The eighth essay in The Ultimate Journey  is an attempt to give a feeling sense and a few images about: The Ultimate Destination:

Those who have stepped beyond the threshold into the mystery, outside of time, do not become disembodied spirits. They still have a physical body until that physical body dies. It is simply that their identity has shifted—it is no longer with the ego self or the unconscious urges and desires that drive most of us in our normal lives. Importantly, though, most of those who cross the threshold eventually find themselves back in the world of time—with the ego reasserting itself and again influencing actions and decisions.

Occasionally, though, a person is advanced enough to reenter the world of human interactions while maintaining awakened consciousness. What is more, these fully realized saints and sages can engage with those living in the world of time. When this happens, the awakened ones usually spend their energy sharing their wisdom, serving those in need, and/or promoting the health and well-being of the whole. Some of these wisdom figures have come to be important in their own cultures, and a handful have become iconic symbols the world over.

Beyond time and space

One crucial idea I am trying to convey is that time itself is a mental construct, a concept the mind creates for us to be able to function in the everyday world. Mystics have known this for thousands of years, philosophers have begun to understand it since Kant, and Einstein’s breakthrough insights have helped scientists come to grips with the fact that time does not exist in the way they had assumed. (See Carlo Rovelli’s fairly recent book, The Order of Time.)

All these insights converge to the conclusion that time is a concept in the mind rather than something that exists separately from the mind that creates it. This is a marvelous thing, crucial for being human. We must create time in order for the world we know and live within to exist. But one implication of this non-basic nature of time is that different cultures might come to understand it in different ways—which is exactly what has happened throughout history. To get a sense of this, read No Word for Time, Evan Pritchard’s fine book about native American culture. Or, for a mind-bending challenge, try to imagine what the word time refers to before the big bang. Of course, “before the big bang” suggests that time existed “before,” which it probably did not, so better still, meditate on how to think about the absence of time beyond the threshold of the big bang.

Just trying to formulate sentences about this topic makes clear that, when using our thinking minds, we are trapped in time. As an example, focus on the fact that the phrase “big bang” is a metaphor with no clear meaning. We do not really understand what it was, or is. We give it a date—almost 14 billion years ago—but since time did not exist before the big bang, and time is not what we have imagined it to be, what does that number really mean? Consider, for instance, that there seem to be billions of massive black holes throughout the universe, some having millions to billions of times the mass of the sun. Inside of each there is nothing that relates to what we think of as time. If a spaceship approached the horizon of a black hole, stayed there for a few of “our” minutes, then moved away, the occupants would discover that a million years had gone by for people on Earth. So, how long ago did the big bang happen for a black hole?

Thinking about time using quantum theory (the most accurate science we have) turns out to be really weird. But back to the big bang. That phrase is only a metaphor suggesting the universe appeared in a nanosecond out of nothing and nowhere. But nanosecond is a reference to time, so we are forced back to the questions: What is time, and how did it get here? When all and everything appeared, seemingly out of nothing, how did time become a part of it all? The answer is: We do not know. But the best scientific guess today is that time is not real in the way we have assumed, but simply a concept we have created in our minds for functioning in the everyday world—which is what mystics have been telling us for centuries. Thus, the big bang is just another name we put on one of the mysteries of existence as we try to make something that escapes our understanding sound scientific and understandable.

Like time, space is also weird, so when I talk about “being in the place across the threshold,” it is not actually a place. It is a state of being. But to communicate, we use words even though our words are not “the things themselves.” So I use the word “place,” but it is not really a place, for both modern physics and many mystics tell us that a place, as well as space, are simply useful concepts we create in our minds for functioning in the everyday world. (See Carlo Rovelli’s, Reality is Not What It Seems)

“In the world, but not of it.”

I know all this is pretty abstract, but it is crucial for conveying something very important. A few saints and sages through the centuries seem to have had an identity centered beyond time, yet to the people around them, these special beings seemed to be functioning in the world of time. One way to try to think of this is the idea that they were, “In the world, but not of it.”

The way I have come to understand this phrase is that a person has opened into a state that is completely beyond ego identity. Such persons are no longer pushed and pulled by unconscious drives and needs; they seek no special attention for themselves; have little desire to look after or take care of their worldly selves. These awakened ones might take care of their bodies to a minimal degree, as a part of the flow of the life force, but their attention is directed toward the All and their actions tend to serve the good of the whole. If they encounter someone who is suffering, they might well look after that person first, at the expense of their own needs. (This is quite different from those who have not yet developed a healthy sense of self, as described in Essays 5 and 6—people who sacrifice their own needs in an attempt to feel better about themselves.)

Looking at history in this light, many stories emerge in every culture about a few saints and sages who returned to the everyday world of time while their consciousness remained beyond the threshold. What did they do? They spontaneously cared for other people, for animals, for the natural world—for all and everything—because they knew that each and all was an inseparable part of the Whole. They knew that everything is one Being, one Existence, one Consciousness. They did not feel separate from anything, but rather, one with everything. They did not feel separate from the Buddha, Jesus, the Tao, or God. “I and the Father are One,” Jesus said. And, like Jesus, the saints and sages who have entered this state and stayed there have performed incredible acts of service for centuries. In Buddhism, many in this place have made the Bodhisattva vow, a commitment to put others before oneself. Or, more specifically, they have vowed to liberate all sentient beings before they themselves enter nirvana.

Some examples from the previous essay, Moving Toward the Ultimate:

1. Being centered in this place beyond the threshold allowed Jesus to say: “Not my will but thine be done.” Even if it meant crucifixion.

2. Being in this place allowed the Buddha to be totally untroubled by any criticism or attack, no matter how vehement, and to be unconcerned when sitting on the cold, hard ground in winter.

3. This is Ramana Maharshi, completely oblivious to the afflictions his body was suffering, joking with his doctor who was examining a tumor that was excruciatingly painful. Because his identity was located beyond the threshold, he could ignore the pain.

4. This is Peace Pilgrim telling her body, mind, and emotions to be still, and all would obey, even in extreme circumstances.

5. This is Bawa Muhaiyaddeen offering his life to an enraged man if it would reduce that man’s suffering.

6. This is Teresa of Avila, when people were criticizing her and even threatening to send her before the Inquisition, saying she had no desire for things to be any different than they were—and was filled with joy by all that was, including the attacks.

It is from this place that Rumi, flooded with spontaneous inspiration—sometimes in a whirling dance—spoke thousands of pages of poems, giving voice to some of the greatest poetry the world has ever known. Listen to his words for a taste of where his identity was located:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing
there is a field.
I’ll meet you there

When you are in that place:

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.

In that state:

I, you, he, she, we
In the garden of mystic lovers,
these are not true distinctions.

And:

You say you see my mouth, ears, eyes, nose
—they are not mine.
I am the life of life.
I am that cat, this stone,
no one.
I have thrown duality away like an old dishrag,
I see and know all times and worlds,
As one, one, always one.

This is the place from which the Christian mystic Catherine of Siena could say: “My being is God, not by simple participation, but by a true transformation of my Being. God is my Being, my me.”

Because she dwelled in this place, when Catherine was very sick and in great physical pain she could still say: “If only you could understand how I feel. My mind is so full of joy and happiness that I am amazed that my soul stays in my body. And so much love for my fellow-men has blazed up in me, that I could face death for them cheerfully and with great joy in my heart.”

Dame Julian of Norwich, resting in this place, echoes Catherine’s words: “See! I am God; See! I am in all things; See! I do all things.”

Another woman who participated in the same experience several centuries earlier, halfway around the globe, was Izumi Shikibu—the 11th century Japanese poet. She wrote:

Watching the moon at dawn,
solitary, mid-sky,
I knew myself completely:
no part left out.

A disciple of the Indian sage Shankara proclaimed. “I am transcendent, nondual, unrelated, infinite knowledge. Sheer bliss am I, indivisible.”

And much earlier, another Hindu master, Ashtavakra, said of the unknowable mystery: “You pervade the universe and the universe exists in you. You are by nature Pure Consciousness.”

Wumen Huikai, a Chinese Chan (Zen) master in the 13th century wrote:

One instant is eternity;
eternity is the now.
When you see through this one instant,
you see through the one who sees.

The result of being in this state? Wumen describes the feeling that arises:

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.

Jumping across the ocean, and across centuries, Ralph Waldo Emerson planted the same seeds of knowing in the soil of early America, saying, “We lie in the lap of immense intelligence.” Emerson saw that, when we move beyond the threshold, we ourselves will know “the laws which traverse the universe.” Standing in this place, we understand that “to the good, to the perfect” we are born, no matter how far away we might feel from those things right now. If we will but wake to the possibility, “worlds, time, space, eternity, do seem to break out into joy.”

Emerson clearly experienced this highest possibility himself. He tells us about one such moment:

“Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years.

“In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, no disgrace, no calamity, which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of Universal Being circulate through me; I am part and parcel of God.”

Make no mistake: People are still crossing the threshold in modern times, often in the most difficult of circumstances. Robert Assagioli, a Jewish psychiatrist in Italy before World War II, was arrested and placed in solitary confinement by Mussolini’s fascist organization. He used his time in prison in an unusual way: meditating, attempting to penetrate to the very essence of who he really was. His meditations led to profound experiences, recorded in an article entitled “Freedom in Prison,” in which he described what he saw and experienced:

“A sense of boundlessness, of no separation from all that is, a merging with the self of the whole … Essential Reality is so far above all mental conceptions. It is inexpressible. It has to be lived … Joy inherent in Life Itself, in the Substance of Reality … The realization of the Self, resting and standing in Itself … The selfless Self … The three attitudes of the supreme paradox: No Self (Buddhist), Merged Into God (Mystic), Realization of the True Self (Vedanta).”

In my life

I have known these moments, but I have not stayed in that place beyond the threshold continuously. I don’t know whether all the saints and sages mentioned above stayed there permanently, but each was intimately familiar with it, and I believe some lived continuously there, in the consciousness beyond the threshold.

As for myself, after the timeless moments have passed, I have always found myself back in my ego life, with desires for comfort, pleasure, and power once again knocking at the door of my consciousness. Once again I feel concern about the praise and blame of others. Now, with my thinking mind, I am trying to write words about my visits beyond time, all the while knowing that what i am trying to describe is ineffable and indescribable. Yet it still seems worthwhile to try to say what I know and have seen.

In my personal life now, I remember my time out of time and have more clarity about the choices available to me. I see more clearly that I can choose to believe, or not to believe, many of the things my enculturation taught. I see that I have significant choice about the values and meanings I will organize my life around, and I am clearer about the actions that might lead to the highest possibilities life has to offer.

I am more free now, but I am also aware that I still have unconscious drives that are trying to shape and control my life. Gradually, though, I am learning ways to make them more conscious, and the more I do so, the more my conscious self is able to participate in life’s unfolding.

I dramatically remember that in my moments beyond the threshold there was only Being, there was only moving in the flow of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Now, back in the world of time, my ego tempts me to believe that I am in that place still, so I can do whatever my ego wants—and those actions will be aligned with the will of God. My ego often insinuates that its views come from the Higher Self, and so everything it is suggesting is fine. It tells me I am now selfless—as it advocates selfish desires.

If, however, I am fiercely honest with myself, I know when I have fallen back into ego mind. I know that true freedom doesn’t mean doing whatever the ego suggests. Rather, I must make choices: I can work to be more conscious of the forces inside me that are pushing and pulling my behavior, instead of giving in to them. I can choose to live by higher values and meanings, the ones I glimpsed when beyond time. Or I can drift back into unawareness and let egoic desires and unconscious whims again motivate my life.

So here I am, back in my ego life, trying to write about what I have seen and experienced. I feel a longing to be in that place across the threshold again, but I know I am not centered there now. I know in my thinking mind that, ultimately, there is no separation, but knowing this does not result in being able to live beyond the threshold. My identity, for now, has fallen back into my ego self. And even if I try, I cannot force myself back into that place beyond the threshold. Even if I say to myself: “Non-duality is the only reality,” “There is no self,” “All is One,” “I am completely surrendered to God,” “The world is an illusion,” “Everything is Emptiness,” “Love is my only motive,” saying or thinking these words does not shift my identity to that place.

When I am honest with myself, I know that thinking these thoughts will not take me back beyond the threshold. Even though I believe they are true, I also know that, right now, my ego and unconscious are present, even if I try to tell myself they are not real. I know I am not living from pure awareness right now, or in complete harmony with the Divine.

I also know that the more I become conscious of my ego’s desires—and my unconscious urges, fears, and anxieties—the less they control my life. I know that the more I make conscious choices in harmony with the meanings I have glimpsed in moments beyond the threshold, the closer I come to crossing the threshold again. And I know that the more I choose to be guided by the values taught by the wisdom figures I admire and trust, the nearer I come to resting in Pure Awareness, able to just “Be” and to move in harmony with All and Everything. As I do the work necessary to become more conscious, I feel the hold of my ego and unconscious loosen, even though I am not totally free from their influence right now.

Why do bad things happen?

In the picture of life I am suggesting, why do “bad” things happen, not only to ordinary people, but to the great saints and sages as well? There is no question that, from one point of view, bad things happen to “good” people. To understand why this is so, it is crucial to recognize that all judgments of good and bad are from the ego’s point of view. All arise from a thinking mind that labels some things good and others bad—from a particular person’s ego perspective. As a simple example, consider that the team that wins a ball game is good from one person’s perspective and bad from another’s. It is not just ball games; the same is true for elections, romance, even wars. In most wars, one side eventually celebrates victory, feeling they have been successful. But that “success” has often resulted in the devastation of another country and many deaths among the “enemies.” So, while the winners are celebrating, the losers are mourning their defeat.

In our lives in the world, there have always been and always will be competition, conflict, loss, disappointment, sickness, and death. Rumi says, “good and bad are mixed.” The Biblical book of Ecclesiastes says the same. Good and bad are present in every individual life, as well as every family, community, and country. It is the price of having a human life. Good and bad are present in every spiritual community as well, for any time people congregate there will be those who are living, at least partly, from ego, and every one of those egos will at times be demanding, selfish, and suffering. To each and every ego, the flow of the Unseen Order will seem “good” when that flow accords with what the ego wants, and “bad” when it does not.

The crucial point is that God, the Tao, the Divine, the Mystery, the Unseen Order do not create or allow bad things to happen. It is always ego preferences and unconscious desires that lead to judgments about what is good and what is bad. That is why the Third Zen Patriarch said:

If you wish to see the truth
then hold no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike
is the disease of the mind.

In the flow of All That Is, there is no good and bad as egos think of it. To enter an individual ego existence means entering the world of good and bad. The flow of life, of existence, is not organized to give each individual ego what it wants, so egos will always judge some things as good and some as bad. The only escape from “bad” things is to bring your life into harmony with the Unseen Order. Perhaps, as philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead suggested, the mystery, the sacred dimension is “an all-embracing chaotic Attractor, acting throughout the world by gentle persuasion toward love.” Perhaps that love is what we are to come into harmony with. But this is not what the ego seeks. The ego is seeking a different kind of love; the ego wants to be loved, wants to bring the Unseen Order into harmony with what it wants, rather than bringing itself into harmony with All That Is.

This is the heart of the Buddha’s message—that to be free of suffering means giving up all clinging and all aversion. To escape “bad” things means giving up all ego wishes and wants, even those that seem to the ego to be idealistic. This is what Jesus was conveying when he said that “those who lose their life will save it.” It is the heart of the vision so many mystics and near-death experiencers have had, such as this powerful mystical vision reported by Canadian psychiatrist R. M. Bucke (which is in complete accord with that of Alfred North Whitehead):

“The cosmic order is such that without any per-adventure all things work together for the good of each and all … the foundation principle of the world, of all the worlds, is what we call love, and the happiness of each and all is in the long run absolutely certain.”

But this happiness of each and all is not that of egos, but of the ultimate identity we all possess, or rather, the Ultimate that is the true identity of each and all.

Serving the Good

When I am in harmony with the whole, simply doing my part to serve the health of the whole, I am serving the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. But when my ego is in charge, I sometimes interfere with the flow of the Tao. I make mistakes that bring pain and suffering, mistakes due to misunderstandings, and mistakes motivated by anger and greed. I even make mistakes, through confusion and errors of judgment, that cause my ego self pain and suffering. I suspect you do this as well.

What should we do? First, accept that mistakes are a natural part of human life. As the Third Zen Patriarch said about accepting our imperfections: “We must be without anxiety for non-perfection.” Secondly, we must recognize that our mistakes are “grist for the mill.” Another Zen master was asked how he had been able to progress so far, and he said: “One mistake at a time.”

I have made, and likely will continue to make, many mistakes. I used to beat myself up for each one, adding to the pain and suffering each mistake was already causing. Gradually I am coming to see that the best response to a mistake is to acknowledge it and immediately ask: What can I learn from this? If I do this long enough, perhaps, like the Zen master, I will make enough mistakes and, learning from each, finally arrive at the Ultimate destination. Until this happens, mistakes are great teachers, if I use them wisely.

I am also coming to see that, even when my ego is alive and active, I can still serve the Good. I will not be able to do so perfectly. I will make mistakes. But I can make an effort to see the larger Good and serve it as best I can, while accepting that I do not see the whole picture. I can reach toward being guided by the Unseen Order as much as possible—but with humility—for I am sure that my ego’s perceptions are limited. That is the best I can do.

And it is enough. Making a commitment to serve the Good as best I can and doing the things I sense that might increase the moments I spend beyond the threshold are sufficient principles around which to organize my life.

The Ultimate

I know I will return to the Ultimate, the place across the threshold. I will “Be” there once again, beyond time. Perhaps it will happen again in this lifetime. I might even dwell there permanently before this body dies. If not, then I will return there when death frees me from the hold of my ego and unconscious drives. Death is not to be sought, but neither is it to be feared. Death is not the goal of life—yet it is the natural fulfilment of existence in a mortal body. What lies beyond death is Mystery. As Shakespeare so eloquently said in Hamlet’s voice (who was at the time fed up with life and its troubles and considering whether he should end it):

To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: aye, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause:

As Shakespeare clearly saw (there’s the rub), we do not know what happens after death; we know almost nothing about the “undiscover’d country,” that “puzzles the will.” Thus we must pause any time we think that death is an escape from the difficulties of life.

Those who are centered in the consciousness that lies beyond the threshold, though, can tell us more than Shakespeare was able to tell. And what they tell us is that the inner work we do here in this life matters, that everything we do to increase our connection and live in harmony with the Good affects the energy in which we spent the moments of our days. And they tell us that how we choose to live now affects whether we will cross the threshold during this life.

An example comes from the ancient Upanishads of India, which tell us that a mind “in deep absorption,” “grown pure and silent,” can “merge with the formless truth.” If you can do this in your present life, you have “solved the great riddle,” you have “found yourself,” and are now “free.” Your “heart forever is at peace.” The result of a life lived this way is that, before the body’s death, you enter this place:

Whole, she enters the Whole.
Her personal self returns to its radiant, intimate, deathless source.
As rivers lose name and form when they disappear into the sea,
the sage leaves behind all traces when she disappears into the light.
Perceiving the truth, she becomes the truth;
she passes beyond all suffering, beyond death;
all the knots of her heart are loosed.

The Buddha summarized what he taught this way: “There is, oh monks, an Unborn; neither become nor created nor formed. Were there not, there would be no deliverance from the formed, the made, the compounded.”

How does one get there? The Buddha instructed, “Vigilance is the path to the Deathless, Negligence the path to death. The vigilant do not die.” He goes on:

One who does evil grieves in this life
Grieves in the next, Grieves in both worlds
One who makes merit now rejoices in this life
Rejoices in the next, Rejoices in both worlds.

The Buddha’s message is that our task in this life is to let go of grasping and clinging, then to “make merit,” and we will cross the threshold, discover the deathless, find nirvana for ourselves before the body dies. What will that be like? When the Buddha was asked whether nirvana was bliss, he said: “Yes: Bliss, my friends, bliss is nirvana.” Crucially, this bliss is not something only those in the distant past could find. It does not require a particular set of practices or beliefs. In the mystical experience of R. M. Bucke, continuing the quote above:

“I saw that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living Presence; I became conscious in myself of eternal life. It was not a conviction that I would have eternal life, but a consciousness that I possessed eternal life now.”

Turning to the Christian mystics, their message is that you will discover, as medieval theologian Meister Eckhart put it, “The ground of God and the ground of the soul are one and the same.” In the same vein, modern mystic Thomas Merton said, “If I penetrate to the depths of my own existence and my own present reality … then through this deep center I pass into the infinite ‘I Am’ which is the very Name of the Almighty.” When you do this, you enter Teresa of Avila’s Seventh Mansion, and can dwell there while living in your current body—until that body dies. You have moved into and dwell in the “ultimate union” that she vividly describes.

If this happens to you, how will you spend your time? Many of the great saints and sages tell us that helping those in need is one primary way that those who have crossed the threshold spend their life energy. With the Bodhisattva vow, many Buddhists commit to a beautiful example of this. In a dramatic Christian parallel, Teresa of Avila says that, if you come to permanently dwell in the Seventh Mansion before the body’s death, “The soul must let ego bring it back to the ordinary world, to the seeming separateness of individual life.” Why? To finish the work that having this marvelous thing called existence is about. Taking Teresa’s life as an example, that work involves tireless service to others.

What is it like for consciousness to permanently dwell in the Seventh Mansion, while the physical body is still in the world of time? If it happens in you, the transformation of your identity will be complete and you will be filled with a new energy. “The soul who has dissolved into God reemerges with a vibrant wakefulness.” You are in “a permanent place of peace”—no matter the difficulties encountered in the world of time.

My here and now

Only a fully awakened heart/mind permanently experiences, during life in the everyday world, the state the saints and sages describe. But the more I am able to shift my identity to the highest stages they suggest while living in this particular body/mind, the closer I come to complete fulfillment of this life. And the more I intentionally choose to live from love and compassion, the more my identity shifts from my small, ego self to the “radiant, intimate, deathless source.”

To emphasize once again, I am not living my daily life now in the place across the threshold that a few saints and sages seem to have been able to permanently occupy. I am not writing this essay from that state of consciousness. Rather, I am trying to capture fragments of what I have seen, offering a few hints and guesses that might help you on your journey. In my here and now life I am simply living from the highest level I can, practicing acceptance, gratitude, and humility, and sharing what I have learned as best I can with those who are making the journey themselves. This is where I will be until the natural death of this body comes, or until my consciousness is able to permanently rest beyond the threshold.

In moments of illumination, when stepping beyond the threshold of time into the timeless dimension, the seer is absorbed in the beauty and wonder of what is seen, becoming the shimmering glory of Being itself. Ego identity disappears. All that remains is the mystery of Being, of Existence, of Consciousness.

How did Existence come to exist? How is it there is Consciousness of Existence? How did Being come to be? When beyond the ego, these questions disappear. There is only the miracle of Being. The feelings that arise when I touch this place are wonder, love, compassion, and gratitude. Sometimes even joy. Love and gratitude for the mystery of Being, for Consciousness, for the Tao, for God. And for the guides who have helped me reach as far as I have been able to travel. I feel compassion for all other beings and for the beauty and wonder of the world. In this place, I see that everything is connected, all and everything is a part of the Whole which I am. Which you are.

Is what I say true? Listen to Rumi’s answer:

Is what I say true? Say yes quickly,
if you know, if you’ve known it
from before the beginning of the universe.

May you move toward the Ultimate as fully as you desire,

David

The seventh essay in The Ultimate Journey concerns the ways we try to understand and talk about Ultimate things, the difficulties of doing so with words and concepts, and suggested ways to move forward.

Naming the Mystery

We do not know how this universe in which we experience consciousness came to be. Yet everything we surmise suggests it has been governed by laws from the beginning. There are at least 26 constants of nature upon which the existence of a universe necessary for human life depends. And since the beginning of human culture, the great wisdom figures have told us there are values and moral guidelines that are necessary as well. Every culture has lived by values and some kind of morality, and all wisdom figures have said that their source is God, the Tao, Buddha-nature, the Way, Allah, Brahma, Great Spirit, Ein Sof, and so on.

All these names are words we humans have created to point to the source of existence, as well as the source of the meanings and values that are important for human life. But each of these words is a human concept, and not one is the thing itself. All these words are meager attempts to make intelligible to our thinking minds something that is just there. This “Isness” simply appears to our consciousness as soon as we become aware that we exist.

The wisdom traditions describe this Source differently, but all assert that there is a larger Reality, “Something Greater” than our everyday perspective. For Plato and Socrates, it was the World of Pure Forms or Ideas: “There abides the very being with which true knowledge is concerned; the colorless, formless, intangible essence … knowledge absolute in existence absolute.” This World of Pure Forms provides guidance for human life—for those who learn to access it.

Confucius taught that we must follow the “Way of Heaven” if we are to find fulfillment in life, and Lao Tzu called the Source the Tao, while making clear that it can never be captured in a name: “The Tao that can be told of is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth.”

In Judaism, Moses brought guidance from “I Am That I Am.” Muhammed received guidance for living from Allah (who has 99 names), as conveyed through the angel Jibrīl (or Gabriel). In Christianity, Jesus provided guidance by interpreting the Jewish scriptures as inspired in him by Abba. (In English, Abba is often translated as Father, but since Jesus’ original language was Aramaic, when he referred directly to this Source he would have said “Elah”—unless he spoke Syriac Aramaic, and then he would have said “Alaha.” We don’t know which Aramaic dialect he used.) Jesus probably spoke Hebrew as well, so he would at times have used the words “Elohim” or “Yahweh” for the Source. Whatever words he used, Jesus clearly said that he did not himself think up what he taught, but that it came from Abba, Elah, Alaha, Elohim, or Yahweh.

Some people today assert that the Buddha rejected the existence of an underlying Source, but even a cursory look at his teachings suggests this is not the case. The Buddha did not claim he made up the Eight-fold path, but instead that he discovered it while seeing the truth of all things. “In that instant, I saw,” is how he described his dramatic awakening that night under the Bodhi tree.

During that night he “saw” back over a thousand of his incarnations and “saw” the true nature of reality. What he saw in his journey beyond time, beyond the threshold of the everyday world and everyday consciousness, was that there is a path to awakening, a Way that he later put into words and concepts. But to emphasize again, he did not claim to have originated this Way, or the core values of compassion, lovingkindness, and equanimity; he did not say he made up the guidelines for ethical living known as the five precepts. Rather, he told us he saw into the heart of things, that he “saw” the underlying rules of how the universe is, and thus how we should live in it.

If the Buddha had not grounded his message in a transcendental understanding, what he taught would have been completely nihilistic. He often said that it did little good to talk about the Ultimate, but he did not imply that an Ultimate did not exist. And he certainly did not suggest his guidance for moral conduct was not grounded in the Ultimate. The reason he did not spend much time explicitly talking about the existence of an underlying Ultimate Reality is that everyone he talked to assumed it to exist. When he used words like “the deathless” or “nirvana,” he knew that every person he was speaking to knew these words and knew they pointed toward an underlying Source of existence, to which beings returned if they found liberation. At the same time, the Buddha knew it was easy to get caught up in words, become confused by concepts, and thereby miss the deepest truths, so he focused on how those listening to him could reach the deathless state, rather than philosophizing about it.

The exact same thing is true of every other great wisdom figure we know: None claimed they personally created the wisdom or values they taught; rather, they said they were conveying what they had “seen” through a glimpse into the depths of the Mystery. Neither Moses, Jesus, Confucius, Lao Tzu, Muhammed or any of the other great sages and shamans of human history said they had personally created the rules for living they taught; rather, they said they had seen how we should live, that it had been revealed to them.

Of course, their respective messages appear somewhat different to us today, but my guess is that the differences come from the different world situations each was living within, as well as the impossible task of putting what they saw into words. They were each attempting to convey the true nature of Reality, as well as the guidelines necessary to bring oneself into harmony with it, but they could not avoid the confusion that words and differing cultures create. They could only hint and suggest, using riddles, metaphors, stories, and parables. And then, when the traditions began to pass down their teachings in a structured way, the messages became more distorted with each passing generation.

What is God?

Most reading this essay grew up in a culture where the word “God” was used to point toward the Ultimate, so let’s focus on that word for a moment. God is a word that points to a concept, an idea that is somewhat different in every human mind. No person’s concept is “the thing itself,” and no human has the only correct concept. The same is true for the words Tao, Allah, Yahweh, El, Elohim, Father, Great Spirit, the Absolute, and on and on. These are all human words we use to describe human concepts in an attempt to understand and speak with others about the indescribable—the Mystery within which we exist.

The names Jesus, Confucius, Muhammed, and the Buddha refer to human beings who lived in the past, but each name brings forth different concepts in each person’s mind. Each of us has a different understanding of who these people were, sometimes radically different. And no person’s concept is “right.” No one has an exclusive claim to the accuracy of his or her concept.

In the same way, emptiness is a concept, nothingness is a concept, and selflessness is a concept. The same for non-duality and no-self. Each is a concept, and everyone’s understanding of these concepts is different. Salvation is another concept, as are Enlightenment and Awakening. The crucial thing to understand is that these words do not point to anything more real than the phrase “everyday world.” The everyday world is just another concept in the mind. All words point to human concepts that have different meanings in each person’s mind.

Although it might be even harder to grasp, “you,” who you think you are, is a concept. When you have the thought “I” or “me,” these are concepts in your mind that point to an ephemeral and changing image that exists only in your mind. None of these images are the “real you.” In fact, much of “you” is hidden from your conscious mind in your unconscious, excluded from your image of yourself. Further, who you are to each person you know is different, sometimes radically different, because each person knows only a small part of the whole. The same is true for your images of other people, as well as for your images of the objects in the world around you.

What I am trying to make vivid is that every word we use points to concepts that are not real things. All our words point to concepts in our minds which have different meanings in every human mind. Further, all our concepts are constantly changing within our own minds. This is very hard to understand with the thinking mind, because this is not how we were enculturated in the modern world. We were taught to look for hard facts, not slippery concepts that are different for each of us. But anyone who truly grasps this underlying truth will find it extremely valuable, for it opens up the world in new and exciting ways and reveals dramatic new possibilities for growth and fulfillment.

If you begin to explore the nature of your own mind, you will gradually recognize that everything you are thinking and seeing is a concept created in the mind by a process that you do not understand. No one understands it. The concepts you have just appear, as if by magic, and very few are consciously chosen. When you were young, you did not consciously create or choose any of the concepts that appeared in your mind, and few people ever learn to choose their concepts skillfully. But if you begin to explore the nature of reality more deeply, you will see that there is no solid, final reality out there. It is all concepts. All and everything is the play of light and shadow. Your mind takes this shimmering rainbow of existence and turns it into concepts with which you construct a reality, using the framework into which you were enculturated. For most people, the world they experience springs forth from an unconscious source their whole lives. But you can learn to work with the creation of your reality in a conscious way. This, however, requires training, discipline, and effort.

If you begin to do this, you will start to understand that words and concepts are simply tools to be used when useful—and laid aside when not. No concept in your mind is “The Truth.” Wisdom is to know which words and concepts are useful in a particular situation, and how best to use each in the situations you encounter. Words and concepts have great value because they are terribly useful for functioning in the everyday world. They are totally necessary as tools for that purpose.

Crucially, you cannot change the meanings of words and concepts just because you want to, for your understanding of the words and concepts you use is deeply embedded in your unconscious. Further, when interacting with other people, you must use words and concepts in the way they have come to be used in the culture in which you are living. You could call a hammer a rock, and at some point in the distant past that usage might have taken hold, but trying to change it now will only confuse you and everyone else. The language conventions within which we live started long ago, and changing how you work with these tools is not easy, and almost never worth the effort.

As you grasp this new reality, you recognize that wisdom is to learn to use the words and concepts of your culture skillfully, while holding them lightly, knowing they are tools, not hard, fixed things—including the words God, selflessness, Yahweh, Allah and the rest.  None of our words are ultimately real things. They are, however, relatively real. In fact, everything we know and think is relatively real. That is not a problem. It is not something we need to get beyond. Getting beyond the relative reality of the everyday world only takes us to the relative reality of the words and concepts we use to talk about the mystery beyond the threshold. (Tibetan sage Tsong Khapa used the image of crossing a threshold to describe what happens when we move into the Mystery beyond words or concepts). The crucial thing to grasp is that everything the mind thinks, will ever think on this side of the threshold, is limited to the relatively real.

What, then, is real? All and everything is “just as it is.” There is nothing beyond what is. Reality cannot be pinned down further in words or concepts, or with our thinking minds. Whatever is Real beyond the veil of our thinking minds we cannot think. We cannot describe it except by using relatively real words.

All is not lost, however, for we can “Be” it. We can step into that field. We can get beyond our words and concepts and open into Pure Being. We can catch an intuitive glimpse beyond the threshold into the Mystery.

St. Paul was sharing this truth when he said: “For now we see through a glass, darkly” and “now I know in part,” conveying the limitations of what we are able to see before we cross the threshold. But Paul says that when he crosses the threshold, “then shall I know.” And with that knowing, he shall also be “known.” Perhaps, in that place, as many mystics have reported, “The knower and the known are one.”

Glimpsing the Ultimate 

From my own glimpses, and aided by the insights of Tsong Khapa and Meister Eckhart, I have come to better understand something I have been trying to grasp for a long time: How to think about such words as emptiness, nothingness, selflessness, no-self and such. What I have finally come to see is that emptiness is empty. Emptiness only has a meaning in comparison to something that is different from it. The word emptiness has no meaning except in relation to something that is not empty. Neither “empty” nor its opposite can exist without the other. (If it interests you, play with the thought “There is no God” in the same way—for that assertion only has meaning if you hold a specific concept to which it is opposed.)

In the end, emptiness and words like it are just more concepts. Because they sound vague, they avoid some of the problems of theistic words, but they are just words trying to explain the unexplainable. After wandering in the wilderness of non-dual “thinking” for a long time, when I finally came to see this, something dramatic happened. Robert Thurman describes the happening this way: “The world is back!” (Thurman discusses Tsong Khapa’s ideas in depth in his audio program, Buddhist Theory of Relativity, and James Finley does the same for Meister Eckhart in Living Wisdom: Indestructible Joy and the Path of Letting Go.)

Upon seeing that concepts such as emptiness, nothingness, no-self, and the like do not capture a final reality any more than does the concept “everyday world,” I penetrated for a moment with what Thurman calls “wisdom’s diamond drill” to the heart of reality. I saw both emptiness and the everyday world for what they are—relatively real. The world, it turns out, is real, but relatively real, just as emptiness is relatively real. They are simply two sides of one coin.

Penetrating to the heart of existence and non-existence, I saw that all and everything is one interconnected construct of the mind. There is no separate hard reality. Ultimate Reality certainly does not contain a separate, fixed thing called “I” or “me.” Having the idea of a personal self is a useful construct to function in the everyday word, but it is not an ultimate thing.

I saw that everything arises simultaneously as a part of the whole of existence. No part can be separated from the rest, for everything is an inseparable part of the whole. Therefore, everything arises simultaneously, leading to the Buddhist idea of dependent origination—your perception of yourself and everything else is always mutually arising. Nothing can arise that is completely separate from the rest. I can create concepts of separate things to use as tools—from quarks to atoms to solar systems to an infinitely expanding universe to multiple universes—but these are not things in themselves, just useful tools, useful concepts. Useful when used skillfully.

In the same way, I saw that my concept of my ego self, as well as my images of other people and objects in the world are real, but only relatively real. I saw that these relatively real things should be respected for what they are, but not given overly much importance. I saw that the ego lives of others are only relatively real, but I also understood that they are powerfully important to many people, so they should be respected.

In the bedrock of what is, I saw that what I perceive and experience is not determined by a reality “out there” but is greatly influenced by where I focus my attention. And to a great extent by what I expect to see. Therefore, as William James said, “To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away … and dissolve the fear in our minds.”

William James—unlike most others I have focused on in this series of essays—did not spend much time in an expanded state of consciousness. He tried, studying it intensely in both a personal and scientific way. But although he was perhaps the greatest philosopher as well as psychologist in American history, he was not able to enter expanded consciousness very often. Yet he developed a deep intellectual and intuitive understanding of it, and his words can help us understand it ourselves. With deep insight he saw that, since we tend to “disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use,” it is crucial to realize that the way we look determines what we see. An extremely valuable example: James advised, “Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.” He went on to say that love, faith, trust, and generosity reveal what cynicism, suspicion, hatred, and fear can never let us discover. Think of the implications if more people practiced this insight.

Once you have glimpsed that there is no hard, fixed reality out there, and seen that nothing is completely separate from anything else, you begin to intimately know that you are a part of everything. You come to see that Existence is one, Being is one. All and Everything is One. To use a metaphor, if everything there is is one body, then the ego “you” is a cell in that body, but the largest you is the whole body. In some schools of Kabbalistic thought, Adam Kadmon signifies the entire world which arises as the first refraction of the light of Ein-Sof (the Infinite). This first emanation of Ein-Sof created everything that is, and each of us is a piece of that original emanation of light. And our largest self is the light itself. Similarly, in the Upanishads of India, Purusha is the universal spirit. It literally means “man,” or all of humanity. It is the eternal, authentic spirit, the cosmic being or self, the one consciousness. It is in everyone at all times. It is eternal and indestructible.

Whatever imagery works for you, glimpsing the primal interconnectedness of all things brings forth a natural response of compassion. It brings forth in me gratitude for the miracle of Being, the miracle of Existence. It moves me to do what I can to serve the whole, to keep the one body of existence healthy and strong, vibrant and alive—just as a cell in my body naturally functions to keep the whole body functioning well. (Unless, of course, it has become a renegade like a cancer cell.)

When I see this clearly, when I can rest in the experience of this vision, I have no anxiety or fear. There is no pressure to do or be anything, for I know that my small ego self is not in charge. I am simply a part of the whole and need only fulfill the natural rhythm of the whole, and if I will simply move into harmony with That, I will naturally serve the health and well-being of the whole.

It is crucial, however, when absorbing these insights, to avoid falling into the pit of “you create your own reality.” The way this idea is often understood is a misunderstanding. The ego does not create the reality in which it is embedded. The ego can gradually change what is included in its thinking, how it thinks about itself and the world, but this kind of change is slow and difficult. It is possible to escape the gravity field of the thinking self, but no one can do this simply by thinking, “I am not my ego.” This is just another ego thought. Only by a fundamental shift, a profound seeing that “I” am not the ego will I even begin to make such a change.

History has given us models for this kind of profound shift of identity, the two most famous being that of Jesus and the Buddha. Jesus had done nothing to attract anyone’s attention outside of friends and family until the age of 30—when he went off to the desert for forty days. When he came back, his identity and life mission were deeply intwined with the Divine, and he spoke with an authority his neighbors had never heard before. And from that profound shift he dramatically affected world history in just three years.

The Buddha began his night under the Bodhi tree with a sense that he had not accomplished the aim for which he had given up everything and to which he had devoted all his time and energy for six years. The handful of fellow-seekers he had been traveling with had even abandoned him because they considered him a failure. Yet he emerged from that night a transformed being, walking and speaking with a dignity and presence that had a profound effect on countless people thereafter. And following that night he had a message that hundreds of millions of people have used to organize their lives during the 2500 years since that event.

The dangers

The danger those of us who have not had such a profound transformation must deal with is this: If we convince ourselves we can create our own reality without a total shift of identity, we will try to create the reality that our egos wish for. Even more dangerous, all the unconscious urges, ambitions, fears, and anxieties that have shaped and molded our lives up to this point will still be active and we will try to create the reality they crave. The only solution is a change of identity like those undergone by Jesus, the Buddha, and a few other exemplars such as Ramana Maharshi, Teresa of Avila, and Peace Pilgrim. Short of that, you and I will still be living under the influence of our egos and unconscious drives. In that place, our work is to come to truly know all the parts of ourselves as thoroughly as we can and gradually do the work to shift our identities to higher levels. But this is no small matter, and certainly not accomplished by the thinking mind alone, or simply by saying “I am not my ego” or “I create my own reality.”

If we come to believe those ideas before a total transformation has been accomplished, we will think our personal desires deserve to be fulfilled and we will have fallen into narcissistic nihilism. In this place, the ego thinks it deserves what it wants. And so do all other egos. Organizing in this place, we will be in a world where all egos are constantly competing with each other for the “good things” of life. But since lots of “good things”—like fame, power, money, and the most desirable partners—are limited in supply, our lives will be lived in a dog-eat-dog world. This kind of life always ends badly.

This is the reason that every person who is not completely awakened, or continuously one with the Divine, needs to be guided by a moral code. And it must be a moral code tied to one of those developed through the centuries by the great wisdom traditions, for if every ego felt free to create a moral code for itself, each of us would do it in a way so as to maximize our own advantage. The result? A totally nihilistic world, where each ego is trying to get what it wants any way it can.

Of course, some people claim they are being guided by their “higher self,” and perhaps a few are. But all too often this is just a rationalization for the ego to do whatever it wants. Few of us have truly learned to tell the difference between the voice of the higher self and that of the ego. It is not easy, for the ego is very clever at disguising itself as the voice of the higher self. Of utmost concern, the more a person has gotten in touch with the higher self, the greater the danger, for the ego learns the language of the higher self and becomes skillful at presenting its desires in that voice.

Thus, to truly be able to participate in the creation of reality, you must first come to know at a profound level who you really are, beyond the ego, and then you must turn control of your life over to that which is beyond the ego. Only after these steps can you, the deeper you, participate in the creation of the larger reality of which you are an inseparable part. Only then do you realize that your personal urges, ambitions, fears, and desires were organized to fulfill ego desires and unconscious drives. Until you know this fully and completely, trying to create your own reality is an attempt to manipulate shadows. The world is not real in the way the ego imagines, so the ego will never succeed in creating its world.

To escape this trap, the ego must understand and accept that existence is not organized to fulfill ego wishes and desires. The ego must accept this fact if the real you is ever to cross the threshold and dwell there for any length of time. This is the meaning of the Third Zen Patriarch’s words in Verses on The Faith Mind:

The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

What, then, is Awakening?

With this preparation, I can now try to say how I understand awakening, or becoming fully enlightened, or opening into Christ Consciousness, or living fully from Buddha-nature, or becoming One with the Divine, the Tao, or God, or any other words one might use for stepping into the Ultimate. Each of these phrases has come to mean for me a state in which the heart and mind are pure, free of all ego desires and unconscious cravings, having no remaining personal preferences. This does not mean there is no order to one’s life. The lives of the great saints and sages suggest that order at this level of being comes from living in harmony with the Unseen Order, living spontaneously from the promptings of the Source. A life so lived usually consists of time spent contemplating the mystery, being absorbed in bliss, serving others, and/or contributing to the good of the whole.

As for “the Ultimate,” the most I can say is that Ultimate Reality involves a sense of Being, a sense of Existence. Being is. It is the starting point. How did Being come to be? We do not know. It is a mystery to us. The two most solid things we have are a felt sense of Being and Consciousness of our existence. Behind that we cannot go with our thinking minds. Thus, the closest approach we can make to speaking about the Ultimate is to say that we are aware of Being, of Existing, and of having Consciousness. And, going one step further, these things do not seem personal to us alone, but are somehow shared with others.

Words fail miserably here. Thinking fails. Our thinking minds have not been able to understand Consciousness, Being, or Existence. These things are just there, at the beginning, whenever we start to think, and our concepts cannot satisfactorily explain them to us. We can only “Be” consciousness, “experience” existence. Words and concepts cannot take us further. We create concepts and words to point to these things, but this is the thinking mind attempting to create something substantial to hang on to. This is the thinking mind’s attempt to reify, make real, something that is ultimately a shimmering play of light and shadow.

Guidance from the Source

Let’s go back to the place where our personal stories begin. When we come into the world and begin to live a human life, it is not possible to organize a life in the world around a “shimmering play of light and shadow.” So, Reality is split apart, “torn asunder” to use a more Biblical phrase. We now have an everyday world, which our ego learns to navigate, and All That Is—to which the traditions apply various names, such as the Tao, Abba, emptiness, no-self, God, the Absolute, Yahweh and many more. The traditions also tell us that All That Is can give us guidance for our lives, and each tradition provides its own version of that guidance.

To move through this life in which we find ourselves, then, one way forward is simply to live according to the guidance of one of the traditions, using the names and guidelines that tradition prefers, asking no further questions. But in the modern world, as we encounter other names and traditions—with the proponents of each proclaiming they and only they have the right name—it is easy to get bogged down in trying to decide which name and tradition is correct.

William James, trying to avoid this confusion, called the Ultimate the Unseen Order. This phrase has the advantage of conveying one thing that is central to all traditions—that there is an underlying order in the universe that arose simultaneously with the arising of All That Is. Unless this were so, there would be no coherent universe, but only unrelenting chaos. James also emphasized that all the wisdom traditions say that the only way to a fulfilled life, the only way to experience the “supreme good,” is by “finding the right relationship” to the Unseen Order.

James made clear that the common thread in all the wisdom traditions, their shared view of life’s ultimate goal, is to come into harmony with the Unseen Order. The only way I know to accomplish this is to use the core guidance of the traditions, which all say:

1. Life has a meaning beyond personal desires and whims, and there is a higher Good that is not organized around fulfilling ego desires or unconscious drives.

2. Some values and moral guidelines are grounded in a Source that lies beyond personal preferences. This is the only escape from nihilism.

3. True fulfillment only comes from living in harmony with the Unseen Order.

Circling back to a problem I have addressed several times: All attempts to explain this guidance to ourselves or to each other must use words and concepts, thus all such attempts will be incomplete, only partially accurate, and will always be subject to differing interpretations. This means that every system of moral guidance, all values and meanings we are given will be problematic. Every interpretation is subject to human error, which makes it hard for anyone trying to live in the everyday world to know what is right or how to act. Further, the uncertainty created by this situation gives the ego great latitude to persuade each of us that the things our egos want is what the Unseen Order wants.

Sometimes I wonder if all the differences we argue about when discussing the Ultimate are differing projections by each of us onto the veil that hides the Mystery from us. It is quite possible that our ego minds create all the differences we think we see, as each person projects onto All That Is the image that his or her ego desires.

Maybe, then, the best way forward is to stop talking about these things, as the Buddha suggested, and just follow his rules for living. Or commit ourselves to following the words of Jesus, as passed down to us in the Sermon on the Mount. Or commit to another tradition or teacher. But which one? And whose interpretations? “Ay, there’s the rub,” to adapt Shakespeare’s wonderful phrase. There is always a “rub,” a complication, such as the fact that after the Buddha said we should not talk about these things, he talked about them numerous times, and gave moral imperatives and various rules for living that he said were non-negotiable—which can only mean that they were grounded in an Ultimate of some kind. Further, the Buddha clearly indicated that a person could not even start on the Way he was offering, or reap its fruits, without first committing to some of these moral precepts.

It seems clear that, if we are going to attempt to approach the Mystery and find a path into harmony with it, we must learn from those who have gone before us. No one can make the whole journey without help and guidance. But anyone who shares what they have learned must use words and concepts, so what they say will always be imprecise and subject to interpretation. Thickening the plot, it is usually the ego that does the interpreting. This is not a bad thing, as long as we understand the limitations of words and concepts. The path up the mountain requires that we follow directions from those who have gone before. Although this is necessary, we must always remember that all guidance will be imprecise, because it must be given in words and concepts.

At some point, climbing the mountain toward wisdom and understanding involves crossing a narrow, dangerous bridge. On one side lies a pit of traps set by misguided and power-seeking teachers and organizations, each using words and concepts to lure the naïve traveler off the bridge and into their grasp. Falling into their arms can feel relieving for a time, because it seems we are freed from the burden of making difficult decisions. And it can be valuable to use this side of the bridge as a place to rest for a while. But it is easy to be lulled to sleep, and never return to the journey.

Falling on the other side of the bridge carries us into snares of our own making, into ego wishes and unconscious wants that open into the abyss of narcissism. The siren song on this side is the ego convincing us that we can figure out the mysteries of the universe by ourselves. Falling in the direction of narcissism often feels good at first. It is like feeling weightless in a falling elevator; you feel you have broken free of the law of gravity.

But this is not true freedom; the elevator will eventually hit bottom with a crash. All wisdom teachings tell us that values and morals have been part of the fabric of the universe since its beginning. If we do not respect them, we will crash headlong into them at the bottom of the fall. With the crash we will discover that we have become prisoners of our own petty urges, slaves to endless desires for more—more of that which never brings true satisfaction. As D. H. Lawrence said:

“We are not free when we are doing just what we like … We are only free when we are doing what the deepest self likes. And there is getting down to the deepest self! It takes some diving.”

Because we have so many different motivations within us, motivations that conflict with each other, to try to follow all of them is a fool’s errand, doomed to failure. If we always follow only our personal urges and desires, trying to maximize our pleasures and minimize our pains, we will end up spiraling down toward greater frailty, increasing sickness, and finally into a meaningless old age and death.

The only way through is to find guidance, surrendering personal wishes and desires, and following the wisdom and discipline of an institution or teacher. It is impossible to find one’s way through the jungle of narcissism without this kind of help at points along the way.

Gradually, however, as we learn and grow, our sense of what we are doing will become stronger and we will feel increasing clarity about the right path for ourselves. As we gain wisdom and strength, we discover that we can, we must, increasingly find our own way. Guidance will still be valuable, but as our connection to the Mystery deepens we will be able to provide discipline from within ourselves, and our intuition will provide an increasing sense of the direction we must go.

As we continue up the mountain, we will feel our lives increasingly in harmony with the Unseen Order. There will, of course, be rough stretches. When they come, remember that all the great wisdom figures have said the journey is not easy, but that following the trail toward the Summit, the Source of the River of Existence, the Ultimate, is the only way to a fulfilled and complete life.

May you have a good week,

David

The sixth essay in The Ultimate Journey concerns the 4 highest levels of who we are.

Last week I explored the first 6 levels of our inner landscape, and hopefully made clear that these levels exist in every one of us, barring a severe dysfunction. The incredible diversity between people is explained by the fact that all these forces, currents, and levels mix together in endless ways. This is true whether a person is aware of them or not. If they are not within a person’s consciousness, they are in the unconscious, affecting that person’s life in multiple ways.

I also tried to convey that understanding the human psyche is incredibly complex, partly because all the parts of ourselves do not have clear boundaries between them; they do not fit into neat boxes. It is like trying to sort out the mix of sounds one hears on a busy street, or putting specific images and thoughts on the figures in a dream. In an attempt at understanding, we use names to designate the various parts of ourselves, but they are only rough pointers toward a world that is fluid, dynamic, constantly shifting and changing.

Increasing the difficulty of understanding, these various parts of ourselves do not function separately, but are constantly overlapping and influencing each other. The value of putting names on this inner landscape is to have a rough, though very imprecise, way of moving toward greater consciousness and awareness. The more we can do this, the more we will be able to bring all the currents together into a coherent life, one that is moving toward the possibilities we have consciously chosen—rather than being carried this way and that by forces about which we are not conscious. Accomplishing this was exactly what Socrates was urging us to do when he admonished each person to: “Know Thyself.”

An image I like is of the leader of a great choir working with the members, who at first are not singing in rhythm or harmony with each other, gradually bringing the many voices together into a beautiful song. In the same way, each of us has many different voices within, and the work of a lifetime is to find a way to bring all the parts of ourselves into harmony, working together toward a fulfilling life. We each have this capacity, no matter how we feel about ourselves right now.

The first 6 levels discussed last week are the voices that have been the focus of much of modern psychology, beginning with Freud, followed by Jung, Adler, and behaviorism, and then various branches of cognitive, humanistic, and self psychology. To understand the next 4 levels of who we are, however, it is necessary to turn to the wisdom traditions of the world. This turn starts with an understanding of the full self.

7. The Full Self: If the ego includes everything I am conscious of about myself, what shall we call the complete individual me, the “me” that includes the parts of which I am not yet conscious. For most of us, there is a lot within ourselves of which we are not conscious. Freud said that the unconscious is a territory much more vast than the small citadel encompassed by the conscious mind. Jung added that there is both a personal unconscious and a collective unconscious. The personal unconscious includes a person’s own individual repressed fears, buried anxieties, unacknowledged longings, unspoken hopes and dreams, unknown talents and abilities, and the disowned shadow.

My term for the ego plus the personal unconscious is the “full self.” Every culture has developed techniques for bringing unconscious elements into consciousness, and this has been the main thrust of many schools of western psychology for the last one hundred years.

In essence, your “full self” includes everything of which you are now conscious, along with all the unconscious personal desires, fears, images, values, beliefs, and thoughts. Psychological growth, in this model, involves developing a healthy ego and then incorporating more and more of your unconscious material into conscious awareness. As you do this, your healthy ego self will gradually move toward becoming one with your full self.

Some schools of western psychology stop here, but Carl Jung, in conjunction with much ancient wisdom, said the full self includes a connection to the “collective unconscious,” the name he used for currents of deeper knowing that are shared with others. Jung did not suggest he understood what this was very well, and no one to this day does either, but many people have experienced a shared deeper knowing that cannot be explained by any means we now understand.

One aspect of the collective unconscious Jung called the archetypes. An example of archetypes at work in animals is the way many have the ability to perform complicated tasks without being taught, or even seeing an example of an action. (Birds that have never had contact with their parents fly thousands of miles to the hereditary mating location of their species; other birds build complicated nests like those of the species without seeing an example, and many animals know how to raise their young by ancient species-wide methods even though they never experienced or saw it demonstrated themselves.) In just this way, Jung believed that each human can access an archetypal image of how to be a Nurturer, Mother, Boss, Warrior, King, Queen, Enlightened One, Lover, Submissive Subject, Dominant Partner, Caregiver, Artist, Tyrant, Healer, Peacemaker, Counselor, Spoiled Child, and on and on. Some Jungians have tried to explain the archetypes as being contained within the individual psyche. If this is the case, then the archetypes would be included in the full self that is contained within each person.

But there is another way to understand them: They can be seen as pure models for ways of being, similar to Plato’s Pure Forms, that exist in a shared field of awareness outside of, or transcendent to the individual. The existence of a shared field of awareness would explain many things that are today mysteries to us, such as the way flocks of migrating birds can act and move as one unit, as if they share one consciousness. This would also explain why people sometimes feel a crisis is happening to a loved one, even though there is no normal means of communication between them.

Other examples include the ability of people to move into synchronization without words, as often happens with soldiers on a mission, a sports team getting into sync, or jazz musicians playing together—the group coming into harmony while playing a song being composed as they play, each aware of the tone and timing of everyone else in the group without any recognizable means of communication we know. This ability includes dancers moving into rhythm with each other in a way that defies physical explanation, a couple sensing the thoughts and feelings of each other, and the incredible link that can sometimes exist between a parent and a child.

However archetypes arise, their presence is valuable. But they further complicate living a human life, for the many archetypes compete for our time and attention, and if they are not recognized and managed, one or more will take over one’s life. (Think of some of the world’s worst tyrants.) Thus, one important goal for each of us is to learn to use the energy of each archetype when it is needed and useful, but not to let ourselves be taken over and dominated by any of them—for therein lies madness.

To become conscious of our id energies and shadow elements, to manage the complexes and personas, and then use the archetypes in a contained and healthy way requires a strong, conscious ego. Many of these currents within are constantly pushing for attention and control, so the work of a healthy ego is to become increasingly conscious of all the voices, gradually expanding conscious awareness to include each and all—an ideal that is never completely reached by most of us. But it is a worthy aspiration.

     Where is the collective unconscious? As noted earlier, some argue that it is contained entirely within each individual, and some of Jung’s early writings can be interpreted in this way. There are countless problems with this interpretation, however, and Jung’s later writings strongly suggest a view more in line with that of Plato and many other wisdom figures. This broader view is that there is a shared field of awareness that exists beyond each individual. And this is the jumping off point for an exploration of the higher levels of the self, the ones that go beyond the theory that everything is contained in each person’s “skin-encapsulated” ego self.

8. The Witness: Several modern theories limit our identity to the ego and personal unconscious. For my part, I believe we include more, that there are several higher levels of identity into which we can move. The first of those levels emerges any time you are able to step back and observe yourself—are able to look at your life, your ego, and at other people without judgments, opinions, or defending a position. Haven’t you experienced this at times? It is the heart of mindfulness training. The one who is observing is not the ego self, but the witness; others call it the observer. It is the part of you that can rise beyond the ego, and even beyond all the unconscious material contained in the full self. This is to step into the level of yourself that can see the whole picture, including the ability to observe your own ego self.

Think of a time you were in a park, or on a trip, and did not know anyone. Perhaps you stopped and saw a family on a picnic, or an argument between two people you did not know, or a small crowd gathered around those playing checkers in a town square. You observe, appreciate the life unfolding before you, but do not feel caught up in any of the scenes in a personal way. You are simply an observer, a witness to all that is happening. Your ego self is not engaged in any of it, and no emotions are triggered in you.

For most of us, most of the time, every experience, everything we see or hear will trigger something in us, even if only vaguely. Most experiences bring back memories or excite hopes and dreams. But occasionally we have a moment when are just present with the scene in front of us and not caught by it in any way.

When this happens to me, I usually feel a tender warmth toward life, toward other people, or perhaps an animal I am observing. This experience is what I imagine brings the slight smile to the face of the Buddha as depicted in many statues of him. It is an expression of tenderness or compassion for those struggling with the issues of life, but detached from unease with praise or blame concerning oneself. It conveys an acceptance of life as it is, the good and the bad, the light and the dark. This captures the mood of the state the Buddha considered “deathless,” which is outside or beyond the individual body/mind we usually think of as who we are.

Related to this state, the remarkable thing I have discovered for myself is that I can practice moving toward this perspective at any moment. It is possible to learn to step into the place of the witness, become the observer of my own life, free from the fears, anxieties, ambitions, cravings, desires, and emotions that usually drive and govern who I am. And, any time I can step into this place, either by choice—or when it happens of its own accord—I have discovered the witness once again. Doing this can be very healing, and lead to much inner peace.

This witness or observing self has been recognized by all the wisdom traditions. In the Upanishadsof Hinduism, we find this passage:

Two birds, one of them mortal, the other immortal, live in the same tree.
The first pecks at the fruit, sweet or bitter;
the second looks on without eating.
Thus the personal self pecks at the fruit of this world,
bewildered by suffering, always hungry for more.

Thus, over two thousand years ago, whoever wrote this text recognized that there is a part of us that engages with the world, is caught up and absorbed in it, but that there is a second consciousness that can observe what is happening without being engaged.

The great German writer Goethe put it this way two hundred years ago:

Alas, two souls are living in my breast,
And one wants to separate itself from the other.
One holds fast to the world with earthy passion
And clings with twining tendrils:
The other lifts itself with forceful craving
To the very roof of heaven.

Many meditative practices are designed to bring forth the observer or witness. Learning to sit as the observer, we begin to notice that the mind has one thought after another and that this stream of multiple thoughts is often disorganized and confusing. But if we become proficient at observing this passing parade, we become less and less attached to its details. Our identity begins to shift from the one caught up in the action to the one who can observe everything without attachment. When this happens, we watch the parade as it passes by, with no scene compelling us to identify with it. This ability provides enormous freedom, as well as an incredibly broad perspective. As Henry David Thoreau captured this experience:

“By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good or bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the driftwood in the stream, or Indra in the sky looking down on it. I may be greatly affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand, I may not be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much more.”

Gradually, the more proficient we become at stepping into our observing self, the more the other parts of ourselves that had been unconscious are revealed. As we identify more and more with the bird that can watch without being caught up in the action, the parts of ourselves that had been unconscious drift into the view of the conscious observer. And, as these unconscious aspects appear to consciousness, we can see them more clearly for what they often are—fears, anxieties, desires, fantasies, enculturated beliefs, and embedded societal rules. Crucially, as this happens, we become less subject to their power. As we continue to shift our identity to the observer, we begin to let go of judging, which brings an exhilarating sense of freedom, as well as recognition that who we really are is more vast than anything we had glimpsed before.

The spiritual literature of the world is filled with reports of such experiences, and transpersonal psychology is increasingly exploring their importance for health and well-being. Arthur Deikman, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California in San Francisco, writes of the importance of the observing self for psychological growth and development. The observing self, as he defines it, is fundamentally different from any other conception of ourselves because it cannot be turned into an object. It can observe, but it cannot be observed. This means that it is “featureless” and “cannot be affected by the world any more than a mirror can be affected by the images it reflects.” He continues: “In the midst of the finite world” is an “I” that is quite “different from the world.”

“All else can be objectified, has limits and boundaries that can be described. All else is a segment of a world of fixed or relative dimensions. The observing self, however, is not like anything else we know.

The way I have come to understand this is that when I look out at the world, my mind organizes what is out there into images, creating an orderly pattern that makes sense to me from my point of view. Since the work of Immanuel Kant (in some ways the person most responsible for the pivot to modern philosophical thought), philosophy and science have begun to understand that the mind receives input through the senses from the “blooming, buzzing confusion” out there (William James’ phrase), and organizes it into a coherent pattern in our minds, so we will be able to function in the world.

But what we see is not what is out there. There is an almost limitless amount of information “out there,” so the mind selects and organizes bits of that information into concepts and patterns that make our lives manageable. (One scientist estimated that we are able to take in only one-half of one percent of all the information available to us in fairly busy circumstances.) Thus, to be able to function within this endless stream of data, we form images and concepts in our minds, and thus, when we interact with the world that we believe is “out there,” we are actually dealing with images and concepts put together in our own minds.

In other words, in order to function in the world I have to create a concept of the world “out there,” as well as a concept of a self that is acting and functioning in that world. I must create an image in my mind of myself functioning in a world—neither of which is what it seems. This means I must think of myself as an object. And this object I create in my mind is my ego self. If I pay close attention, though, I will discover that there is a part of me that can look at, can observe, both the “world out there” as well as “me”—the ego self my mind has created of who I am.

If, for a moment, I try to turn my attention around and observe who is looking, if I try to discover who is creating the concepts, I cannot find it. I can create another concept of myself, but that concept is not my direct experience; another concept is not a direct observation. My only immediate, direct experience is of simply being aware—of observing. I am aware of people, of things in the world, of feelings, images, plans, hopes, and fears within me. Each of these can be seen only because it has been made into an object in my awareness. But as hard as I try, I cannot observe the awareness itself. I cannot find who or what is observing. I can only recognize that, in some way, I “am” it.

To get a sense of this, close your eyes and turn your attention inward, toward the observer inside you that is looking out at the world. If you turn and look at the one who is looking, what do you see? Don’t get caught up in ideas and concepts about this “I.” Try to get behind these concepts to an immediate experience of what is there.

When I do this, I realize that my immediate experience is of an openness, a receptive space in which ideas, images, and concepts come and go, form and dissolve. When I think of an object or person, it becomes a part of my awareness. Then, when I think about or look at something else, that becomes part of my awareness. Whatever I focus on is included, soon to be replaced by the next idea, object, or person that comes into mind. In my direct experience, this awareness is not an object like the objects I am observing. And, although I can have the thought, can form a concept that “this awareness is in my brain,” I have absolutely no direct evidence for this. I have no evidence at all that the center of this awareness is in my physical brain.

You can shift your attention in many directions: toward the sky, a tiny insect, a specific part of your body. You can focus on emotions, ideas, or another person. You can focus on the past or the future. So your awareness is not limited by space or time. You can imagine being in any number of different places—the seashore, a mountain top, a space station looking down on Earth. When you form these images, your awareness is not limited to here, or now.

As an experiment, think about a discomfort in your body. Now, think about a powerful emotion you experienced recently. Now think of someone you love. Next, think of a movie you like. Now look out and focus on the furthest object you can see. When I do this, as I shift my awareness, each thing I focus on seems to be a part of my awareness. When I focus on any of these things, it becomes an “object” to me, but none are the awareness itself. And these objects are not directing my attention to themselves one after another. What is? Something in “me,” a mysterious “something” that opens toward the most fundamental part of who I am.

Once again, try to turn and look at who or what this is. If you can’t find it, try for a moment to describe it to yourself.

When I do this exercise, I can never find the observer, but I do sense that it is quite different from the way I normally think of myself. Although many wisdom traditions talk about the witness, they do not all describe it the same way. I think this is because it does not lend itself to conceptions. To compensate, each tradition has created different words and images to talk about it. But all these words are imperfect. In fact, this awareness will never fit into any conceptual box. It is like trying to observe light, which we cannot do. Space that appears dark is not free of light, but only of objects to reflect the light. We can only see objects which reflect light, and so we infer light’s existence because we see the objects. Awareness is something like that.

9. The Higher Self: Some spiritual traditions stop with the witness or observer, but one characteristic of someone completely centered in the observer is that there is no motivation to act. Life is just “as it is.” There is no motivation to change “what is”—it doesn’t feel like anything needs to be changed. From the point of view of the pure witness, why would you try to change the way things are? The witness simply sees life as it is, and “accepts what is.”

Importantly, there are times in our lives when this is the ideal response—such as times when we are being driven by unhealthy urges and fears. But if everyone were centered in witness consciousness all the time, human life would grind to a halt. There would be no motivation for anyone to act. And, if some people were centered in the witness and some were not, and those who were not started acting from unhealthy motivations causing bad outcomes—then the witness would simply “accept what is.” A person centered in witness consciousness would have no point of view from which to decide how things should be any different than the way they are.

If a person is totally in witness consciousness, from where would the motivation to help others arise? And who would they choose to help, the robber or the person being robbed? If I look out at the world from a place of complete calm, I can see countless people engaged in endless activities that are creating pain, sadness, even starvation and death. But it is endless—the endless flow of normal human life. This cannot be fixed. To do anything requires choosing a specific place to start, a particular problem to engage, specific people to focus on, a specific place to give one’s energy and attention. But from the point of view of the witness, there is no basis upon which to make such choices. Thus, through the ages, most spiritual traditions have suggested that who you are goes beyond the witness.

This you, beyond the witness, does not just observe what is, but sees the harmony beyond the chaos and can provide guidance as to what is truly meaningful—for you and for other people. This is the still small voice within, the voice of conscience that says, “Don’t do that, even though it is popular.” It is the voice that calls you to the hard task, the one that provides a sense of the values that are truly important for your life. How can you separate this higher self from the ego? It is complicated, and usually involves a lifetime’s work. But one clue given by Jung is that, if a feeling inside suggests acting in a way that seem like a “defeat for the ego,” this is a sign you are having an “encounter with the Self,” your Higher Self.

Trying to think about this aspect of ourselves is especially complicated, because it goes so far beyond the categories of the thinking mind. The Higher Self is completely beyond thoughts and concepts. If we try to capture it in words, it slips through our mental fingers—which is why it is so often approached through riddles, metaphors, and parables. This is also the reason that different wisdom traditions might seem to be talking about different things when trying to describe this level of our being—and their words can create more confusion than clarity. It is quite possible all the words and concepts of the different traditions point to the same thing. Or perhaps they don’t. How will we ever know, because those who have truly experienced the Higher Self and want to describe it to the rest of us must use language that is totally inadequate for the task.

Despite this difficulty, however, most wisdom traditions say there is “something” that exists beyond the ego, beyond the unconscious, and even beyond the witness. Crucially, they all tell us this is the most authentic, the deepest or highest Self. Hindus call it the Atman; Quakers speak of the Inner Light or Inner Teacher; Christians tell us about the soul; Jews speak of the spark of the Divine within; some modern teachers call it our “essence” or authentic self, and many Buddhists say we find the Buddha within or that we become one with Buddha-nature. The images of Buddhist compassion through the centuries come from those who have gone beyond simply “accepting what is” and are living from this level of being.

Most importantly, all the traditions agree that only by discovering and living from this level of ourselves will we ever come to know who we really are, and only by doing this will we have a chance to live a truly authentic and fulfilling life.

10. The Unitive Self: Here, at the tenth level, we reach what Jung believed to be the final stage of existence:

“This is the decisive question for man: Is he related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of life. Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interest upon futilities, and upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance. If we understand and feel that here in this life we have a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change. In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential we embody, and if we do not embody that, life is wasted.”

Jung did not think the goal of life was to disengage from the world, as some spiritual traditions suggest. Rather, he emphasized the importance of developing a healthy channel of communication between the ego and the Self in which the ego turns to the Higher Self for guidance. In so doing, we find the best way to relate to the Infinite, and the best way to implement the Self’s guidance into the living of our lives. In this model, the Higher Self is the link to the Unitive, the Numinous dimension, the Infinite. In Jung’s view, the goal of “individuation” is to become a whole human being, not someone cut off from human life. To become whole is not easy, of course, for it requires making the darkness in oneself conscious, getting to know all sides of oneself, forming a connection to the Higher Self—which connects us to the Infinite, and then integrating everything in a healthy way.

On this path you do not disown any part of yourself, since you can never truly get rid of any of the levels that are part of you. In fact, if you consciously—or unconsciously—reject or despise any part of yourself you will just drive those parts into your shadow, where they will wreak havoc on your life. If you haven’t owned your shadow, haven’t recognized how your shadow side is affecting everything that is going on in you, you will blame negative outcomes on others, or on chance. On the other hand, if you get to know your shadow, you will be able to integrate the enormous energy contained therein in a healthy way, and be able to use it in living of your life. Through a fully developed conscious awareness you will gradually be able to bring all the parts of yourself into balance and harmony, learning to use all your energies appropriately—like a dancer moving in perfect harmony with all the currents within and without.

In the three higher realms, the Witness, the Higher Self, and the Unitive Self, all the distinctions I am making with words ultimately fail, for these levels overlap and interact. But we can catch a glimpse of the whole. As Dante said at the end of the Paradisio:

Mine were not the wings for such a flight.
Yet, as I wished, the truth I wished for came
Cleaving my mind in a great flash of light.

Because he is a human being, Dante does not have the “wings,” the ability (metaphorically speaking) to fly into the highest realm. Yet his aspiration to catch a glimpse of the highest truth is so strong that his devout wish is fulfilled—not as a thought or concept, but by a vision that cleaved his mind “in a great flash of light.”

Like Dante, many of us on the ultimate journey long to catch a glimpse of the highest truth for ourselves. And, like Dante, sometimes our fervent wish bear’s fruit. But when it does, if we try to explain it afterward, it is crucial to keep in mind that the words we use to describe what we have seen are not “IT,” do not capture it, and never will. As T.S. Eliot said:

Words strain, crack, and sometimes break,
Under the burden,
Under the tension,
slip, slide, perish,
Decay with the impression, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.

Our words cannot pin “It” down because our thinking minds, and the words and concepts that thinking minds use, are part of ego consciousness, and that consciousness always experiences itself as separate from the whole. In contrast, when experiencing the highest dimensions there is no such separation. Mystics of all traditions have confirmed over and over that when immersed in the highest dimensions one’s identity is not separate from others, or from nature, or from the Divine. One anonymous Christian mystic called it the “Cloud of Unknowing.” Experiencing this for oneself means becoming one with the Tao, waking up as the Buddha, or joining a chorus of Christian mystics singing, “My me is God” and “See! I am God; See! I am in all things; See! I do all things.”

The difference between the Higher Self and the Unitive Self is, therefore, hard to put into words. But to make an effort, when in the Higher Self, one still feels a separate self exists. It is beyond the ego and it is beyond the witness; this self sees how the whole fits together, but there is still an individual actor to which it is connected. When in the Higher Self, there is a perspective from which one looks at the whole, and in looking can see other unique selves who are also looking. In the Unitive state, however, what is experienced is that there is only One in the whole universe, and “That Art Thou,” as it is said in the Upanishads. In this place, there is no separate identity; who “you” are is One, and it includes “All That Is.”

The modern teacher Eckhart Tolle was trying to capture this when he said: “Can I sense my essential Beingness … my essential identity as consciousness itself?” Several centuries earlier, the Christian mystic Jacob Boehme said much the same thing after a profound glimpse. In his words, “The knower and the known are one.”

Stepping into this dimension—variously called the Numinous, the Tao, the Transcendent, the Infinite, God, the Divine, the Absolute, the Ultimate, Nirvana, the Great Spirit, Buddha-nature, Ein Sof, and Brahma—means moving beyond the observer and into the space captured by the Chinese poet Li Po:

The birds have vanished into the sky,
and now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.

In the tradition of Islam, it is to discover that, as Ibn al-Arabi, one of the greatest Sufi mystics and philosophers, said, “He who knows himself knows his Lord.”
Arriving at this place, one joins the 11th century Japanese poet Izumi Shikibu as she writes:

Watching the moon at dawn,
solitary, mid-sky,
I knew myself completely:
no part left out.

Many of these quotes baffle and intrigue, leaving me with a sense that there is much more to step into than I have been able to do fully up to the present. So they urge me on, urge me to continue the exploration of “Who am I,” until I eventually become the Ultimate that a few have been able to “Be.”

If you are on this journey, but are not yet fully established in the Unitive, do not be discouraged. There is never any reason to be discouraged—that is the ego talking. It is always the ego that wants to get somewhere else.

And don’t be concerned that many of the quotes I have shared are from long ago. Stepping into the Ultimate is an ever-present human capacity; it is a possibility for each life; it has existed always and will always exist. For contemporary confirmation, here is an account of a “normal” person like you and me. While on vacation in Cypress, Muz Murray was looking at the sea in the afterglow of sunset and suddenly, without warning, everything changed. In an instant, the world was new:

“I was shown that every cell had its own consciousness which was mine. And it seemed … that the whole of humanity was in the same condition: each ‘individual’ believing in his or her separate mind, but in reality still subject to a single controlling consciousness, that of Absolute Consciousness Itself.”

One more: C. G. Price, a farmer in England who was having financial difficulties and was trying to focus on nothing in particular except spreading straw for his livestock, said that suddenly:

“I seemed to be enveloped in a cocoon of golden light that actually felt warm, and which radiated a feeling of Love so intense that it was almost tangible. One felt that one could grasp handfuls of it, and fill one’s pockets. In this warm cocoon of golden light I sensed a presence which I could not actually see, but knew was there. My mind became crystal clear, and in an instant of time I suddenly knew, without any doubts, that I was part of a ‘Whole.’ Not an isolated part, but an integral part. I felt a sense of ‘One-ment.’ I knew that I belonged and that nothing could change that. The loss of my farm and livelihood didn’t matter any more. I was an important part of the ‘Wholeness’ of things, and transient ambitions were secondary.”

You can step into this place. As many mystics have said, it is closer than breath, than heartbeat. You cannot force it to happen, but you can open to the possibility. You can do that right now. For a moment, sitting in the experience of reading this essay, and the quotes shared within it, simply let yourself rest in awareness itself. Give yourself permission to just be “Beingness,” without thinking or doing anything. Don’t try to keep from having thoughts; just let yourself be consciousness itself. Do not try, just be for a moment, and let whatever happens happen, without judgment, without opinions, without preferences.

If you step into the Ultimate, will it last forever? What part of you is asking that question? Whoever it is, it clearly is not the you that is in the Ultimate. The Ultimate is timeless. And, if the Buddha is correct, it is deathless. Jesus said it is to be forever with Abba, “Father” in his native Aramaic tongue. And if Rumi is right, it is to be “one.”

I have thrown duality away like an old dishrag,
I see and know all times and worlds,
As one, one, always one.

Be well

David

All the essays in this series are being posted on my web site as they are written, at: A Meaningful Life  https://ameaningfullife.org

The fifth essay in The Ultimate Journey concerns the many parts of ourselves, the different layers that make up an individual identity.

The internal mechanics of the human mind are as complex as anything in the universe. Science has been investigating the mind for centuries, yet so much is not understood. One of the things that has eluded scientific explanation is consciousness—what it is, where it is, how it came to be.

The incredible complexity of individual consciousness defies mechanistic explanations; each is different, with layer upon layer of feelings, thoughts, wishes, memories, dreams, desires, fantasies, motivations. The chakra system developed in India is one way to think about this complexity, but many others have been developed through the centuries, including ancient ones within Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Confucianism, and Jewish thought. More recent models come from Jungian psychology, the enneagram, the Gurdjieff work, and Roberto Assagioli’s image of how the psyche works. All are valuable, and no single model is “best.”

One central question all these systems wrestle with is that of identity: “Who am I?” Each of us has numerous possibilities for how we will choose to think about who we are. And because our sense of identity shifts from moment to moment—and can change radically over a lifetime—a crucial question we each continually face is: What definition of who I am will I organize around now?

If you start to pay attention, you notice that shifts in identity usually happen at the unconscious level. But they can be made more conscious, and by doing this you will discover that growth and transformation are about developing the ability to consciously shift your identity from a smaller to a larger self, from an ego-centered outlook to an understanding that includes more, ultimately much more.

Working with identity, however, is difficult, partly because there are so many different ways I can think about who I am. One image I have found valuable is of a river into which many streams flow. Some streams come up from underground to join the river, others flow in from the surface. Rain and snow fall from overhead. In this river there are rapids and calm pools. Storms come and go, adding water to the river and sometimes agitating its surface. In this image, “I” am floating down the river of life, buffeted by every change of current. The whole river is the flow of existence, and in that flow, the little “me” floating along is trying to put together a coherent life. Occasionally, however, I have a sense that the river is also me, but this feeling is fleeting, and I don’t really understand what it means. Even more rarely, I sometimes have a sense that surrounding everything, interpenetrating it all, existing as All, is the Numinous, the Infinite. But words fail here.

For each of us, when we are young, the “small me” is mostly carried along by currents from the world around us as we try to fulfill the urges and desires that are constantly rising up from within (for food, safety, comfort, sex, power, and more). The main task of life, when we are young, is trying to balance influences from the culture over against the urges and desires coming up from within. According to a number of wisdom figures through the ages, the best way to do this is to make all the conflicting currents as conscious as possible in order to make good choices about how to spend one’s time and energy. If we do this reasonably well, we create a somewhat coherent ego self that has agency in the world.

The more we understand ourselves—the currents inside as well as the forces pushing and pulling from outside—the better we will be at making healthy choices and implementing them in the world. As we are able to do this with increasing skill, the better we are at steering our little ship toward a destination that seems truly valuable and important, rather than being carried this way and that by every passing current. The opposite is also the case: If we remain unconscious about the forces pushing and pulling from within and without, the more we are simply flotsam and jetsam bobbing along on the surface of the river of life without meaning or direction.

A Model: 10 Levels

When I was growing up, I came to understand myself through a model that was passed along from my culture by the people around me. It has been hard to disentangle from those views, often very difficult. Yet it has been exhilarating as well, as I accepted the challenge of separating my understanding of who I was from the early enculturation I was given. The result is a mixture of wisdom from my early years, letting go of misunderstandings and prejudices, and working to include wisdom from other cultures and traditions.

You will find below my current understanding of the levels of myself, developed over a lifetime. This model grows out of and borrows from many sources, but owes a special debt to the chakra tradition and to Carl Jung’s ideas. Interestingly, these two models seldom conflict—they just approach understanding who we are in different ways. In the model below there are 10 different levels of who I am. Thinking about myself in this way has helped me arrive at a deeper understanding and a more conscious life. May it do the same for you.

1. The undifferentiated self: A small child’s identity is not separate from the mother or from immediate caregivers; rather, it is merged and mingled with them, as well as with objects in the surrounding world. As we grow, however, a separate identity develops, but the young undifferentiated identity does not disappear—it is simply overlayed with self-images and identities that gradually push it into the background, into the unconscious. Since it is still present in the unconscious, however, the undifferentiated identity will reemerge in times of stress, group hysteria, or when the overlaid identities loosen for any reason (sleep deprivation, physical exhaustion, euphoria, mystical experiences, drug-induced moments, or mental illness).

Our first identity has its primary focus in the body, along with all the urges and desires centered there—first for food, comfort, safety, and security and then for sex and other pleasures (all these make up what Freud called the id drives). In our earliest years, therefore, you and I (along with everyone else) experienced these drives and desires as the center of who we were and what life was about.

2. The communal self: In many cultures, societal members are taught that the self should be identified with the group rather than with a separate individuality. Most ancient cultures placed greater emphasis on communal identity than does the modern world—and this is both a blessing and a curse. Each culture is different, and there have always been differences between how cultures molded the identities of their members, with some putting more emphasis on individuality, some on group identity. Those differences in emphasis remain today. Reporting on a study, Sharon Begley noted in Newsweek that when someone raised in a Chinese culture had the thought “mother,” the sense of “me” was activated, but not when a typical American thought about “mother.”

These differences are not all-or-nothing propositions, of course. At any given moment, each of us is somewhere on a sliding scale between oneness with a group and a feeling of individuality. Even in individualistic cultures, some people are more identified with the group than others, and in communal cultures, some lean more toward individualism than others (stories of members who were fiercely individualistic come down to us from the most communal cultures).

If, therefore, you were enculturated into a group identity, some individualism will inevitably find a way to manifest itself, for there is an urge toward individual fulfillment in everyone. If that urge is not given sufficient attention, it will burst forth in unconscious ways. For instance, those raised to identify with an extended family will act selflessly part of the time, but the individualistic urge, chafing at the bit, will push through at times and try to control the actions of others in the family “for their own good.” This is individuality asserting its power under the guise of group concern.

To add to the complexity of this picture, throughout our lives most of us will shift, sometimes toward greater individualism, then back toward increased communal identity, then back again to individualism. Freudian psychology deals extensively with these issues, and he defined the superego as the part of us that is enculturated to follow the rules of society. It is the internal voice that tells us to follow the rules of the group. Thus, when you are identified with this part of yourself, you think of yourself as the one who does what you are “supposed to do”—as the group understands it.

3. Personas: As we grow up, in order to fulfill the obligations we have been assigned, we each develop several roles we play within our culture, the faces we put on in day-to-day dealings with the people in our lives, roles such as rebel, good friend, athlete, life of the party, the adventurous one, the nerd, the outcast, beautiful person, the trend-setter, and on and on. As we get older, we continue developing personas, such as doctor, caregiver, housewife, teacher, sexual explorer, businessperson, and on and on. In our early years, we don’t consciously choose these roles; rather, the people in our lives tend to define them for us and we develop them with the encouragement of others (or sometimes in rebellion against the roles the people around us are trying to force on us). Most importantly, in our early years we think these roles constitute who we are.

Developing personas is not a bad thing; in fact, it is valuable and necessary. In Carl Jung’s view (who coined the modern usage of the term persona) they are crucial for many life situations. In the world, we all take on a role (boss, devoted employee, considerate relative, interested member of a group), developing a persona as a vehicle to create and maintain relationships. These roles are very useful. But some people spend their lives identifying with their personas, thinking these roles constitute all of who they are. (Think of a stern drill sergeant who carries that role home to his wife and kids, or a beauty queen who is always playing that role in all situations.) The difficulties of some famous people—several actors and politicians spring to mind—arise from the fact that they believe their personas constitute the totality of their identities.

There is, however, much more to each of us than our personas, and if we mature, we will gradually realize that the roles we play are not our full selves.

4. The complexes: Each of us has many different moods we can be in at different times, different emotional states that come and go. Most of us can be angry, fearful, playful, guilty, jealous, remorseful, insecure, confident, sad, and on and on. The thing we don’t usually notice is that we act and think quite differently when we are in each of these different states. Jung called these different internal points of view our complexes, and noted that each different complex sees the world and ourselves in a different way, sometimes very different.

As we move through life, we switch into one complex and then another, seeing ourselves and the world differently in each. For a taste of this, just remember a time when someone was late and you started becoming upset, feeling angry; perhaps you felt the other person did not value you. Suddenly, you receive a phone call and learn that person was in a car accident, and you move very rapidly into fear, or caretaking, or sadness. This switch can occur in an instant. So, which complex was the “real” you?

Different situations bring out our different moods, different complexes. Most of us organize around one of our complexes when at work, another during a romantic evening, and still others when playing sports, visiting parents, caring for children, traveling, or at a party. And to emphasize again, the way we think about ourselves and the world is different in each one. Think of the difference in how you feel about yourself when you are in a confident mood versus when you are feeling fearful; when you have just lost a contest, versus having won; when an invitation you extended is accepted versus rejected. Think of how other people seem different to you when you are angry versus when you are remorseful.

The way most of us go through life is that some outside event triggers one of our moods, and we believe for a moment that this is who we really are. (It is amazing how easy it is to identify with one current and then another, without remembering that just a few minutes before we saw ourselves differently.) Then, something else happens and we switch feeling states and the way we see the world changes. Most of us switch often, identified with first one and then another of our complexes. The more conscious we become, however, the more we will be able to recognize the different complexes and thus be able to choose the one that is appropriate for the current situation.

There is great freedom in being able to make such choices. It allows us to use our different moods wisely—which is much better than being taken over by one after another. Imagine what it would be like if you could instantly recognize when you were being pulled into your angry self, or guilty self, or insecure self—and could choose how much energy and attention to give each state rather than being taken over by one after another. Better still, what if you were able to use the energies of your various complexes intentionally by consciously choosing which one to be in. What if you learned to consciously combine several at once?

Complexes and personas overlap, but they are somewhat different. In broad terms, when in a complex, most of us identify so fully with that specific feeling or mood state that we lose any sense of separation from it—we think that is who we really are. On the other hand, when using a persona, with a little maturity we usually recognize that it is not our full identity; we remember that we are playing a role with others and they do not know all of who we are.

In this model I am building, the ego is everything we know and understand about ourselves. Thus, when we are caught up in a complex, in that moment that particular complex is who we think we are, so that complex and our ego self have merged in that moment. Think of a time you were so caught up in anger, or sexual desire, or fear that you forgot every other perspective. In such moments, there was no separation between your angry self, your sexual self, or your fearful self, and who you thought you were. You saw everything and everyone through the lens of that one current.

These are the moments in life you are likely to make the most serious mistakes. These are the times, when, a few minutes later, you are saying: “How could I have done that?” “How could I have said that?” The ability to raise such questions indicates you have moved back into a perspective that includes more than your anger, fear, or sexual desire. You now see that there are other points of view from which you could have chosen differently.

In this model, growth and development involve the ego becoming more and more aware of the various complexes within and strengthening the ego so that it cannot be pushed aside by any of your feeling or mood states. As your ego develops the strength and ability to make choices between the different currents within, sometimes you will choose to act from the energy of a complex, and sometimes not. As you become more conscious, the ego learns to stay present as the different complexes come and go, and you are able to make increasingly healthy choices that lead toward a balanced and coherent life.

To get a feel for this, every now and then stop and ask yourself which complex you are feeling most strongly at the moment. Are you angry, sad, confident, peaceful, or some other state? Consciously register to yourself the state you are in. Now ask: “Shall I try to shift my energy to a different state, a different mood, or shall I let this one remain the center of attention for now?” In this way, the ego can begin to play a more active role in managing your life, and you will begin to live from a broader perspective. This is the path to a healthy ego state. But first, it is important to recognize that we can have an unhealthy ego.

5. An unhealthy ego: This one little word, ego, has created an enormous amount of mischief. The word Freud used in German meant “I,” but it was given a fancy-sounding Latin name when translated into English, thus the simple pronoun “I” became the mysterious ego. The motives of the translator are unclear, but the translator’s audacity in changing Freud’s intent has given rise to great confusion and endless arguments.

There are many definitions for ego in the English language today, so let me give the one I prefer, which is also the one used by most mainstream psychologists: The ego is simply who I think I am as I go about living my life. It includes everything that comes to mind when I think of myself. In short, my ego is “me.” It is the “me” I think of as myself, my individual self, including all the thoughts, emotions, desires, values, responsibilities, abilities, body images, and memories of which I am conscious. (Of which I am conscious—that is the key phrase in defining ego.) My ego is simply my sense of who I think I am.

The ego can be healthy or unhealthy. Some people remain fairly undifferentiated, failing to develop much of an ego, thus remaining fused with other people and the world around them. They do not develop a clear sense of a separate self. Others develop an insecure ego, and still others a narcissistic one. For a narcissistic ego there is little or no concern for the needs and desires of others. It feels it is, and should be, the center of the universe, and that other people are objects to fulfill its desires.

Those who are wholly identified with the narcissistic ego (and most of us are at times), feel that the world should be organized for our enjoyment and fulfillment. The overwhelming sense is that everyone is out to get what they can for themselves, and everyone is in competition with every other person for the good things in life. For those organized in this place, the only restraints to action—if there are any—is fear of being punished, condemned, or blamed. Thus the need for rules and laws in all societies.

Make no mistake, however, extreme narcissists can be quite successful in the world. Skilled narcissists learn to manipulate others to get what they want, and can become very clever at seeming to follow the rules of society while surreptitiously breaking them. Some narcissists are good at getting others to focus on their wishes and desires (just notice how some celebrities are treated). Ironically, the narcissistic ego needs attention precisely because it is weak. It is always seeking more recognition, more praise, always wanting more of what it believes it needs. Trouble is, no matter how much it receives, it is never enough. Thus, the path to healing narcissism is for a person to get beyond their narcissistic wounds so they can feel truly good about themselves deep inside.

The difference between a healthy ego and a narcissistic one is that a healthy ego does not exclusively focus on itself but recognizes that others also have needs and desires and thus makes an effort to recognize the feelings and needs of others. A healthy ego recognizes that a big part of life involves being in good relationships with others and sees that it must take the feelings and needs of others into account. It therefore values mutuality and exchange. So, let us move to what a healthy ego looks like.

6. A healthy ego: As we develop consciousness of our inner self, first we become aware of the urges, needs, and desires in our first years, then those that developed on through puberty. These needs and desires are strong and urgent, and our early lives were mostly organized around fulfilling them as best we could. As consciousness continues to develop, we begin to sense that the roles we play are not who we really are, that beneath the surface is more than just the roles. We begin to develop a self that recognizes the personas are simply ways to interact with others. We are now developing a conscious ego self.

For example, you might behave in a friendly way toward someone at work but inside you realize you are seething with anger at that same person. In this situation, the ego knows you are angry, while the persona is the mask you are wearing as you act pleasant. The “you” that knows you are angry is ego awareness. Another example would be acting stern with a child to make a point, while inside you are feeling tenderness toward that same child.

With the emergence of ego awareness, the ego takes on the job of fulfilling our needs and desires. Using Freud’s terms, these urges and desires are our id energies, and the superego the part of us that has incorporated societal rules and tries to get us to obey them. These superego rules are the boundaries for our actions in relation to other people, the guardrails we feel we must stay within as we pursue our wants and needs. The ego mediates between the id and the superego as it tries to fulfill as many of our wants and desires as possible.

At this stage of development, then, your ego manages your life. It tries to balance all the internal currents and conflicts in relation to outer pressures and demands. To do this, it makes decisions and develops a course of action, while trying to get the id desires, the complexes, and the superego to go along with the unified plan. It operates by thinking things through and coming to conclusions about how it will use your time and energy: what it will commit to, the things it will decline, where it will place its attention, and the things it will try to turn your attention away from because they are not helpful for movement toward the overall goals.

When you reach this level of development, you recognize there are a lot of things you know about yourself that you are not sharing with others, with the result that people do not really know you. Therefore, to develop mental health, it is crucial to find a few people with whom you can share yourself more fully. This is a step toward a healthy ego, and if you don’t take it, you will never have true friends or loved ones and you will never receive honest feedback to use for growth.

As you are able to distinguish between your ego and your personas, and then become conscious of all the moods that sometimes take over your awareness, you are gradually able to drop a persona when it is no longer appropriate in a given situation (being stuck in the wrong persona is always a problem). And you are able to use the energy of a complex when it fits the situation, then put it aside when it does not. Your ego awareness becomes the manager of your life, bringing your personas and complexes into a well-functioning team. This is not easy, of course; it requires a lot of work to reach this level of self awareness.

Anyone who has tried to understand this process has discovered how amazingly complicated it is, as evidenced by the countless volumes that have been written trying to define and describe the internal mental system of a human being. To catch a glimpse of how mysterious and difficult understanding all this is, ask yourself: Where is my ego? How do I decide on what I will do and what I won’t do? Do I see the part of me that is formulating a plan of action? Do I always go along with the plan? If not, what part of me wants to go in a different direction?

These questions go on and on: When I wish for conflicting things—to eat a lot of sweet food but not gain weight, to watch a movie but also get some sleep, to attend two different events that are happening at the same time, to go on a date but also finish a project—how do I decide? How do I know when my ego is making decisions, versus an id urge, a complex, or the superego?

When I try to work through these questions, I realize that no part of this system can be seen clearly. It is all ephemeral, made up of vague concepts. Still, I have an intuitive sense that there is a part of me that is trying to organize my life, trying to fulfill as many goals and ambitions as possible in terms of career, relationships, health, adventure, romance, learning, and having fun. Amidst all these currents, there is some part of me that is trying to balance them all while also trying to manage my fears, anxieties, commitments and aversions—trying to navigate all the competing interests in my life as best it can. To me, that is my ego, but trying to get a handle on it intellectually is like trying to see an electron—I can only see the traces of its actions after they have occurred.

It is, of course, quite possible to use a different word to describe this part of ourselves. But it is not possible to live without some part of oneself fulfilling this function, prior to complete enlightenment or becoming totally merged with the Infinite. Thus, you have a functioning ego, whatever name you give it. What I recommend—since we seem to be stuck with it through broad usage—is that we all use ego in the way Freud, Jung, and many modern psychologists understand it.

This means, for me, that when I seek success, power, fame, prestige, or personal wealth, the pursuit is organized by my ego. These are some of life’s main motivations, and my ego has tried to balance and fulfill these goals much of my life. But also, when I try to be a good person, participate in a healthy relationship, help other people, or improve the world, these pursuits are also organized by my ego. In fact, when I pursue anything, it is my ego that organizes my life to be able to move in that direction. Even the desire for enlightenment, liberation, or to go to heaven is organized by the ego—which is the reason the Buddha said we must have the one “Great Desire” and Christians speak of “Holy Longing.” In short, the best word I know for the part of ourselves that tries to organize a life, balancing all the disparate currents, is the ego.

Crucially, in this model the ego is not bad; in fact, it is a totally necessary part of being human. I sometimes smile inside when someone says they want “to get rid of the ego,” because the only part of us that would have that thought is the ego. Just think about what that phrase actually means: “I want to get rid of I.” This is altogether different from asking: “Who am I?”

A few saints and sages have stepped into a field where there was no longer an ego present, but I have never read about any who did this by focusing on getting rid of the ego. Or talking about wanting to. It always grew out a profound moment that happened in a way that no one knows how to plan for, or make happen. I don’t think it was ever the ego that made such a thing happen. Thus, when a person says they want to get rid of the ego, it suggests an ego that thinks it will seem special to itself or others if it says it wants to get rid of itself.

In this model, the goal is to work toward developing a healthy ego instead of an unhealthy one, an ego that recognizes that other people are valuable and worthwhile. Then, as that work proceeds, it is learning to direct the ego toward goals that reflect higher possibilities and finding ways to open one’s identity to dimensions that are larger than the ego.

Once I have made sufficient progress on those steps, I might be ready to undertake the difficult work of beginning to let go of everything that keeps me from becoming my full self.

Next week: The 4 higher levels: 

7) The Full Self, 8) The Witness, 9) The Higher Self, 10) The Unitive Self

Be well

David

All the essays in this series are being posted on my web site as they are written, at: A Meaningful Life  https://ameaningfullife.org