4.      The Levels of Selfhood 

As without, so within - the basic premise of the traditional outlook (and of this book) is that man and the cosmos have a similar shape.

I. Body  (Terrestrial)

A. A body made of cells equipped with hundreds or thousands of molecules a million billion times finer than the most delicate cybernetic relays man can devise

B. Its apex the brain, the most highly organized three pounds of matter we know

II. Mind (Intermediate)

A. Brain is a part of the body, but mind and brain are not identical (brain breathes mind like lungs breathe air). Mind's existence is proved in three ways

1. Evidence from neurophysiologists:

a. There is no brain-spot which, if electrically stimulated, will induce patients to believe or to decide

b. Only the human brain is divided into two hemispheres - The left deals with logic, the right grasps intuitively and able to deal with transverbal super- terrestrial planes

2. The theoretical argument that no convincing materialistic explanation of mind has been forthcoming

3. The empirical argument that mind is a distinctive kind of entity, conforming to laws that differ in kind from those that matter exemplifies.  (parapsychology such as telepathy, clairvoyance, psycho kinesis)

B. We experience mind operating in four forms.

1. Waking, it causes us to view the world as if through a window rather than as a slide show presentation of our senses.

2. When we sleep - Research shows in dreams we are close to the center of life's vitalities.

3. Daydreams

4. The reports of life after death experiences and the subject of spiritualism is treacherous but not to be completely rejected.

III. Soul (Celestial)

A. The soul is sensed first in our discernment of our individuality.

1. The soul is the final locus of our individuality.

2. Mind is the stream of consciousness - soul is the source of this stream; it also witnesses the stream while never itself appearing within the stream.

3. It underlies all the changes through which an individual passes and thereby provides the sense in which these changes can be considered to be his.

4. We sense it in the sense of what it feels like to be oneself instead of anyone else who has ever lived.

B. The soul is sensed second in our discernment of our wants; we are creatures of wants.

1. Man seems always to be searching for an object that he could love, serve and adore wholeheartedly.

2. Our entire history - political, moral, legal socio-cultural, intellectual, economic and religious from earliest times to the present day is the record of that search.

3. The search is for the Good but because the soul is finite, it appears to the soul as if its fulfillment were to be found in finite things: wealth, fame, power, a loved one, whatever.

4. Some individual souls get no further than to love the finite things.

5. Some individual souls reach the point of focusing their love on the Good through worship of an anthropomorphic form of God, the creator of the finite things.

6. An exceptional type of soul can slough off his own image and know an infinite God otherwise than through a human prototype.  If an in-ways-humanized image serves as a bridge to a region beyond the limitations under which all images must labor, then praise God.

C. This exceptional type of soul completes its encounter with the infinite God in three steps.

1. First, the accent falls on the love the soul feels for God.

2. Second, the accent falls on God's love for man.

3. In the final step the soul relinquishes its individuality entirely, simply dissolving into the Godhead (Spirit).  The soul perceives that the love it directs toward God is none other than that which originated in God's love for it.

IV. Spirit (The Infinite)

A. If soul is the element in man that relates to God, Spirit is the element that is identical with Him - not with his personal mode, for on the celestial plane God and soul remain distinct, but with God's mode that is infinite.

B. It is that "something" in the soul that is uncreated and uncreatable.

C. Spirit is infinite, but man is finite because he is not Spirit only.  He is body, mind, and soul which veils the Spirit within him and prevents him from being omnipotent or omniscient and limits him from perfect goodness.

D. But his Spirit does give him vantage point from which he can see that his station requires the limitations his humanity imposes.

E. Man accepts that decree for his physical component; for his mind and soul as well, in their respective ways. Meanwhile his Spirit remains free, it being the sovereign that imposes the decree rather than the prisoner who submits to it.

D. The shifting of the ballast of man's self-recognition from servant to Sovereign proceeds by stages.

1. Almost invariably there is some point (in one's life) where selfhood is sensed to end and the not-self begin. We recognize we are the sum total of all that we do and all that happens to us, spread out (from our point of view) in time and space, but a single, timeless fact in the mind of God.

a. It can appear as a predominantly hostile world of alien objects and  circumstances that kick and buffet,

b. or as everlasting arms from whose embrace it is impossible to fall. 

2. One must come to the point where they are seen as the latter (the door of love); that is love of Being-as-a-whole or of the God who is its Lord before one can take the final step in self-abandonment and identify with one's surround.  Or, as stated above (at III. C. 3.): In the final step the soul relinquishes its individuality entirely, simply dissolving into the Godhead (Spirit).  The soul perceives that even the love it directs toward God is none other than that which originated in God's love for it.

 

 

[ Home ] [ Up ] [ Preface ] [ 1. The Way Things Are ] [ 2. Symbolism of Space: The Three-Dimensional Cross ] [ 3. The Levels of Reality ] [ 4. The Levels of Selfhood ] [ 5. The Place of Science ] [ 6. Hope, Yes; Progress, No ] [ 7. Epilogue ] [ Appendix: The Psychedelic Evidence ]