This is an essay I wrote for my Master's in Transformational Psychology at the UPRS. It examines the tangled hierarchy we consider ego consciousness.

“As above, so below” – Alchemical Principle

One of the main issues in philosophy is the principle of emergence. It asks the question as to how subjective consciousness could have arisen from a purely objective universe. One of the most satisfying answers to this question is the idea that consciousness exists “all the way down”, on all levels of reality, and that the subjective individual consciousness we experience is merely a self-referential system within this unified field of consciousness.

Metaphorically, one could speak of the “It” that wanted to know itself. Consciousness is in everything, but without an observer, “It” could not experience its own existence – similarly to how we can only measure force by its impact, or “see” ourselves in the mirror. Arthur Young elegantly described this process of the “It” coming to be and ultimately achieving a level whence it can know It-Self. His “Theory of Process” outlines the descent of spirit into matter in an evolutionary phase, a turning point, and an involution that returns matter back to spirit. Spirit manifests itself in a point, a line, three dimensions, at the turning point as matter with mass and volume, and then as plant life, animal life, and finally as human life. The latter having a self-referential system we refer to as our subjective consciousness. This subjective consciousness, the “I”, is required for the “It” to know itself. And for “It” to know itself, to know all the possible constellations of probabilities, “It” requires an observer, as the observer is the factor that co-creates reality through causing the collapse of probability waves all the way into physical manifestation.

How does “I”, the ego, come to be? The process of ego development can be viewed as the process of developing from spirit, through physical, to an intellectual self-referential system. When and how exactly in the process of human development ego came to be is as controversial as the question of consciousness itself. Terence McKenna e.g. suggests that the “I” was born as a result of our early ancestors consuming psychoactive substances such as the Psilocybin mushroom (Food for the Gods). In his view, ego development can be seen as a pathological development. Curiously, a similar view can be found in certain interpretations of esoteric traditions. “Sin” as a word stems from old German “sinte” and means separation. The ego separates itself from the source in order to materialize and develop itself. Without banishment from paradise, there is not return. Without going outside of ourselves, we cannot see our selves. But if we get caught in identifying ourselves with the ego rather than our true source, the results are desire, attachment, and subsequent suffering.

The concept of “I” appears to be something we are taught. Through our environment’s constant reference to our beings by name and as discrete entities, around the age of 5 years “I”, the ego, is being developed and the child begins to refer to itself as such (see Piaget’s theories of child development). Psychophysiological experiences further affirm our separateness from the world around us, be it pain, lack or scarcity. Throughout puberty and early adolescence this ego is further manifested, now broadened as a process of definition against a larger system of social norms and resulting dissonances. Being self-referential and self-conditioning systems, our ego identity is continuously affirmed. Consequently, by the time adulthood is reached, our identities consist of an array of fractured personae resulting largely from unconscious projections as learned responses to avoidance of negative experiences, or worse, the affirmation thereof.

Within the model we have looked at so far, there are two forces at play: a creative dynamic force that continues to strive toward the goal of reuniting with the source, and an attached, static force that tries to maintain what already exists. The one force realizes union: love is an understanding that all is connected and acting on that knowledge. The other force strives to uphold separation: fear as a visceral manifestation of the idea of separation and thus the possible threat to and attack of the ego. “I” is the identification with a subset of the whole: The stronger this identification, the “harder” the lines. This separation manifests on an energetic level, on conscious and unconscious psychological levels, as well as on subtle and gross physical levels.

During our early stages of evolutionary development, as our reptilian selves, we were largely governed by fear. The “I” had an instinctual awareness of self and thus began to protect it-self. This psychophysiological process of protecting can be found in humans if we consider a stress response (which is triggered by fear located in our “reptilian” brains): shallow breath (-> oxygen needed for cell production), tightened vessels (-> blood “feeds” muscles), and tightened muscles (-> toxins and deterioration). All of these represent a “shutting off”, a physical separation from the environment, and all of them bring about the decay of our bodies. Negative thoughts result in physical tensions. Our body, just as a photon with mass, is just one answer; our spirit, just as a wave of information, is another. Both are interrelated and affect each other.

One of the oldest spiritual systems known today, Yoga, described this interrelation in its philosophy and practice. Asanas, body positions for the gross physical body, pranayama, breathing techniques for the more subtle physical body, mandalas and meditation for the intellect, all aim at the same goal: union, the literal meaning of the word yoga and also the opposite of ego separation. Within Yoga, different energy centers throughout the body, so-called chakras, are identified, which in turn correspond both to psychological as well as physical areas of the human existence. Wilhelm Reich described similar areas of the body and their correspondence to emotions and thoughts. By manipulating either the body or the mind, reactions in the respective other could be measured.

“I” will return to the source. Union is inevitable as union is the true reality, and separation is really only a temporary, but persistent delusion. Two paths can lead “me” there: sickness, old age, and death is the one (encouraged by my existing character and body armor, and by a society that is driven by the concept of scarcity and competition and thus discourages healthy human expression of union such as collaboration and sexual intercourse). “Enlightenment”, understanding that I never left the source, that indeed I am the source, on the other.

Up to this day, my cumulative experiences have provided me with a sizeable ego. One path is for me to embrace this ego as who I am. If I attach myself to it, I consequently immediately live in fear of survival of my precious “I”, and with that in a world of scarcity with all the suffering that comes with that. Death then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy caused by continued “stress” and chronic character and body armor resulting in the decay of my body.

The other path is to work on becoming aware of all my fears, all my attachments, and to dissolve them until I truly and fully realize that I am all that is. At that point my ego, my “I” dissolves. Death is then simply the voluntary cessation of identification with only one particular subset of reality. Through a conscious process of individuation, through the breakdown of my multiple personae and finally my ego identity, through replacing all unconscious projections with conscious relationships I can change, and finally return to my true and full self.