Psychology, Mental Health and Yoga

The Nature of Identification

Identification is regarded by many psychologists as an important concept for understanding both the early development of personality and its later growth. However, from the viewpoint of yoga psychology, identification is a much more pervasive and deeper phenomenon, of which only some limited and superficial aspects are recognised in modern psychology. This essay aims at explicating the deeper nature of identification as viewed in Integral Yoga psychology.

As a psychological concept, identification has several different though related meanings and implications. These various meanings and implications of the term may be understood by considering the different forms of identification.

Forms of Ordinary Identification

Common forms of identification which are generally recognized fall into four categories:

1. Identification with persons: Two main forms of identification in relation to persons may be distinguished:

(a) Identification with an idealized person, or someone who is strongly admired, such as a parent, a teacher, a hero, a star, and the like. The general psychological definition of identification as a process by which one incorporates in oneself aspects of another's personality applies to this form of identification. It implies an unconscious tendency to become like the other person who constitutes, in the language of psychology, an aspect of

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one's ego-ideal. Identification in this sense is in a way similar to emulation, but whereas the former is mostly an unconscious process, the latter involves conscious effort.

It is in a somewhat similar sense that Freud - perhaps the first theorist in the West to write about identification -used the concept in explaining the origin of his construct of the super-ego or conscience. According to him, the super-ego is the result of identification with the parent and the consequent introjection of parental values.

(b) Identification with relatives, friends and other similar relationships based on love, affection or liking. Such identification, depending on its degree or extent, results in an unconscious tendency to think, feel and act in sympathy with the person one is identified with, as if the other person were an extension of oneself. Good and bad fortunes of the other person are felt, in varying degrees, as if they were one's own good and bad fortunes.

Identification with a group with which one is affiliated, such as a club, society, political party, nation, etc. also falls under this category.

2. Identification with descriptive characteristics of oneself:

A person is identified in society by various descriptive particulars, such as the person's name, caste, religion, nationality, race, occupation, etc. Identification with such descriptive labels of oneself implies that the descriptive characteristic is an integral part of one's self-concept; one's idea of oneself is inextricably associated with the description. The feeling of narcissism or love of oneself is therefore unconsciously extended to the name, caste, religion, etc. with which one is identified. Feelings of pride or shame regarding any of one's descriptive charac-

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teristics equally betray an identification.

3.Identification with parts or aspects of oneself:

Identification with one's body, feelings and impulses, or the mind and its thoughts comes under this category. Such identifications imply that the part one identifies with is regarded the same as oneself. Consequently, the states, activities and reactions of that part are felt as one's own states, activities and reactions. For instance, if the body is ill, the person feels and says, "I am ill"; when a thought occurs to the mind, the person says, "I think", etc. This form of identification is spoken of mostly in Indian psychology, though it is also recognized by some thinkers in the West, such as Robert Assagioli, founder of the psychotherapeutic system called Psychosynthesis.

Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist, has written about identification with a personality trait, such as extroversion or introversion, masculinity or femininity, etc. Such identification with an aspect of oneself may be subsumed under this category. It implies that the trait one identifies with is regarded as an essential characteristic of oneself; consequently, one unconsciously acts in terms of that trait.

4.Identification with one's possessions:

Identification with possessions is indicated by the very sense of ownership in relation to them. The sense of ownership implies that the possession is regarded as a psychological appendage of oneself. Consequently, one is affected by what affects the possessions. Thus praise or criticism of a possession is felt as praise or criticism of oneself; damage to a possession causes hurt as if the damage were to oneself.

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Characteristics of Ordinary Identification

The chief psychological characteristics of the common forms of identification just described are as follows:

(a) The central characteristic of identification is implied in the etymological root of the term: idem, which means 'the same'. Identification therefore implies that the thing or person or trait or part one identifies with is considered, in varying degrees, to be the same as oneself. In terms of Indian psychology, the separate self or the ego is the basis of identification; the ego is extended in varying degrees to embrace the object of one's identification which in some measure is regarded to be the same as oneself.

(b) Since what one identifies with is an extension of one's ego, the ego's inherent love of itself is extended to the thing or person or trait or part one identifies with. Thus the common forms of identification are characterized by attachment to the object of identification.

(c) Identification is an unconscious process and leads to involuntary emotional reactions associated with the object of one's identification. It is said to be an unconscious process because one can become aware of it only after it has been formed. The associated emotional reactions are involuntary in the sense that one cannot help experiencing the feelings involved, even if one can prevent one's thinking and actions from being influenced by the identification. For instance, when a close friend has a conflict with a third person, one cannot help feeling a predilection in favour of the friend, in spite of the fact that, rationally, one may regard the third person as being in the right and may actually take a stand in favour of the third person.

In the light of what has been stated above regarding the

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characteristics of the common forms of identification, it is not surprising that in psychotherapy emphasis has come to be placed almost exclusively on the negative aspects of identification. When psychotherapists refer to identification, it is almost always to point out the need for dis-identification in order to free oneself from the influence of unconscious identifications which bind and limit the individual.

From the viewpoint of the deeper psychology of Integral Yoga, however, there are two types of identification - one which leads to ignorance and bondage, and one that leads to knowledge and freedom.

Two Types of Identification

The two kinds of identification are alluded to in the following passage:

"Consciousness is the faculty of becoming aware of anything whatsoever through identification with it. But the divine consciousness is not only aware but knows and effects. For mere awareness is not knowledge....Only when the consciousness participates in the divine consciousness does it get full knowledge by identification with the object. Ordinarily, identification leads to ignorance rather than to knowledge, for the consciousness is lost in what it becomes and is unable to envisage proper causes, concomitants and consequences. Thus you identify yourself with a movement of anger and your whole being becomes one angry vibration, blind and precipitate, oblivious of everything

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else. It is only when you stand back, remain detached in the midst of the passionate turmoil that you are able to see the process with a knowing eye. So knowledge in the ordinary state of being is to be obtained rather by stepping back from a phenomenon, to watch it without becoming identified with it. But the divine consciousness identifies itself with its object and knows it thoroughly, because it always becomes one with the essential truth or law inherent in each fact."¹

The passage contains two profound implications regarding the nature of identification:

(a) It is through some degree of identification that one becomes aware of anything. In other words, to become aware of a thing is, in some measure, to identify with it, that is, become one with it in one's consciousness. Thus there is some degree of identification with everything that we come in contact with and become aware of. The Mother states this fact more explicitly in speaking about the dispersion of consciousness. She says:

"One is always identified more or less with all that one does and all the things with which one is in contact. The ordinary state of people is to be in everything that they do, all that they see, all whom they frequently meet."²

The subtle truth that the very awareness of a thing implies some degree of identification with it is more easily comprehensible in relation to feelings and emotions. From a psychological viewpoint, to be able to understand truly another person's feelings, one must empathize ox feel with the other person. In other words, to become aware of

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another person's feelings, one must identify or become one with the other person's feelings. Thus at bottom, identification is a reflection of what in yoga has been called knowledge by identity - the highest form of knowledge which consists in becoming one with the object to be known. Sri Aurobindo has stated it thus:

"In reality, all experience is in its secret nature knowledge by identity; but its true character is hidden from us because we have separated ourselves from the rest of the world by exclusion, by the distinction of our self as subject and everything else as object, and we are compelled to develop processes and organs by which we may again enter into communion with all that we have excluded. We have to replace direct knowledge through conscious identity by an individual knowledge which appears to be caused by physical contact and mental sympathy."³

From what has been stated above, it follows that hidden behind all the forms of identification normal to human beings there is the secret knowledge by identity possessed by the innermost self. The commonly recognized forms of identification mentioned earlier are only the external and more obvious forms of a subtle and all-pervasive process which, for the most part, is veiled to our surface awareness. Identification in its essential sense is thus a much deeper and wider process than what it is believed to be in modern psychology.

(b) The second implication pertains to the double nature of identification and the distinction that exists between the two types of identification. The ordinary type

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of identification leads to ignorance, "for the consciousness is lost in what it becomes"; to the extent one identifies with a thing, one becomes "oblivious of everything else". The other type of identification leads to knowledge because consciousness "becomes one with the essential truth or law inherent in each fact". The Mother alludes to this latter type of identification when she says: "I know the character of a man through self-identification.... all knowledge is knowledge by identification. That is, one must become that which one wants to know."⁴

The key to the paradox that identification results in ignorance as well as knowledge lies in understanding the relationship between the two types of identification mentioned above. This relationship is very similar to the relationship between desire and love, which has been well brought out in the following remarks of the Mother:

"I believe, right at its origin it [desire] is an obscure need for growth, as in the lowest forms of life love is changed into the need to swallow, absorb, become joined with another thing. This is the most primitive form of love in the lowest forms of life, it is to take and absorb. Well, the need to take is desire. So perhaps if we went far back enough into the last depths of the inconscience, we could say that the origin of desire is love. It is love in its obscurest and most unconscious form. It is a need to become joined with something...."⁵

The identification which leads to ignorance may in similar terms be described as identification in its obscurest, most unconscious and most primitive form. The Mother alludes to its primitive nature in speaking about

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identification with one's possessions. She says:

"... people - the ones I call altogether primitive - are attached to things: when they have something, they do not want to let it go! It seems so childish to me!... When they have to part with something, it hurts! Because they identify themselves with the things they have...."⁶

As stated earlier, attachment is one of the chief characteristics of the common forms of identification. On the other hand, the identification that leads to knowledge is characterized by a complete absence of attachment. As the Mother states:

"...a perfect indifference and neutrality is the indispensable condition for a knowledge by integral identity. If there be a single detail, however small, which escapes the neutrality, that detail escapes also the identification. Therefore, the absence of all personal reaction,... is a primary necessity for a total knowledge.

"One can thus say, paradoxically, that we can know a thing only when we are not interested in it, or rather, more exactly, when we are not personally concerned with it."⁷

The Mother alludes to the two types of identification in another context where she speaks about the need to accumulate things. She says:

"They [human beings] sense their limitation and think

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that in order to grow, increase and even survive, they need to take things from outside, for they live in the consciousness of their personal limitation. . . Naturally, this is a mistake. And the truth is that if instead of being shut up in the narrow limits of their little person, they could so widen their consciousness as to be able not only to identify themselves with others in their narrow limits, but to come out of these limits, pass beyond, spread out everywhere, unite with the one Consciousness and become all things, then, at that moment the narrow limits will vanish, but not before. And as long as one senses the narrow limits, one wants to take, for one fears to lose One tries to take, accumulate, accumulate, accumulate, but that is impossible, one can't accumulate. One must identify oneself. The more one spreads out, the more one has. The more one gets identified, the more one becomes. And then, instead of taking, one gives. And the more one gives, the more one grows.

"But for this one must be able to come out of the limits of one's little ego. One must be identified with the Force, identified with the Vibration instead of being identified with one's ego."⁸

The fundamental difference between the two types of identification is implied in the above-quoted passage. One type of identification involves being "identified with one's ego"; in the other type of identification one "must be able to come out of the limits of one's little ego". The former type is illustrated by the common forms of identification, the central characteristic of which, as stated earlier, is that they are related to the ego. Identifications which partake

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of the nature of the latter type, too, occur in ordinary life, although they take place unconsciously and are not usually recognized as phenomena of identification. The Mother gives several everyday examples of identification in which one forgets the ego:

"For instance, when you are reading a book that interests you very much, a wonderful novel full of exciting adventures, when you are completely absorbed in the story,... this is a phenomenon of self-identification. And if you do it with a certain perfection, you succeed in understanding ahead what is going to happen. There is a moment when, being fully absorbed in the story, you come to know (without trying to look for it) towards what end the author is leading you For you have identified yourself with the creative thought of the author. You do it more or less perfectly, without knowing that you are doing it...

"These are phenomena of self-identification. Only, they are involuntary. And this is also one of the methods used today to cure nervous diseases. When someone cannot sleep, cannot be restful because he is too excited and nervous and his nerves are ill and weakened by excessive agitation, he is told to sit in front of an aquarium... and look at the fish. So he looks at the fish, moving around, coming and going, swimming, gliding, turning, meeting, crossing, chasing one another indefinitely.... After a while he lives the life of fishes: he comes and goes, swims, glides, plays. And at the end of the hour his nerves are in a perfect state and he is completely restful!"⁹

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Conscious Identification

As stated previously, one of the characteristics of the common forms of identification involving the ego is that it is an unconscious process. The examples just cited show that the salutary type of identification in which one forgets the ego can, too, take place unconsciously. However, whereas the former type of identification is necessarily unconscious, the latter can be learnt consciously. This is stated by the Mother in commenting on Sri Aurobindo's statement: "Knowledge can only come by conscious identity, for that is the only true knowledge - existence aware of itself."¹⁰ The Mother comments as follows:

"There is always some kind of unconscious identification with the surrounding people and things; but by will and practice one can learn to concentrate on somebody or something and to get consciously identified with this person or this thing, and through this identification you know the nature of the person or the thing."¹¹

The Mother has spoken about several methods for learning how to identify oneself consciously with a thing or person. Two particular methods which she has recommended on several occasions are described here.

One method consists in concentrating on an object, or a drawing of a design, or simply a point:

"...it is very convenient to take a point: one looks steadily at the point, and so steadily that at a certain moment one becomes the point. One is no longer

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somebody looking at the point; one is the point. And then, if you continue with sufficient strength and quietness, without anything disturbing you, you may suddenly find yourself before a door which opens and you pass to the other side. And then you have the revelation."¹²

Another method consists in trying to enter the mind of another person with whom one disagrees about something. The Mother describes the method thus:

"...instead of doing that [arguing],... if you tell yourself: 'Wait a little, I am going to try and see why he said that to me'. And you concentrate: 'Why, why ,why?... you concentrate more and more on what he is saying, and with the feeling that gradually, through his words, you are entering his mind. When you enter his head, suddenly you enter into his way of thinking....

"... if you make that little movement, and instead of looking at him as an object quite alien to you, you try to enter within, you enter within, into that little head that's before you, and then, suddenly, you find yourself on the other side, you look at yourself and understand quite well what he is saying - everything is clear, the why, the how, the reason, the feeling which is behind the whole thing....^"13

The Mother, however, points out that knowledge about a thing or a person through identification with that thing or person is not the same as knowledge of the thing or of the person through identifying with the Supreme Reality. She says:

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".. .by unity with the Supreme you share the Supreme Nature and get the full knowledge whenever you turn to observe any object and identify yourself with it... which is certainly more than what is called in yogic parlance knowledge by identity. For, the kind of identification taught by many disciplines extends your limits of perception without piercing to the innermost heart of an object: it sees from within it, as it were, but only its phenomenal aspect. For example, if you identify yourself with a tree, you become aware in the way in which a tree is aware of itself, yet you do not come to know everything about a tree."¹⁴

The Mother was once asked: Can one attain the Divine by learning how to identify consciously? This is how she replied:

".. .the only way of knowing the Divine is by identifying oneself with Him ....Hence, once you are master of this method of identification, you can identify yourself But so long as you do not know how to identify yourself, a hundred and one things will always come across your path, pulling you here, pulling you there, scattering you, and you will not be able to identify yourself with Him. But if you have learnt how to identify yourself, then you have only to orientate the identification, place it where you want it, and then hold on there until you get a result. It will come very fast if you are master of your power of identification."¹⁵

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REFERENCES

1. Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 3 (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1978), p. 167.

2. Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 7, p. 256.

3. The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1970-73), Vol. 18, p. 62.

4. Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 5, p. 219.

5. Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 7. pp. 37-38.

6. Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 10, p. 174.

7. Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 15, p. 299.

8. Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 5, pp. 233-34.

9. Ibid., pp. 223-24.

10. The Life Divine (SABCL, Vol. 18). p. 213.

11. Collected Works of the Mother. Vol. 14, pp. 51-52.

12. Collected Works of the Mother. Vol. 5, p. 400.

13. Ibid., pp. 221-22.

14. Collected Works of the Mother. Vol. 3, pp. 167-68.

15. Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 5, p. 225.

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