SACRED PSYCHIATRY
David Gersten, M.D.

In 1975 I left the snow country of Colorado for the warm beaches of California, where I began my psychiatry residency at the La Jolla Veterans Administration Hospital at the University of California in San Diego. Within the first month, a nurse named Madeleine approached me and gave me a photograph of an Indian holy man with a big Afro and an orange robe. “You're a spiritual person, and I want you to have this picture. His name is Sai Baba. I think you need to know about him.” That was all she said. I kept the photo, but had no interest at all in Sai Baba. Both my chief resident and ward chief mentioned that, at one time, a Dr. Sandweiss had supervised them regarding spiritual issues. Supervision often included lessons in meditation and yoga asanas. I was interested in this Sandweiss…but not yet intrigued by his spiritual teacher, Sathya Sai Baba.

In my second year, I phoned San Diego psychiatrist, Dr. Samuel Sandweiss, requesting supervision in spirituality and psychiatry. We met for two years and he told me stories of this man of miracles. The miracle stories shook my very foundation of reality. Sometimes I thought that Dr. Sandweiss was out of his mind. To a second year psychiatry resident, Dr. Sandweiss seemed to “fit the criteria” for schizophrenia. His entire life revolved around one “magical being” who performed miracles that defied all the laws of science. Sandweiss’ thinking was totally dominated by one single entity, one single thought, namely Sai Baba.

According to traditional textbooks, Sam Sandweiss sounded a crazy. But there was a problem for me in coming to grips with Sandweiss and ultimately Sai Baba. Sam was friendly, intelligent, and sociable, with a loving wife and four daughters. He was never even moody and just did not “feel” schizophrenic to me. He seemed very well adjusted. For the first year, I left our supervision sessions spinning, confused, and quite literally nauseated.

When I finished my residency, I traveled with Sam to India to see Sai Baba. Obviously, I had concluded that Sam was quite sane. Baba deluged me with so many miracles that after four days I couldn't take any more and left on the fifth day. During that brief visit I observed and experienced Sai Baba manifesting material objects out of thin air. He manifests sacred ash, called "vibhuti," rings, medallions, even candy, with a wave of his hand. If you think this was sleight of hand, let me say that Sai Baba even materialized a three-foot-high gold brooch for His pet elephant. During the closing moments of that first trip, I was called in for a personal interview. Sai Baba knew everything about me. Now, I'm obviously interested in things that most doctors and psychiatrists shy away from. But it was as if Sai Baba had been living inside my head every moment of my life. He didn’t know “about” me. He “knew” me.

But we've just scratched the surface. There is no miracle known to humankind that Sai Baba has not performed. I personally know two people who had a loved one resurrected from the dead. The most astounding was a woman whose husband died while at the ashram. She refused to let anyone take the body for cremation. She told people, "Baba said he would come help him." Five days after the man's death, Sai Baba came to the room, which reeked with the odor of the decaying body. Half an hour later, Sai Baba walked out of the room with the resurrected man, arm in arm, cheerfully greeting the wife.

Isaac Tigrett, founder of The Hard Rock Café and The House of Blues, is a devotee of Sai Baba. In Isaac's younger days, he says he was sailing around the curves of the Malibu hills in his sports car when it flew over the cliff. Sai Baba appeared in the car, held His arms around Isaac and protected him completely. The car lay demolished at the bottom of the cliff with the waves pouring over it. Isaac was unharmed.

These stories are jarring to the average American, but more so to the average psychiatrist. "Magical thinking" they call this stuff. Yet, if one dares to explore what I have said, then we are faced with more than a challenge to the theories of modern psychiatry. Psychiatry is a speck of dust compared to the infinite mystery of God. Sai Baba says, “I am God and you are God. The only difference is that I know it and you don't.” And so, yes, this psychiatrist is saying that after his puny, medical ego had been sufficiently deflated - I know that God is now walking on Earth.

Is Sai Baba my Guru? The short answer is, “Yes”. We, in the West, have a very hard time with the idea of a real Guru. We're tough-minded individualists, and surrendering to Sai Baba has been a tough lesson. What is a Guru, anyway? The word means “He or she who removes the darkness.” These people are like human magnets, their power of attraction is so great. Although Gurus throughout the ages have developed immense powers, these are not what attract. It is the boundless love one feels in such a presence, a love so great that one can be permanently changed. The Infinite Consciousness of Sai Baba can transform us, raising our consciousness simply by being in His Presence . . . or even just by thinking about Him or focusing on a photograph of Him.

How has this transformed my clinical practice? Because I have witnessed miracles, I now expect miracles. It's my job to create the atmosphere in which miracles can occur. The mere belief in miracles is like a fertilized garden. I now know that deep change need not take eight to fifteen years of psychoanalysis, four times a week. Deep change can be instantaneous, and that is a miracle. But there are “real” miracles that I have been part of in my clinical work, and I stand in awe before them. Take Carmen, a friend who came to me for help after being diagnosed with lung cancer.

I gave Carmen the works: meditation, mental imagery techniques, nutritional supplements (I specialize in amino acid therapy), and some Lingham water. A Lingham is an egg-shaped stone. Sai Baba materialized one for a friend of mine and said, “This is for healing purposes. I will send you patients.” She returned to America and made bottles of water prepared with the Lingham.

Carmen's entire right lung was filled with cancer. Then came the call. “David, you just won't believe this. Then again, you probably will. I had the surgery. They opened my chest and discovered that the cancer had spread into the left lung and was wrapped around the big blood vessels. They closed me up and sent me home to die. Well, I was meditating one morning, and suddenly Sai Baba appeared in front of me. He was reaching inside my body, pulling cancer out of me. They gave me one radiation treatment and sent me home to die. And you know what. The cancer has shrunk by 75%.”

Six months later Carmen walked into my office and said, “David, I am 100% cancer-free. But why would Sai Baba do this for me? I hardly know Him. I’m not a devotee. I have only heard of Him through you.”

I replied, “Carmen, it is impossible for me to begin to know why this miracle has happened to you. It is impossible to understand why Sai Baba performs overt miracles for some and not for others. But, I do have one guess and it is this. When you came to me for help, you were not personally concerned about dying. Your younger sister died of ovarian cancer a few years ago, and you told me you just couldn’t bear for your mother to lose both daughters while she was still living. Your desire for help was completely motivated by your love for your mother. You were not that concerned whether you lived or died. You’ve had a great life and felt that if it were your time to go, you could be happy with the life you’ve had. Perhaps, your truly selfless motivation for help was part of the miracle, for Sai Baba is always encouraging us to let go of our personal ego and desires, to move from “me to we,” to be motivated to “give and forgive” rather than to “get and forget.” Perhaps, that was part of Sai Baba’s motivation. I can never know. All I know is that the fundamental Teachings of Sai Baba are about love, and you have shared your heart in a most loving way.”

The question arises, when going beyond traditional medical and psychiatric boundaries, what to do with spiritual experience, how to “treat” it? Before each session with a patient, I say a silent prayer for guidance in working with the next person. I imagine my Guru, Sathya Sai Baba, in the office with me and I dedicate the work to Sai Baba, so that I can regard the work as worship, and surrender the healing process to Sai Baba. When I am stuck, I will silently ask Baba for advice. Part of my spiritual practice is to look for the spark of God in every person, including the craziest of my patients. Sometimes this can be quite a challenge, but I've learned to find wisdom in the midst of insanity, and divinity amidst the darkest depressions or psychotic episodes.

A few years ago, I was working with a woman named Penny, who suffered from a full-blown manic psychosis. Mania is interesting. These people have an ability to zero in on your personal weaknesses in an instant. When Penny and I met, she was loud, angry, and threatening. I managed to simply listen, remaining centred. Toward the end of that first meeting, she asked about my family. I told her I had a 22-year-old daughter. “Do you tell her you love her?” she asked. “Yes,” I said, “I do.” “But do you tell her every day?” she insisted. “Yes,” I said, “every single day.” And then the kicker — “But do you really tell her from deep in your heart? I want you to tell her tonight from the bottom of your heart how much you love her.”

I agreed. I knew that the divine part of Penny had spoken, and that I had better pay attention. I went home that night and told my daughter how much I love her, from the bottom of my heart. Sacred psychiatry is about bringing my patients to a point of serenity they may never have experienced, but it is also about finding the divine in another person and connecting soul-to-soul.

Through decades of putting Sai Baba’s Teachings into practice, I have been able to largely give up comparisons, judgments, and the idea of separation. I am not better than my patients in anyway whatsoever, and so I have come to a new doctor-patient relationship. Based on our unity and equality, my patients have taught me a great deal. It’s a two-way street.

I have brought Sai Baba’s Teachings into clinical practice in a number of very direct ways. He says that the entirety of the Vedas can be summed up in the phrase, “Sathyam vada dharmam chara,” which means, “Speak the truth and practice Dharma, or powerful right action.” This is where I start with my patients. In order to change, first one must want to know the truth and the Truth. If a person does not want to know their truth, I can’t be of much help. But if they do, then they discover that the truth automatically reveals the Dharma, the right action. I have shared this simple equation with people from all faiths, and I will tell them in both Sanskrit and English.

A second teaching of Sai Baba’s that is central to my work is His strong recommendation that chanting the Name of God is the most effective spiritual practice during this age, called the “Kali Yuga.” I have taken this teaching and moved it into clinical practice. I ask my patients to close their eyes for 30 seconds, but not to meditate. After 30 seconds, I ask them to tell me every thought, feeling, image, or sensation they experienced. The average person has 5 thoughts in 30 seconds, 10 per minute, and about 5,000 random thoughts per day, depending on how much time they spend in focused work or other activity. Once they understand the nature of the mind, and that by age 40 they may have churned out 100 million random thoughts, they are ready to listen to what I have to say.

Everyone knows that the mental noise creates tension and a lack of peace. I help my patients create a Mantra, based on their religious tradition. I explain that Mantra meditation is like weeding the garden of the mind. The modality I use the most is mental imagery. Once the garden of the mind is weeded through Mantra meditation, when we begin mental imagery work, we will be planting healthy seeds in healthy soil. If you don’t “weed the garden,” then weeds and flowers will come up.

Whether I am working with mental illness, physical illness, stress, or peak performance (I have trained professional golfers, basketball players, Olympic hurdlers and equestrians), I teach everyone to quiet their mind and create a “mental home base” through Mantra meditation.

This is the psychiatry of the future, a psychiatry of love, hope, faith, and miracles; a psychiatry that heals and uplifts that helps people see that they “have a mind” but that they “are not their mind.” Sacred psychiatry sees pain as part of the spiritual journey, knows that spiritual ecstasy is real, and that God exists. This new psychiatry dares to bring God into the office, dares to offer miracles, and considers Paxil medication the last choice and not the first.

(David Gersten, M.D is a psychiatrist in private practice who employs a spiritual approach to therapy. He is an expert in imagery techniques and lives in San Diego, California. He publishes ‘Atlantis: The Imagery Newsletter’ and has authored ‘The POW Survival Guide’.)