Defending the Tram

In re David Brook’s new book, The Social Animal, the issue is not really about the conscious or the unconscious mind, and which predominates, but ultimately about the presence or the absence of a genuine agent who may be held responsible.

One reviewer (Will Wilkinson in Forbes) quotes Brooks summarizing the thrust of his book. It is “the relative importance of emotion over pure reason, social connection over individual choice, character over IQ, … and the idea that we have multiple selves over the idea that we have a single self.” These are supposed to be (and no doubt they are), the revolutionary discoveries of modern psychology and brain science.

I note here the incoherence of this characterization, so prevalent everywhere these days. If we have multiple selves, who has the emotions? How do we define the character (singular) of multiple selves (plural). I know, I know. We also speak about public opinion, as if it were something tangible, the national interest, as if there was a concrete something actually capable of having an interest. But now we find it projected backwards into the individual who, on close inspection, turns out to be a crowd.

If someone hired me to defend this characterization on rational grounds, I’d want to be paid in advance—because my chief argument would be, “Well, I don’t mean that precisely, but you know what I mean.” I would, in other words, appeal to a presumed understanding in my public that modern science denies the actual presence of a soul, an individual, an agency because science can’t decant it, hold the glass beaker up to the light, and then, pointing, say: “There it is! Can you see it? It’s swirling in there.”

The presumption here is that belief in an actual conscious person capable of genuine choice is a “traditional” belief, meaning old, pre-scientific. Also obsolete, hoary, dated, primitive. Therefore the discovery that we are a more or less cohering, continuous, but ever-changing phenomenon—but inhabited by a multiplicity of selves generated by the phenomenon—is “revolutionary.” But if we really are this phenomenon, then there isn’t really anyone there to notice that a discovery has been made. The “revolutionary” modern theory may be rendered as a street-car line in which the real objects are the power lines and the car that runs on rails. The passengers who come and go, our multiple selves, are not really what it’s all about. The revolutionary theory is about as easy to defend as this description of a streetcar line.

One Self or Many?

The notion of multiple souls in us is a familiar enough concept, although the number we use in the West is usually only two. There is that famous line by Goethe: Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust (Two souls, alas! reside within my breast). Okay, make that three. Freud had his ego, id, and superego. Jung had three for males and more (in a sense) for ladies. In the male there is the self, the self’s female side, the anima, and then the “shadow,” the chthonic, undeveloped soul. The same pattern holds for women, but the animus appears as multiple males, at least in dreams. The shadow in males is male, in females female. The numbers increase in a hurry.

And things get complicated. People say, “I’m of two minds about that.” Does that mean that there is one I with two minds, or two minds each with its own I but sharing one voice and both saying the same thing at the same time?

Sometimes in a milder form another word is used—personality. There are split personalities. This can take mild forms, thus quite different behavior in various habitual settings, at home, at work, visiting the parents. But in some cases it manifests as a formal mental disorder called dissociative identity disorder (DID). It is a real disease; when present, personality A does not even remember at all, or very clearly, what personality B knows, and vice versa; and the behaviors are very different. Does that mean that two or more souls or selves are present in all of us, but usually smoothly communicating? And that in severe cases of dissociation the communications break down or are simply cut off? The disorder is due to trauma in early childhood caused by severe and repetitive abuse. But does one self violently detach itself from a whole range of experience and develop an alternate mode of being, sometimes cycling back? Is one real identity present beneath the personalities? Or is the only substrate of these personalities a single body without consciousness at all? Case stories of DID suggest that one identity remains. Some may be read here, and they suggest that the “alter” is a rogue. Some describe themselves as passengers in their bodies rather than as drivers. Detached behavioral programs seem to run—and the reset key is stuck. But the frustrated person, staring at the screen, is separate. This suggests that personalities are tools, although in practice we identify with them so completely that we think that they are us—rather than structures we have formed and allow to run on automatic. And in cases of disorder, these programs become so automatic that they cannot be shut off, alas, can’t even be seen to be running.

Identification is a key word here. In Sufi circles the concept of multiple selves is used in two different ways. In one these refer to the soul at its various levels of development: commanding, accusing, inspired, and illumined. The Commanding Self is the unreformed natural product in which self-awareness is barely present and the individual is always “identified” with whatever is going on. It is also the conditioned self, just thoughtlessly executing its routines. The Accusing Self manifests higher awareness, hence it displays a conscience. It is accusing—itself; of heedlessness. In the next stage development has crystallized the self enough so that grace begins to flow (or to be perceived). In the last stage the person belongs to the Illuminati.

The second way of talking about multiple selves in Sufi circles is really a part of their methods of training. Here we sometimes hear or read that people have no self; they have selves; now this, now that. Emphasis is laid on this, and the disciple is invited to observe himself or herself. The automatic, reflexive, associative, reactive character of our behavior then becomes apparent. But apparent to whom? Why—to the actual self. So there is a self there after all. And to teach it to become aware of itself, it is told that it isn’t there. A teaching method. Therefore let’s not trot it out as a scientific observation. What is an observable fact is that most of the time in most of our actions, we follow routines. We’re not self-aware. We’re just behaviors. But to control those behaviors, we must develop consciousness. It is there, in potentiam, all the time. But not, as the medievals used to say, in actus. The “natural” behavior of the Commanding Self is purely reactive—however complex that reactive behavior is, and often (as I well know) it can be very complex. It is but one self, but it identifies with its own routines of behavior. It is a base case. The way is upward from there.

Modern psychologies that emphasize multiple selves but never speak of stages of development are simply incomplete. And they maintain this view because of underlying metaphysical assumptions, among which is the absence of an actual, real soul or self. Souls, selves, are mere epiphenomena that vanish into thin air as soon as the brain dies.

Re-Reading Life After Life

Reading again Raymond A. Moody’s Life After Life, I was struck, this time, by the quotations from near death experience (NDE) reports concerning the functioning of the spirit or self, particularly its modes of self-perception, communications, and “senses,” thus hearing and seeing. The quotations that deal with time perception or extra-dimensionality also struck me as new—but it has been several years since I’ve last read this book with the requisite concentration it deserves. The book tends to produce a certain amount of trance—the page-turning kind—in part because it was written for the widest possible audience, because the quotations from NDE reports follow each other rapidly, and because the commentary is minimal in order to be maximally accessible.

Moody is generally ignored (so far as I can tell) by the learned—with one notable and, for me, significant exception. Henry Corbin devotes a paragraph to the book in his Prelude to the second edition of Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth. Here is part of that paragraph:

All the more significant then has been the welcome given to a recent study which treats the “life after life” and presents the manifold testimonies of their actual experiences by people who, even though they had not crossed it never to return, had none the less really found themselves on the “threshold,” for their death had already been clinically confirmed. [Here Corbin footnotes Moody’s book.] There is no reason to be surprised that such a book should meet with a moving approval from some, testifying to a nostalgia which nothing has ever succeeded in snuffing out in the human heart. Equally there is no reason for surprise if the same book has been received with scepticism. Certainly, many traditional texts were quoted in connection with the testimonies reported in this book. But how many people knew them? In fact, some of these testimonies cannot be entertained let alone understood except on the condition of having at one’s immediate disposal an ontology of the mundus imaginalis and a metaphysic of the active Imagination as an organ inherent in the soul and regulated in its own right to the world of “subtle corporeity.”

Next to this paragraph I wrote in the margin, in amazement, “My God, I can hardly believe it!!” — Yes, but such are the consequences of writing for the general public rather than staying on the reservation.

Regarding Corbin’s references to imagination, I cannot deal with that in this post beyond saying that he saw the imagination not as an extension of humanity's sensory faculties but as a unique spiritual power, which he, following Paracelsus, called the true imagination rather than the ordinary fancy. Other entries on this blog under Corbin will provide the necessary context.

Reading Moody this time, what Corbin here labels “subtle corporeity” came sharply into focus, namely that selves “see” and “hear” with great acuity but cannot touch or grasp anything material, including living bodies. The hearing does not depend on air vibrations but seems due to thought perception; seeing is odd as well. Perception of the body varies; many perceive themselves as energetic structures, but experience these structures as somewhat extendable and with certain polarities, like up and down; others perceive actual bodies. While focused on this dimension people seem able to extend their attention out great distances and see, at those distances, from up close—while yet retaining a sense of having stayed in place. Reports of what selves see on that side of the Borderzone are complicated by the fact that the experiencers find themselves in an environment with more than three dimensions and a different experience of time. It takes them far less time to experience a great deal, interpreted as a more rapidly flowing time; experiences, like life reviews, while very detailed yet take no time at all. They struggle in expressing the experience in ordinary language the concepts of which are narrowly adapted to a three-dimensional existence and our kind of time.

I got to thinking how unfortunate it is that we are so tribal and clannish in all things, not least in the various arts and sciences. Moody is not viewed as providing extremely valuable data for serious examination for the simple reason that he preferred the more benign and welcoming attention of the general public to the hostile skepticism of those who claim a calling to study how reality works.

Permanence

An urge to contradict the flux of time is present in the soul. Monuments are outward expressions of this innate tendency. So is recording things. In effect it seems to be a marker of consciousness itself. Our sense of time is meaningless without our intuitive perception of genuine permanence. We can’t actually observe it in nature, but we feel it in ourselves as a permanent self. That self sometimes, rarely, becomes sharply distinguished from the flux of thought, and as we recall moments like that from childhood, we are aware that nothing has changed, not in that feeling, and this despite the flow of decades in between.

I clearly, sharply remember one of these moments as a child of seven in my grandmother’s back yard when, all alone and sure of it, I tried to imitate the fiery oration of a newly minted Nyilas (read Nazi) prime minister of Hungary—and in the process suddenly became equally sharply self-aware and stopped. I’d no idea what a Nazi was, by the way; I was just imitating the fervor I’d heard on the radio. That moment of solitary self-awareness left a very deep impression. I was suddenly present, somehow; and at that time I also remembered yet another such occasion when I had been four. And this, the permanent self, after that, became my odd point of permanence in light of which I’ve always tried to live. Not consciously, mind. The consciousness of this linkage developed as I grew wiser. But now I know that this permanence, this moment, is the fixed point from which anything and everything can be viewed with timeless equanimity.

Many people are dizzied, troubled by the concept of eternity, when trying to think about it. The reason for this, I assume, is that they think of it under the rubric of time, thus of change or motion—rather than the very opposite of change, namely permanence. And permanence is in another order, another dimension. Such permanence, if we are lucky, is always present in us if we but stop. That we can stop and experience it tells us that we’re strangers here.

Spotty, Lossy Self-Awareness

Consciousness fascinates me. Take for instance consciousness in dreams. We seem to be conscious, but we are not. We do and see things, but it is not the same as genuine awareness. Take half-awake or other passive states. Engrossed in a pleasing TV drama without ads or interruptions, we become identified with the action. Our surroundings almost completely disappear. When the drama ends, there is a sensation of awakening. I watch women shopping. Sometimes their faces reveal that they might as well be asleep. When their cell phone rings, their faces change dramatically; suddenly they’re human again. I can mow my lawn almost entirely in a state of trance, my mind repeating the same phrase over and over again. I’m active. I seem to be awake. Yet this is not what I’d call self-consciousness.

It seems that we have the potential to be genuinely conscious, thus self-conscious; and we frequently are. But all depending on our way of life, self-awareness may be much more enduring or much more paced out, as it were, arising only now and then. The phrase itself, self-consciousness, is ambiguous. In that state the self is conscious; we’re not conscious of the self as such. But when the self is not aware, where has it gone? It seems then to have been absorbed, captured, submerged in pure experience. It has disappeared. Some label this as identification. Self-awareness comes into being when the self separates itself from its experience. Then it stands aloof.

Only when the self detaches can it genuinely think and will. In all other situation—and these can be extraordinarily complex—habits and reflexes operate. Now it is worth noting that all child-raising and educational efforts of humanity are bent on awakening and training self-awareness. And its utility is undeniable. And, strictly speaking, it isn’t necessary for survival. The animal kingdom survives very well without it. The higher functions of the self point beyond biology. Living in bodies—and when we are self-conscious, we know that we’re not our bodies—we may be living in a prison (as Plato has Socrates say) or we may be in some stage of development. What is certain is that our conscious awareness is a lossy sort of power, very often absent. What we value is its presence. Our real lives are in the mental/spiritual dimension, even in this life. We eat in order to experience meanings; we don’t manipulate meanings in order to live. It is a struggle to separate the self from the fascinations of experience that can pull it into forgetting and a kind of waking sleep.

The Naming of the “Inward Parts”

In the traditional view of the human being, the person is the “inward parts.” This post concerns the naming of this most familiar but also most elusive something. Elusive, yes, but as a Sufi phrase would have it, “nearer to you than your jugular vein.” Nearer than the jugular vein because we’re not the body—although, to be sure, even at this fairly basic level views diverge even within the confines of traditional thought. In the tradition influenced by Aristotle the soul-body duality is of the essence of the human; in other indeed in most spiritual traditions the body is secondary, a vehicle, in relation to the soul it is as the garment is in relation to the body itself; at death we’re off, like a dirty shirt...

In my own language I always contrast traditional with modern, and by modern I mean materialistic, thus a view that denies any reality to what we might call a “detachable” soul. Yet the inward parts have their own designations even in the modern scheme of things—and, furthermore, not just using single words like ego, self, or personality but more complicated schemes. The Freudian comes to mind: Id, Superego, and Ego. Here the inward parts form a triad, reflecting the primitive child-like id, the sum of social conditionings called the superego (the parent within), and then the ideal Freudian ego which faces reality as it is, refuses to project any of its wishes upon it, and simply calls a spade a spade.

Now the world in which we find ourselves may be a “school” in which we are expected to develop; it may be a state of degradation into which we’ve fallen because of our collective sin (as in “the Fall”); it may also be a realm in which we find ourselves captured, seduced to enter it by rash curiosity; or it may be a temporary but necessary adaptation in response to cosmic events long since forgotten. Human cosmologies have all sorts of explanations, but these have certain elements in common and others that diverge. The divergent elements have to do with responsibility. The responsibility for being here may be ours. Or it may be caused by the failure or the arrangement of higher levels of being; and these may be superior and benevolent or inferior and rebellious. The elements that cosmologies agree on are that we must develop while we’re here, as persons not as collectives; we must develop either to escape this realm at all or, once freed from it by death, to reach the proper place “over there” rather than end up in a place much worse than this one. The development required of us is that of our inward parts. No amount of body-building or acquisition of wealth,  power, or mere knowledge will do us the least bit of good if our inner core, that permanent something, does not undergo a favorable change.

I find it interesting to contemplate the terminology used in different cultures to deal with this situation. In virtually all of them at least two states are recognized. One is the ordinary, unreformed, undeveloped self, the old Adam, the “mortal mind,” the unenlightened self. The other is the product of successful development. In Catholicism, minimally, this is the soul in a state of grace, thus purged of sin even if, before it reaches heaven it must still abide in purgatory for a while to burn away, manner of speaking, residual errors that in a Hindu system of belief would be called remaining karma. In Buddhism there are two states, the basic and as yet unreformed and the enlightened; once illumination has burned away all karma, liberation, and with it certain escape, has been achieved. No intermediate stages and ranks are stipulated, although the bodhisattva, equivalent to a high saint, is a person who, liberated, is still here or has returned to help others achieve escape. In the inner circles of spirituality, a hierarchy of development is always detectable. Thus we find in Catholicism a hierarchy of sinners, the virtuous, and the saints.

I’ve encountered the most extensive system of classification in Sufism. Here we learn of seven levels of developments. These are states of consciousness, or of souls. The word used is nafs, meaning breath or soul. Sufism unfolds a very sophisticated psychology that developed long before our own twentieth century forays into Freudian, Jungian, and other sophisticated psychologies. Seven, of course, is an arbitrary number we frequently encounter in these realms. I read that “seven” simply to mean a gradient from which seven points have been singled out for description. In this scheme we have the following selves or “breaths”:

Commanding
Accusing
Inspired
Serene
Fulfilled
Fulfilling
Purified and complete

Let me give some feel for the first three. The Commanding Self is the unreformed, ordinary self that develops naturally in society. It is what we’d call the ego or the personality, a structure of conditioned or acquired behaviors with only superficial consciousness. The Accusing Self is a soul that has developed enough to have a conscience; it is accusing—but accusing itself for failure and for heedlessness. It is the first level of actual development. All of these levels have their problems. In Catholicism, for instance, where soul-development is job one, this state of the self can sometimes slip into what is called a “scrupulous conscience,” which is a problem at this stage of development. The Inspired Self has developed sufficiently so that it is capable of perceiving the inflow of grace. The Accusing Self, having removed the barriers produced by this dimension sufficiently so that an inflow is possible, grace begins to work on the person and, as it participates in the development of the self, the self then ascends to even higher levels. Humble of necessity, I’ve never looked very far beyond the Accusing Self, but we do encounter instances of the higher levels in the flesh as well as in the lore.

Interesting, really, how systems of naming the inward parts develop—and how extensive the descriptions become when actual development proceeds beyond the first step or two. The absence of such concepts in ordinary discourse testifies to the general absence of interest in soul-development in the current culture. This then brings me to the “inspiration” for this posting. It was a program I heard on NPR’s Science Friday yesterday. There I learned that multi-tasking is not good for people. It causes the brain to focus rapidly on different tasks, and, in making these quick shifts, the brain experiences losses. Thinking of this as I was driving, I had to chuckle. Our culture’s problem is that it can’t even concentrate on one ordinary task at a time, I thought. And Job One, in this dimension, seems to be to concentrate with some real vigor on another world we cannot even see...

Still on the Subject: A Spark of Divinity

If I examine my own impressions, the self feels like a sovereign unity. This feeling arises when I attend to it, thus in quiet moments. In the midst of action I am the action; I’m attending to reality out there. In times of conflict, indecision, or in a vortex of emotion my self is submerged, carried along like a body in a raging flood. Such times are rare, to be sure. The feeling of unity returns in times of calm. I can also forcibly summon it up in the midst of action if I have to. It is also, generally, the state when I am in repose.

The characteristics of the self remain constant over the years so that, looking back, it seems to me that I felt exactly the same at age seven as I do today. My self doesn’t seem to age. My knowledge has grown, my experiences have multiplied—but I treat both as possessions, not as the self.

To define what the self actually is is best done using negatives. It’s not my body, not my thoughts. The same applies to my emotions, to my memories. Thoughts are constantly in motion, emotions come and go, memories can be lost, found, made. Body, thoughts, emotions, memories are all phenomena I think of as possessing or experiencing. I experience them as external to me. The self, by contrast, is a constant. I can at least imagine losing body, thoughts, emotions, and memories and yet still imagine being there. What I can’t imagine is nonexistence. The concept falls apart. How can I imagine if I am not there?

I also experience the self as seeing, grasping, attending, and as acting. Seeing and grasping signify a power of perception—be that intellectual or sensory. Attending and acting are functions of the will. I comprehend and act out of the self itself, but understand fully that other functionalities are present; they facilitate this activity. Information comes through the senses and by means of memory. My actions are expressed through the body; my decisions guide bodily actions and, even if they’re not outwardly expressed, I still store them away as memories of having decided something in such and such a context. Not that I do anything to store a memory. I don’t. The brain does that for me and automatically. Recovery of that memory will also take place automatically if stimulated by the right experiences.

This then is a brief and relatively complete presentation of the subjective and thus the introspective view of the self. I am neglecting certain aspects—dreaming, intuitions, and what are called paranormal experiences. Just the above suffices to show that the core of being—and it happens to be accessible—is something very strange indeed. In its bound form it is nothing. In its fragile body, seemingly vulnerable. In its essence, indestructible.

Thoughts are Free

Die Gedanken sind frei, wer kann sie erraten,
Sie fliegen vorbei wie nächtliche Schatten.
Kein Mensch kann sie wissen, kein Jäger erschießen
Mit Pulver und Blei, Die Gedanken sind frei!

Our thoughts they are free, and no one can guess them
They fly right on by like shades—you can’t catch them
No human can know them, no hunter shoot down,
No way José and nay! Our thoughts they are free.

The quotes is from a German song with the same title as this post; the free and somewhat Americanized translation is mine. The poem “freely” wandered into my thoughts in the context of the last posting on the sovereign will—because our thoughts symbolize our essential character, namely our absolute freedom. No—as embodied beings held in the thrall of matter we are bound and fettered in many ways, but the core that we are is not. And this poem, which has strong political undertones—it was, for instance, prohibited in Germany during the Nazi years—was evidently composed to signal the ultimate defiance of the free soul against all constraint.