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All your anxiety is because of your desire for harmony. Seek disharmony; then you will gain peace. (Rumi1)
Contrary to Most psychologists who study children, animals or the mentally ill in order to find principles which will contribute to the understanding of maturity or final integration, I believe that insight into the nature of fully-integrated individuals can greatly increase our knowledge of the mature man who exists potentially within the child. It can make psychotherapy a more effective and meaningful technique and can guide the socially-adjusted person to his state of individuation.2
This paper is an attempt to formulate a psychological theory for the study of final integration in the adult personality. It is not a report of an experimental study. Rather, it is based on personal visionary experience, objectivization of that experience, clinical study of cases of two cultures, and an analysis of final integration in autonomous individuals.
Several visionary experiences and a few experimental studies almost a decade ago convinced me of the significance of final integration in the adult personality. After seeking an understanding of it for the last few years, I have been able to formulate its psychological theory, its laws and mechanisms and to propose it as a measure for man's progress, health and security, as well as a guide in training analysts, psychologists, leaders and educators.
The first psychical vision occurred in 1955 when I wrote a book (in Persian) entitled The Process of Human Growth.3 At that time I was deeply influenced by the works of Piaget, Erik Erikson and those in the Committee on Human Development at the University of Chicago. In a conscious way my book sought to interpret the stages of human growth according to these Western concepts. Yet, when I came to discuss maturity, my thinking unconsciously led me away from Western thought; nor did I feel any sympathy for the pleasure principle and pragmatism, both of which seemed to me inadequate for