rabino maurice lamm el poder de la esperanza
M Scott Peck
(Filed: 28/09/2005)
M Scott Peck, who has died aged 69, was a psychiatrist and author of The Road Less Travelled, the ultimate self-help manual, which has sold some 10 million copies and which set a record for a nonfiction book by spending more than eight years on the New York Times bestseller list.
Its opening sentence, "Life is difficult", introduced a tome which argued, uncontentiously and sensibly, that human experience was trying and imperfectible, and that only self-discipline, delaying gratification, acceptance that one's actions have consequences, and a determined attempt at spiritual growth could make sense of it. By contrast, Peck himself was, by his own admission, a self-deluding, gin-sodden, chain-smoking neurotic whose life was characterised by incessant infidelity and an inability to relate to his parents or children. "I'm a prophet, not a saint," he explained in an interview earlier this year.
In 1983 he began a bid for the presidency in order to be "a healer to the nation", but was forced by health fears to abandon his ambitions. Recently he had written in Glimpses of the Devil (2005) about his experiences of conducting exorcisms and had embarked on a new career as a songwriter. The voice of God asked him to be objective about the merits of a song he had written on the subject of faithfulness. "I went into a sort of guided meditation and I imagined there were a million people around the globe, Japan, Ethiopia, Brazil, America, what not, all with headphones on listening to this thing and that their consensus would somehow be objective… I played it for the 62nd time and I said: 'Holy s***! It's not good. It's great.' "
Morgan Scott Peck was born on May 22 1936 in New York City, the son of a successful lawyer who later became a judge, but who, according to his son, was in denial about the fact that he was half-Jewish. Though it was a secular household, young Scott attended a Quaker day school and became fascinated by religion, becoming a Zen Buddhist at the age of 18. By his own account, he was a tiresomely brilliant child. Like all the others, his ambition was to write the Great American Novel.
After Middlebury College in Vermont, he proceed to Harvard, from which he graduated in 1958 in social relations. Despite his literary ambitions, he enrolled in a pre-med course at Columbia University, taking night classes and working at Bellevue Hospital's psychiatric division during the day. At that time, he took a dim view of psychiatry, and enrolled at Case-Western Reserve University at Cleveland, Ohio, aiming to become a general practitioner.
At Columbia, he had met Lily Ho, from Singapore; they were married during his first year of medical school. Both sets of parents disapproved, and Peck's father went so far as to disown him, though he later relented and paid his school tuition fees.
After graduation in 1963, Peck joined the US Army as a psychiatrist, this being the only way in which he could train while receiving a wage sufficient to support his wife and children. He had stints on Honolulu and in San Francisco before becoming head of psychology at the US Medical Centre at Okinawa from 1967 to 1970, and then assistant chief of psychiatry at the Surgeon General's office in Washington, DC, from 1970 to 1972.
He opposed the Vietnam war, but stayed in the military ("Maybe it was a cop-out, but I decided to be one of those people who work from within") until 1972, when he left in the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Peck moved to New Preston, Connecticut, working as a psychiatrist and, like many in his profession, spending an equal amount of time playing golf.
In 1976, however, he received an urgent inspiration to write a book which, 20 months later, he submitted to Random House under the title The Psychology of Spiritual Growth. His editor liked the first two sections, but thought the third "too Christ-y". Simon & Schuster picked it up for $7,500 and published it as The Road Less Travelled. At first it sold well, but not spectacularly; by 1980 it had been reprinted and sold 12,000 copies but, on its appearance in paperback, it became a word-of-mouth sensation. In 1983 it entered the bestseller lists, and stayed there for eight years. It was especially popular with members of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Peck, meanwhile, found himself drawn from Eastern mysticism to mainstream Christianity, though he remained unfaithful to his wife, maintained his drink and cigarette intake, and was liberal on issues such as euthanasia. "To me, religion and psychology are not separate," he told Playboy.
His next book, People of the Lie (1983), explored human evil. He was tiring, too, of his own patients, whom he thought "slow" and insufficiently attentive to him. He wound down his practice and set out on the lecture circuit, charging $15,000 a talk. He collaborated on Christian song sheets and, in 1987, published The Different Drum, which pointed out where communities were going wrong.
Latterly he suffered from impotence and Parkinson's Disease and devoted himself to Christian songwriting, at which he was not very good.
He married Lily Ho in 1959; they had three children, two of whom would not talk to their father. She left him in 2003. He is survived by his second wife, Kathy, an educationalist he picked up, while still married, after a lecture at Sacramento, and by his children.
Make a commitment to yourself to heal your body, mind and spirit. You must decide you want to be well. It's your life and your body, no one can do it for you. Consider the gifts of your illness.
Reduce the stress in your life. Practice meditation, yoga, exercise. Allow yourself to rest and relax.
Communicate with Spirit -- your Higher Self, Angels, God/Goddess, etc., --on a regular basis.
Cultivate self-esteem. Love yourself. Give and receive love freely and unconditionally. Forgive.
Love your body, especially the parts that are hurting. Eat real foods---fruits and vegetables, drink lots of pure water. Eliminate pollutants such as caffeine, tobacco, sugar, aspartame.
Watch out for negative thinking, your own and others. Write and repeat positive affirmations. If the news gets you down, don't watch it on TV or read the violent parts of the newspaper. Stop seeing people who put out negative vibrations and make you feel bad.
Live mindfully in the present moment. Let the past go. The future will take care of itself.
Be willing to make the necessary changes in your life and lifestyle. This means big changes as well as small ones!
Honor your emotions. If something doesn't feel right, it isn't right.
Don't worry about what other people think. Don't worry, period.
Follow your bliss. You deserve to be happy. Do what you want to do.
Try new alternative and complementary healing methods. If something isn't working, try something else. Listen to your intuition, it's there to help and protect you.
LOIS M. GRANT, Ph.D.
A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY
Lois Grant grew up in the forties and fifties and led a "normal" life for a Midwestern girl. She married her high school sweetheart who began to work for a major Fortune 500 company and they had two children, a boy and a girl--"the perfect family." They attended church, she taught piano lessons, was active in the PTA and pursued her roles as wife, mother and homemaker with enthusiasm. The children flourished, but by the time they were in junior high school she felt a need to do more with her considerable talents. Aptitude testing revealed that she was suited for "medicine, architecture or composing" and she chose to go to architecture school.
This was a very strange thing for a woman of 37 years to do in 1975, but she earned her degree and proceeded to make a specialty of hospital renovation work. The onset of rheumatoid arthritis at this time was troublesome, but did not deter her. She divorced her husband in 1983 and two years later moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and remarried.
Always an avid reader, she was led to explore astrology first, then moved to other spiritual interests with the primary goal of healing her arthritis. The story of her personal growth and spiritual as well as physical healing are the subjects of her book, Spirit at Work, A Journey of Healing. She demonstrates that there are alternative healing modalities which can bring about desired results without the side effects of traditional Western medicine. She feels strongly that healing takes place from the inside out. She says, "My experience of healing my rheumatoid arthritis has been a dramatic and touching story of pain, desperation and deformity. Frustration with Western medicine, which was poisoning my body and offering little more than symptomatic alleviation, brought me to the path of spiritual growth and inner healing. I have explored many alternative healing methods and sought advice from psychics, channels and the angels."
Since writing Spirit at Work, Lois has retired from architecture to teach workshops and classes, to counsel those who wish to heal themselves, and to write more books. She has been interviewed on numerous radio and television programs on her book tour which took her to Chicago, Boston, Providence and Los Angeles, as well as Atlanta. She has earned a Ph.D. in Holistic Counseling. She has named her new company Angelic Beings of Light Enterprises, Inc. A.B.L.E. because she was very disabled, but now she is able.
Lois lives with her husband and two cats in Atlanta, Georgia.
LOIS M. GRANT, Ph.D.
A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY
Lois Grant grew up in the forties and fifties and led a "normal" life for a Midwestern girl. She married her high school sweetheart who began to work for a major Fortune 500 company and they had two children, a boy and a girl--"the perfect family." They attended church, she taught piano lessons, was active in the PTA and pursued her roles as wife, mother and homemaker with enthusiasm. The children flourished, but by the time they were in junior high school she felt a need to do more with her considerable talents. Aptitude testing revealed that she was suited for "medicine, architecture or composing" and she chose to go to architecture school.
This was a very strange thing for a woman of 37 years to do in 1975, but she earned her degree and proceeded to make a specialty of hospital renovation work. The onset of rheumatoid arthritis at this time was troublesome, but did not deter her. She divorced her husband in 1983 and two years later moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and remarried.
Always an avid reader, she was led to explore astrology first, then moved to other spiritual interests with the primary goal of healing her arthritis. The story of her personal growth and spiritual as well as physical healing are the subjects of her book, Spirit at Work, A Journey of Healing. She demonstrates that there are alternative healing modalities which can bring about desired results without the side effects of traditional Western medicine. She feels strongly that healing takes place from the inside out. She says, "My experience of healing my rheumatoid arthritis has been a dramatic and touching story of pain, desperation and deformity. Frustration with Western medicine, which was poisoning my body and offering little more than symptomatic alleviation, brought me to the path of spiritual growth and inner healing. I have explored many alternative healing methods and sought advice from psychics, channels and the angels."
Since writing Spirit at Work, Lois has retired from architecture to teach workshops and classes, to counsel those who wish to heal themselves, and to write more books. She has been interviewed on numerous radio and television programs on her book tour which took her to Chicago, Boston, Providence and Los Angeles, as well as Atlanta. She has earned a Ph.D. in Holistic Counseling. She has named her new company Angelic Beings of Light Enterprises, Inc. A.B.L.E. because she was very disabled, but now she is able.
Lois lives with her husband and two cats in Atlanta, Georgia.
Conversations
The following excerpts were taken from a conversation between M. Scott Peck and a class of theology and psychology students at Fuller Theological Seminary in March, 1998:
The Soul & God
"I believe that the soul is the deepest part of us. I believe it is the part that God wants us to be. I believe that our souls are not born fully developed and that this world, as Keats put it, is "the vale of soul-making." I think that this is largely a cognitive process, that the ego can try to cognate in harmony with the soul and with what William James called "the unseen order of things." Or it could just ignore it, which is probably what most people do. Reminds me of a quote of Elton Trueblood’s, a famous Quaker, who said that "You can accept Jesus, you can reject Jesus, but you cannot reasonably ignore him." And I think that is what most people do, is to unreasonably ignore him, and God. And then, the ego can be in active battle with God and running away from God. I think that God has a relationship with all of us, in the sense we’re all in relationship with God, but for many people that relationship is one of indifference or it's a running away from relationship. A lot of people run scared. For good reason, as St. Paul said, "It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God."
On Being A Christian
"Even though I was raised in an extremely secular home, as I look back on it, I was a freakily religious kid, although not specifically Christian. And always I felt God to be in the background, always benign, never paid him or her that much attention, specifically, but felt him or her very much there. Christianity meant nothing to me as an adolescent, but in adolescence I fell in love with Eastern mystical writings, and then very gradually evolved from them to more attention to the Jewish and Muslim mystics, and then only finally to Jesus making more sense as I was moving toward writing The Road Less Traveled, when I was about 35 or so. I was a mystic first, and a Christian second. And I entered the Christian church through the back door of Christian mysticism, or maybe the top door, whichever way you want to look at it.
My baptism was in a number of ways a real kind of death for me, as it is supposed to be. And one of the reasons it was a death for me was that by declaring myself a Christian, I was declaring myself not to be Buddhist, not be Jewish, not be Hindu, not be Muslim, and as if I was casting disparagement upon traditions that had deeply nurtured me. So that was just one way in which my baptism represented a death in that I declared myself and regretfully in many ways. Speaking of that, incidentally, nobody likes to die, and so from the time I though about getting baptized until I was, it was about three years, and I used every rationalization in the book to drag my feet. And the most effective was that I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be baptized as an Eastern Orthodox, or as a Roman Catholic, or an Episcopalian, or a Presbyterian, or a Church of Christ, or Methodist, or an American Baptist, or Southern Baptist, and that complex denominational decision was obviously going to take me 25 or 30 years of research to figure out. But then I finally realized that baptism is not a denominational celebration, and so when I was drowned on that morning, 18 years ago yesterday, it was by a North Carolina Methodist minister in the chapel of an Episcopal convent in a deliberately non-denominational celebration. And I have very jealously guarded my non-denominational status ever since. If one were to believe that somebody had to have a certain denomination or particular church to be a Christian, by that definition, I suppose I would not."
On Psychiatric Illness
"Starting with the Road Less Traveled, perhaps the most radical thing that I said in that book that deviated from traditional psychiatry is that I located the source of psychiatric ills in the conscious mind, rather than the unconscious. And that the previous view, the Freudian sort of view, had been that the unconscious was filled with all these bad feelings, and angry thoughts, sexy thoughts, and whatnot. And that was where psychiatric, psychological illness originated. When in fact, the real question is why those things, which were obvious, were in the unconscious, rather than the conscious mind. The answer was that it was a conscious mind that didn’t want to face certain truths, and pushed this stuff into the unconscious. But the problem is with a rejecting consciousness in which we simply don’t like to think about things….Over the years I came to believe, and again I’m leaving out the biological aspects, but that psychological disorders are all disorders of thinking. So narcissists, for instance, cannot or will not think of other people….What we used to call passive-dependent people don’t think for themselves. Obsessive-compulsives tend to have great difficulty thinking in the big picture. And I would say that if you have a patient or a client who has some real difficulty, psychological difficulty, look for the problem in their thinking. There is some area where they are not thinking correctly. "
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