Psychospirituality and William Shakespeare

Paramahansa Yogananda, the Indian-American Hindu monk, yogi, spiritual master and guru, who was sent to the West by his lineage in order to demonstrate a unity between Eastern and Western religions and advocate for a balance between Western material growth and Indian spirituality His longstanding influence on the American yoga movement, and especially the yoga culture of Los Angeles, led yoga experts to consider him the "Father of Yoga in the West." Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs ordered 500 copies of the book, for each guest at his memorial to be given a copy. Yogananda

"I want you to read Shakespeare.” Boom!

The wise person seeks a guide. We can find that guide in unexpected places and in those we were blind to until we start to awaken. William Shakespeare, The Bard of Avon, the greatest author who ever lived, who was also a spiritual master, unbeknownst, who had profound insights into central realities of spiritual life: Forgiveness, compassion, peace, real love, the Soul, gratitude, prayer, Faith, transcendance, and an end to suffering, providing rich material for modern spiritual inquiry and reflecting the complexity of the human condition that defines the human experience and how to heal from it.

In this article I will focus entirely on William Shakespeare as he was the greatest author who ever lived. He was a spiritual master. It takes a fully aware psychospiritual. He said "Love me or hate me, both are in my favour: If you love me, I'll always be in your heart. If you hate me, I'll always be in your mind.” The mind comes from the ego. The wants you dead. The ego is responsible for all conflict - from interpersonal relationships all the way to war. All wisdom comes from the heart.people live in the heart. Very few people repair their disconnections, fractured psyches, and childhood Trauma.

Shakespeare explored the deeply spiritual concept of a Higher Power influencing human affairs. While avoiding explicit statements, his plays sometimes subtly critique established religious hypocrisy and dogma. His work features not only Christian references but also plays with settings involving non-Christian deities, such as in Antony and Cleopatra, showcasing a broad spiritual outlook. 

We could place Shakespeare and the Buddha side-by-side and say: Both had the capacity to represent suffering and inner work: They discerned how to liberate us from that suffering. This is the basis of psychospirituality.

William Shakespeare, 'Hamlet' "There are more things in Heaven and Earth Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy"

"I want you to read Shakespeare.”

Paramahansa Yogananda, the Indian and American Hindu monk, yogi, and spiritual master wrote of authors who were also spiritual masters “Think of Plato, Plotinus, Shakespeare, others, and their works. Think of the privilege you have. You can converse with all of them at will through their wonderful books. I want you to read Shakespeare.” He mentioned William Shakespeare many times in his own writing, indicating Shakespeare’s position among the great spiritual figures of history, and that insight into the highest esoteric spiritual level of reality can be intuited in Shakespeare by those readers who are attuned to this level of truth. By enchanting us with his poetry, Shakespeare opens our minds to the divine. He, more than any other poet I can think of, understood the importance of symbolism. Our present age, alas, has largely lost the ability to read this symbolism. The constant allusions in his sonnets to the beloved are all references to the divine spirit, in other words, unconditional love, which the human Soul longs for and this, for me, makes him a figure of universal importance, for he shows us in language so easy to understand that, whichever tradition we may be born into, it is only by attending to the spiritual dimension of our Being that we may properly know what it is to be alive and to be healed. Shakespeare was an Enlightened Being: In his  sonnets, he wrote that “The secret is for Man to live in tune with timeless spiritual values”. The prefix and root of 'Enlightenment' combine to form the idea of ‘into the light,’ suggesting a move from darkness to clarity and understanding. His works continue to shine light. Spirituality in Shakespeare's works explores the enduring presence of healing themes like forgiveness, redemption, and compassion, and the spiritual struggles and suffering of his characters, offering profound insights into the human condition and the consequences of spiritual neglect on our anxiety, suffering., and mental illness. Shakespeare's characters often grapple with their own spiritual health, resulting in sorrows stemming from spiritual blindness and spiritual bankruptcy. His characters often fail to use spiritual resources that could have saved them. While avoiding overtly didactic moments, Shakespeare subtly uses irony to convey his message, with his tragedies often presenting a world suffering from spiritual dis-ease. And who are we to argue?

I found the tenets of Buddhism’s Eightfold Path in speeches by Juliet, Polonius, and Nick Bottom. I overheard resonances between Buddhism’s ‘Four Noble Truths’ and the wisdoms of ‘Twelfth Night’, ‘Julius Caesar’, and ‘The Taming of the Shrew’. Mostly, though, I heard echoes of the literary critic Harold Bloom, who once claimed that Shakespeare remains so steadfastly at the centre of the canon because he read us better than we’ll ever read him. And while this might be true, I’m also quite certain that reading Shakespeare has helped me better read myself.

Shakespeare indeed, during the years of his artistic maturity - the years that witnessed the production of 'Hamlet', 'Troilus and Cressida', 'Macbeth', 'Measure for Measure', and 'King Lear', he would seem to have passed through a spiritual crisis, a 'Dark Night of The Soul', that made any facile kind of positive thinking or positive feeling impossible. This gave birth to his spiritual awakening. Other great writers have passed through similar crises - Dickens, for example, and Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy's negativism resulted in a spiritual conversion and a complete change of his life. Leo Tolstoy's major spiritual works, detailed in compilations like "The Spiritual Works of Leo Tolstoy," include 'A Confession', which describes his psychological crisis and subsequent spiritual awakening; 'The Kingdom of God is Within You', his treatise on Jesus' 'Sermon on the Mount' 'What I Believe'; and 'The Gospel in Brief'. These writings reflect his profound interpretation of Christianity, his focus on nonviolent resistance, and his belief that Faith is the source of life's meaning. Dickens cured himself of despondency by plunging into creativity (see my previous article about creativity) through amateur theatricals.

All that we know is that if Shakespeare did indeed go through a Dark Night of cosmic despair in his soul, he was poet enough to be able (in Wordsworth's words) to recollect his emotions in creative tranquility and to use his experience as the raw material of a succession of tragic dramas that were followed, during the last years of his professional career, by a series of romances, in which strange and improbable adventures are acted out in an atmosphere of acceptance, forgiveness, and a conviction that, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, God's in his Heaven and that 'All is well' with the world.

Unlike Milton or Dante, Shakespeare had no ambition to be a systematic theologian or philosopher. He was not concerned to ‘justify the ways of God to Man’ in terms of a set of metaphysical postulates and a network of logical ideas. He preferred to ‘Hold the mirror up to Nature’ in a hostile dystopian, and toxic world. It was a many - faceted mirror that changed with the passage of time, and the nature it changed, reflected, and recorded was a pluralistic mystery. What he gives us is definitely not a religious system; it is more like an anthology, a collection of different points of view, an assortment of commentaries on the human predicament offered by persons of dissimilar temperament, upbringing, and existential choices. Shakespeare's own spirituality can be inferred in many cases from hints dropped by his characters.

Prospero, from 'The Tempest' is here enunciating the doctrine of ‘Maya’, a concept in Eastern philosophies, particularly Hinduism and Buddhism, where the world is an illusion, but it is an illusion which we must take seriously, because it is real as far as it goes for us, and in those aspects of the reality which we are capable of apprehending. Maya conceals the ultimate spiritual reality (Brahman) from individuals. Maya also manifests as the ego and the mistaken identification with the body-mind, leading to psychological suffering. Various practices like meditation and selfless service can help one transcend Maya and realise the true, interconnected nature of existence. Our inner work is to awaken spiritually. We have to find ways in which to detect the whole of reality in the one illusory part which our self-centred consciousness permits us to see.

Shakespeare and psychospirituality

Shakespeare offers many spiritual and healing quotes, such as "The miserable have no other medicine but only hope" (from ‘King John’) and "Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break" (from ‘Macbeth’). Other spiritual quotes include "One touch of ~Nature makes the whole world kin" and "This our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything" (from ‘As You Like It’). Shakespeare offers spiritual healing themes through quotes relating to the concept of accepting suffering and surrendering to it.

In 'Henry IV', Hotspur, as he is dying, sums up the human predicament with these memorable words:

"But thought's the slave of life, and life time's fool;

And time, that takes survey of all the world,

Must have a stop.'"

We think we know who we are and what we ought to do about it, and yet our thought is conditioned and determined by the nature of the sum of our lived, immediate, experiences as psychological states on this particular planet. Thought, in other words, is Life's fool, the ego-mind, that is always wrong, and that fills our heads with a brash voice spouting untruths. Thought is the slave of Life, and Life obviously is Time's fool in as much as it is changing from instant to instant, changing the outside and the inner world so that we never remain the same two instants together, without the enduring power that is presence, where a still inner resting place as the seat of the Soul is found.

Expectations are toxic and they ruin relationships. It creates resentment as most expectations are unachievable - this gives a morale crisis. Missed deadlines. People rebel against expectations. Expectations lead to anxiety, depression and resentment, they are cowardly and fear based. It puts the expectation on others. They feel betrayed. They might not live up to it: Then there is disappointment. If they live up to it then it might be ‘so what’. They feel mild anxiety and boredom. Expectations are not necessary. It’s possible just to have agreements with no expectations. True of business and interpersonal relationships. Negative thoughts about family members are because they had expectations of you in order to make them proud of you and feel worthy and loved. Dr Gabor Maté had YouTube videos on attachment vs authenticity. If you have no expectations then anything that happens is a pleasant surprise. No expectations is a way of life. It leads to a forgiving attitude. People who think that hurting others takes the hurt out of them have no joy. They are selfish like two babies scratching their eyes out. Two adults would never do that. Expectations are cowardly and toxic. It’s lack of leadership. Its ego! It’s your lower self. You are chasing it away. It never works. It never brings people closer together - it causes terrible damage. Expectation is like cancer and robs people of life. You can’t be surprised or surprising. People who have expectations expect others to make them feel the way they want: People who have expectations are the most unhappy people in the world. They have no self-esteem and they are a nervous wreck. As a child we are given expectations - that’s societal conditioning. ‘Be this or I won’t love you.’ You lose your sense of adventure and are disappointed and upset. People can add expectations of others themselves.

Agreements - are something we agree on. Based on discussion about what you can do for sure and what you need to be able to do that. It’s so much stronger than an expectation. Human beings will love to keep an agreement that are agreed upon. Wonderful things happen. You don’t have to fix and resent - you can ask what they need to do it. It is also creative and courageous. Agreements give a much better feeling - ‘this is great’. Higher self-esteem. Kindness in communication. No sarcasm. In a happy time - seek an agreement. Same approach in business, family, friends and relationships. No criticism, no negative judgement. We don’t have to hurt the other person. There will never be a fight. It’s Higher Self - adult true Self with a capital S. Human beings have a free spirit in them. We are not put on earth to live up to others’ expectations. We are divine. Tell people how valuable they are in the team. Make agreement when mood and atmosphere is good. Humans beings do not like breaking their own word. People keep their word, but do not meet expectations. If they break agreement - you have another powerful conversation about keeping your word. It works in the same way in families and business. It is more charged in families as expectations are higher: ‘I expect you to love me etc.’ If you don’t like a situation, do not simmer in toxicity, create an agreement that changes it. It gives unexpected pleasure. Do not simmer in the toxic cancerous juices of your own expectations.  You might have an unexpectedly happy life. The great news is that no expectation is necessary. We shift away from being at the mercy of everyone else. We take full responsibility for all of our lives. We begin to see that the source of resentment is actually our own fears. It’s not on the other person any more. I am the only one I can really work on anyway. You can’t fix or work on other people anyway. If either one of you expects the other person to change then the relationship won’t work. This is true in marriage or business. Know your client’s secret. How do you do that? Their greatest fear is their biggest secret. Carl Jung said “Find out what a person fears most and that is where he will develop next.” Joseph Campbell said about the Hero's Journey “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” My ideal client is me before I dived below the surface of my iceberg and saw the face of my biggest fear/secret/limiting/subconscious belief, after the pain of growing became greater than the pain of staying the same. Isn’t our deepest secret one or more of: being unloved, being unlovable, being unworthy, being abandoned?

"Expectation is the root of all heartache.”

'The Merchant of Venice'

"The quality of mercy is not strained;

It droppeth as the gentle rain from 'Heaven'

upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes."

This famous quote defines mercy as a divine, compassionate, always forgiving, act of Grace, that brings blessings to both the giver and the receiver, suggesting a psychospiritual benefit in selfless kindness.

In the play ‘Measure for Measure’ Isabella pleads for her brother Claudio’s life, arguing that the only true judge is God, not earthly judges like the rigid Angelo - people or any institutions (which are both based on the uncompassionate ego) which gives birth to man newly made.

In 'The Merchant of Venice' Shakespeare is teaching us that a materialistic approach to life always ends in misery, selling one's Soul to insatiable desires, dying a rotten death, with 'Gilded tombs do worms enfold':

"All that glisters is not gold;

Often have you heard that told:

Many a man his life hath sold

But my outside to behold:

Gilded tombs do worms enfold.”

‘Measure for Measure’:

“Why, all the Souls that were were forfeit once;

Found out the remedy. How would you be,

If He, which is the top of judgement, should

But judge you as you are? O, think on that;

And mercy then will breathe within your lips,

Like man new-made."

'Henry V'

"A good heart is the sun and the moon; or, rather, the sun and not the moon, for it shines bright and never changes."

This line points to the enduring and spiritual light of a good heart.

On the nature of unconditional love, Shakespeare states that “A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.” Acceptance is essential spiritual path. What greater gift is there than to not get in the way of someone else's spiritual growth?

With regards to the power of love and self-love as a crucial element of psychospirituality, a modern interpretation of themes found in his works are summarised as:

“If you love and get hurt, love more.

If you love more and hurt more, love even more.

If you love even more and get hurt even more, love some more until it hurts no more.”

'Henry VI'

Shakespeare wrote that "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.” I believe that what he is saying here is that only God can judge, not other human Beings. And an omniscient and omnipotent Being/God does not judge, and is characterised by Jesus's teachings, who never judged, and only taught forgiveness, love, and compassion. This was his superpower! This made him into a spiritual master and the most important and enduring human who ever lived.

In Henry VI, Shakespeare wrote: "To weep is to make less the depth of grief." This reinforces that we should cry, even cry as a man, in order to relax and release when we- as it says in one of my previous articles, in order to process, surrender, release, and let difficult emotions pass through us without 'clinging' (an Buddhist tern), attachment, or resistance to them, if we want to recover from poor mental health. The solution to difficult emotions is one of acceptance, free from our conditioned preferences, which are the result of childhood Trauma.

'As you like it'

American spiritual teacher Ram Dass, formally a Professor of Psychology, describes spiritual work as coming to “Understand that you are a Soul passing through a life in which the entire drama is a script for your awakening and that you are more than just the drama.”

Shakespeare referred to this when Jacques claims in ‘As You Like It’ that:

“All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players; 

They have their exits and their entrances, 

And one man in his time plays many parts.”

'Macbeth'

Indeed, the importance of not giving others power over yourself is one of the ‘messages’ one hears from the play. Vaulting ambition and the witches’ prophecies have to be acknowledged as strong forces; but ‘Macbeth’ allows them to give direction to his life, rather than choosing to correct, subdue, challenge, or overcome those forces. Socrates, the Ancient Greek philosopher advised us that the secret of change is to “Focus all your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” Whether the witches are psychological apparitions or somehow real, their prophecies are mere words until Macbeth chooses to imbue them with more power, forcing himself into creating their fulfilment in a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

The quote refers to the power of presence in one's wellbeing, and that living for tomorrow or in the past is the basis of poor mental health, being a fool, and leading to a dusty death, or is buried in a gold gilded coffin that. The ego, small fake persona, idiotic, ignorant, restless, fearful, massively stressed out over nothing, noisy, chaotic, brash, angry, strutting, attention-seeking, manipulative, controlling, conditionally loving, and fake. Someone stuck in ego cannot heal, and by not taking the spiritual path, is angry, lacking understanding and wisdom, and is eventually ignored as a nothingness as other people see them for what they truly are.

Shakespeare writes:

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”

The past has already happened. So, the only wise thing to do is to is to accept it fully and to surrender one's ego. The part of us that causes us to suffer is the part that loves us the most in order to heal so that we can serve others, which is part of the healing process. This is why I haven't charged anyone for writing almost 500 articles related to transformative life coaching (TLC) that I specialise in, which is a combination of positive psychology, timeless philosophy, and spiritual Truths.I truly hope that I am serving you well and that you find some of them helpful for your own healing, finding your voice, allowing yourself to be courageous, accepting, humble, vulnerable, honest, open, authentic, and willing. Practise with low hanging fruit such as when someone is giving you road rage, when someone is acting aggressively with you.

Famously, here, Shakespeare writes that "What's done cannot be undone.”

'Hamlet'

"We know what we are, but not what we may be”, Shakespeare alludes to spiritual transformation from the ego to the expansive divine higher Self. This is similar to the line in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' where he writes "Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

"We know what we are, but not what we may be”,

“Who’s there?” is the ultimate inquiry every spiritual tradition seeks to answer. It’s certainly the fundamental question that Buddhist and Hindu philosophies pose, if not all philosophies including Western ones. The great Hindu sage Sri Ramana Maharshi taught the question Nan Yar? (“Who am I?”) as the gateway to the true understanding of the Self. “Who’s there?”, fascinatingly, and by no coincidence, is also the opening line of ‘Hamlet’. And while the question receives much more attention in spiritual life than it does in critical investigations of one of Shakespeare’s greatest masterpieces, it’s a fertile meeting place for the most celebrated writer of all time and a 2500-year-old Buddhist practice of mindful attention and a metaphysical dive into consciousness, which must be fully understood in order to satisfactorily treat all form of mental illness and spiritual dis-ease, in the field of psychospirituality.

Shakespeare wrote:

To die, to sleep -

To sleep, perchance to dream - ay, there's the rub,

For in this sleep of death what dreams may come.”

Conversely, this represents our innate preference to awaken and achieve our dreams of peace, love, and joy. But the Truth is that Hamlet is alone and contemplating suicide.

Shakespeare writes "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.” This represent that one can recover from mental illness and childhood Trauma, using psychospirituality using the methods described in my previous articles to supplement mainstream psychotherapeutic articles. It also refers that our lives and the challenges and suffering that we endure are sent to us (as lessons, until we learn what the lessons are) by the part of us that loves us the most (our hearts), as Dr Gabor Maté says, along with God's will, in order to redirect our lives to fulfil our divine primary purpose. 'Madness' refers to unrecognised and untreated childhood Trauma which triggers us and makes our stress reactions look like madness, when they are simply reflections on the 'inner work' that must be done to heal. Other people who have treated their childhood Trauma will not go on to develop mental illness as a response to the normal challenges that we all face throughout life. The only time that healed people do not experience suffering due to their resistance to it is when they have had treatment for their childhood Trauma, and also learned psychospiritual principles, making them insensitive and fearless in response to challenges - they respond, and in their own time. These are not even challenges for them. The only time that people who are not healed avoid stress is when they die. Unhealed people show restlessness, irritability, and discontent: Where the ego drives negative reactions and an inability to cope with life's challenges. This is a 'spiritual malady': A condition that can trigger the mental obsession and physical craving for a substance such as alcohol or drug use (as per 12 -step programs, which many psychiatrists and therapists fail to recommend it as they pooh-pooh the 12 steps or call it a cult) or who have experienced 'imitation love' as that is all that can offer, and so they get it back like a boomerang. Psychiatrists and therapists also do not recommend it as it is completely free, unlike their fees, and their lifelong treatment. Psychospiritual approaches through coaches are time limited as the person becomes their own coach and are ready to take the jump, which may be scary and painful at first, but healed people are happy, joyous, free, which is why I love coaching so much. The 'method' refers to psychospiritual recovery. Being unhealed is the root cause of addiction, alongside self-will, self-seeking, and other defects of character and persona. To address these feelings, 12-step members use the steps to reconnect with a Higher Power, practice self-reflection, make amends, and cultivate spiritual practices like prayer and meditation. Tools for managing these feelings include naming the feeling, connection with ourselves and others, contacting a sponsor or trusted individual, and re-engaging with recovery practices like attending meetings and doing step work. To overcome this, one needs to cultivate a connection with a Higher Power of your understanding, through prayer and meditation to find inner peace. Work through the steps to gain humility and a broader perspective, which helps reduce self-pity and resentment. Steps four and five allow you to create an inventory of all your resentments and reactions to other people, which are nothing to do with them, but we see how they are based on our fears. This is where we need to do the inner work. In step five we share the whole of our inventory to a trusted person.

'Richard the third'

Shakespeare wrote "Dispute not with her: She is lunatic.” This resonates deeply with me as I have experienced malign persecution from people I have tried to help. I have realised that we can't fix someone else, and if you try to do so, you will experience hatred when you have put down a boundary due to their toxicity and them seeking conflict when the problem is their reaction, and it is thy who need the inner work: I have described this in many of my articles.

'The Tempest'

The Tempest that begins the play, and which puts all of Prospero’s enemies at his disposal, symbolises the suffering Prospero endured, and which he wants to inflict on others. Hurt people hurt people. The spiritual journey is one which transforms us into a state of forgiveness, compassion, unconditional love, peace, joy, gratitude, and service, not the ego mind's hate, aggressive anger, attempts to control and manipulate others, and increase their suffering. All of those shipwrecked are put at the mercy of the sea, just as Prospero and his infant daughter were twelve years ago, when some loyal friends helped them out to sea in a ragged little boat. Prospero must make his enemies suffer as he has suffered so that they will learn from their suffering, as he has from his. The Tempest is also a symbol of Prospero’s magic, and of the frightening, potentially malevolent and malign side of his power. Our spiritual journey is one of realising our true potential, our possibilities, and our real Personal Power.

"We are such stuff

As dreams are made on"

Namaste.

Sending you love, light, and blessings brothers.

Olly

Dr Olly Alexander Branford MD, MBBS, MA(Cantab), PhD.

Fully qualified and certified transformative life coach

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Disclaimer: The information presented in this article explores the role of spirituality in mental well-being and recovery. It is for informational purposes only and should not be considered a substitute for professional medical, psychological, or psychiatric advice, diagnosis, or treatment. You should always seek the advice of your own qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding your specific condition or any medical concerns. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read here. Integrating spiritual practices can be a valuable part of a holistic approach to mental health, but it should complement, not replace, care from medical and mental health professionals.