Dr Yousuf Raza | Freud, Faith & Finding Love | MindTrap#64 | Mufti Abu Layth

[Music] [Music] all right all right all right i take it we is live people i'm just going to do a quick audio check i'll bring up uh your lovely comments as always people and as soon as we've we are clear on the audio this will go through i'm just bringing that up all right here we are right okay

let's take the audio all right welcome back we've got

an esteemed lineup for tonight i'm just finding the profile page to bring before you an esteemed guest who we've had on the show before and alhamdulillah once again the profile in front of you for tonight's guest is dr yusuf raza who is an islamic lecturer he's also a psychiatrist hailing from islamabad currently in georgia atlanta i believe as a phd candidate over there he is the director of the julie bib institute which which

serves to bridge the gap between reason and the crises of faith being faced by many people today and he has an amazing phd on the way just to bring on our guest for am good lil el hammed it's epic to have you back once again this time having traversed many thousands of miles and joining us from

uh atlanta is it not uh yes this is i'm in carrollton it's an hour away from atlanta so yeah that's this is where our university is all right so shukran once again for taking the time out uh doctor thank you for having me i remember last time we had a very fruitful and amazing discussion we discussed things from psychiatry in pakistan to different diverse psychological kind of challenges being met there and the concept of identity and um and inshallah many wonderful things to unpack today so you're in

uh georgia right what so tell us about how that part of what you what's got you over there and what's currently preoccupying uh your time there and your plans and that will lead us into inshallah today's discussion as well right so um as as you just mentioned i'm a psychiatrist and um in our clinical practice uh time and time again we are confronted with various challenges which lead for us to question the theoretical foundations that our field

is standing on now psychiatry has come a long way it has progressed there's quite a lot of things that we know now that we did not know before but unfortunately the cost of this progress is a disconnect from a lot of our uh history a lot of our theoretical underpinnings that um usually go unexplored unexamined and you can be a professor in psychiatry and have very little idea about the theoretical psychology that is

uh undergirding the psychiatry as we practice it and not only are we usually unaware of that there's alternatives within the tradition usually very neglected uh that are not given much due so um and there's so much that they those traditions can help those alternative views can help in addressing contemporary challenges unfortunately most clinical programs or and even most uh phd programs uh ironically they're called doctorates in philosophy there

would be little to no philosophy in the whole doctorate they don't allow for you to explore those areas of inquiry and so we found this place called university of west georgia which is very open to these conversations to these discussions these uh theoretical philosophical alternatives within the history of psychology and how they can help uh help meet contemporary challenges so here we are in uh in university of west georgia and the the phd um

kind of research hypothesis that your uh or the research that you're looking into um talk us a little through that so um the program is uh it's a phd in psychology consciousness and society my particular focus in this program is going to be the relationship of sigmund freud and oscar fister so freud pretty much everyone is familiar with and has heard about but usually what people do not know is that

one of freud's very good friends and uh psychoanalysts was uh the swiss pastor oscar fister and fister had a background he was a pastor a protestant he was an educator at the church in the schools he was he had a background in philosophy as well and he was a very devout psychoanalyst as well he was very committed and dedicated to freud and so that relationship it is um it is very mind-boggling that how can

somebody of the um of the character of who has the interest that fister has who has the commitment to religion that fister had be so committed on the other side to sigmund freud who is uh understood to be one of the most militant atheists of the early 20th century so their relationship their dialogue how they engage in psychoanalysis i feel has a lot to offer uh us today with the different challenges that we're faced with there is so much fragmentation that one school of thought has a

difficulty speaking to another school of taught thought as much in the practice of science as in the practice of religion so there is uh there's quite a lot that these uh that this dialogue can teach us so here we are looking to explore that wow and and is there in this research are there other key figures that are contributory figures maybe carl jung is is he in there or vic uh victor frankl or yes so i i do have um my uh i have had an interest in both jung and victor frankl um

jung is uh taken to be one of the again he broke away from freud uh very early on right around 1912 1913 and one of the areas of focus in our department is transpersonal psychology and it takes a lot from carl jung a lot of trans personal psychology attributes itself to jung and it is also interesting to note how

fister also switz also swiss young also swiss both of them actually uh junk introduced fister to freud jung brought bro and they were very close friends to start off and when the split took place between freud and jung yeah again very interestingly fister sided with freud who is the atheist of the two and the more spiritually mystically inclined jung fister chose not to side with so that contrast also serves uh

serves to teach us a lot wow okay i mean uh what just uh i wanted to also go into uh a bit on your um the whole psychiatric practice especially in pakistan but just just this point since you've raised it so interesting and i don't want to leave it just uh with so many question marks and speculations can you shed some light on that because so um following this split with carl jung and freud what what do you feel were the causes that led uh fester to side with freud despite

freud being you know from the founding fathers of atheism yeah so um for fister the contribution of psychoanalysis yeah to the cause of religion was incredibly important uh fister saw freud's work again similar to how allama iqbal cites freud's contributions now lama says allama iqbal says in the reconstruction that freud and his followers have

rendered an inestimable service to religion an inhabitable service service disservice service service wow okay and fister is probably one of the first people who opens that up uh details that of course lama hints at it and um he then whatever he's critical of he cites that as well moving on to his main subject then it's just a comment that he makes but then within within fister we see how it opens up so in one of his papers for example he talks about

the relationship between psychoanalysis and ethics and in these two domains he talks about what ethics can learn from psychoanalysis but also what psychoanalysis can learn from ethics and how the two can be in the dialogue and he portrays freud as uh somebody who is a foreigner who puts a mental hygiene in the forefront that uh psychological health is very important for psychoanalysis obviously but fistra identifies how that psychological health is indispensable for spiritual growth as

well that if you are riddled with psychological conflicts and there's a lot of neuroses going on there's a lot of symptoms or psychological diagnoses then how much spiritual growth can there be what is it that you can possibly do for religion he takes that further and he says that there's going to be a lot of problems with a neurotic religiosity that if psychoanalysis is not taken seriously then there is this narcissistic pursuit of religion as well there is this pursuit of religiosity in which people are exploited and people

who haven't had those uh unconscious conflicts identified addressed treated will then carry those in their religious practice and their rigidity is going to be abusive for a lot of people a lot of students of religion who are going to grow a verse which is what we see in the world i mean this is yeah this is this is one of the key problems with often uh religious authorities or figures but yeah but so

okay so talk about yeah look at carrion yeah sorry uh so he talks about just as an example he he says that this um one of the forms of ethics that he talks about is a command ethics and how that command ethics is demanding from the follower of a particular religion or any ethical uh code in immediate a complete uh fulfillment at all costs and how freud has helped us see that results in all of these repressions that these natural uh natural

desires these natural aversions because of that external pressure is so strong it is those those natural components of the human personality are pushed into the unconscious and then they manifest themselves in diseased ways and those he recommends that psychoanalysis teaches us can be we look at them as ideals and we speak about love and that conception of love he also borrows uh from psychoanalysis that howard freud has talked to us about sexuality and how he has broadened that concept and so there's a lot that we can learn

from that and help overcome these ethical challenges so so in many ways the is highlighting that um and is this the same thing that allama iqbal is highlighting that the religious kind of constraints um or these ex apparent somewhat apparent excess prohibitions can lead to this kind of almost sick repression of all these things that are then um manifesting in these somewhat psychosocial diseases

so okay i see also alludes to that and he says that there are uh these expressions of religiosity which are based in in these sicknesses and pathologies of course he uses different words i can't remember exactly but he says that's not all of what religion is so his contention would be that you can't reduce all of religiosity to just that there is more to religiosity than that but that is important too it has to be looked at okay so why what did fister so so these things with the unconscious mind and one could say well

you know looking at young jungian kind of analytic analytical psychology there's still this understanding of the unconscious and it's kind of interplay and somewhat of the two million year old self and um and maybe not so much of a fixation on on the kind of sex drive but so why what led fisted to to choose freud over young and even allama iqbal in that sense i mean is considering that young is still somebody who sides with religion he doesn't dismiss god and doesn't dismiss uh and he has this kind of kind of spiritual

spiritualism or mysticism if you if you like is it just because freud's considered more of a heavyweight was or are there more reasons so i'm sure there would be political reasons to it and i i don't think any of the psychoanalysts would disagree with that uh including physician for it themselves they would identify that within their uh within their relationship if there are elements of political expediency i mean uh why not but the more um the more significant reasons that they would put forward for fister and this is consistent with how allama

iqbal reads or represents jung although he talks about him very briefly there is a psychologizing of religion that religion is nothing more than a subjective element that there is there is nothing more to god other than the god archetype so there is he would identify the god archetype within the collective unconscious yeah and there people would see that oh he is more uh sympathetic towards religion than than freud

but then that is all there is to god whatever is there to god outside of that archetype so he's a subjective entity primarily right so um frankel again consistent with this reading his criticism is similar so somebody asked him about uh jung's god archetype and how that is something of a proof for religion or god um frankel asked the questioner in response do you believe in the four the number four archetype and the questioner is confused what do you mean the number four archetype so he's like if i show you that there is a number four

archetype is that going to be the proof for the number four or the importance of the number for our experience of the number four in the outside world i'm seeing a great overlap with the whole you know the the similar debate with the forms of the of of plato the very similar kind of discussions and debates but yes sorry carry on yeah so there uh the objective world and how that relates this there is an interplay there is a dialogue but the precedence that jung gave to subjectivity to the human psyche

pretty much everything else other than that was uh an epi phenomena secondary including um including god including prophets so one thing that we can see one of the most one of the foremost proponents of jungian psychology in our age is jordan peterson and we would be able to see in peterson's narrative that the depth of prophetic stories and their significance would almost be at par with that of pinocchio

as representatives of of archetypal um you know of certain archetypes yeah that we recognize i don't think but to be fair i don't think um they they would argue that they are um that they are of equal stature in terms of the kind of sanctity they hold or things like this amongst people but that the the kind of uh the archetypal narratives at play are similar narratives throughout human history so whether it's going to be somebody going on a journey uh you know somebody and

going through rites of passage discovering yourself trying to redeem your parents trying to these same kind of archetypal narratives are present in all great stories so they're going to say well whether it's going to be the stories of the bible or the quran or whether it's going to be uh stories that people write even today they still will lean in on these narratives yeah but i see what so and those and then those archetypes yes the the sanctity there would be a distinction but when jung identifies religion's purpose or christianity in particular's

purpose as being renunciation of the instinct and how it has helped humanity overcome that aggression that uh that unbridled sexuality that it was it once had now that that has been done in a sense it has become redundant it has already served its purpose and for that reason whatever uh sharia for example has to offer people in uh in their lives supposedly has already been achieved right so it's already made we're already ethical people and we see this we hear this narrative quite a lot

i don't have to conform to different aspects of sharia i'm already a good person i am already what matters is you know my my dealings with people and they're perfectly okay i don't need to go to church or i don't have to pray that's for another generation or so on so forth okay but i mean one could see um sure i i mean i um i do see um these these kind of discussions but i'm intrigued because with freud the the whole

concept of god is but an uh an illusion and it's a projection of the kind of father figure and this kind of heightened uh fear that we have onto this being up there and and in many ways much more critical of uh the whole kind of sacred and the taboo and and even in uh in totem and taboo this whole thing of how these rules and everything civilization begins and whether it's going to be with incest first and these initial rules but so i am intrigued although i i am

also very fascinated with fruit but i'm intrigued how the um he was kept primary by the religious figures and young was kind of relegated second position i do especially by allama iqbal i'm finding that very interesting so okay what about out of curiosity does uh are there any other islamic figures that speak on these that you're aware of um islamic figures who speak about um psychology um see

that there are there's dr refudeen who is one of the foremost students of allama iqbal and he was one of the presidents of uh iqbal academy as well and one of the earlier presidents and he's written the book ideology of the future and he does pick up on these these aspects in his book uh ideology of the future he speaks of freud he speaks of macdougall uh i don't think he speaks of jung in there but i may be mistaken uh so he picks up on that side but not from uh he he speaks of it from

more of a philosopher's side not as much in psychology uh unfortunately as far as uh psychology is concerned uh from the muslim side our attitude has been very um either completely following in with the way things are and becoming if it means pill pushers then we become pill pushers prescribing medication not asking a second question um or it has been hostile or it has uh that we have these various movements of

islamic psychology now gaining a lot of ground and i just say there's there is so much more in psychology and the tradition of psychology that is not taken seriously because you are coming from this vantage point where um your your reading of islam is the filter through which every everything psychology has to pass do you feel a lot of that is or do you feel a con this whole phenomenon is resultant to

psychology being something from the west and of the west and i think also because it is a science i i mean it's definitely something i'm passionate about but it's let's say people argue as a soft science um now and therefore laden with a lot of philosophy unlike medicine now medicine may be western but it's not philosophically laden it's something coming to us just as an empirical claim that this you know this pill will do this this will do this and when we're looking at psychology well we're looking at uh behavior we're looking at mind

we're looking at the unconscious mind we're looking at repression we're looking at all of these things as well in addition to neuroscience but so is this more of re is this the reason or a significant reason why people aren't embracing it that well you know this is uh a kufri maybe there's it's it's kind of entrenched in kufa that is definitely uh one of the criticisms against modern psychology that it is uh essentially weird western educated industrialized rich developed

that's the sample that has been generalized to all of humanity and an uncritical acceptance of this weird psychology um accepting it as universal will create problems uh so that that contention is to be taken seriously but does that mean that we uh resort to a pastoral psychology a jewish psychology a hindu psychology a buddhist psychology and islamic psychology i mean that is

ignoring an entire couple of centuries of the development that the entire renaissance and the scientific age and enlightenment and all of that what took place uh and looking to enslave psychology and franco says this very beautifully psychology can serve religion better if it's not a servant but when you have these appellations and you restrict you take away the necessarily secular space that these sciences do need then um they're just serving your agenda i yeah no

100 i'm i'm with you on that and i feel often it reflects a person's self confidence and a surety with their own faith that they are very comfortable to embrace things that come to them that are foreign and they not only as the early muslims did with the the beethoven and when they took the greek writings and not only did they translate them but they became uh contributors to the actual science they started to commentate they started to add footnotes add their own theories try them out

yeah i i remember a quote speaking of on religion and [Music] that in a book on philosophy it had said um when i was doing this philosophical course once it it said that that three uh figures or three people had served a devastating blow to religion and it said first was uh galileo with that we are not the center of the universe kind of thing and and then darwin so first that humans are not the center of the world and

then darwin that humans are simply animals and then finally freud and that the animal is sick well you know it's uh yeah it's it's it is uh very fascinating but uh part of it i feel as well um if i don't know looking at things through a lens of uh you know how nietzsche would say that the uh apollonian and the dionysian that these things that are structured uh logical sequenced

kind of like very linear and then you have the dionysian chaotic amorphous uh lateral this kind of somewhat in that sense things like or especially freudian kind of psychology and this jungian psychology and this i don't mean the kind of very just brain scans and biology this this is quite uh there's a mystique to it isn't it it's not it's quite amorphous it's not uh it isn't quite crystallized in a way very clearly and like the unconscious mind and you know all these things it's not

something so clear and and i feel that too leaves people the ambiguity it leaves like an unsettled feeling with people they're not um you know they they're not quite comfortable with the ambiguous they want clearly defined parameters exactly like you know like but would you tell us do we entire hands here or here or here it's like exactly you figure it do we say i mean out loud so we're not comfortable with uncertainty at all and um this is something when uh this is world war right around the time of world war ii

it's in the works and you know things are getting in that direction einstein wrote to freud that this is okay okay wow so einstein wrote to freud that the world is going to war and there's going to be this um you know this barbaric uh bloodshed that we're going to see and you being a pioneer in this field of psychology now i would want for you to share with us uh what you have to say why do we do this why war why do human beings end up acting like that

and freud responds and he shares his reasons as to why this is and in that we actually get to see a side of freud which is usually not he's not given enough credit for that fister see that fister highlights that there is this side to floyd the positive the one looking towards civilization towards peace who's identifying that i'm addressing these sicknesses these regressions i'm talking about these sicknesses and regressions life so there can be health and progress progression right so if you're talking about fixations he's identifying that as a pathology he's not saying we should all be fixated in sexuality

he would want uh for civilization to to progress for there to be a control for there to be higher uh social works to take place and for which for which reason sublimation is very central to psychoanalysis in any case he responds to einstein and in giving all of the psychoanalytic uh terminologies obviously watered down uh for non-uh psychologists he says that i can i can understand that you may be looking at all of what i'm saying as uh as as

mysticism or as mythic and he says he goes on to say however that isn't it true though that all of our sciences including yours that is physics there is a mysticism or there is some uh mystical terminologies axioms or presuppositions philosophies that we're all based on physics and mathematics are not uh without their share of philosophy and magazines exactly so much there is so much there's a lot of uh what uh fister continues as anthropomorphism

within within physics the concept of force of mass there's there's no not just anthropomorphism and religion it has its share in science as well definitely in fact i would feel that physics to some extent has has warmed and opened up to a lot of the the kind of mystique uh unlike maybe other sciences like biology and stuff like this but physics seems to have at least got quite spooky in in its way i mean that's actually einstein saying spooky stuff from a distance but uh yeah what what you mentioned about freud

i i was going to just say i mean this is the criticism that many people had kind of heard at um psycho analysis was that even though it gives this diagnosis of saying well you know whether it's going to be freud speaking in his in his actual cases with with his kind of subjects or even practitioners later on that well this is since childhood or this is let's say you've been struggling with whether it's going to be castration envy or whether whatever it's going to be that how do they become cured because a

lot of them in a lot of the practices it just seems to be like an ongoing uh kind of engagement treatment it's not um for especially for the modern world where we need you know where cbt is saying well okay within 12 sessions or 16 sessions we're going to have this done and where some practices are saying well normal medicine is going to be saying well you know you've got these pills take this and it cures it and and these practices are saying well you know this is to do with childhood okay identified um and the healing just seems to be like

well okay now this is a lifelong journey and you're just going to keep at it like this has been one of the the kind of criticisms um that there doesn't seem to be a any healing it just seems to be well like no cures sorry that maybe that's a better word there's just identifying these childhood problems and and then what so um there is uh there is there has been this criticism and for that reason um carl rogers and others right around the 50s they developed more

um let's say swift modalities of psychotherapy and then existential psychotherapies came in um logotherapy was developed right around that time unfortunately did not gain as much acceptance as we would have wanted for it to and then that's right around the time that the antipsychotics and antidepressants are uh coming into the market as well um however with all of these developments with all of uh the modern modalities of treatment both biological and psychological all cognitive behavioral

therapy all our ssris the results are pretty much similar our success rate for uh particular uh patient populations is not we would like for that to be like antibiotics right that there is you take an antibiotic if you are if if there is a particular bacteria it will take care of it antidepressants don't necessarily do that um cognitive behavioral therapy works for a lot of people

does not work for many others and there are competing um there are competing results empirical studies that talk about how psychodynamic psychotherapy which is of course abridged versions of psychoanalysis uh show similar results competing results but then again psychoanalysis and psychology in general has more to offer in terms of uh what it can give to society than just that person to person

uh psychotherapy there is that one-to-one psychotherapeutic uh service that it provides and it should but then there's a broader uh picture of education let's say uh public education and there is so much that we see within our clinic that and that's one of the the one of the areas of focus that fister pick up picked up on as well and that was psychoanalysis and education how about teachers religious teachers in particular if they understand a whole lot of things parents um just

people in relationships couples married people if there is stuff that they understand about what can happen so much of this can be prevented yeah and so it doesn't have to be in line with that i want to um speak a bit about your uh practice with is is it it's telling psychiatry in pakistan yeah how why is this um why is this unique in its kind of presentation in trying to combat psychiatric issues just a moment whilst we do that i was just noticing um i think a subtle

um kind of out of sync audio uh this is what it appears as so i'm just going to press uh no no you're fine i'm just going to press reset here it may just take a few seconds that's fine and we'll just pick it up just to hopefully you'll kind of bring that to sync so just one second and then we'll just pick that up from there in one so hopefully i can see yep you you seem to be in sync uh excellent it was just i was noticing that there was a sudden there was a subtle kind of out of sync and i wanted to keep it as smooth as possible so

right uh yeah so keeping all of this what we're saying in mind these theories um as a psychiatrist hailing from pakistan and somebody well deeply rooted in not only the um the kind of faith uh islamic understanding but also psychiatric issues right uh you've mentioned you're a consultant psychiatrist for tele psychiatry in pakistan what tell us a bit about what makes them quite unique in trying to handle the challenges they're facing so um i started telling psychiatry

pakistan um within like this is uh two years now and um the idea behind that was that the practice of psychiatry now already there are uh very few psychiatrists in pakistan there's uh less than 600 and the estimate the entire country wow into the entire country there are more pakistani psychiatrists outside of pakistan in the united kingdom and the united states than there are in pakistan itself so um similar numbers that's that's shocking

just 600 what six hundred so there and there's a lot of reasons for that right so when you've spent when you are the brightest child in the family right and those are the kids who are going to go into medicine getting into med school is a big deal now we have a lot of private medical colleges for people like me who don't get into the very competitive government ones and so you can sort of uh pay a higher fee and get a medical debt long live capitalism people oh did i say that life [Laughter]

and so when you've spent all that money and you are that you know uh star child of the family who's worked so hard um you would want to go into those incredibly you know those fantastic feels those lucrative feels those uh fields that don't have uh stigmas who you're like a superstar when you're like a plastic surgeon or an orthopedic surgeon just when you're walking everyone's like looking up at you like oh my god it's that plastic surgeon or it's that prestige okay with psychiatrists it's like um

is he as crazy as his patients are i mean company so there's there's a lot of challenges there plus i think a lot of people struggling with that would probably just go to a local army or a pisa that will help cure the psychiatric challenges much quicker than psychiatrists they would psychiatric medications are prescribed by non-psychiatrists okay they're prescribed by medical specialists just like gps surgeons and

the reason for that is within pakistan now very similar to uh to victorian age in which freud used to practice the presentation of psychological problems is in the form of physical symptoms body hysteria yeah what was called at that point hysteria so uh headaches body aches a loss of functionality in a limb um you know epilepsy like movements epileptic you know seizure-like movements people who think that it's an epileptic fit or you know something to that effect so they're more likely to go

because they know that if they say that i'm sad or i'm depressed or even acknowledging to themselves which there's it's that's a big no right so psychological challenges have uh are you saying a lot of a lot of it is psychosomatic a lot of these okay wow and that's because of the stigma that is associated with psychological challenges and so they're more likely to present to medical specialists and there they would be prescribed anti-depressants anti-anti-anxiety benzodiazepines and they have their own complications when that takes place before they would make it to or like you

said they would go to faith healers and have all sorts of experiences there as well so the lack of a sufficient professional resource we we can't hope to uh develop that the required i mean the ideal is 10 000 psychiatrists there's 24 million people in pakistan minimum i would have thought minimum because for the love of god i mean there's so many psychological problems there there's psychological problems everywhere but there's a hell of a lot of them so um two and our

the earlier generation of psychiatrists they really had to fight this stigma just to establish themselves as psychiatrists and even prescribing medication that they've gotten the they've develop the social space to do is an incredible achievement it is an incredible achievement but we do need to look beyond that if we continue to do what our teachers did is going to be a disservice for them it made complete sense they were fighting a a very uphill battle just to get recognized as a discipline to be taken seriously

for us now we have to take it beyond just medications and we have to also recognize that yes we have a service that we or a duty that we owe to the people of our country as pakistani psychiatrists but then we're very uniquely placed in that the challenge that the field of psychiatry and psychology has globally because we are rooted in a different culture yeah and a uh a tradition in which religion spirituality

in which baal is a very significant figure and how he says that modern psychology has not even touched the outer fringes of of who a human being is and there's so much more to it being the uniquely placed in there we can make a contribution which would be of a global relevance wow and for that reason for that reason we have to be well-versed in not just the practice of psychiatry but the history the theory of the field itself so that we can develop meaningful relationships with

cultural resources that we have to offer is there anything as an example or something following on from just to to kind of fledge that out slightly so if we if when you're saying that we could how uniquely placed countries like pakistan are that they could contribute in ways that other maybe other parts of the world maybe in the western world it's difficult is there could you as just to instantiate it with an example if possible is there anything that comes to mind so um for example we were having this

conversation just yesterday uh on one of our facebook lives that we do um yeah now he has a global relevance he is globally accepted as uh as as a mystical figure as this saint uh from an age old and like there it is there is it is recognized that there is wisdom that he has to offer uh which is relevant to contemporary times now as people placed in an eastern tradition uh with uh access to both western and eastern languages both western and

eastern resources we can delve into mawlana room allama iqbal um all these regional uh spiritual masters in like say dealing with depression or something like this yeah and uh draw out from their treasures a lot of what can be of use in a clinical and also an educational setting bring it in conversation not place because western slave and one as a master because

western you see this whole thing western psychology or this whole branch what it struggles to do is when things like depression are often linked to a lack or an absence of propulsive meaning purpose meaning and obviously bringing that in from a faith perspective but then that too by these kind of people who are often nesting it in wonder and love and and stoicism as well they're kind of just being a bit stoic about it as well just like yeah that you're right that that would be so wow that would be something really

special if something like that was done i mean there are conversations that are developing so um within academic within academia uh within psychologists trans personal psychology in particular they do take uh eastern mysticism seriously but when they say eastern mysticism they don't mean baba bulesha in mawlana room and allah they mean buddhism okay we are completely missing from that conversation yeah and that is our own doing we didn't do anything to become a part of that conversation not to say that as a study psychiatric pakistan we have this all figured out

and we all we've all done it it's just that we you've identified these lines that we need to pursue that along with our clinical practice we need to take this academic side this theoretical side seriously and continuously and part of that is uh doctors are part of that is being part of the discourse and not shunning the the kind of heritage so studying freud studying young studying behaviorism studying you know cognitive psychology and and then contributing meaningfully as opposed to saying well you know we don't want to

know what they said why waste our time on them when we've already got jalal maulana room and we've got we have it all shut down yeah exactly and that's not what that's not what any of these people did yeah that is not the methodology of allama iqbal that is not the methodology of maulana room that is not these what made these people great was that they were part of their contemporary conversation and allama iqbal is is exchanging letters with bergson like we just spoke about he's delivering a lecture in 1931 i believe and jung's book came out in 1928 and he's

read it and it's an it's it's it's not a book of in law or philosophy it's a book in psychology and he's read it he's read freud he's read young he's he's conversing in all of these uh all of these technicalities of the field and he's relating it with uh with muslim scholars of the past as well because he's well versed in that and that that's that's the that's the legacy that we that we really did not take forward past allama iqbal we would either be of the western

side of the story and you know parrot that narrative or would we we would be completely opposed and identify that as complete cover and nothing else and i feel part of as well why uh i mean there is obviously there there are you know uh very deep spiritual uh traditions in the far east but i feel part of what also attracts um the western let's say those who are sympathetic to spiritual non-western traditions to things like buddhism

is the fact that they feel well it's not um they feel it's something that they could at least explore without you know it's not hostile and it's not something which it will just welcome and it won't kind of it's not because people i think as well are afraid of muslims and islam because muslims and islam are seen as like hmm like i don't know you know if you're saying nice things okay but the moment you question something they might just chop your head off or you know there'll be a fat waffle and so as a i'm assuming there is a lot of this in so you see even western

people they generally don't even want to talk about islam because they think it's not worth let's just let's just explore buddhism because you know it's it's it's interesting and they'll engage with us and there isn't hostility or a fear of repercussions so there is definitely a need for uh spirituality and they've they've personally experienced i mean how far can um coffee through the week and alcohol on the weekend take you yeah how many and people like celebrity atheists you know uh like sam harris is really a testament to this that somebody who is today

the the kind of pillar stone of atheism modern atheism incredibly talented like a genius in his own right unquestionably that's why he's got where he's got to but he himself has to deeply root himself in meditation and and consider it as he speaks of it sacred uh and he does it on a daily basis he advocates it he's had to learn it from buddhists because it doesn't any this is not a secret this is something he himself speaks about because he recognizes that you see when

everything falls to pieces ultimately you need that deeper in a spiritual connection you need something otherwise what does it all mean and exactly and this is this is something that max weber identified as academic prophecies first academic process that you spend this entire time and that is the the direct consequence of the enlightenment age that you've um the darkness that was religion and those religious understandings you've done away with them and now being rooted in a scientific tradition

you're resorting to something of a scientific spirituality now i mean how did that come about and it's not it's it's not without precedent the forerunners of science of positivism no less than august compt he was like he identified religion as a prehistoric infantile immature stage in human evolution it was religion metaphysics and then science for him and religion was the most uh immature he goes on to establish a church of positivism

[Laughter] and need is felt but when they see look towards fulfilling that need the need is fulfilled by this mysticism which in this spiritualism necessarily divorced from religiosity uh which does not have those uh impositions or those restrictions of of sharia of any sort and is um is this it's so mind-boggling freud

has it in uh he he wrote about this that this is something that the world is necessarily going to go go to then there will be a group of people that this that when this is taken away in the future yeah there will be people who will resort to this sort of a mysticism yeah because i i feel we can't divorce ourselves from it it is part and parcel of being a human being this this kind of spirituality we can't be separated on in line with that uh dr consciousness because this is as well the the kind of

holy grail of modern kind of whether it's going to be modern science or physics even and psychology it's really just that well what on earth is this and and i feel it's interesting that really consciousness in some ways has its roots historically like this the the discourses within religion people are but then today i don't find people really zeroing in on consciousness especially within the islamic paradigm obviously it's within buddhism and other things and but yeah i mean is this not also

um something which we need to enrich in our discourse on especially within the the muslim kind of uh framework definitely there's something there is so much that we have to offer uh within this uh dialogue and um there is to be able to do that we have to be aware of where that dialogue is today what are the different views where are they coming from there is a very uh very popular notion that consciousness is an illusion that

if we follow that uh the dogmas of materialism as rupert sheldrick identifies them then there is no consciousness it is uh it is the the biomedical model presupposes consciousness to be a an illusion it's not actually there what is actually there is that elemental atomic molecular movement which is being construed as such right so there is an atomism um which is at so many levels

an atomism that gives rights to an individualism and that lens is a lens through which we look at consciousness and then um we look at conscious individual as or conscious human being as essentially an individual cut off from uh from the rest from other human beings from from god from uh from meaning from purpose and there are so many um just before we went live we were speaking of vygotsky there are so many thinkers who identify consciousness as something that

is developed in in relationship and dialogue that dialogue and okay language give rise to uh to human consciousness and minus that there is no consciousness because that's really fascinating that you're saying with language just give me a sec i want to just refresh the system again because i feel there was just some out of sync um kind of audio so just once so language and consciousness um that you said that maybe this phenomenon emerges as or is a

result of the kind of interaction and language just with that in mind consciousness which is now a it is a thing in this age is that part of it the wording because you see it's not a discussion in the past or it's not clearly it's not a distinct discussion the way it is today so everybody's obsessed fixated on consciousness is this because previously the word was not there which obviously reflects the discourse perhaps was not the but even today in other languages

it's like i feel it doesn't carry the same thing like even um when we're speaking about like let's say if we were to translate it into urdu or people even when they're using words in arabic whether some people use sharor or they use like i feel it doesn't quite carry the discussion that we have in english about consciousness when we translate it i mean what are your thoughts on that um and i think that's very that's a very uh interesting point that you bring up i haven't uh thought of it in that regard as such

but if i were to make something of an educated guess as to why that may be then consciousness becomes a question because of how inexplicable it is from a purely materialistic atomistic paradigm yeah that it is logically if we follow that if psychology follows that physics envy psychology you were speaking about earlier how it is a soft science yeah but it is a soft science that is vying

to be as hard as it can possibly but and in doing that it is becoming it is trying to explain more things in a neuroscientific way it is looking to explain things in a more quantitative fashion and when that does take place consciousness becomes more of a question than it was before like descartes could take consciousness for granted i think therefore i am right that takes consciousness for

granted freud does put a question mark on it like hang on it's not all of what you think is who you want you know there is so much in the unconscious that is interfering with that but then in parallel with that the objectivism uh the the um the materialism naturalism is also putting as it's following in with physics there is a question mark on its on its very essence um so it's because it's so it's so kind of uh elusive

um in the sense that well consciousness seems to kind of band together a bunch of things so there's obviously attention is one there's kind of like um a sense of self is one okay that's kind of associated with it i guess memory naturally part of that would be associated with that this uh like this there's there's a band of things like when we're saying consciousness and obviously then we have the word as well to be conscious as opposed to be unconscious and it's it's like well you know what people are trying to figure out well what is it that this means

i guess in some ways like the word which i i'd like to come to that topic as well which will be love which is so elusive as well it's like everybody knows it but the moment they try to define it it becomes once again you know just like like fragrance i guess you can't quite just capture it um i thought i know i've thought personally and i've often translated from the islamic perspective consciousness in this sense what we're speaking of uh to be synonymous with the rule from arabic so i've i've said that and i

know maybe people um i don't know whether people would be as willing to do that but i felt that it um that's what it would be now obviously then once again people would say well because maybe they've pictured the rule just to mean something that gives life like as long as you have it you're alive um so maybe people don't see a gap but i wonder what your thoughts are just on on that so that's again um when we do enter into the conversation from a traditional

uh perspective then what we have to say about the will be very very important but then the rule would be as elusive of a concept as as as consciousness and this is why i felt it kind of fitted as well i also felt that the one of the reasons was it then gave that gateway into because consciousness seems to be something

at least to me and to many people something almost somewhat sacred in its mystique um you know it seems to be the missing factor that people want to somehow some physicists want to reconcile it with between you know put between multiverse and m theory place m for mind this consciousness as they to wrap it all as one but it's what they can't seem to get hold of and and i and i've always liked that verse as well yes that it is you know this is an affair that which

i felt that if people had if some people like you were saying that had an interest in psychology and were let's say from pakistan and were uniquely placed in some ways to like you said bridge traditions um if they did explore these things in certain ways maybe it might give them that kind of mastery as well on um over the tradition like like early muslims who were exploring certain things but also becoming part and parcel of it so um within this conversation right there is this uh very strong pull

this the uh towards the mind body problem yeah right the mind-body dichotomy and that in another way can be the body's soul uh dichotomy which would then be the dichotomy and there is a particular way that allah himself has approached the subject and he has looked to describe the rule now i would not uh claim uh sufficient understanding to uh you know attempt to articulate that just yet maybe sometime in the future okay but there is definitely uh quite a bit that he has to say on that and he he picks up on that

verse and he looks at relates it to umar and then from um directive purpose and how from within that directive purpose it is and how that directive purpose cannot be anything but embodied it has to be and the body is ru having taken up definitive habits right so um i mean there's there's quite a lot there but i would want to be uh more prepared to have that conversation even even that has been very informative speaking of rule and soul and soulful discussions you've you've zeroed

in from the mind and soul straight to the heart and you're running a course which is on love itself which is as elusive as as as the soul and consciousness so tell us a bit about this yeah so this is this course that i'm conducting again from the platform of telepsychiatry pakistan uh with the recognition that there is so much that reaches us clinically um and then there is that is not even the tip of the iceberg it's barely scratching the surface and then there is so much more that is out there in the community that cannot reach to us or when it does

reach to us it is fairly severe and complicated love actually yeah really probably should have watched the movie before starting the course but yeah that's that's where it's from that's where the term is taken from and we're trying to um talk about within the course uh the participants walking them through how there's so many popular misconceptions with respect to love that actually results in the chaos that we see in our relationships and how that chaos in relationships results in so many experiences of depression anxiety not

just in uh the couple but their families the children grow up in troubled households and then they're carrying this um these difficulties within themselves uh and so much can be prevented if there is a solid understanding of what love and relationships are not first and then what they are so um that's what we're trying to do so beautiful so guys guiding us and the viewers through this a journey this tumultuous journey of love so beginning with so how are you defining it and what is

it not so um when we talk about the best representation perhaps we need that song in the background that what is [Music] love i think a lot of people in some of our facebook posts about posts about it they commented that that exact song there baby you don't want to know yeah so that interestingly right there's going to be a lot of hurt

they're loving in a truly loving relationship and they think they can get through it without conflict without hurt without pain forget happening so something that uh scott peck um one author that i would definitely recommend i mean there's so much out there in terms of self-help garbage that actually messes conceptions up more than it helps address but uh if if there's one book that i would recommend it is the road less traveled by scott peck he's a psychiatrist psychoanalytically oriented spiritually

oriented so very uh unique um uh faces that he had that he came from and then he was um also very reader friendly like no jargon competition um some people may have noticed today that we tend to get into terminologies and concepts that not everybody may be able to follow along with puppet had this gift that he could speak of these things to a complete layperson uh so he that book is definitely recommended i've actually seen a lot of people who were struggling with

uh very severe symptoms of depression but they took that book seriously and it helped cover i will definitely get i've just brought it up in front of me and it's it seems to have a lot of glowing reviews about it as well on amazon and online and yeah i mean i'll definitely get that so people i wrote less trouble the rotary the road less traveled by m scott peck but yes so in that he talks about this myth of romantic love that um you know looks like imagine doctors

i get that doctor is going to break a lot of hearts right now with his words [Laughter] is so those of you thinking it's the romanticized love doctor how about it with the sledgehammer [Laughter] yeah so um i mean there is this

this romanticized this uh fairy tale image you know this i mean you go on your instagram and facebook and you will be seeing this these posts if he hurts you you don't want to be with him if he you know if you're going to change in any way that you can't be yourself and all of these you know you're tempted to curse at these [Laughter] garbage and how people like you look beyond good just on that post like 50 000 likes i'm like what are you what is going on so let's so let's zero in so first of all

this romantic uh this kind of very you know the shahrukh khan kind of and the whole uh eerie fairy cloud9 butterflies in the stomach that kind of love uh which is the it is the the kind of holy grail of this age for the common people this is life is centered around finding that love that kind of soul mate that kind of uh what do they call them the twin flame and all these kind of things so first of all just having at this thing because this is a phenomenon isn't it people actually feel like somebody

could be highly accomplished in life they could be you know have incredible like let's say they could be incredibly successful in their career in their businesses in life in general they could be in great shape they could things are going wonderful however if they don't have a not if they don't have a partner but if they don't have a person who they feel that kind of butterflies and cloud9 and then their life is still failing many people feel this and so yeah so having at it from there because that is

a an issue and from from movies from books from social media all of them from a person's own experience there will be some stage in everybody's life where they will feel like that about someone and that they will have that sort of a relationship initiated and what we understand is the honeymoon phase in which all of that cloud9 butterflies in the stomach

looks like dr sabas has said quite a few of these dialogues in his day and age okay yeah all of that stuff yes people would go through but from uh you want to speak of it in a neurobiological perspective the girl develops more testosterone than usual the guy develops more poxetusen than usual the guy is more emotional than he typically would be and oxytocin in in the brain overdosing

say stuff that they wouldn't otherwise say and the girl to be doing stuff that she wouldn't otherwise be doing and then the relationship gets closer and closer and when it becomes uh pretty mundane then they're like you know these things were different yeah and all of those stories start coming in because it's i guess it's natural like if we're dealing with emotions emotions by their very nature will fluctuate because they're more fluid as opposed to solid-like and yeah so the heart bites in arabic the

word heart means something that moves it keeps going round and round turns upside down and so when this the butterflies and this eerie fairy cloud9 stage dissipates um they're still they're still a pleasant it's not unpleasant but people it will start let's say if it's on a it's it's moving somewhat closer to a mundane uh aspect now they still care people may still care they may still be friend

friends if you want to use that term or but then i feel and this is something i know we spoke about just uh before as well that society will place a pressure on people as well that look if you've fallen the the concept sorry the phenomenon of falling out of love yeah this uh yeah i mean unpack this for us doctor right so sorry dr love i'm leaving [Laughter] yeah so um that honeymoon phase and quite

interestingly it is something that some people would experience when they first start becoming religious as well that when you start developing that first fervor for religiosity and spirituality that comes with any new phenomenon almost almost oh sorry either a heightened spirituality or a deeply passionate love exactly so um peck and he takes it from freud uh

they would relate this to how your ego boundaries that have developed as you developed as an individual that for a child there are no ego boundaries for a child the self the consciousness hasn't established as we understand it as as grown-ups or adults that development takes place mostly when the child's desires wish pleasures they're not fulfilled it's sported it has to face obstacles and so it starts realizing you know what there is a particular place where i end and others begin and you know kind of mirror stage forming off

yeah so uh you're getting lacanian now yeah um so then that is the development of those boundaries and so that oceanic feeling in the honeymoon phase of religiosity spirituality or falling in love is one in which those boundaries drop and they you in a sense regress this childhood yeah kind of becoming at one with the other soul bodies one soul sort of thing

[Laughter] yes this is what people experience and so when but that's naturally not sustainable not for one spirituality not for one's um relationship and that is where the demand for real love actually comes in when now you're sharing a space now you have um your own lives and priorities and you know goals that you've set for yourselves and there's going to be a clash there is going to be multiple clashes

how one person it cannot be that two people are in a genuine relationship and there is no clash that there is no conflict for tube or other if there is no conflict then it is one of two situations one of the persons has taken the role of a master and the other is the slave and the other is not allowed to say anything but couldn't also be that there is so um just to reframe the word let's say conflict which is i agree in life

conflict is inevitable but in the relationship dynamic with i suppose compromise like like naturally people are compromising on certain things to the other but also when there is let's say there is an understanding people one person may feel comfort in compromising on that for this but like so for example you may have a particular friend where you know if that friend says let's do you're happy to kind of do that as well similarly in this relationship kind of thing that this people may find a kind

of comfort to compromise with the person whereas maybe with somebody else they wouldn't find that comfort they'd be like what the hell for like but so it will vary with uh who the other person is and to what level that compromise or that change is required but the compromise is required because the conflict necessitated it right and there's mature ways of handling that conflict most of us most of the time are not going to be prepared to take it in that mature direction

especially if that myth of romantic love which you just ident what you just pointed to and falling out of love is something like what we were speaking before the person feels duty bound and honor bound to secondly now i don't love this person it is ethical for me to step out of this relationship right and to give up on this relationship because now i'm not in love anymore because that honeymoon period is over supposedly do you i i would would argue as well that society not only

states that it's ethical but it may pressure through a kind of like a tacit peer pressure that they must so it kind of mandates that yeah otherwise you're a kind of hypocrite to yourself or something and interestingly enough i was having a conversation with somebody and they were like if i do not express my homosexual tendencies i feel immoral if i don't know if i do not express a homosexual tendencies that i feel then i am being immoral now see how society has

the more moral the requirements of morality that have been internalized in the form of expression and then there is this conflict uh expressing homosexuality then it's a religious person as well there's so many things because doesn't this tie back into this whole there is a discourse of you know or if or we could put it as a kind of as a holy axiom almost that be true you know to thine own self be true that this this is what's kind of the pillar stone to this whole thing isn't

it that comes up so many times in our uh conversations with with our patients and they're like i have to be myself i'm like okay who are you what is this self that you want to be and then there is silence right i have to be myself because a pedophile who has this tendency of who has the strong desire inclination to sexually abuse innocent children and traumatize them in being true to himself he's he's being anti-social

so that's the same logic be yourself no please don't be yourself i think because what we're saying is that and many um thinkers in fact uh uh what's his name yuval harari in his second book has a huge a fantastic discussion on this as well in homo deus this whole thing of to thine own self be true the problem is that modern this this age seems to say well as long as you know you're being true to yourself but then nobody seems to truly know what the self and

and tr and x and it is ex and it is true if i can say that on on several occasions sure that is the thing maybe that you know if you are so claustrophobic about something then or you're unsettled and you're distressed then being true being with something that is true to you but on other occasions like you're highlighting somebody's a pedophile somebody is a rapist somebody is you know a murderer somebody is and they're psychopathic i mean they not just as a reaction they are psychopathic so in some sense they are being true to

their self that's monstrosity they cannot be i mean that to carry that axiom and say well you know oh well at least you're being true to yourself is is absolutely absurd in this context and we don't to make that this um it is not just those extreme psychopaths see if statistically every fifth girl child is being sexually abused okay is that the stuff globally globally even in pakistan similar stats

every fifth girl child every 20th boy child is being sexually abused then these psychopaths are not um on the fringes that these are not the periphery this is yeah yeah not so much they're not strangers typically they are known to the family the family knows them they are very the idea if there's anything that we can take from psychoanalysis is to realize and that's what freud wrote back to einstein in that paper as well you're surprised that

there's war i'm surprised that you're surprised that this this i mean i'm paraphrasing but something you're doing it very eloquently [Laughter] the idea is that we have these base instincts within ourselves and there is a very strong tendency to regress to them to express them in especially our close relationships especially those who are vulnerable being our spouses or our children or nephews and nieces so this

idea of self-actualization without taking your personal demons into consideration is utter catastrophe it is complete lawlessness we are looking at whatever we're looking at in the world right now war with following on dr saab with the with this with the theme of love are you rooting that in then what values like a sense of because you're saying well look because if if i've understood this correctly

that sure this romanticized or if i'm gonna say some this kind of movie centric concept of uh love let's say um sure you know people find it other people may not find it but it's a phenomenon but the actual love that you're kind of zeroing in on what are you rooting that in like a sense of loyalty or a sense of responsibilities or what what is what is that so uh it is drawing primarily from the work of victor franco uh and his understanding of of of love

um and he would see that uh responsibility and freedom uh responsibility that's interesting because freedom is often seen as antithetical almost to love yeah because to to kind of surrender to love is to give up your freedom especially from the male perspective it's often drama you know picturized in that sense and so frankel draws this contrast as well that there is what we speak about freedom and he says that uh the united states of america uh exam or symbolizes freedom with the

statue of liberty on uh the east coast they need to supplement that with a statue of responsibility on the west coast because liberty is half the picture especially in the absence of responsibility it says freedom from rather than what it's supposed to be which is freedom two words but responsibility isn't attractive or isn't sexy or isn't it seductive nobody wants response that's the thing they want freedom from exactly they and it's very this is something uh earlier we were also

speaking of the godsky bugatti talks about how children when they don't get to have what they want right whatever it is that they want they want a pony or a horse or an airplane whatever they realize you know you can't have what you want you can't always have what you want they start playing and then they that play their in their imagination they have all of that they've got the pony they've got the plane they're you know they can play mommy and child they can be daddy they can they can play all of those roles but what is incredible about those roles and about

those games is that children always can find themselves in those games that play with rules okay so it is apparently re-imagination but when a child says that in this game i'll be mommy and my doll is going to be baby now there's a set of rules that the child has unwittingly enforced upon herself to act like mommy now to do what mommy does not do is not allowed in that game you sort of lost the game if you do that

right and they've done these experiments in in developmental psychology as well that when they make certain games and sports easier children lose interest it is with more rules with harder games that they're more engaged that they're more fervently uh pursuing the game itself so yes we want to play yeah but even the game we don't want to cheat codes you know cheat code our way to still the game without rules falls apart isn't it like it isn't then it's just nothing it's like absolute it's just

or an easy game like we we when we win against india as pakistan yeah that's incredible right we've we win we won against india but we went when we win against namibia or um ireland yeah big deal we won against ireland most people won't even watch that match right it's the harder game the more difficult uh predicament

i see what your snow absolutely makes a lot of sense and so so love in that sense even though it i guess with with with responsibility it's it's a bit like that verse that uh [Laughter] you know it's a it's a punishment apparently but inside internally it's actually a mercy it's a rahma

so it's so okay so people i guess by identifying and recognizing these kind of things they could navigate through their own uh relationships with uh so we and in that we're going to bring up specific examples concrete situations as well uh we will talk in considerable detail about sexuality because uh people don't get to interact with uh what what is statistics that's just a very i'm sure all the viewers are going to be like wait a minute don't just gloss over that throw some things at them what are you going to cover in sexuality doctor we will talk about common challenges

that uh people do experience so uh especially if you are from an eastern conservative background there is a particular mindset that a guy would typically be bringing into the relationship and the sexual relationship as well there will be a lot of role that guilt is playing in that interaction uh more so for the girl in the relationship and how they would then overcome those challenges i mean i have dealt with patients who have been married for years and they haven't been able to consummate their relationship even though there is no physical pathology there is no physical pathology

it is psychological for for years did they manage to find each other or were they on opposite parts of the globe they were living in the same uh same house sleeping on the same bed yet the inner world uh with all of the cultural constructs and inhibitions and stigma associated with the with something so natural right weren't able to get around it we're not able to get around it because there was this hollywood internet image that you know we're gonna go first time we meet and everything's

gonna just happen naturally and that's not how it that's not how it works no that is not how it works this whole theme doctor's up this relationships because we are you see it's something we're never really taught you go to school you go to college you go to university wherever you go whatever you do you're not actually taught how to handle a relationship you don't exactly so so we kind of interject uh let's say certain methods and ideals on how to handle that which is either

from tv so we've watched a movie we've watched something which often isn't you know true to life scale because it's you know it's a movie or people will watch the appearance which often as well is unfortunately not the best blueprint to be because just because of whatever circumstances and life having moved on and they wouldn't want to talk about it either like parents are not going to talk to their children about these uh about these topics and i asked my class the first time you met like how many times did you guys have a conversation on love with your

that's just not a conversation we have and so they learn from friends friends who are telling them all sorts of stuff about masturbation at like age 12 and 13 that you do you masturbate and this is going to happen and that is going to happen and you're going to become this and you're going to become that and then they go online and they find affirmations of that people claiming to be sexologists what sexology saying like the harms the physical harms of the medical harms of masri like oh wow and so they carry that with their with their marriage they have a performance anxiety they're like you know what why

this is all the years of masturbation oh my god now i've become impotent okay i can't throw my face to anyone i can't talk to anybody about it yeah because there's so much guilt associated with these things in uh especially the cultural sense so these things are seen as like incredibly dirty secrets and and then they're pathologized and they're also kind of they kind of laid in with so much extra weight of guilt that you are s disgusting sinner in the eyes of god and then people also feel that they

you see some people to to add to that pathology as as if it wasn't enough may feel that this is then the consequence that god is punishing them like let's say he said somebody now can't perform sexually or inadequately perform then they feel maybe this is god punishing me for being so the spiral has just intensified in that context right a month away we have ramadan

you were doing with your own selves why this is the the fasting roku because you used to sleep with your wives during the month of ramadan and you thought you weren't supposed to do that and allah says we never made anything like that this is a this is something that you you've labeled it or looked at that as something anti-spiritual yeah uh that's there is as many times as that roku talks about fasting it talks about having sex and that's what nobody talks about i i feel that the certain cultures especially the disney culture

it is so much more sensitive to all of these things uh i mean i was saying to someone that you see as an example we don't even really have just neutral words for for like the private parts in like that okay there's either crude swear words or there's going to be like uh like a technical term functional like people may say uh procreation kind of instrument or organ of procreation i like the nassau or people may use these words or euphemisms like private parts sharon god

they won't they don't otherwise have words for it there is no i mean in in i suppose in hindi they they will with yoni and stuff from sanskrit but we now that that i'm aware of unless you you're aware of word like the only ones i'm aware of is they will just use like arabic words like fargo yeah but the common people don't really understand these like they'll probably just guess by the context but no common person will say the word as if they would know what that means that speaks so that's an arabic word but and you see coming what we were saying

earlier on in today's discussion about how some people would speak of a phenomenon is born out of language and you can also almost see that if we don't even have the words for it in a neutral sense it kind of it's indicative of how this topic is being handled by these people and it's being handled very poorly i like i i in their very first introductory uh lecture i told this i shared this uh story this is actually from one of freud's case studies which i have clinically seen

at least a couple of times okay in which the husband and wife are unable to consummate their relationship why because one or the other has grown up with this incredibly strict understanding that demonizes sexuality altogether wow and so now all of a sudden day of marriage they're required to turn the switch on and perform they just feel it's what like really like like the devil's work or this is really kind of it's the devil's work exactly

right and so wedding night comes they're unable to perform that naturally creates emotional distance between them right the husband and wife develop all sorts of problems with them with themselves ironically then those emotional crises the wife seeks consolation from somebody at the workplace a neighbor and ends up sleeping with them so the very morality that this uh that looked that sought to that that was looking to protect itself was violated in how

it went overboard in its imposition because this is not you see i've spoken on several occasions about this previously that you see islam the islamic texts which are actually in arabic is much more natural when it comes to the topic of sex it's way more let's say casual about it in comparison to the disney culture so i've often wondered where did they inherit this from because because the the the kind of let's say the the indigenous hindu tradition was

also rich in kamasutra and stuff like this and they weren't so prudish about sexual stuff but the the is it like victorian is it like we where did this i don't know if you've ever given this much thought that how did they become so sensitive much more sensitive than the islamic uh thing because when we read hadith we will see in hadith this stuff that people would not be able to speak like that so um because people will in in our let's say this culture they'll find that very rude and

so so there's a hadith where they will speak about having sex amongst themselves in the hadith like people will speak like the companions will speak people will say and i gave the example of i mean there's many examples but one just straight to uh uh comes to mind with the prophet sallam and some people they go to uh some person's house to knock the door but he doesn't answer and they walking off and he comes and the hadith mentions that he comes running after them and says like and he's rapping is his art he's kind of both uh and he's catching up and and the prophet says oh he says the prophet says oh oh okay

sorry did we startle you and he says no he says i was just having sex and you guys knocked and so i just trying to finish up and and then the prophet says oh did you did you finish having sex did you ejaculate and he says no i didn't ejaculate and and then now this kind of a conversation is at a very uh seen as a very kind of like irreligious conversation it's not like like imagine two grown men or a bunch of grown adults speaking like this in in a public platform it would be seen in our disney culture as like very immoral like how could you even speak like this

so we're not getting these uh sensitivities from islam so we definitely got them from somewhere else one of the one possible one possible avenue alama talks about this in the reconstruction and those are the the greek and the median influences on the muslim tradition as to how generally the spiritual tradition that is inherited from greek philosophy or the magic conception is such that it

divides the world into this binary in which that which is otherworldly is absolutely superior and that which is this worldly which is in any way a carnal pursuit or an economic pursuit or whatever a material pursuit is inferior and so for a higher spiritual life

these things have to be renounced and yes we can identify and trace the the intellectual trends and where they're coming from but we can say that there is a tendency within human beings if it is if it is something that you see in the victorian age and it is something that you see in um in a conservative eastern society today yeah so there is there is there's uh there's quite a bit yeah because i i know i've um i've read as well in certain some certain speculations and i've that that with the kind of

with the arrival of the victorian um just the domination i guess especially once um victorian rule was declared and even i guess the build-up to that because the the kind of ruling class are often seen as they they're seen often as kind of socially superior uh by people and many people speak of it including ibn and that people often see it's not just force they often associate a kind of intelligence as well because they they'll be doing things like they'll bring sciences they'll bring new

engineering they'll bring kind of a new way of thinking and and people can't help but be in awe of it so often there's this emulation and there was this kind of very prudish victorian morals that the especially the english had that they would even look down on the rest of europe like they would see even europe as oh my god these people are too uh open and flamboyant with their sexuality and france and parisian people are like this whereas we the english are always so um you know yeah and very kind of somewhat pure in that sense um it

i i've it always feels like that people the local population seem to have interjected these from islam and you know we're better at this than them and maybe take it up a notch these are actually you know islamic things so you'll get yeah uh so for example people will often then uh coat this they'll kind of uh file this away under the islamic discussion of rira in islam they'll say this this is from having

and look the prophet said in hadith about you know allah these things so they they take the certain words and people will say that so for example controlling a lot of control over women will also be from this topic that well the reason women don't go out this is from because if other men are looking at my woman then this is an un-islamic because then they'll find discussions on just like vague just the word and they'll say look allah obviously commends this and having this kind of iran but they applying it here and they'll say well you know this is

why because if people look at your wife or they look at your sister or they look at you what kind of a man are you and you know people are misapplying or because if she let's say for example she's just you know doesn't necessarily have hijab or doesn't necessarily oh my god what kind of a person are you and what kind of uh and i've often uh you know this there's an amazing actually you know it's it's a mesmerizing hadith that comes here and many for her quote if not many people that a person comes to the prophet sallam and and he complains

about his wife because she's too uh in his word that she's too um she does she's accepting of the advances of men and and the arabic he uses he says to the prophet and people can google the arabic as well it'll come up that in that if any man wants to touch her she will not repel his hand this is the hadith that this is the how the person says to the prophet about his wife he's complaining and he says that this and the prophet says he says

the prophet responds by saying okay you know because obviously this relationship has broken down from your perspective the prophet says that divorce her and he says he says he said i love her and then the prophet said fasbir ethan then you gotta you have nothing but have patience and you see there's no discussion this hadith is so mesmerizing because there's no uh speak of this kind of well you should slap her twice and what kind of a woman is this and where's your here and you're at the youth and you know can't you even and considering the prophet society was this kind of warrior society that what

kind of a man are you if you're a woman but it's actually that okay fair enough why don't you separate and he says but i love her and says well why don't then then you gotta exercise patience i mean this it's just amazing that how when we look at the life of the prophet salallahu guiding people on these matters from a purely either okay just be practical or still very human yeah as opposed to what we think because if you like realistically if we're told today somebody said that they would say

you know that zania and blah blah blah she's going to hell and you can't even control her you're going to martha [Laughter] yeah it is honestly it's absolutely wow uh dr zaba honestly i've really loved uh this stream um it's just been so haha the whole thing has been so richly packed with just information and gems

uh honestly we've we've we've got to do this again it's something you bring out i mean i've had conversations with other people but just the way you're able to navigate a conversation from one topic to another so naturally i haven't i really haven't experienced that with them i'm sure many people i don't know unless it's going to just unless you're going to get inundated

many people may want to reach out to you um is there something and we can also i will also put up any kind of links that you that you like in the description as well but is there something that you want to direct people towards yes i'll share the links to my uh my social media and websites and they will be in the comments of this video and you can reach out to me as you want sure so and and just to conclude uh as a psychiatrist uh dr saban and somebody that truly understands as well the south asian south asian kind of culture um are there certain words that you

would like to say maybe some something on people because there's a lot of even i mean i can definitely say for the uk i'm sure in the states as well where you are there's a lot of people struggling with a lot of kind of mental health unexplored as in they're just battling um but you know it's not necessarily i don't mean people that are in kind of psychiatric care and stuff i mean just the day-to-day common people yeah um yeah some some maybe some something that you'd like to kind of maybe just guide them that what maybe what they could do or something they should take seriously

um and will inshallah wrap with uh so um i think we we spoke about young the one thing that i remember reading from jung and he refers to the tradition of alchemy and the alchemists as not how we popularly understand for them to be as looking for the elixir of life and you know turning regular metals into gold but people who were really it was a tariqa of sorts and they were looking to develop people spiritually for them um [Music]

the beginning of spiritual journey and spiritual growth was with an experience of depression okay so [Music] the way depression and anxiety liberate the way they serve as signs of yes disease illness problems challenges issues for sure they also signify incredible potential meaning potential so it is very important for us

to a not google our symptoms then have dr google diagnose us with certain complicated terminologies that we wear as labels that then become excuses i can't read i have adhd um please don't do that we came up with these terminologies so that we can exercise our agency and freedom in order to control them not so we develop these terminologies and then we are bound fatalistically or deterministically by them and we are just this depressed person

and cannot do anything else no there is the illness in itself or the experience i won't even call it an illness in most situations the experience of pain in itself is a very strong signifier of health so very good idea to look for that amazing that that is that is very powerful and sugar for sharing that so people do take these things uh very importantly and seriously but don't just be kind of googling you [Music] [Laughter]

your kind of diagnosis out there and yep otherwise god so people we're going to sign off with that um those of you that haven't already liked and subscribed do so uh definitely click the notification you know the usual trilliard

so uh people you know the drill and if you need to reach out instagram is usually good i'm very responsive on there if you're or you're more than welcome to go to patreon as well uh doc you should also set up a patreon as well with what you're doing that would be wonderful so people signing off and dr saab once again much appreciated um

um