Smiling Wisdom - An Appreciation
Marilyn Barry
A reflection on the essence of psychosynthesis
Smiling Wisdom was written by Roberto Assagioli in the 1950’s and is only three pages long but it’s packed full of wisdom. I do not go any-where without my copy of it, and I want to share why it’s so precious to me. The article begins: “The ancients greatly appreciated laughter, which they looked upon as a divine gift and a helpful remedy ...”
“There are, above all, three things which modern man must learn in order to become a sane and complete being: the art of resting, the art of contemplation, the art of laughing and smiling. Here we shall briefly consider the latter, and primarily its superior and spiritual aspects.”
He gives a brief description of its “direct salutary effect upon our bodies” and then moves onto the “psychological value of laughter” which he describes as “a harmless and happy outlet for repressed tendencies, especially the tendency to play.”
We all remember the joy of playing when we were children but how many of us continue to play when we’re adults? Assagioli writes:
“Too early and too harshly do we repress ‘the little child’ which dwells in us with its fresh gaiety and its need for free and happy playing.”
The article then describes the value of humour in eduation:
“Laughter can, and should be extensively and ‘earnestly’ applied to education...” by utilizing “Contrasts, surprises, unexpected conclusions...” to “...awaken and sharpen our intellectual processes...”
I certainly have no memory of humour in my own education which was a serious matter and merely caused me to gaze out of the window with boredom and not take much of it in. However, when I became a teacher myself, I used humour in the classroom and achieved impressive results. Apart from having a class full of happy smiling children, they were alert and attentive as they waited for the next surprise, trick up my sleeve or, as Assagioli writes: “queer and ludicrous comparisons and resemblances, or the comical combination of similarities.”
For example, I wrote the date on the blackboard every morning but I sometimes wrote the wrong day or the wrong spelling of the month, for there is nothing children love more than to correct their teacher. I also never told them their answers were wrong. They were either right or “almost right” which sent them into a flurry of activity.
I also used humour with the severely physically handicapped children I taught because the ability to understand a joke or an absurdity reveals intelligence. If a child cannot speak or move but he or she laughs at a complex joke, it is a sure sign of intelligence. Assagioli writes: “Laughter ... indicates with certainly whether a pupil does or does not understand what is being taught ... when he presents the subject matter in a playful way, he can see at once, by the reaction of the student, whether or not he has understood.”
Later I used humour with children who, for a variety of reasons, could not learn. They had either been withdrawn or thrown out of normal schools and therefore felt like failures. Many of them had stopped trying. The only way to teach them was to make them laugh as a way of releasing the tension because, as Assagioli writes:
“The nervous discharge produced by laughter diminishes excessive intellectual tension ...”
I taught in ways that made them laugh, for “... laughter has a property which is very useful - that of increasing the pupil’s attention”. It worked. They enjoyed coming to school and were rarely absent.
I have to remind myself that Assagioli wrote this article in the 1950’s when children were still learning by reptition. Progressive child-centred education, which I studied at a teacher training college in the 1970s, was certainly not on the curriculum when I attended school from 1950 to 1961. Yet, he writes:
“Modern psychology has proved how wrong it is to make a student learn by heart and memorize mechanically abstract definitions instead of showing him by concrete example ... The comical can be of real help in this, owing to the precision and the vivacity of the images and ideas it arouses.”
Assagioli goes onto describe the various levels of humour - from the “vulgar, gross laughter” and “sarcasm, contempt, mockery” to “the simple, inoffensive, comical laughter, such as is produced by puns, limmericks, etc.” adding that: “The spiritual value of laughter depends on the intention of the one who arouses it.”
He then quotes Guido Stracchini:
“Humour is like an intimate smile of the soul which, if one knows how to feel it, never becomes exhausted and never peters out; it is a superior joy where the best part of ourselves feels itself risen unto a higher level and experiences the entirely spiritual satisfaction of being at the same time, actor and judge.”
This quote, I feel, is at the heart of Psychosynthesis because it is about disidentification. Only when we are able to disidentify can we truly laugh at ourselves. We can “overcome suffering” through “The noble function of humour” which dissipates illusions and the “pains and anxieties which harass man”.
Part of my daily spiritual practice is to see how much I can laugh at myself. This may sound absurd but it indicates how disidentified I am. It shows me when I am identified with a problem or a subpersonalty, for subpersonalities are rarely able to laugh at themselves. It also reveals when other people are identified with a subpersonality.
For a therapist humour is a valuable tool for recognizing healthy neurotics, who can laugh at themselves, and borderline personalities, who can’t. It shows when a person is beginning to recover in their therapy, for only in recovery can we laugh at the dramas and/or problems which took us into therapy in the first place.
Assagioli finishes the article with the “cosmic perspective” in which we regard life on earth “essentially as a theatrical performance, a ‘comedy’ in which everyone must play his part as well as he possibly can, without taking it too seriously, and above all, being ever conscious that he is playing.”
He describes “spiritual humour” as a “combination of an attitude of serene and detached observation, the feeling of the oneness of life, and a deep sympathy for and compassion with others.”
However, he concludes that “sympathy is always conscious and serene”, and gives the example of the liberated Buddha whose smile is full of compassion, but it is a smile “born of certainty that the way to salvation exists, and that all human beings, sooner or later, will reach liberation and bliss.”
In this one sentence Assagioli describes Psychosynthesis:
“He is a sage who, while living, suffering and beneficently working with one part of himself, keeps his higher and real Self a detached and smiling spectator.”
What he’s writing is simple: humour is one of the keys to our liberation. He writes: “That which Guiseppe Zucca has so aptly called ‘the steel
cabin’ of the self cannot long resist- however hard and thick its walls may be – the subtle, penetrating and consuming flame of humour; sooner or
later its door opens and man can free himself from that narrow and suffocating
prison. When that happens, one can say that the greatest achievement has been
reached. The soul spreads its wings and joyously, with a divine smile,
unites itself with the other souls, with all creatures and with God.” I have Assagioli on a video in which he is being interviewed in a garden towards the end of his life. He looks frail - like a tiny bird that is about to fl y away - but his eyes are sparkling with joy and humour. “Smiling Wisdom” is, in my opinion, the essence of Roberto Assagioli. I pay tribute to this article as if he is writing it now because whenever I read it, I feel his radiance and his smiling presence.
