*
WHAT
IS THE SELF?
The central problem of psychology is the determination of the nature of the Self.*
*Several different concepts of the "self," with or
without a capital S, have been put forth and are logically acceptable if
consistent with certain metaphysical premises. In
The
Planetarization of Consciousness, Rudhyar has used the term self
(without a capital S), referring to the root-power which
sustains the entire organism from birth to death. It is an unvarying
vibration which is power, but not consciousness. The task is to bring
this power to the condition of all-inclusive consciousness. When this is
achieved, one can really speak of the Self. In the
following two chapters, however, Rudhyar has followed the thinking of
depth psychology, particularly as formulated by Jung and Assagioli. — Ed.
What
do we mean when we say "myself?" And how far can we make a
distinction between the expressions "myself" and "the Self
within me?" What significance is there in speaking of a
"universal Self" in contrast to the "individual
Self?" The answers given to these basic questions differ greatly
among the contemporary psychotherapists whose approaches we have
discussed so far. The scale of opinion stretches from Freud, the
materialist, to Assagioli, the transcendentalist. All these men observe
the same phenomena and all seek to heal; yet each sees his task in a
different light, because, to each, the Self also appears in a different
light.
If
we consult the dictionary, we find the word "Self" defined as
"an individual known or considered as the subject of his own
consciousness. Any thing, class, or attribute that, abstractly
considered, maintains a distinct and characteristic individuality or
identity." (Funk and Wagnalls.) But what is exactly
meant by "subject" and by "consciousness?" The
concept of "subject" cannot be discussed without considering
its opposite, the concept of "object." Consciousness (as known
to man) is a relation between subject and object, between the
"I" and the world. Our experience, however, is not limited to
the "outer world," that is, to the things which we see, touch,
hear, bump against, sensually enjoy or are organically hurt by. We also
experience an "inner world," an uninterrupted sequence of
feelings and thoughts or mental images — even if we close all the
gates of our senses and withdraw in undisturbed solitude and muscular
inactivity. Solitary, silent, inactive as we may appear to be, we can
nevertheless know emotional pain of the most acute type, or bliss — we
can be haunted by mental images forever repeating themselves, or be
illumined by inspiring realizations.
Whether
experiences deal with this inner world, or with sensations induced by
external physical entities, they must be considered as referring to
"objects" of which a "subject" becomes conscious.
This subject is what we call "I." All experiences, however,
are due to the fact that the subject notices changes in
the nature, position, and activities of objects to which he is related
— whether they be physical objects, or mental-psychic images of his
inner world. But could the "I" actually notice changes in his
world, if he himself kept also constantly changing? Briefly said,
consciousness is the relation between objects which are in a state
of change, and a subject who does not change; thus, who
"maintains a distinct and characteristic individuality or
identity." If the subject (or "I") is not able to
maintain these, if he is caught in "the wheel of change" and
loses his distinct and characteristic identity, then consciousness
vanishes and is replaced by unconsciousness. The "I" is
overwhelmed by the world; the (relatively) changeless is defeated by
change.
In
order that the world may not overwhelm the "I," it is obvious
that this "I" has to be basically different in nature from the
world. He has to be "in the world, but not
of
the world"; a rock of permanency in a sea of change. But what most
people call "I" is actually similar in nature to the world —
that is, they themselves are "affected" (thus, changed) by
violent or persistent changes in the society and the body of religious
and cultural truths or values of which they are most definitely parts.
The average person's Self does not maintain its characteristic identity
in times of social convulsions, simply because it is rooted in
a particular type of society and conditioned by particular
social-cultural structures. Indeed, this Self is basically an expression
of the place and function the person occupies in his society.
Astrologically speaking, the character of this Self is determined by
Saturn; and the nature of his participation in society, by Jupiter.
These two planets are essentially representatives of social, collective
functions — that is, a person's differentiation from and stable
maintenance within a greater whole of which he feels himself a part.
If a person lives in a static kind of society which remains rooted in a
stable economy, a steady religious and class outlook, and a set
geographical environment, the unchanging character of this society
reflects itself in the person's life as a Self. Whatever changes are
experienced by this person (mainly on account of his organic
development, capacity to work, and age) can be readily explained by his
religion and the traditional wisdom of his culture and made to fit into
broad patterns of cyclic order. He thus remains firmly established in
his place, social function, and his relationship to other persons
similarly stable and well-rooted. His "I" is steady, simply because it
is a function of a steady social order. But if the person lives in a
society which is in a state of wholesale upheaval and crisis — like ours today — and in the midst of disintegrating beliefs,
morals, and social patterns, his "I" inevitably becomes
involved in this frenzy of change, as long as it is rooted in the
soil of society. As this happens, there is no longer in this
person any permanent center or frame of reference to which the continual
and unpredictable changes in his outer and inner worlds can be related.
Consciousness slips away. Unconsciousness, and the dark, destructive
powers it hides, overwhelm the "I." The "rock in the sea
of change" is eroded away by the demented sea. It can be thus
disintegrated, because rock and sea are both substantial entities. Then
the person unconsciously performs actions which he cannot significantly
relate to his "I," actions which dismay or revolt whatever is
left of that Self and its "characteristic identity." Because
of fright, the "I" freezes or splits and disintegrates, and
neurosis, psychosis, and insanity follow in sequence.
When
the "I" breaks down in such a manner during a steady social
period, the event is exceptional; and it is attributed to
"possession" by elemental or evil forces which the church
attempts to ritually exorcise. But when the society and the religious
tradition disintegrate, and the breakdown of "I" becomes a
frequent occurrence, the need for a general and basic reconsideration of
the nature of the Self becomes imperative. The psychologist has no way
to rebuild or to stop the disintegration of society and culture. He can
try to help the few individuals he can reach to rebuild the Self that
has become rigid beyond the possibility of relationships which
"make sense" to their inner and outer worlds. He may piece
together the shaken rock of the Self and try to give it more strength to
face the onslaught of the sea. This, however, cannot lead to very
lasting, and certainly not to creative and radiant, results. The only
other course is to admit that the shattered "I" is not the real
subject, the dependable center of reference, that it is not, by nature,
permanent and steady — but only so if all around it is ordered and
static. A real subject or center must be discovered. The
shatterable "I" is then called the "ego" in
contradistinction to the real "I," named the "Self"
or the "higher Self" (in contrast to the ego or "lower
Self"). Psychotherapists such as Jung, Kunkel, Assagioli, et al.,
recognized this distinction and have at great length defined the two
factors, thereby providing a basis for a new type of psychological
healing.
According
to Carl Jung, the ego is merely the subject or center of a person's
field of consciousness. The Self is the subject or center of the totality
of the personality; "it includes not only the conscious but
also the unconscious portion of the psyche." For Jung, "the
unconscious processes stand in a compensatory relation to
consciousness," and these two parts of the psyche "complement
each other in the Self." The Self, therefore, is to be regarded not
only as the "center" of the total personality, but as the
"circumference" encompassing both the conscious and
unconscious activities which this total personality includes. The Self
can never be fully known by the ego, for this would mean that a limited
part (or aspect) would know and be able to describe the whole — an
impossibility. To the ego, the Self can appear, however, as the ultimate
goal of personal development; as an all-inclusive container of
experiences which includes far more than those of the ego; as the
permanent center of reference and ideal subject. The Self can also be
seen as our individual share in God, that focal point of
our psyche in which God's image shows itself most plainly, the
experience of which gives us the knowledge, as nothing else does, of the
significance and nature of our likeness to God.
Dr.
Kunkel describes the distinction between the ego and the Self more in
terms of their being respectively the "false" and the
"true," or the "temporary" and the
"essential," centers of the personality. He sees the ego also
as "the sum total of what we know or what we think we know about
ourselves. . . a system of statements concerning our goals and means,
gifts, capacities and limitations. . . an inadequate portrait we make of
our real Self." This ego tends to live a life of its own, as an
independent, rigid "object," while the Self displays new
qualities and growing maturity. In many cases the Self and the ego
develop in opposite directions. Our behavior-pattern and decisions come
"to serve the ego instead of the Self — and this is egocentricity
— whereas, when our actions "flow from the real center" (the
Self) they show true creativity. The ego's influence is always
unfavorable. Egocentricity begins in early childhood as a natural
adjustment to the child's egocentric environment. Kunkel also writes
that, "The very essence of 'sin' is the substitution of a sham
center, the ego, for our real center, the Self." This substitution
results in loneliness and distrust of people in our group, isolation
from and loss of knowledge of God, and then anxiety. "Our creative
center, the Self, is our positive relationship to God." It is
"the creativity of the Creator working through human
individuals" — and "the more a person finds himself, the
more he discovers that his personal interest is replaced by his
responsibility for his group and humanity, the real Self is not I but
We" (In Search for Maturity, Ch. II). Thus, for
Kunkel, the ego is a "wrong," "ex-centric" factor
hindering our creative life; while Jung thinks of it rather as the
unavoidably incomplete first phase of the development of personality, in
which conscious processes alone are recognized.
The
Italian psychologist Roberto Assagioli presents a somewhat different
picture, as he places the Self, in his diagrams of man's total
constitution, at the top of an ovoid shape, at the center
of which the ego is found; moreover, he does not use the term
"ego," but contrasts the "normal conscious Self, or 'I'" with the "spiritual Self." In his view, the conscious
Self is merely a projection of the spiritual Self with which it is
linked by a magnetic "thread" or descending ray.
These ideas of a "descending" projection of the true
Self (the source of spirit and light) into the field of the personality,
of a true Self which is transcendent to the field of personality (yet
from which every "student of man should start"), of an
opposition between "the lowlands of our ordinary consciousness and
the shining peak of spiritual Self-realization," are all
characteristic of the Platonic-Christian or "occult" approach
to psychology. As the "lower Self" comes to be united with the
"higher self," the individual, in whom this most arduous
process reaches its consummation, "transcends altogether the human
kingdom and becomes a true spiritual being." In this process the
transcendent Self acts as a new "unifying center" around which
a new and equally transcendent personality is built: the goal of
psychosynthesis.
In
studying the various definitions of the Self and of the ego offered by
the modern psychotherapists, one is likely to be struck by the confusing
use of the term "center." I believe that this confusion
resides in an inability to differentiate between structure
and contents. To say that both the ego and the Self are
"centers" is, in my opinion, to ignore the fundamental
differences between them. This difference should become clear if we
return to our first stated definition of the "I" as that permanent
factor in reference to which the forever changing elements of human
experience (in the psyche as well as in the outer world) become
conscious and significant.
Two types of things, however, can be considered as permanent factors of
reference: a (relatively) set structure (the ego) — and a (relatively)
unvarying quality, vibration, or tone (the Self). For instance, in a
classical symphony, all that takes place musically can be referred to a
particular scale; and the scale is a set structure — that is, a fixed
pattern of relationships between a series of notes. These notes have
meaning and function with reference to that pattern, in terms of the
place they occupy in it. But this element of structure is not enough.
The symphony is not only a written score, an abstract structure of
"notes"; it is also a very complex combination of sounds or
"tones" actually played on instruments and heard by human
ears. There is something to which all these tones are referred, an
unchanging factor in relation to which they acquire an absolute
character or vibration — the diapason. The notes C and F
have structural meaning as component parts of a scale; but the vibrating
tones to which these names are given have significance in terms
of an absolute pitch established by the diapason. If this diapason's
pitch changed, C
This
illustration must not be taken too literally, as the facts of human
existence are far more complicated than those mentioned in this musical
metaphor. Yet the analogy should help us to realize that the ego is,
like a musical scale, essentially a product of family and social
conditions, or more accurately, a set of responses to heredity and
environment. Every culture develops its own musical scales. Every
race and society produces a few basic types of ego-structures
(just as it produces a few basic types of bodily structures). A person
belonging to a particular race and society is, as far as his ego is
concerned, a melodic-harmonic variant of one of these basic
ego-structures (or scales of response to the generic potentialities
inherent in human nature — i.e., in the common humanity of all human
beings). When a society is steady and set in its collective patterns,
the ego-structures of the members of such a society are also quiet,
steady, secure, and permanent. When, on the other hand, the society is
in a condition of crisis and disruption, then the ego — its
differentiated product — is structurally insecure. Having no frame of
reference within which they can be related, the responses of the ego to
the environment and its chaotic events inevitably slide below the
threshold of consciousness and meaning. The human person can no longer
significantly say "I" — and he has forgotten how to
instinctively feel "We" (cf. Kunkel and his "Primal
We-experience").
Then,
the only possible solutions for the individual, beside an insensitive
freezing in sheer egocentricity within the congealed memories of an
absolute tradition, are:
1. To participate in the
building of a new society — which usually implies revolution and the
coercive imposition, by strong persons and a dominant Group (Church or
Party), of new social and mental patterns upon society, and fixed places
and functions for every individual (cf. Soviet Russia).
2. To reach beyond subservience to ego-structures and social patterns
toward the creative source of all livingness and all spiritual progress
— viz. the Self.
The
first alternative implies the rebuilding of a new ego, usually under the
compulsion of a new society, a new religion, or a new leader or idol.
The new ego-structure may be broader and more inclusive
— but it may also be regressive, depending upon the type of group to
which allegiance is made. The allegiance and the service given is an
ego-restoring, structure-rebuilding act of salvation: a new operation of
the Jupiter-Saturn function.
The
second alternative means going through the "crisis," as an
individual; and a direct linking of the organism-as-a-whole to a source
of creative emanation — the Self, the God-within. This
implies, astrologically speaking, an arousal of the functions of
psychological metamorphosis represented by the transcendent planets,
Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. These planets are linked in a mysterious way
to that of which the visible Sun is but a focus of radiation — the
radiant fullness of the space defined by the orbit of the earth and
eventually by still vaster motions.* cf.
The Sun is Also a Star
(Dutton, 1975) and From Humanistic to Transpersonal Astrology
(Seed Center, 1975)
The
visible Sun is the source of the cosmic and atomic
energies which arouse all nature into being, which call forth and
sustain all organic species in a generic, unconscious sense without
regard to individuals. These cosmic energies are those that are locked
within the atoms by the Saturnian "binding force." They are
thus locked within the structure of the ego, within the patterns of a
particular social structure and culture. The life that energizes the
contents of these structures is that which streams, astrologically
speaking, from the Moon, for Saturn and the Moon constitute a pair.
Saturn builds the structures; the Moon energizes the contents — thus all
the purely conscious Images, reactions, and complexes
which fill our tradition-ruled, egocentric life. This Moon-energy is,
however, but a reflected portion of the energy unceasingly
pouring from the Sun. It is solar energy filtered through and colored by
the limitations (karma) imposed by Saturn. The
form-structure of the ego (and also the skeleton of the body) is thus
signified in astrology by Saturn (its zodiacal and house positions and
aspects); the life of the contents of this ego is represented by the
Moon. The visible light and power of the Sun is the universal power that
arouses, enfolds, and sustains all there is everywhere — all that
vibrates at the core of every atom as well as in the activities and
responses of every human being. Its power makes every experience
possible
and animates every experiencer at every level. It shines indifferently
upon all things; it is both constructive and destructive. It is
universal vitality and atomic power. It is the source of what the Hindus
call prana.
The
visible Sun, however, should not be considered as the
Self. It is only the point of release of the energy of the Self. The
Self can only be symbolized in its essential reality by space — space
in fullness of being. We can only perceive and realize
this space, however, as our own motion through it establishes a focus
for the release of its universal power. We come to know that power as
spirit, as light, as creative intelligence. But we know it at first only
through the upheavals it causes (via Uranus, Neptune,
Pluto) to our Saturnian security and our egocentric, culture-centric,
church-centric rigidity. Indeed, we can only know the Self at first through
our crisis, and in a negative manner. We know it by what it is
not — as Kunkel has clearly pointed out, following the ancient
Oriental wisdom of the Upanishads and of Tao.
Yet we can ultimately experience this Self, if we emerge — and as we emerge — successfully from our crises. We experience it mystically, as an intense expansion of awareness and an inexpressible feeling of identification with a universal Subject in the consciousness of Whom we are but one of many objects — a small orb within cosmic immensities. We experience the Self, in a more concrete occult manner, as a realization of "our place in God" (J. Jacobi), a realization of our innermost quality and tone of being, of our functional participation in a transcendent spiritual Communion that encompasses solar systems and stars.
