Robin Bagai, Psy.D. is a clinical psychologist in Portland, Oregon, who has been practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapy for over 35 years. His book Commentaries on the Work of Michael Eigen (Routledge), adds to his publications in journals and anthologies. Dr. Bagai has been leading in-person and international seminars on over a dozen of Michael Eigen's books since 2014.

Foreword by Ebru Salman

Preface and Acknowledgments

Credits

Introduction

Selected Quotes and Commentary

Holiness

Beauty and Ethics

Wonder, Awe and Not-Knowing

Ethics of the Unknown

Sensitivity and Ethics

Wordless Immensity

Awesome Living Being

Knowledge and Being

A Circle We Must Live With

The Brain and Experience

Evolution of Experience

Health and Suffering

Mastery and Mystery

Horizon of Humility

Our Mad Psyche

Absolute States and Possessiveness

Mutual Correctiveness

A Mix of Infinities

Psychic Binocularity

On Hierarchy

On Self-Destruction

Can Life Survive Itself?

Destructiveness Itself

Creative Murder

Psychic Destruction as Freeing

Realness and Mystery

Feeling Normal, Feeling Alive

Beyond Reparation

Actual and Ideal Satisfaction

Music

Wordlessness in Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy as Letting Be

Staying in Therapy

Struggle

Lie and Truth

Emotional Experience

Impact of Reality

Medication

Openness Within Closed Depths

Sensing

Instinct and Spirit

The Fire that Never Goes Out

Tolerating Frustration

Insoluble Conflicts

Disproportion with Ourselves

How Does Change Happen?

Psychological Amphibians

Surviving Psyche's Pressures

Full and Empty

Artists of the Invisible

Faith and Belief

An Intimate Presence

Ein Soph Within

Inside Eyes

Letting Emotion Speak

Evocation of Meaning

Inner Scream

What Can We Give?

Faith as Opening

Psychoanalytic Intuition

Infinity, Invisibility, and Experiencing

Exploitation of Emotional Capacity

Emotional Anorexia

Assimilating Our Products

Distinction-Union

More Distinction-Union

Mystical Distinction-Union

Like Saint Augustine

You Can't Literalize the Psyche

Confucius and Compassion

Surviving Aliveness

Tool-Making and Reversal

Psyche Never Stops

Your First Patient

A Root Sense

Partners in Evolution

Many Species

Making Room for Experiencing

"Have to" Thinking

It Feels Right

Blurring Complexity

Chanting "I Don't Know"

Psychosis and Creativity

Knowing One Another

Limits of Understanding

The Beauty of Therapy

Therapy for the Human Race

Knowing and Not Knowing

Practicing I Don't Know

Unknown Intimacies

Clinical Not Knowing

Unsolvable Problems

Words Touching Wordless

Confessing Ignorance

Unsolvable Difficulties

Hatred in Response to Deficit

Murder as Delaying Tactic

Boundless Presence Inside Aloneness

Love of the Invisible

Beginning Never Stops

Opening Doors

Relief in Not Knowing

Aliveness and Deadness

Primary Process and Psychic Digestion

Survival Needs and Integrity

Psychic Infancy

Reconciling Languages

Real Water

Imaginal Capacity

Trying To Do Better

Wholeness and Humility

Transformational Processes

Trauma Worlds and Sensitivity

Sensing as Multidimensional

St. Paul and Freud

Substituting Pleasure for Pain

Quality of Unconscious Life

Modifying Winnicott's Use of Object

Fighting Over Differences

Waiting

Building Tolerance and Deflecting Experience

Making Room for Insufficiency

Speaking and Breathing

Creative Waiting

Am I Alive Now?

Smile and Scream

Uneven Evolution

Excitatory Powers

Control and Impulse

Faith and Catastrophe

Faith and Destruction: Both are Deeper

Toward Dreaming's Reach

Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis

Light and Faith

Invagination

Shame and Grandiosity

Support for Dreaming

Object Seeking and Projective Identification

Our Drive for Psychophysical Nourishment

Intolerant Object and Murderous Superego

Sparks

What is Faith?

Therapy and Uncertainty

Stainless Light and Stain of Life

Frustration Modification and Evasion

Hallucinatory Murder

Quality of Life

Common Sense and Visions of the Ideal

Self as Family

Wars Within and Without

A Deeper Love