Twice Born
As a predecessor to Murray and Erikson at Harvard, Willliam James (1900/1982) applied his own triadic perspective to the matter of spiritual maturation. He wrote of the “twice born” person who is frequently (if not always) troubled with the push and pull between religious matters. The Hegelian resolution comes in the form of one or more conversion experiences that transforms the “new believer” into a different person. “New water” baths the “new-born” person and they find salvation, redemption, enlightenment, or at the very least a comforting release from long lingering tensions. St. Paul could find relief from tensions related to his troublesome relationship with traditional Jewish faith, while Bill Wilson could be releases from the bonds of alcoholism as the converted founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.
A contemporary exemplar of James “twice-born” person is to be found in the life of Brugh Joy, a successful physician who has gone through two major transformations, that led him to conduct widely attended year-round residential workshops at Moonfire Lodge, located in the high desert of Arizona and to publish several books in which he describes his transformations. In his book, Avalanche, Joy (1990, p. 3) notes that in his book, Joy’s Way (1979), he writes about:
“. . . the many experiences, thoughts, feelings and insights that moved [him] from the practice of traditional medicine, as an internist specializing in diagnostics and pulmonary diseases, into the rich and varied world of the Life Teacher. In that latter capacity, I was to work with and teach such things as awakening expanded ranges of human awareness, self-healing, the meaning and interpretation of dreams, the use of Tarot, human energy fields associated with the chakra system inner Teachers and outer Teachers, and the extraordinary power of Unconscious Love and the Heart Chakra state of consciousness”.
While most of the twice-born believers featured by William James, were converted to some form of Christian faith, Brugh Joy was drawn into the multiple streams of “new age” wisdom that were dominant in the United States during the final third of the 20th Century and first years of the 21st Century. In the “Age of Aquarius,” Dr. Joy was to take a radical departure from his medical practice in Los Angeles.
As Joy (1990, p. 3) notes, the writing he did and the Arizona workshops he began holding in the 1970s were engaged so that he: “might capture the power and significance of the first major change of my professional life . . .” However, Joy felt at the time that “another major change was about to occur in me”.
He (Joy, 1990, pp. 5-6) experienced this second “birthing”” in 1981:
“. . . during a sunrise meditation in Egypt, atop the Great Pyramid of Cheops. . . . A few minutes before sunrise, as I watched the crystals [he placed on the pyramid] gathering the early morning light and the flow of the sun just before it appeared, I was in a wonderful state. I was approaching the mystery of the sun and the sunrise. . . I was inspired, excited, anticipatory, and expanded”.
