Behind the manifold states of thought and feeling lies a real self, which when discovered acts as a unifying center that can integrate the personality into a coordinated whole. It is also from this center that our highest spiritual impulses emanate.
By Roberto Assagioli, Translation Ella Ostermann
In our review of the different forms of psychosynthesis, we have spoken of the group where the unifying center is constituted by a dominant personality tendency (subpersonality KS), such as a life-giving “function” such as motherhood, of an activity, a social or professional deed, or finally is based on an intense admiration of a hero or a higher being.
But these centers cannot create a complete psychosynthesis, where every single element of us is coordinated and harmonized so that they form a living unity, or a completely independent psychosynthesis, that is, one that is not based on elements outside our own being.
To realize a complete and independent psychosynthesis, a different kind of unifying center is necessary. First of all, this center must be of a different nature from all the individual elements that make up our psyche. It must be different from them and superior to them, for only then does it have the power to dominate and arrange them into an organic unity. In other words, the unifying center must be not merely psychological, but spiritual.
Secondly, such a center cannot be something foreign to the personality, but something with which it is familiar and which is truly “central” to it. In short, the unifying center must coincide with our real self, the very essence of our inner being.
The hidden meaning of the self
“I.” How often do we use this little word without hesitation and without thinking about it, as if we knew its meaning! Everyone knows that this word is the nominative singular first person of a pronoun. But in a certain form we do not perceive the “I” as a grammatical form, but as a real symbol. It makes a big difference. Our certainty about an obvious concept is suddenly changed to confusion. We have the feeling of being confronted with a mystery.
Sometimes the “I” seems to us to be the most obvious and true reality. At other times it is vague, intangible, almost non-existent, like a mathematical point. It is as if it were something distant, like the collision of countless parallel lines in infinity. Sometimes we have a clear sense of our personal identity in the midst of all the changes; then we seem to change again, to be different from our “I” of the day before, and we cannot “recognize ourselves.”
Sometimes we feel strongly the unity of our being, how the personality with its parts is connected in an organic whole; at other times we perceive great differences in us, strong contrasts; two souls seem to possess us, and they tear us apart in their fierce struggles. Sometimes our “I” seems to be closely connected with our organism, dependent on it, and a victim of all physiological changes. At other times it seems to be completely independent of the body and made of a spiritual substance that is simple, unchanging and untouched by any material/material influence. Sometimes we clearly feel the difference between “I” and “not-I”. We experience an abyss between ourselves and others without a bridge, we feel infinitely alone , like islands far from land. At other times it is as if we become one with a loved person, or with many, or with nature, or with God. In the evening it is as if our “I” goes out, disappears without a trace during sleep, and every morning it miraculously returns as if it had appeared out of nowhere. …
We cannot be satisfied with knowing ourselves so little and so imperfectly. Our insatiable thirst for knowledge, which drives us to explore the vast, distant worlds and the multitude of beings that sprout in a drop of water, cannot leave us indifferent to the unknown in ourselves, which seems to us to be the central mystery of our being. But it is not only the desire to know that drives us to understand this mystery; personal motives that have immediate practical possibilities also drive us. We feel that we have light, order, and harmony within us. We try to distinguish between the countless thoughts, feelings, and impulses that arise in us, those that are in fact expressions of our most real and deepest being, and those that, on the contrary, originate from external promptings or instinctive tendencies. We try to control and eliminate those that we do not perceive as our own, or that we think are unworthy of us. But we must admit, if we are honest, that such attempts are often unsatisfactory. They remain an unattainable aspiration. The attitudes and tendencies of those around us masquerade as ours without our noticing, while we often doubt and push aside our innermost intuitive thoughts. The instincts, passions, and habits which we try to control stubbornly resist our efforts or escape our grasp, hiding in the subconscious from where they operate in a subtle way, or they launch a violent attack, and in both cases we suffer defeat.
Our failure to succeed is due to several things: first of all, the real difficulty of the task. Furthermore, we act blindly in our efforts to be self-regulating because of our ignorance of the precise methods that can be used to explore and discipline our inner selves.[1] These specific methods, however, exist and should be made the subject of as much interest and appreciation as those widely used in physical culture. On a larger scale, our mistakes and shortcomings are due to the too undeveloped conception we have of the nature and powers of our real selves. For these practical reasons, a more precise knowledge of ourselves is necessary, not only for a special group of students, but for all who wish to live consciously and worthily, as masters and not slaves of their own inner world.
[1] Assagioli refers here to what are called subpersonalities in psychosynthesis. Read more here: http://www.psykosyntese.dk/o-21/ (publisher’s note)
Psychology’s denial of the self
But if we want to find out what the “I” is and turn to scientific psychology, which until recently reigned unchallenged and still dominates the universities, we are utterly frustrated. Psychology has no answer to this question, not because it does not know, but because it does not want to know. The path has been carefully blocked by a denial, a priori, of the existence of a real subject. It has chosen, in Laing’s unfortunate expression, to become a ‘psychology without a soul.’
In reality, ‘souls are not in fashion’ in psychology, as William James said some years ago. Such a denial, a priori, is entirely without justification. To justify it, it must be proved that the Higher Self does not exist. And that proof does not exist. This is acknowledged by some of the wiser psychologists, who do not resolutely deny the existence of the Higher Self, but say that such a question has nothing to do with psychology. But this agnostic reservation is purely theoretical. In practice they study psychological life as if there were no Higher Self, and they therefore identify themselves with those who deny its existence. But even if it is admitted that, up to a certain point, one can make an analytical and structural study of psychological phenomena without relating them to the Self, it is a fact that if one is to pass from anatomy to the physiology of psychological life, from a structural study to a functional study, from analysis to synthesis, the existence of a unifying principle, an active center, a real self, is absolutely necessary.
The hidden nature of the self
To fully understand the various manifestations of psychological life, we must see it as the expression of a living being who, by setting himself definite goals, attributes to them a value, desires to attain them, and tries to do so by overcoming the external and internal resistance which makes it difficult to attain them. If we also accept, in addition, that there is a unifying principle, we must try, as far as is possible, to determine its nature and powers. This is a difficult task, because the nature and powers of the “Self” do not ordinarily reveal themselves directly to our consciousness. What we are conscious of in our daily lives is only what may be called the phenomenal self, to which all the different states of consciousness, thoughts, feelings, etc., refer. But the phenomenal self is merely the manifestation of ordinary consciousness, the reflection of the real “I,” which is the permanent active principle, and the real substance of our being. If we recall the state of our empirical conscious self, or in other words our ordinary consciousness under normal circumstances, that is, when we are not intentionally observing or thinking about ourselves, but spontaneously letting ourselves go, we are confronted with two important facts. First, we see that our ordinary consciousness, our conscious self, always identifies itself with the content of consciousness at a given moment. We say, in effect, “I am tired, I am rested, I am sad or happy, I am beautiful or ugly,” etc.
We are identified with states of consciousness
Ordinary self-consciousness has countless identifications with the body and emotions. For example, if a sad thought occupies consciousness, we say, “I am sad.” If a feeling of fatigue occupies it, we exclaim, “I am tired.” If we feel like eating, we say, “I am hungry.” And so on.
In the same way, we identify ourselves with moral, intellectual, and social qualities which represent only a partial aspect of ourselves. We say, “I am beautiful or ugly,” “I am strong or weak,” “I am a man or a woman,” “I am a son or a father,” “I am a positivist or a spiritualist,” etc. The particular content or aspect of our consciousness is not always strong or complete enough to occupy the whole space, and we say, “I am tired” while thinking of other things. But if the state is intense enough, as a heavy sadness resulting from disappointment or a serious loss, it occupies for a time the whole field of consciousness, and the self’s identification with the content of consciousness is for a time complete. A person in deep sorrow not only says, “I am sorry,” but forgets for a moment that he has ever been peaceful and cheerful, and can hardly imagine how cheerfulness can exist, and if he sees others laughing and joking he is surprised, and this behavior seems strange and unreal to him. The person tends to generalize, to “objectify” the subjective and temporary state with which he has identified himself, saying, for example, “Life is sad,” “Only the sadness is real, everything else is an illusion.” Let us suppose that this person receives some good news: He has not suffered the loss he thought. The loved one he thought was dead is saved. Then we see an immediate change in his state of consciousness; the sadness is replaced by joy, and the person, who now identifies with the new state of consciousness, exclaims, “How happy I am!” Life looks bright and worth living, and often in his overwhelming joy he forgets that the sadness exists. If someone or something reminds him of his recent sadness, it seems so distant and unreal to him that he may say, “Now I feel like a completely different person.”
Our real selves don’t change.
This natural outburst, which we have often heard, is in fact very significant. On the one hand, it shows how apparently complete the identification of the self with the contents of consciousness was. But the person knows , even while the words are spoken, that he is not really another person. In other words, he does not lose the sense of personal identity. This means that while the conscious phenomenal self identifies itself with the various contents of consciousness, there is something in us which is not identified, which does not change with the changing states of consciousness, which always remains the same, fixed and unassailable. It is our real “I,” the centre of our individuality, the real substance of our being. Without accepting the existence of this deeper self, it is impossible to explain satisfactorily the duration of the sense of consciousness, or the sense of personal identity through the changing states of mind, and the interruptions of consciousness which occur in sleep, fainting, hypnosis and narcosis. The fact that we ordinarily have no awareness of the deeper self is not surprising. Ordinarily our consciousness is occupied with the endless stream of our various states of consciousness. Our empirical self identifies with all of them in turn. How then can it be possible to have a consciousness of the real Self at the same time? It is impossible, except under special circumstances, to be aware of the transient and the permanent at the same time. But if we succeed in stopping the mental stream for a few moments and keeping the field of consciousness free from the states of mind which usually occupy it, we may succeed in attaining a partial knowledge of the real Self. This is no easy experiment, and it requires special conditions. Continuous external and internal sensations seek to invade the field of consciousness; continuous feelings, emotions and thoughts arise, and it is difficult to maintain attention to the self. To succeed in this requires patient exercises in concentration and meditation, or unusual psychological conditions must exist in which ordinary mental activity is suspended. This explains why most people have never had any consciousness of the deeper “I.” Therefore they doubt or deny its existence. But those who, due to exceptional circumstances or through patient effort, have attained that consciousness have a deep certainty of the existence of the real Self.
When the deeper self breaks through into consciousness
At samvittigheden trænger sig ind på det almindelige selv er et af de mest overbevisende beviser på Sjælens eksistens. Associationslovene alene, de forskellige psykologiske elementers mekaniske aktion og reaktion på hinanden er helt utilstrækkelige til at forklare det psykologiske livs højere manifestationer. Fornuft , skabende forestilling, moralsk dømmekraft, udvælgelse, viljeshandlinger forudsætter en syntesisk, styrende og skabende aktivitet. Men denne aktivitet finder ikke sted i det empiriske selv, i den almindelige bevidstheds lys. Kun resultaterne når dette personlige selv . Og i visse tilfælde, når Åndens aktivitet er intens og resultaterne bryder pludseligt, ja nærmest voldsomt igennem til den almindelige bevidsthed , opstår der en mere eller mindre forvirret fornemmelse af den mystiske kraft som påvirker den. Digteren som føler en uimodståelig trang i sig til at skrive inspirerede digte, munken som i sin bevidsthed oplever afsløringen af det højeste godes kraft og storhed, patrioten som en myndig samvittighedens stemme dikterer, at han skal ofre sig for sit land, og alle andre med tilsvarende oplevelser vidner samstemmigt om, at der er en kraftfuld indre kraft som virker på og opildner den almindelige bevidsthed til de mest radikale aspirationer.
Når det dybere selvs eksistens og eventyrlige kraft er oplevet, får det delfiske orakels ”Kend dig selv” en ny og dybere betydning. Det betyder ikke længere blot at ”analysere tanker, følelser og handlinger”; det betyder, at studere ens allerinderste selv, at opdage det virkelige væsen skjult i sjælens dybder, at lære dets vidunderlige kraft at kende.
På dette sted vil jeg gerne foregribe en mulig indvending, eller udelukke en mulig misforståelse. Det faktum at vi taler om det almindelige selv og det dybere Selv må ikke forlede os til at tro, at der er to adskilte og uafhængige ”jeg”er, to væsner i os. Selvet er i virkeligheden én. Det vi kalder det almindelige selv er den lille del af det dybere Selv, som den vågne bevidsthed er i stand til at assimilere i et givent øjeblik. Det er derfor noget betinget og foranderligt, en ”variabel størrelse”. Det er en refleksion af det der kan blive stadigt mere klart og levende; og det kan måske en dag lykkes med at forene sig med sit udspring.
Vi vil nu se på en anden mulig misforståelse. Denne erkendelse af vort højeste væsen betyder ikke at det individuelle selv guddommeliggøres. Det ville kun være tilfældet, hvis vi betragtede det som adskilt fra sin naturlige og intime kontakt med virkeligheden, det vil sige med andre væsner og det Højeste Væsen, det Universelle Selv. Denne opfattelse giver os i stedet mulighed for at opfatte denne kontakt mere klart, og derfor kan vi mere bevidst åbne os for dens indflydelse.
Erkendelse af det højere Selv
The spiritual conception of the self and of the soul has been generally accepted, though expressed differently in Christian philosophy and religious tradition. St. Augustine affirmed the absolute and transcendent unity of the Self. Several mystics speak of the Spark, or the apex of the Self, or of the bottom, of its center, which is its innermost reality and where it comes into contact with God.
Father Gratry says in his admirable work, “La Connaissance de l’Ame”: “The soul carries hidden treasures within itself and does not see them, knows nothing about them, cannot explain them” (p. 147). He adds, however, that we have an “inner sense” which, at certain moments, when we are able to withdraw from the usual tumult of distractions and passions, gives us a direct and clear awareness of our own souls.
“I felt like an inner form… full of energy, beauty and joy… a form of light and fire that sustained my entire being: a form that was stable, always the same, which I have encountered again and again in my life and forgotten at times, and always joyfully received with the words, “Here is my real being” (p. 199)
The realization of the existence and nature of the Self is of immense spiritual importance. Such a realization is a true revelation for the individual. It is the beginning of a new life, and the necessary basis for a successful effort to achieve self-regulation, freedom, and inner renewal; that is, to achieve true psychosynthesis.
Source : Provided by the Psychosynthesis Trust, London in connection with their training.
How to move forward
Here you can receive seven free meditations where you develop different aspects of yourself.
Also read the article Conversations about the Self, by Roberto Asssagioli
