found out, that we are.

"At bottom," James observes, "the whole concern of both morality and religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe. Do we accept it only in part and grudgingly, or heartily and altogether?"

Could I discerningly accept as true whatever science provided evidence for, yet remain unswayed by the "religious" or "spiritual experiences" - including eventually my own - reported by men and women throughout the ages?

"It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one," James points out, "whether one accept the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints. The difference is as great as that between passivity and activity, as that between the defensive and the aggressive mood."

"Gradual as are the steps by which an individual may grow from one state into the other, many as are the intermediate stages which different individuals represent, yet when you place the typical extremes beside each other for comparison, you feel that two discontinuous psychological universes confront you, and that in passing from one to the other a 'critical point' had been overcome."

[Wm. James, "The Varieties of Religious Experience," pp. 42-43.]

 For me, it took a crisis in life to get sober. Being close-minded, however, it took a greater crisis deep into my sober life for me to reach the 'critical point' that James referred to before I was restored ('somewhat') to sanity. When sharing my experience, I emphasize the need to set aside prejudices and develop an open mind - the sooner, the better - and to question what concepts such as "self," "sanity" "consciousness" and "a Power greater than ourselves" mean.

"Seek until you find," I was advised by one of my old-timers, "and study all religions until you can see the sameness in them all." Or, as Bill advises in the 'Big Book," "(b)e quick to see where religious people are right."*

* Alcoholics Anonymous, page 87.