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A Conversation with Thomas Moore
Interview by Matt Laughlin -- Fall 2009, Vol 5, Issue 17
Best selling author of Care of the Soul talks about the meaning of the Gospels and the soul of medicine...
UH (Unified Health): Thanks
for accepting our invitation to interview,
Thomas!
TM (Thomas Moore): My
pleasure; I was looking forward to it.
UH: I have to say while I was
personally intrigued by your new
book, Writing in the Sand: Jesus and
the Soul of the Gospels, I wasn't
really sure how an interview
focused partly on this book would fit
with our readership of holistic health
practitioners. But then I heard
about your upcoming conference
and once I read the book I can definitely
see how the four central
messages you elaborate on totally
apply to medicine. I understand
you studied the Gospels by
removing them from their current
and historical contexts in order to
focus more closely on the writings
themselves, with a strong emphasis
on the imagery, story and poetic
significance. Would you elaborate
on your methodology and intention
in writing this work?
TM: Yes. It might be helpful to
put this in context for myself, too. I
have been a psychotherapist for 30 years and have been very
interested in the subject of healing in general. After writing
Care of the Soul, which was published in 1992, I began immediately
getting invitations from medical schools and conferences
to come and speak. It surprised me at first, but then I
realized it isn't so surprising since healthcare is essentially a
souful enterprise.
Fifteen years later I have just completed a book called Care
of the Soul in Medicine. It's at the publishers now and will be
out right after Christmas. I go directly from this book on the
Gospels to my book on medicine. These two subjects are
very close to my heart and in my mind. They're not separate.
One way that I approached this issue is through my work as
a therapist. I discovered - and it wasn't too much of a surprise,
just the extent of it - that many of the emotional and
relationship problems people have can be traced back to
their understanding or misunderstanding of the Gospels.
People grew up reading these texts and having them
explained by preachers who often tended to be highly moralistic,
inducing guilt and anxiety.
This guilt and anxiety has a very
negative impact on relationships.
In my work as a therapist I saw
patient after patient coming to me
with a story of how they were
having trouble in their marriages
or various difficulties in their own
lives. And we would begin talking
about the way they were taught
the Gospels.
What I have done in this book,
Writing in the Sand, is present
the Gospels without guilt and
anxiety. That's one of my intentions.
It's not that I wanted to
apply that idea myself but that I
think it's there in the Gospels.
When examined closely, I don't
think the basis for all of that psychological
trouble is there in the
texts themselves.
UH: So one healing influence
of this book is the diminishment
of guilt?
TM: Yes, and as I say, I don't
really start with that idea. I look in
the Gospels and I don't see that
kind of punitive, guilt inducing figure
anywhere. Jesus is not that figure
at all. I wonder where all this
fire and brimstone came from. It's not there in the Gospels.
As a matter of fact, in the Gospels Jesus is often being differentiated
from the religious teachers who are much more
moralistic.
UH: So while this was not a core intention in writing the
book it's certainly an aspect of the work that emerged when
you examined the writings themselves.
TM: That's right. It wasn't a core focus.
I really didn't
know what I was going to come up with in looking at the texts.
Going back to methodology, what I did was first set aside the
bias of interpretation of over 2,000 years. An interesting thing
happened: a new idea of what the Gospels were about came
through in key words.
I'm very interested in language. In all my books I really
focus closely on words. I looked at the Greek words and I
looked at how they were used in earlier time before Jesus, trying
to get a sense of what their fuller meaning might be. What I found is that in many cases the Greek dictionary I used,
which is a very large, sophisticated one, will tell a meaning of
a word and then note that in the new testament it means something else.
And I wondered why do they say this?
UH: That's curious.
TM: Yeah, it's like saying well, there must be a special
meaning. And I think that special meaning comes from that
bias. One central example I give in the book is the word
metanoia, which means a shift in mind. Noia means mind,
close to our word knowledge. So, it does not mean repent as
it's always been translated. In the Greek dictionary it will say
the word means changing your mind, except in the New
Testament it means repentance.
UH: It makes more sense to think of it as a change of
mind or knowledge.
TM: It does. And it doesn't have the guilt of repentance.
If you're supposed to repent it means you must have been
bad and you did bad things; your religion becomes guilt-ridden
right from the very beginning. The word doesn't say that.
The word suggests a shift in the way you see the world or the
meaning of the world. That, I think, makes a huge difference.
That one word! And that one word is used many, many times
in the Gospels.
UH: And that's just one of four key words you noticed
appear throughout the Gospels.
TM: Yes, it is.
UH: In your book you discuss how each of these four
words is closely associated with four central messages that
appear throughout the Gospels.
TM: That's right. I looked in the Gospels and I noticed
that certain words kept popping up and they were important
words obviously. I found there weren't too many other words
that came to the surface as strongly. The first word in Greek
is basilea, which means kingdom. As I thought about this
notion of kingdom, I was influenced by the work I do in psychology,
which is very much based on a poetic sense and on
a real appreciation for images. I take it to mean that when
you grasp the philosophy of the Gospels, you enter a different
kingdom, you enter a different world because of how you
are seeing things now so differently. That is what the basiliea
is, and why it's so important. It's a key word in all the stories.
One story after another says that the kingdom is like a mustard
seed-small but powerful, or it's like a person walking
down the road with a sack leaking grain-open and subtle.
UH: It's very intangible and nonlinear.
TM: Yes, it's nonlinear. Exactly.
What I found is that the
word kingdom is really about how you imagine life; once you
begin to imagine life differently, you are now in a different
imaginal space. That's what the kingdom is, a different world
created by this shift in imagination. I take imagination very
seriously, because it's how we picture the world, and therefore
has to do with how we develop our values and how we
have a sense of meaning. That shift in imagination is really
key. It's not easy to do. It's the central thing. So, that's how
I understand kingdom.
UH: I can see how basilea really relates to the word
metanoia, in that you are reimagining.
TM: Exactly. They are connected. Another word that
comes up frequently is therapeia. It's a very interesting word.
It's obviously the source of our word therapy. It comes from
the word theraps that means nurse or servant. It doesn't
mean doctor or healer. That word is used over and over
again and is usually translated as healing, or to heal. For
example, I was doing some translating the other day and I
noticed the Gospels say they brought all these sick people to
Jesus to heal them. Their word is therapeia. I think, well, the
word doesn't really mean to cure. It means to care for. They
brought all these people to him so that he could care for
them. It's a whole different view. It takes us away from this
emphasis on breaking physical laws constantly and being a
magician. It's not healing in the sense that suddenly these
people are free of all their illnesses; it's that having such a
caring attitude, being in this kingdom, means you're always
available to be a healer, and people who are in need of
healing will come to you.
UH: And you're constantly nursed and supported along
the path.
TM: That's right. That's exactly what it is. It comes right
out of the notion that in this kingdom we heal each other, we
don't overlook each other. We nurture. We care for. We
nurse.
UH: And each of these words can't really be understood
without consideration of the others?
TM: Yes. They're all facets of the same thing. They're
all facets of the teachings. They are not separate entities;
one depends on the other. So, if you're in this kingdom you
are now going to be a healing person. That's just the nature
of it. The last word is agape, which means to respect. That's
my translation of it, looking at the word closely. It means to
love, but it means love in the sense to respect or to consider
important and precious.
UH: To revere.
TM: Revere is a good word. That's right.
It's a very good
word. When you're in this kingdom you have a much broader
perspective, you can respect many more people. Story
after story tells about how Jesus accepts people who are normally
rejected, and he says that's what the kingdom is like.
The last shall be first. In other words, people who are normally
rejected have a place in this kingdom, because that's
the nature of being in this kingdom; you receive and you respect
those people who are normally rejected.
UH: Which, again, is also another antidote to feeling
unworthy or guilty for your own shortcomings.
TM: Yes. So, you can also see that agape, too, is a healing
thing. You're not judging others. It's so interesting
because so much of religion has developed where people
are judged so much and condemned. In this view, it's the
exact opposite. There is a broadening of the heart to accept
people you would normally find difficult to accept.
UH: And it doesn't necessarily mean that
you agree with
or accommodate their negativity but you respect and love
them despite it.
TM: And you don't even condone
what they're doing; that's not
part of it. It's simply a deep human
respect. With that in mind as you
read the Gospels you'll find that
point being made over and over
again very strongly.
To get back to that notion of
medicine, I think all of this - this
whole kingdom being offered, this
new way of being - is a healing
one. If people lived this way I think
they would be physically healthier.
UH: Yes, in your writings you
point out that by aligning your life
with these core messages it tends
to bring about a healing on all levels.
TM: On all levels. There's a
story in the Gospel of John about a
blind man being healed. Once he's
healed, the story goes on to talk
about being blind morally and the
way you see the world. You can't
see how things are. The Gospels
themselves make this point; the healing is not just physical,
but the spiritual, emotional and physical healing are all
aspects of the same thing.
UH: That reminds me of the distinctions you noted in the
Gospels, which differentiate a soul sickness and a physical
illness, or a cure and a healing. You write about a woman
you knew with a terminal diagnosis who realized that she had
been healed, though she was not cured physically. That
struck me.
TM: Yes. In fact, since I wrote about that
woman's experience
I have been spending a lot of time in hospitals and I
hear that story frequently now. People say I realize now that
my illness physically is not going to get better. But now that
I have faced this and dealt with things around it I feel I am
cured as a person. My illness will not find a cure but I am
healed.
UH: What, in your view, did Jesus seem to
infer by soul sickness?
TM: Much like I was saying before about blindness.
When Jesus deals with someone who is sick, he makes a
point of taking the sickness to a different level and doesn't
just leave it at the physical. It even comes up with this notion
of demons and the demonic. It's related to what we're talking
about because, again, if the translation is quite physical
and not very sophisticated or not very subtle, you get this
notion that Jesus is going around like an exorcist chasing
devils out of people. But the Greek is more subtle than that.
The word used most of the time is daimon, not demon.
Daimon is a word that has been
used before the time of Jesus.
Socrates talks about his daimon,
and later poets and writers have
used the notion of daimon; WB
Yeats, Jung and others.
UH: Much like a muse?
TM: Yes. It's a muse that is
neither good nor bad. Yeats, for
example, says the daimon is this
voice inside of us, or an urge
inside of us, that we have to
struggle with all the time. It may
lead us down the wrong path, so
we have to always deal with it
and struggle with it. But ultimately,
it's our guide. And Jung suggests
something very similar, that
it's as though you consult yourself.
You feel a certain guidance
from inside yourself and that is
called the daimon. Even Aristotle
talked about health being
Eudaimonic, meaning daimonically
very good, or being in a
good daimonic situation.
UH: In that you have faced your demons.
TM: Yes. "Face your demons" means dealing with your
jealousy, your anger, your addictions. Actually, not your literal
demons, but those daimonic urges that affect your life negatively.
Passions and longings that are beyond your control
and that threaten to destroy you. In general, the daimon in
you is actually working for you rather than against you. I
think this is what Jesus is about. It's interesting to keep
Aristotle in the back of your mind when you're reading about
Jesus casting out demons. Instead of translating it as Jesus
casting out devils, what I say is that Jesus got rid of the negative
daimonic compulsions. The daimonic is a more modern
way of seeing it, where it’s not so literal and so naive. It's
real, it's not just metaphor. I say that because some people
would accuse me of making it all metaphor. I really don't
mean it that way.
UH: No. It seems you're striking a balance
between the
error on the one hand of conceptualizing the daimonic as
totally external to yourself or having little to do with your own
nature and an error on the other extreme to suggest that the
daimonic does not exist or is simply a metaphor.
TM: Yes, that's right.
UH: I appreciated your contextualization of the word
'possession' and what it means to face your inner demons.
You write that Christ is an example of a completely self-possessed
being. Would you elaborate on that?
TM: I think what you find in all
these gospel stories about the daimonic
is that when a person is
troubled with something, or has not
dealt with their demons as we say
today, then that daimonic presence
is experienced as a possession. It
overwhelms their will, and they
really have no strength to deal with
it. The most obvious example
would be alcoholism. It's overwhelming.
Alcoholics have to face
their demons in order to finally
come to a place where the alcohol,
an embodiment of deep daimonic
conflicts, doesn't have control over
them anymore. They are no longer
possessed.
You can be possessed by a lot of
things. You can be possessed by
hatred for foreigners. Xenophobia is
a form of possession. Homophobia.
Narcissim. Paranoia. I think it's
these demonic things that are really
making our world so dangerous
today. That's why I think the Gospels
are important now, because they ask us to face those demons
and in a sense to get rid of them, or better, to come to terms
with them. The Greek word is 'to toss out.' It means to get rid
of that possession. I think what it requires is the facing of the
demon, and maybe discovering how it can be useful rather than
just getting rid of it. You want to get rid of the alcoholism but not
the intoxication with life that the alcohol represents.
UH: It reminds me of a basic tenet of psychotherapy that
you have to own your downside in order to move forward.
TM: Yes, your dark side. Absolutely.
UH: A moving thread throughout your book was your
emphasis on the very intimate and ultimate trust Jesus had in
God the Father. I really appreciated the many ways you
examined what it meant to rely on the Father. Would you
comment on some of those core themes you noticed in the
Gospel, and this notion of the archetype of the heavenly
father?
TM: What I wanted to do is get past, if I can, this naive idea
of this grandfather in the sky image that we talked about before.
UH: A personified something...
TM: Yes, but I don't want to get rid of the notion of the
very profound, meaningful Father presence, or spiritual entity,
because that's what Jesus honors over and again. What I
found going back to the Greek Gospel is that whenever it
says that Jesus prays to his father, it says 'father in heaven.'
The word in Greek is Ouranos, from which we call one of our
planets, Uranus. Ouranos is one
of the Greek gods, the father god
who was primarily identified with
the sky; he's kind of a sky spirituality.
I think when we look up to
the sky in our spirituality, what
we're doing is looking at the infinite
cosmic aspects of our situation.
We're looking beyond all the
earthly limitations and concerns
we have every day, even the political
problems we have on our
planet. We're looking beyond
them into the sky, to what I would
call the Ouranos mystery. And
that, I think, is the Father that
Jesus is always in relation to.
That's one side of it. The other
side I try to show is that Jesus
was also very earthly. He loved
his friends. He loved to eat. He
cooked. He danced. He laughed.
He was a great story teller and
told story after story. This is a
very earthy kind of figure. And he
also has this relation to the sky
father, to the Ouranos mystery. I
would say this represents two dimensions or what I sometimes
refer to as two streams in Jesus' way of life. I think they
indicate what it is to follow the Jesus spirituality. It means to
be both vastly spiritual, cosmic, and unlimited in your spiritual
potential, and at the same time extremely involved in the
world and enjoying life's pleasures.
UH: Speaking of these two ways to relate to the Father,
in my own devotional life, on the one hand relating to the
Father as the ultimate source of life and consciousness certainly
makes sense intellectually, and in a way, subjectively in
prayer, but it is often the very earthly imagery, like the psalms
saying "under his wings you shall trust," or other concrete
imagery of being supported and protected that also really
seem to move my heart. Does that make sense?
TM: Yes, it makes great sense. I think what happens
when you don't have these two things together - and they
come together in Jesus very well - is that you end up with
this father in the sky without having an emotional relationship
to life itself. Or you end up with a sentimental notion of the
Father who takes care of you no matter what. That's not the
way life is. It's much more demanding than that. This Father
that we pray to, for example, in the Lord's Prayer - Our
Father who art in heaven, in Ouranos - is an awesome figure.
This is a cosmic notion of Father that requires deep meditation
and a very high spirituality. Now the other side of it is that
Jesus brings out this deep humanity. You want to have them
both together. I would call that spirit and soul together.
UH: What do you mean by spirit and soul, based on your
understanding of the Gospels?
TM: Well, in the Gospels, the word soul is not used very
much, actually, while spirit is used very frequently. In literature
around the Gospels, like the Greek philosophers and so
on, they distinguish between the spirit and soul. The Greek
for spirit is pneuma; pneuma is not so bodily. It's that vastness
I was talking about. It has to do with wanting a sense
of meaning and living in a very big world, with being concerned
with the ultimate questions like mortality and death.
The soul, or psyche, present in our word psychology, is more
about the deep soul of our emotions, our relationships, our
sense of belonging, our friends. Jesus is a very soulful figure in
that regard, while also being very spiritual. The wonderful
thing about him as an image is that he is able to resolve this
conflict between spirit and soul. He lives both dimensions fully.
UH: Ordinarily one doesn't think of Christ's
message to be
a teaching on nonduality, but in a way, it brings seeming polarities
into a resolution in many of the things you are talking about.
TM: I think that's true, and that's
the beauty of the gospel
image of him. He does not polarize the great spirit from the
deep human soul. The philosophers said that the soul that
makes us human beings gives us our humanity, and it's the
spirit that gives us our vision and our values. That's really, I
think, what we are called to be. We need both of these things
interpenetrating in our lives just the way Jesus demonstrates.
UH: Would you comment on your upcoming book, Care
of the Soul in Medicine?
TM: Yes. First of all, I spent two years visiting a hospital
interviewing everyone on the staff and patients monthly, to
really feel I was on the inside somewhat. I am not a doctor
or a medical person. Based on that experience and on my
thoughts and ideas in my work as a therapist, I tried to see
how what we've actually just been talking about applies to
medicine; how spirit and soul are involved in medical life.
Because normally what we do in medicine is we live within
the myth of science. We live a philosophy that doesn't take
spirit and soul into account, only the physical world.
Medicine is especially devoted to that philosophy. I have
been called on the carpet many times now by doctors for saying
the things that I'm saying.
When a person goes into a hospital or a doctor's office,
they're not just bringing their bodies. That's an illusion; it's
false. A living human being is never just a body. If we don't
acknowledge the spiritual and soul aspects of the person,
we're not really dealing with their illness. In this book I'm not
exploring how to heal our physical illnesses is by dealing with
our psychological and spiritual issues, so much as how we
can at least treat people as though they are spiritual and psychological
and emotional beings.
UH: How can we fully nurse and care for them?
TM: Exactly. How do we care for their
souls and spirit
when under medical care - I also address the book to
patients, asking, how can you take care of your body, soul
and spirit when you go to a doctor or when you are in a hospital?
It's not just the professionals that have to do this, but
patients, too. Patients don't have to be put in that place
where theyre just a body.
UH: I appreciated how in your writings you reference
your own personal struggles or experiences as they relate to
the material you're exploring. You mentioned that you have
had some heart trouble. Is this something you brought into
this next book, too?
TM: Yes, I did. One of the things I did in this next book
was to explore the image of my heart. I tried to personally
explore, for myself, what is the history of my own heart? Not
as a physical thing, but as the center of my emotional and
relationship life. What wounds have I had to my heart over
my lifetime? That's not to say this is what caused the heart
problem. I don't know what caused the heart problem. I don't
have to think cause and effect. What I can do is consider my
whole being here and now. When I say my heart is troubled,
I want to look not just at my physical heart, but also the heart
as the center of my emotional life.
UH: You're looking at the heart as a whole. Can you
speak to this quality in the context of medical care, and perhaps
the relevance of the Gospels in medicine?
TM: One thing is that I've been going to a
Catholic hospital
in Hartford, Connecticut to do research for my book on
medicine. This was a hospital founded by nuns from France
who knew nothing about medicine, but they founded this hospital.
Today, people will say that when they come to the hospital
there is a spirit there that they can't put their finger on,
but it's different from the public hospital down the street. It
has a different spirit.
I have visited lots of hospitals, and when I go to places that
are connected to religion not just Catholic religion but other
religions as well, I find that these places really do have a mission
to care for people in a broader way very much the way
Jesus does. They don't turn people away because they can't
pay, and they get in trouble for that. But that's part of their
work because that’s where they are coming from. If you look at the mission statement of a hospital you will be able to see
whether they have this gospel message or not. And you
don't have to be a Christian to have it. Today, a lot people
are listening to the Buddha even though they are not
Buddhists. I think a lot of people who are not Christians can
read the Gospels and say, this is what we need today
because we have created a secular life devoid of this, especially
in medicine. We have secularized medicine, and that
is to our detriment. We have lost something crucial.
UH: We really have... That reminds me of an
observation
I heard a physician make that in his decades of experiences
visiting nursing homes and medical centers, it was the faith-based
centers that had a presence or warmth to them. They
tended to have more pets on the premises, a greater sense of
caring, and were always affiliated with some faith tradition.
TM: Yes, and while it's difficult to
define you can sense
it. People say they sense this; they can't define it very well,
but they really sense it. In my experience of doing this for
fifteen years, speaking at one conference after another on
medicine, I usually bring this element up. I also say that taking
care of a patient's family is not just a side issue. This is
central to the person's wellbeing and their health. And your
capacity as a clinician to talk and listen to your patients is
part of your job as a healer, because a person is never just
a body. If all of you do is just do the measurements with your
instruments and your studies of the physical aspects of this
person, you're not doing your complete job.
UH: Before we close would you comment on the
upcoming conference you're having on October 26th in
Hartford, called "Awakening the Imagination in Medicine"?
TM: Yes. The one-day conference is sponsored by the
Hospital of St. Francis I have been visiting. We invited several
people to speak. James Hillman, who was my mentor, will
speak. James Hillman has been working in this area of archetypal
psychology, which has also been my work. He and I have
been colleagues working together for many, many years. He
is brilliant. I really look forward to hearing what he has to say.
He just recently had some lung cancer and surgery, so he will
be very much aware of hospitals and I am sure he will have a
lot of interesting ideas. Another person coming is Michael
Kearney, who I met in Dublin. I have lived in Ireland off and on
for quite a bit. In the year 2000 I met Michael who was a medical
director of a hospice. I went over and spoke to his staff a
number of times. He has written a couple of books on this idea
of broadening the notion of what medicine is. He is a medical
doctor himself, so he has that advantage. There will also be
Marcus McKinney who teaches pastoral care at St. Francis
hospital. And the other member on our team is Sharon
O'Brien, the head of integrative medicine. We are putting all
this together to try and reimagine what medicine is.
UH: That sounds fantastic, Thomas.
I wish you the best
with it! And for the readership, I'll also note that you will
speaking at the Hay House I Can Do It Conference in Tampa
Florida on November 22nd. Good luck with that, too, and
thanks for taking the time to interview!
TM: Thanks very much. I appreciate it and enjoyed talking
with you.
About Thomas Moore
Thomas Moore is the author of Care of the Soul, which spent forty-six
weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and fifteen other books
on deepening spirituality and cultivating the soul in every aspect of
life. He has been a monk, a musician, a university professor, and a
psychotherapist, and today he lectures widely on holistic medicine,
spirituality, psychotherapy, and ecology. He also writes fiction and
music and often works with his wife, artist and yoga instructor Joan
Hanley. He writes regular columns for Resurgence, Spirituality and
Health, and Beliefnet.com. He has two children and lives in New
England. He can be reached at www.careofthesoul.net
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