'Black Narcissus' & The Spiritual Ego

March 2023

The heady perfume that gives the film, 'Black Narcissus' its name, exudes a 'warning scent' for missionary zeal. Of course, evangelism has often been the hallmark of traditional Christian Crusades and Missionaries for centuries and the film 'Black Narcissus' tells of such a tale of a group of missionary nuns sent to establish a convent school for village children in India and to bring Catholic Christianity into their lives there: in the formidable context of an old Indian Palace, decorated with Indian-Hindu erotic paintings, and where a Hindu Saddhu or Holy Man is seated in deep meditation for hours on the high mountain ridge!

The film has been produced in different eras and with slight variations on theme, but essentially the film charts the spiritual life of Sister Clodagh, who entered the Convent, supposedly 'by mistake', rather than religious vocation, (although perhaps there are no mistakes!) after falling in love with a boy in Ireland who had no intention of marrying her and leaving her for a new life in America. The shame of this in a small Irish village at the time meant that felt she had to leave her village as everyone knew of her unrequited love story. So, Clodagh entered the convent by default and with a starting point of a shame-filled broken ego or, we might say, a diminished sense of self - certainly not a psychologically healthy ego or anchored, individuated sense of self, in the way in which the word 'ego' or 'self' can be used in modern psychology today. However, psychological understanding of ego/self, is different to the use of 'Self' with a capital 'S' in some religions, (especially Buddhism and Hinduism's Advaita Vedanta), as the annihilation of the ego/self equates to the Hindu Saddhu's state of 'Self-Realisation', or 'Divine Illumination' or 'Union with God/Divine Being', as represented by the Saddhu in 'Black Narcissus'.

The young Sister Clodagh quickly became, (to echo a famous verse about the novice Maria from 'The Sound of Music'), an 'Asset to the Abbey': we can imagine that Sister Clodagh was very bright, could study and teach well and even had a great singing voice for the  convent choir! She was so talented that she was eventually chosen to lead a group of missionary nuns to India as the youngest ever 'Sister Superior' of the Order - Sister Clodagh was flattered indeed and could not hide her sense of superiority at being chosen to hold the exulted title of the youngest Sister Superior, which her Mother Superior saw in her face and expressed concern that she was really too young for the role; in charge of many other older (and wiser) Sisters in the Order - and, Mother Superior proved to be quite right - as the story unfolds...

The Indian Palace atop a high mountainous ridge proved to be a cold and barren place, beset with difficulties in settling in with the villagers' customs and beliefs and, needless to say, unhappiness grew amongst the Sisters, especially with Sister Ruth, whose infatuation with the dashing estate manager Mr Dean, causes her to struggle competitively with Sister Clodagh (whom Mr Dean had actually fallen in love with!) and fall to her untimely death. The scandal reverberates throughout the valley and the Sisters are forced to move away and return to their convent.

A touching, enigmatic scene at the end reveals the loving affection that had developed between Sister Clodagh and Mr Dean, as their hands touch upon parting for the first time (not allowed in the Order!) and Mr Dean asks her, concernedly, what will become of her in the Order after this. Sister Clodagh bows her head and sigh-smiles, saying that she will return to the Order, just to see out her days as 'just one of the sisters - never again a Sister Superior', with an expression, as I saw it, of saddened-yet-wise-relief! The film ends with the cliffhanger-dilemma of what we, as viewers, might prefer to happen to Sister Clodagh; whether to return to the Catholic Order to live out her days as a humble sister, or to take the hand of Mr Dean, whose pragmatic philosophical wisdom and empathy had opened her heart to wider spiritual truths in India, helping her to soften and become 'nicer and more human' than the nun he first met - and possibly marry him?

For me, the story holds a deeper psycho-spiritual truth about the stage along our spiritual journeys of the melting of what we might call the 'spiritual ego' or the 'grandiose/inflated self'; in that Sister Clodagh's journey to India had caused her by happenstance to meet a spiritually wise man, whose open-mindedness to the Indian culture was a healing soul education to her Irish-Catholic Convent upbringing. During conversations with him, Sister Clodagh had opened her heart to speak openly and tearfully of her 'shameful' reason for entering the convent. Mr Dean's empathetic response to her, in shock and disbelief at her family and community's rejecting treatment of her, caused her to realise that she had been treated harshly and with misogynistic hypocrisy that women, but not men, were to be 'without desire'. With the tearful-melting of the shame-narrative held onto tightly and defended against within her own psyche, Sister Clodagh's healing of childhood shame and trauma could finally begin. Her wounded-shamed 'ego' or sense of 'self' no longer needed to hide and defend itself under a veneer of Superiority as 'Sister Superior'. So at the end of the film, her healing symbolically revealed a more natural 'True Self', as they say in transpersonal psychology, (psychology from the spiritual perspective) that was finally content to be one with her sisters and no longer with any need to be a 'Sister Superior'. In many ways, this reminds me of a story I heard told once by an Abbot of a Buddhist monastery, in which he revealed that he was surprised to be chosen to be the Abbot, as he really didn't want to be the Abbot - but that is exactly why he was chosen! His fellow monks could sense and trust in the true humility of his 'True Self', emptied of ego or personality - the kenosis, or self-emptying of Christian theology.

So, I believe that the deeper meaning of the film is revealing that Sister Clodagh walked the treacherous spiritual high-peak path of painfully healing (what is called in many spiritual circles), 'the spiritual ego'. This can occur where a person's sense of self has become unconsciously identified with the spiritual role that they hold for a time. When a person is given spiritual responsibilities (usually because they have such qualities naturally in abundance), it is often accompanied with high expectations of them. So if life's circumstances later challenge that person, such that they stumble and fall from any pedestal, it can be a very painful puncturing of the spiritual ego to bear indeed - and often accompanied by a burning shame of not living up to the very high standards expected of them in their spiritual role. So, Sister Clodagh, in walking that path of the painful healing of the spiritual ego for us on screen, helps to reveal the archetypal pattern of soul-growth and unfoldment of soul-wisdom that is at play in all aspects of our lives, even and especially, the painful ones.

So, if we think of Sister Clodagh as representing something of a Spiritual Archetype within us all, as we walk our spiritual journeys of personal soul growth, what ending would you now choose for Sister Clodagh? To take the hand of Mr Dean and live a life as his wife in India, or to return to the convent to live out her days as a simple Sister? Or, perhaps you envisage yet another, creative, unexpected ending for Sister Clodagh?

– Rev. Jenny Miller

First Published in The Inquirer, Issue 8055, 18 March 2023 – www.inquirer.org.uk