S i l e n c e

 

We are concerned about the question: “Who am I?”

 

This is the central question of the human being, who contrary to the animal, plants and material objects, is blessed (or even punished) with a more or less developed consciousness of himself.

It is a question of identification: There is consciousness and there are formations on different levels of reality – wherever my consciousness is focused I am identified.

• ‘Western’ people of today are still mainly identified by their thinking –
  “I think, therefore I am” - according to the starting point of the Philosophy of Descartes. On this basis Scholastic Theology and superstition of the Middle Ages could be overcome; With this, the cornerstone for scientific research was laid.
• In the 90’s Damasio enlightened us concerning “Descarte’s mistake”; he proved scientifically that our thinking functions on the basis of feeling only. Accordingly it would be correct to say: “I think and feel, therefore I am.”

 

KBT (Concentrated Movement Therapy) takes us still deeper into our personality. It prompts us to let our consciousness sink into the feeling body; thereby it develops from the “body that I have” to the “body that I am”.

Our ‘I’ is the entity of our consciousness that integrates all of these levels: “I am my thoughts, my feelings and my body”. In addition the ‘I’ is connecting itself to the development in the course of the  life story and to the context of the social environment: “I was that child / I was that youngster / I was that young adult / I am the partner / I am the mother or the father” and so on. When all these levels and ingredients’ are well integrated, I can draw the conclusion: “That I am”, and maybe at the same time I am pointing towards the middle of my chest – not towards my forehead or towards my stomach (for a good reason as we will see).

Parts of our shadow, as well as parts of our personality, which we have not integrated in our ‘I’, can come into our awareness as neurotic or psychosomatic symptoms; we sense them to be strange, unwanted, a cause of suffering; we do not understand what for – we do not understand ourselves. These symptoms do (somehow) belong to us, but on the other hand (somehow) they don’t. They are ‘I’-dyston’, as it is called in professional circles.

The ‘I’ accounts for our personality; we know it more or less well and strive to understand and to unfold it more and more. In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs this corresponds with the need for self-discovery and self-realization. This we can only pursue when our basic needs have been satisfied sufficiently: our physiological needs, our need for security and belonging, our need for love and acknowledgement.

At the end of Maslow’s pyramid of needs stands the need for Self-Transcendence. It marks the transition from ‘I’-psychology to transpersonal psychology that sprang up in the 70s on the western coast of the States, but in Germany never really gained a foothold.

Here we are approaching a ‘limited horizon’ that Anke Dalhoff asked me to look beyond. Transpersonal Psychology deals with that which appears in our waking consciousness, when we go into silence - as at the beginning of our togetherness - when the flow of thoughts and feelings, the outer senses of our body and surroundings ebb away. Now it is not a matter of a further step in the development of our personality anymore – it is a matter of the well-known ‘quantum leap’ towards the infinite inner person that we are, towards the Divine within us.

On the physical level I experienced such a leap a few years ago in a high wire garden. Ten meters high, in the middle of a balance beam there was a gap that couldn’t possibly be bridged by one step; to get to the other side one had to jump. It wasn’t possible to keep one foot on the timber. This climbing construction was called “the decision” (and of course we were roped up for security reasons). At first my legs were shivering at being 10 meters high. Only when they had calmed down was I able to slowly walk up to the gap on the beam. Now the decision had to be made: to jump or not to jump? At this point it is possible also to simply let oneself be roped down, and one has then had the superb experience of having almost been floating on the beam high up in the air. In my case the jump simply happened. I heard myself calling out: “Stephan, I am jumping!” … and found myself sitting on the timber on the other side. Wow, what an experience! For weeks it was lingering on inside me.

I am sharing this experience to give you a taste of what ‘quantum leap’ means here and to assure you that it takes a decision: you can jump – you don’t have to jump!

My leap in consciousness did not occur in Transpersonal Psychology, but directly in spiritual studies and experiences. In my search I finally arrived at Sri Aurobindo, in whose main philosophical work “The Divine Life” I found satisfactory explanations that I could integrate and relate to all of my previous knowledge and my experiences.

Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy is a cosmology

• based in the depth of thousands of years of Indian wisdom,
• presented by a mind of rational logic that was trained in the West,
• further developed in an integral evolutionary way in the spirit of a time that also found representatives in Teilhard de Chardin and Jean Gebser.

Between 2006 and 2009, for 24 months I studied in various Southern and Northern Indian Ashrams, first in an autodidactic way and later at an online master study course of the Indira Gandhi University in New Delhi.

I also delved into the practice of Integral Yoga that was developed on the basis of his insights by Sri Aurobindo - together with his companion, Mirra Alfassa, a native French woman called “The Mother”. I am practicing Integral Yoga with various teachers in Auroville, the international, eco-spiritual city-community near Pondicherry, which was founded under the patronage of UNESCO by the Mother in 1968 to manifest the Oneness of Humanity on the basis of the One Divine Self.

What did I find out about the I, the Soul Being and the Self during these ten years of wandering and learning? What can I share with you about this?

First of all it needs to be noted that in general these terms are randomly used in the western world. It is not clear what they mean: ‘I’ and ‘Self’ are used as if they were synonyms, as if they meant the same – which they don’t! For example, this is the case when Stern refers in his research to the ‘selves’’ which the baby possesses or develops, but describes the beginnings and emergence of the ego personality. Stern wants to distant himself from the term ‘I’ of Freud’s theory of drives, which he finds inadequate for his observations. Maslow calls it “self-discovery” and “self-realization”, when the experience and expression of the individual ‘I’ is concerned. On the other hand the urge for ‘self-transcendence’ that we mentioned before is wanting to go beyond the ‘I’, leave it behind, to transcend it, to be able to experience and realise the Self. Western psychology is mainly an ‘I’ psychology and the resulting psychotherapy deals with healing and developing the ‘I’ of the outer personality that exists between conception, birth and death. The Self is eternal. It exists in time and space and beyond. Experiencing and realizing it are the theme of spiritual disciplines, which are mainly concerned with overcoming the ‘I’ to arrive at the Self. In Transpersonal Psychology there are different branches having their own understanding and development. But in Germany, in only a few clinics, people try to include the transcendence of the ego and the experience of the Self in their therapy. This is because it requires a concept that acknowledges the existence of the Divine in general and particularly within the human being – and this is delicate, as it evades the western approach to research.

The term “soul” denotes something different in each of the following cases: in the Greek word ‘psyche’, in the Christian faith and in psychology as a western science of the soul. To outline this in detail would go beyond the scope of this presentation. What all applications of this term have in common is that “soul” means the core within the human being. But this is considered in different contexts and located on different levels.

It requires the cosmology of Sri Aurobindo to see the realities behind these terms within an appropriate overall context that gives us clarification.

1. Diagram (the Absolute and Consciousness) open

This cosmology starts with the absolute, and reaches down into matter to be able to view all the elements that are facets of the ONE as an integral Oneness. The absolute exists beyond being or not being, beyond conscious existence and yet it bears, permeates and is all. A further statement concerning this is in principle impossible. The primary, omnipresent reality that emerges from the absolute is consciousness. It has two facets: conscious being (Satchidananda) and conscious non-being (Nirwana); a first duality can be experienced by enlightened ones such as Buddha and Sri Aurobindo. For us mentally bound human beings it is a question of polarity. These states are a paradox; they seem to exclude each other – and yet they are ONE in the absolute. In Buddhism nirvana is the conscious non-being, the goal of all efforts, as it does free the human being from the painful “wheel of rebirth”; the merging of the individual consciousness into nirvana is the ultimate exit from the suffering of existence. In Hinduism, human beings of all centuries turn towards doing research on conscious being, existence. This is the starting point and the goal of my consciousness journey.

If you would like to learn more about the Buddhist Nirvana you would have to ask someone else. Sri Aurobindo has experienced Nirvana, but has decided not to merge into it and to remain in conscious being, to experience and to explore it in spite of all the suffering that appears in human consciousness. I have made the same decision, and I follow Sri Aurobino; because if it was all about getting out and free, than all the suffering and development was for nothing! It must have been worth it for something in the end – and that it is, fortunately!

2. Diagram (higher and lower hemisphere of existence) open

So we are concerned with conscious being, with existence; and here we have to differentiate between a higher and a lower hemisphere. The higher hemisphere of existence is eternally unchanging being, transcendence beyond time and space. The lower hemisphere of existence is the manifestation in space and time, the everlasting change of being. In transcendence we find the One conscious BEING in three facets as

• pure unmoved consciousness (sat), experienced as the Self (Atman) by its impersonal side, recognized as Ishwara, the Divine Lord, in its personal being;
• active power of consciousness (chid), experienced in its impersonal side as nature, recognized in its personal appearance as Maha-Shakti, the Great Goddess,
• conscious blessedness (ananda) of the Oneness of Self and Nature, of Ishwara and Maha-Shakti.

(footnote: here we find a second and third duality, namely active and passive, personal and impersonal.)

So the True Self (Atman) is already here, in transcendence beyond time and space. It is pure, void, unmoved, conscious being. It is called Jivatman, when standing behind or above an individual human incarnation as witnessing consciousness. The True Soul is a ray of consciousness that emerges from ananda, the blessedness of Being One. Therefore it is pure smiling, joy, bliss. It enters the incarnation, its “Avatar”, the organism of the physical body, feelings and thoughts that we usually identify with. The soul absorbs the essence of the experiences of our lives and thereby becomes an individualized Soul Being. This is the persona that continues to exist after death that at a different time, at another location, re-incarnates in a new body, in a different personality. So newborn ones are indeed no “blank sheets”; on the contrary, they bring an individuality with them, as Stern realized while observing his babies without any further comment. In analogy to the DNA of our physical bodies, we could even speak of a “soul DNA”.

It is Nature or Maha-Shakti, the active power of consciousness that provides the outer organism, by leaving transcendence and moving towards manifestation into time and space. She is dedicated to the everlasting process of change: by gradually compressing, she is in the course of “Involution” – so called by Sri Aurobindo – developing worlds and beings of subtle matter. The involution fulfils itself in three basic steps: the manifestation of the mental, of life and of matter by increasing density and crudeness. When the point of utmost possible density was reached, the material, evolutionary universe was born by the Big Bang. Our outer personality, integrated by our I, is an infinitely small, but holistic particle of this. Our earth, the blue planet, is the evolutionary part of the universe – maybe only one of many, who knows? - in which matter, life and the mental are, one after the other, developed within a diversity of perishable forms that is beyond all description. Homo sapiens is insofar up till now the peak of this evolutionary process, as the human being beyond animal life anchors mental consciousness within the manifestation, and integrates all basic elements, matter, life and the mental inside himself. Moreover, within the individualised human being that has a soul, transcendental ‘being’ and manifested ‘becoming’ combine each other. Thereby, individuation on the highest level is taking place – it happens within the incarnated Soul-Being.

The absolute does now exist in three different “states of aggregation”: transcendent, cosmic and individual. To individuate the Divine is the second big task of the human being, the Homo sapiens that has a soul – and with this we are occupied at the moment.

This project goes beyond academic medicine as taught at the University and beyond conventional therapeutic research – it is trans-rational. It requires a quantum leap in consciousness, letting go of the terrain of sturdy facts. We do not need to fear this, as it does not imply a relapse into the infra-rational, where the gate to wild superstition would be opened anew as in the middle ages. We are “roped up”, safeguarded by our rational mind. It will keep us at the height of its consciousness. We will not fall any deeper. However, for us to be able to experience and integrate higher and subtler levels of consciousness our rational mind needs to open up, it may not deem itself to be the highest as it usually does in the western world, because it is characterized by rational science and its resultant technic. Ken Wilber and Sri Aurobindo agree on this point: on the rational level of consciousness, humankind has only reached “halftime in evolution”. Ahead of us lies the next step, the development of Homo sapiens into Homo Divinus – this means the realisation of the human being, who has integrated the Divine in himself. Inside us the Divine, the Soul and the Self were and are ever present, but they remain in the background. As they are so subtle they struggle to be noticeable and to gain a hearing. Our ego is so noisy and dominant that we almost don’t have any access to the Divine inside us, often so little that we are inclined to deny its existence altogether. But Goethe, the old master, sensed the soul inside himself and let us know:

“Quietly sensible, a God in our bosom speaks and shows us what needs to be taken up and what needs to be fled.”

The Divine inside us, Soul and Self, live in our chest: for this reason we point to our chest and not towards our head or stomach when we want to express with a gesture: “That’s me” or “That’s myself”.

Well – what is to be done?

After having the map of consciousness spread out before us and as we can now orientate ourselves, our journey starts. As always there are many roads to Rome (to the Homo Devinius that Jesus Christ already realised within himself 2000 years ago already) and on each of these paths we will be seeing something different, will be experiencing something different – if we want go get to Rome at all and not prefer to go to New York or Rio …. The path that opened up for me I called Field Dynamics. There will be a workshop for that which allows you to go deeper into this experience. I would like to describe it as follows:

By focusing consciousness on the feeling body, KBT gains access to knowledge and wisdom of the body and activates its creative potential to heal dysfunctional personality patterns. With Field Dynamics in a state of ‘breathing relaxation’, we go deeper into the level of cells and tissue, where, in the light of the accompanying consciousness, parts of the shadow will appear and give access to working on them.

• We are diving as deeply as possible into our outer personality.

 

While practising ‘breathing concentration’ on the spaces of the heart on the surface we find the “wishing-soul”, the emotionality of our outer personality, behind that our “Soul-Being” with its specific Biotope and at the very back we find the vastness of the Self, felt and illustrated in very individual ways in each case.

• We meet the inner person, the Divine inside us that is behind our ‘I-Avatar’.

We trust the dynamic of this field in between the subjective wisdom of the physical body and the Divine inside us. The integration of all our parts allows us to ripen to become a “Homo Divinus”.

• The evolutionary quantum leap happens to us.

 

I – Soul Being – Self

Understanding and experiencing

 

I thank you for your kind attention.

Namasté!