THE COGNITIVE BEHAVIOR APPROACH OF BAGAWAT GITA

            The best and most effective contribution which has been to a very great extent relevant to the modern psychology has been from the holy script bagawat gita which talks about increasing objectivity, transcending change by accepting it and integrating it into the system for effective living.

            For a long time baghavat gita has been projected more a directive counseling with its roots being present in the guru-chela model. It was also accepted as a process of directive counseling. But a proper scrutiny of the way bagvat gita has been documented its gets more closely to the CBT model rather than a counseling one.

            The process is more on an interactive dialogue related to various aspects of the situational behavior attitude and emotions. The socratarian dialogue is clearly visible in the process. These socratarian dialogues were aimed at challenging the belief systems related to self, environment and future that were present in around.

            The whole script is divided in to eighteen chapters with the first chapter explaining the setting in which Arjuna (Client) became incapacitated and the next seventeen chapters dealing with a specific issue related to the individuals perception, cognition and behavior. In other words it is a systematic cognitive behavioral intervention with seventeen sessions elaborating of various ideas which aid cognitive restructuring.  The vital areas dealing which was directed at changing the attitude behavior and personality were

Ø  The strong and virile alone are fit for a life of great consequence

Ø  Strength natures life, weakness wears it away

Ø  Potency drives away diseases, incapacity aggravates it

Ø  Virtue and righteousness are the outcome of strength, vice and wickedness have their origin in weakness

Ø  Cowardice creates crookedness, it is feeble who resort to foul play

Ø  Action born in manliness leads to freedom and its opposite to bondage

Ø  Strength and sense of achievement are identical

            The whole transformation was described to be brought about as a slow steady perceptible mental evolution.

            Bagawat gita has been described as an event when Arjuna (Client) was confused and preoccupied with self defeating thoughts when the kurushetra war between Kauravas and pandavas was about to start. The activating event was the Arjuna (Client) (Client) witnessing army in an organized frame work with most of his close relatives in the opposite group. Immediately he starts feeling that he cannot fight these people (the belief system). Arjuna (Client) also started dreading the consequences of his actions and starts feeling sick and incapacitated. So he drops his bow(c- consequences). The type of sudden, negative thought that Arjuna (Client) had in this situation is called an “automatic thought” in CBT. (An “automatic thought” is a sudden thought, often unrecognized by an individual, which leads to a negative emotional or behavioral response.)

            According to cognitive theory, individuals develop cognitive schemas that affect how they evaluate and make meaning of internal and external stimuli. Schemas are influenced by experiences and can be thought of as filters through which a person perceives situations. Problems arise when a person develop depressive or anxious schemas that lead to overly negative, pessimistic, or fearful views about oneself, the world, or the future. This was the real experience of Arjuna (Client) in the battle filed

            Arjuna (Client)'s distorted way of interpreting the situation primarily based on his immediate situational emotions, lead to overly extreme interpretations, as well as a tendency to focus on negative pieces of information. It was in these conditions Arjuna (Client) failed to realize his goals and also the purpose of his presence in the battle field. Arjuna (Client)’s core belief that he was the person responsible for the war and for winning the war typically lay dormant in the background until activated by stressful and context relevant events. These activated the core belief made him interpret the events and gave rise to automatic thoughts that are consistent with them.

            Arjuna (Client)’s harbored these negative core beliefs and rigid and extreme automatic thoughts in the situation which demanded action with an internal attributional style in which he excessively started attributed blame to internal versus external factors. These made him react with strong intentions to leave the place.

            This avoidance has also prevented him from disproving this belief and receiving satisfaction from engaging in activities of pleasure and mastery. It was essential to break the vicious thought–belief cycle and make Arjuna (Client) understand how to change extreme cognitions, so that he can do things which he was supposed to do in that situation, there by  engaging in rewarding activities by which the self-defeating thoughts are weakened and new self-affirming thoughts and beliefs are strengthened.

            It Was in this situation Krishna (Therapist) acted just like Cognitive behavioral therapists to work closely with Arjuna (Client) to develop more realistic and flexible thinking styles and information processing, including learning how to identify, challenge, and modify maladaptive automatic thoughts and core beliefs. The whole of Gita which proceeds as interactive dialogue shows how the constellation of interacting components that contributed to Arjuna (Client)’s current problems were conceptualized and created conditions for identifying key situations, automatic thoughts and their associated meanings, emotions, and behaviors thus paving way for a change in perception cognition and attitude.

            But just like any individual when Arjuna (Client) still could not get over the inertia and start his act as it happens With severely anxious or depressed patients, Krishna (Therapist) (Therapist) initially focused on instilling some behavior change, which may quickly provide some relief, increase energy, and instill confidence in the therapeutic process, before extensively working on changing entrenched thoughts. The turn of events depict how Krishna (Therapist) made Arjuna (Client) act, by creating a strong idea that he was destined to act and whatever he does is just his role for which he was born, and he as the Holy Spirit is the ultimate decision maker of who does what. But this step at the end makes bagawat gita look more like a philosophical literature rather than a effective intervention model which is very closely relate to the current model of CBT

            If the situation had been perceived just as a conflict with in Arjuna (Client) whether to fight or retreat, then Krishna (Therapist) could have given an immediate solution based on his own decisions on how Arjuna (Client) should act at this juncture. But instead Krishna (Therapist) understanding the distress tried to enlighten Arjuna (Client) with a systematic approach which involves education (psycho education), cleared understanding of perceptual modalities and deeper analysis of core belief system to bring about a comprehensive change in personality has been adopted which clearly simulates a therapeutic intervention which has the structure of cognitive behavior model. The profound ideas in Bhagavad gita allow themselves to be approached, applied and verified from different angles of vision which makes it a universally applicable model.

           

            What has been made popular as the comprehensive statement of Bhagavad gita is “do your duties, with out the expectation of its outcome”. But people who have understood bagawat gita clearly can only comprehend that the core message of Bhagavad gita is “ find pleasure in your actions rather than its results which can only make you function consistently and sustain the goal directed behavior”