The Spiritual Self
By
Alan Schneider
As I write this in January of 2023, the world continues to descend into
chaos on all levels – cultural, social, civic, moral, spiritual,
governmental, and environmental, among others. Wars and strife continue
to proliferate even as the natural resources on which all life are
dependent dwindle everywhere to dangerously low levels, and oligarchs
seize ever larger portions of the global economy in what can only be
characterized as ego-driven megalomania. The future, and the human
condition, seem quite challenged, to say the least!
Some observations can perhaps be made regarding the state of
human evolution as it exists today at this critical juncture in history,
particularly with regard to the evolution of human consciousness
as it stands here, and now…
Most scholars would probably agree that that oldest human
ancestor, based on carbon-dated fossilized remains, is the
Australopithecus. These remains have been more or less accurately placed
in the vicinity of four millions years old. So, we can postulate that
human beings have been evolving for that span of time up to the present
moment. Australopithecus was a short creature (four to perhaps five feet
tall), only partially upright, had an ape-like skull and jaw structure,
wore no clothing, had no culture, and probably existed by foraging for
food – only proto-human, but had enough human-like traits to attain the
position of earliest ancestor, although barely so. We have most
certainly advanced far, far from that beginning to our current stage of
post-industrial, hyper-digital, densely urban world culture. But, four
million years is a micro-span in global history, and a micro-micro span
in the history of the universe. We have just barely begun what will
hopefully be a long evolutionary journey! The state of our consciousness
and awareness bare this out only too well…let us examine this state in
more detail now.
The human brain is evolution’s arguably most spectacular
achievement. I say arguably, because the dolphin brain appears to
be both larger and more complex than that of humans, implying a profound
level of intelligence, although what they do with that
intelligence remains a mystery for human observers of that species -
perhaps they have become so perfectly adapted to their environment that
they no longer need intelligence. So, our brains are the
defacto pinnacle of evolution, as far as we positively know. Yet, this
brain still has many shortcomings when viewed from the extended
theoretical perspective of what science tells us must exist in
the observable universe.
Human awareness is essentially instantaneous in nature.
We appear to process information about the world on a momentary
basis as a sequence of sensory impressions. Although there is not a
consensus among authorities (to my knowledge) the neurological “sampling
interval” of this process could certainly not be faster than 0.01
seconds. The brain then “cobbles” this linear impression of the five
senses into a “description” of reality recorded in the synaptic memory
of its billions of neural cells. We cannot directly perceive this
process – our experience of the world is the experience of long and
short term memory only. And we can only perceive what our senses
show us – science tells us that much of the universe is only observable
through the use of sophisticated instrumentation, if even then. Again,
authorities differ in their opinions, but a consensus exists in
mathematical science that at least seven additional dimensions
exist composing “reality” beyond the three or four we appear to
exist in…
Another consequence of the very early character of human brain
development, and related to the linear nature of perception, is the
overall fragmentation of perception into modes of interpretation.
If I observe my consciousness, it seems as though I have at least three
distinctive world-views that exist more or less simultaneously – the
physical, the mental, and the spiritual realms of interpretation – and
they seem to be discontinuous and in substantial disagreement with each
other regarding many basic features.
Science has emerged as the Grand Determinant of the physical
mode of interpretation, which is grounded in the sensory perception of
the physical continuum, and very compelling for that reason – an
organism which ignores sensory perception does not last long! Science
has given us all the modern world of relative comfort and convenience.
Yet, the meaning and implication of that world is still subject to
further interpretation as mental phenomenon – without additional
assessment, the physical world consists of neutral objects, only related
to each other by random association.
The Mind is the Grand Determinant of the mental mode of
interpretation. It is in this realm that the long term implications of
all events in the physical realm takes place. The Mind is the seat of
extended meaning and (hopefully) higher porception in life. The Mind is
the locus of personal identity – the “me” that “I” feel exists
and interacts with the physical and (additionally) mental phenomena –
“my” feelings, emotions, and ideas. Freud called this locus the Ego, and
along with the subconscious Id, and super-conscious, acculturated Super
Ego, postulated that these three regions of the Mind accounted for all
human experience and behavior. I have no argument with psychoanalysis,
however, if we do not evaluate the impact of at least one more mode of
interpretation, a key and critical sequence of factors is lost. This is
the Spiritual mode, and can (again arguably) be assigned to the Super
Ego.
The Super Ego is the result of acculturation and socialization
in the Mind – we have to learn not only functional matters to exist
within a culture (as virtually all human beings do today), but moral and
spiritual models of knowing and acting as well. The Spiritual mode is
perhaps best examined through the lens of another great thinker in
history – Carl Gustov Jung. Jung was one of Freud’s contemporaries, and
even worked and studied with him for several years. He became
dissatisfied with Freud’s contention that sexual repression was the root
of mental dysfunction, and instead postulated that existential
repression also played a role in such dysfunction – that an unhealthy
attitude towards meaning in life was also potentially as
crippling as an unhealthy attitude towards sexuality.
Certainly one of, if not the, most significant
contributions of Jung to psychiatry was his Theory of the Archetypes of
the Collective Unconscious (mind). Jung took Freud’s work a step
further, claiming that the topography of the Mind extended far beyond
the Freudian Id of animal drives and sexual repression into a vast
region that he referred to as the Collective Unconscious, a region also
populated by instinctual trends that he called Archetypes, These trends
are not directly observable, but generate acculturated Archetypal
Symbols that can be. He cataloged thousands of these symbols over
the course of his life, along with their relationships to each other,
and the total Mind.
At the core of the Jungian mental model was a primary
Archetypal structure that he referred to simply as the Self,
which presupposes all other archetypes and archetypal symbols. This Self
could, in theory, be contacted as a cultural form, but only through
extreme measures that could “switch off” the Ego, the Id, and all other
acculturated experience. In the case of most, or all, religious
perception, some such technique(s) are indicated in the literature on
the subject. I personally have used meditation as the vehicle, but there
are many others.
Science says that the laws of physics and chemistry define the
world. The Mind says that personal perception defines the world. The
Spirit says that God (i.e. the Self) defines the world, ld, and they are
all correct! Our brains simply have not yet evolved far enough to
experience a combined reality composed of all three modes in a unified
state of perception, thus we have to fragment our being into three (or
more) realms and endure the dissonance that results. I personally
believe that the Jungian Self is the foundation of all being, but exists
in a higher dimension of experience that can only be perceived in deep
meditation, or using some other equally powerful observational
technique.
The Jungian Self is the (supposed) driver of all mental
manifestation including the archetypal symbols of the Collective
Unconscious, the repressed sexual contents of the Freudian personal
unconsciousness, and the conscious waking awareness of the
(predominantly Freudian) Ego – the “me” that I commonly recognize as
“myself” observing and interacting with “the world” displayed in the
physical senses. I have had much to say in these essays about the
basal nature of that world, its ultimate reality, and meaning for human
observers, and will say more now, because it is the Self that
creates our perception of everything internal and external to the
organism. Do the world and the whole universe exist? Yes, indeed they
do – there is something “out there” in the observational field. What,
then, is there? It is the same Self that lies within us!
Since the external environment (i.e. the physical continuum)
can only be observed through the haze of sensory impression and
interpretation that is subject to the continuous interference of the
ego, we must resort to the variety of alternative observational
techniques mentioned so often in these essays to gain relatively
unimpeded impressions of actual existence, and these also have
been touched upon in some detail. The reader may take as a given that
my testimony here is derived from the evidence of personal meditation as
my preferred method of observation and investigation, although I have
also used several others along the way. In particular, once such a
structure as the Self is clearly identified in the Psyche, and brought
into conscious awareness (in the therapeutic process that Jung referred
to as realization) for further observation, much information of
paramount importance for the observer (and humanity at large) can be
discovered. Please allow me to share some of this with you now.
To begin with, the Self appears to have an external aspect,
and an internal aspect under observation in deep meditation. In terms
of what I have realized about this entity, it appears most often in my
waking conscious awareness as it does in the depictions of the Sphere
of the Psyche diagram that I have used so often – as a dense
black sphere – in this case floating in my perception above and
centrally located immediately beyond my physical head, and surrounded by
the luminous (Jung used the term numinous to describe internally
bright structures in the Psyche) forms of many other archetypal symbols
that I have realized in my years of psycho-spiritual work. The
Sphere of the Self appears quite large in my perception – perhaps
occupying half of my collective awareness. Although it seems to be
dark from the perspective of outer observation, one has the impression
that it contains an abundance of internal life of its own – this “life”
emerges more or less continuously from the surface of the Self at
numerous shifting locations in a stream of numinous, fiery undulating
forms that bear an uncanny resemblance to the post-Babylonian Hebrew
(“square”) script characters. These subsequently take a wide variety of
eventual secondary symbolic expressions in the collective region
surrounding the Self – all of archetypal significance, and there are
literally so many of them present that I could not by my personal
efforts realize them all in many, many lifetimes of effort. This is why
Jung felt that consciousness became collective beyond the Freudian
regions, and I agree with him – the Self is continually outputting far
too much content for any one observer to deal with. In my case, the
collective region of the Psyche surrounding the Self is literally aglow
with the numiousity of all that it has released, and continues to
release, into Psychic manifestation.
It is possible, although I do not have this practice as a
routine, to place the observational locus right at the surface of the
sphere of the Self where one of the founts of “letters” is emerging, and
interpose this locus directly in the stream of manifestation flowing
from there. It is as if one is immediately blasted with light and form
on an almost unbearably brilliant level – the only adequate analogy is
that of experiencing the Word of God becoming manifest in real time.
Under the correct circumstances (as I experienced in Samadhi) one can
enter the interior of the Self by following one of the streams of
numinous letters (actually archetypal symbol chains), and the
environment there is as I have previously described it – omnipresent
white Light, omnipresent unconditional Love, and a merging with an
ultimate Presence that is the Source of all subsequent observation and
experience everywhere in the Psyche. At this point, one becomes “Self
Realized” and attains the “knowledge” that the Self is always One with
both the observer and every observation occurring anywhere. bsp;
I realize that this seems to be an impossibility from the
logical perspective of the Ego awareness that is typical for human
beings but nonetheless remains the Truth of Consciousness at the level
of the Self. We must remember that the ego is very close to – in fact,
resides within – the physical organism, which itself exists in three
dimensional space and linear time subject to the constraints of that
extensive external expression of the Self known as Karma. Yes,
my friends, the outer world is ultimately simply a different version of
the inner world – one that typically vibrates (or, in more scientific
terms, oscillates) at a much lower frequency accounting for the observed
density of things on the Physical Plane, but is made of the same “stuff”
– consciousness.
I conjecture that the Self appears dark from the exterior
perspective as a convenience for observation, considering what it is
evidently like on the interior. One could not indefinitely withstand
such an environment and continue to exist in the flesh (at least in the
hyper-materialistic Western world), but it can be realized as a psychic
structure within the mind, and worked with therefrom, although there
remain prices to be paid for this level of access. Such contact with
the innermost core of human possibility tends to redefine all other
experience – what might have once been important tends to pale by
comparison, including such mundane experiences as external physical
existence has to offer. Even human sexual involvement, that glittering
foundation of Freudian psychodynamics, tends to lose its luster after
the Self is contacted and realized in this definitive manner. In fact,
the only thing that retains much importance at
all is communication regarding this experience delivered to the other
struggling sentient beings on, and contiguous to, the Physical Mode of
expression. As the reader has probably gathered, I have embraced this
challenging process with great enthusiasm!
Thus, it appears from this most intimate perspective on
observation that the entire universe, which once seemed to be a great
(and chaotic) machine, is in fact a great and mysterious bsp;Mind,
continuously outpouring Creation as an expression of Love, which now is
seen as the ultimate driver of all existence.
The universe can and should be thought of as an orderly,
intelligent, and conscious state of being, an Awareness, of which each
individual human awareness is a part. In this sense, the physical
universe becomes a Universal Mind or Consciousness, engaged in what the
Hindu religion calls the Cosmic Dance, an eternal manifestation of deep
involvement occurring on every plane everywhere. The Universal Mind is
the ultimate source of all knowing and all being, including our human
knowing and being.
The Universal Consciousness demonstrates a significant element
of collective manifestation. This manifestation is expressed on
the level of archetypes and archetypal symbols. The well known Major
Arcane of the Tarot system are also archetypal symbols of the various
estates and stages of life, as are the Runic glyphs. That which is
collective is shared among us at the deepest level of expression – we
all participate in the process of Universal
Consciousness!
Because the totality of knowing includes free will, we can
choose to see ourselves from this cosmic perspective, or from the simple
material perspective, or any other, but the repeated practice of
spirituality always tends to reveal the subtle and majestic order which
underlies all superficial events. Universal Consciousness occurs as we
move in the direction of the totality of existence, and become more and
more aware of who and what we are in this infinite, eternal expression.
The realization of this process is the ultimate reason why we are here
in physical manifestation.
- From Alan, With Love -