Who is This 'I' ?

by Caty Green

The Theosophical Society in England
Insight magazine Spring 2007 vol. 48 # 1

Ms Caty Green has had a long career in theatre and in education, in the United States of America and France. She has been a member of The Theosophical Society in both the U S. A. and France and is a current member of the TS in England

Illustration: Narcissus, by Caravaggio, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome

THE RENEWING OF YOUR MIND

'Making all things new' is a terrifying prospect to the psyche. For better or worse-and all too often for the worse-we cling to the systems of thought and behaviour we developed in childhood, and to those we learned as very young adults. New ways of dealing with reality may be too threatening to contemplate, even when we understand intellectually that they are our only salvation.

They create deep within us the panic some psychiatrists refer to as being 'between trapezes', the moment of hanging suspended with no safety net when you have let go of the old trapeze, the old way of thinking and doing, but you do not yet have a grip on the new way. It seems as though anything - no matter how second-rate, how miserable, how wrong - is better than that terrifying new place empty of system, that unknown, that nothingness.

It is the time the mystic St John of the Cross wrote about in The Dark Night of the Cross, the time when you must press forward into nothingness with simple faith and a mere intellectual conviction. It is the true test of faith, not the 'I give my assent, I accept' kind of faith, but the bond of absolute trust in the goodness of the very nature of creation. This faith has substance so rich it can almost be felt in the hand. This is the 'evidence of things unseen', and only in its presence is spiritual progress possible, for spiritual progress is necessarily a solitary journey down that narrow path leading into a misty dark night which the world finds boring in its apparent emptiness.

It makes no sense to our family or friends, to our boss or our government, and certainly not to 'science', that catch-all word covering a host of virtues and a multitude of sins. It makes no sense to that part of ourselves which is someone else's family, or friend, or boss or employee. We want to do the right thing, to stand for and to act out what we have learned to be good and true. And we rely on the opinions and judgments of persons and institutions we respect to confirm our values and support our behaviour. When we veer from the wide way we must face the probable loss of that support and approval.

An anonymous source once wrote that "the counterformist gains in personal strength what she loses in confidence". Losing the affirmation of those around us, seeing the estrangement in their eyes, may well shake our self-confidence. But when we know that conforming would compromise us at the deepest level and inhibit our answer to the call to spiritual progress, then we have no choice. We flex the muscles of self-dependence and grow stronger.

What is that self in which we have or do not have confidence? It is a question with so many answers we wonder if there is any right answer at all. Struggling with the great questions as Jacob struggled with the Angel until it blessed him, we, too, can be blessed with spiritual growth. We can do some work which will indeed lead us a little distance down the narrow path. To get out of the prison of the intellect and onto the plane of noetic understanding-that is, beyond the limitations of our categorizing language brain - we have to accept the fuzzyyedged realm of intuition, of inspiration. We must tolerate ambiguity, and the frustration of only partially perceiving what we feel may be there. We are like those astrophysicists who postulate the existence of heavenly bodies they cannot yet perceive even with the best of existing instruments. Their sophisticated calculations tell them something is there, but its actual presence may not be confirmed for generations to come. So it is with the reality of the spiritual unseen.

What, in fact, is real? You touch the lunch counter or a kitchen table. It feels solid, 'real'. To us, that is the reality. Yet it is a mass of very rapidly moving particles. So which is the reality?

You have a child who grows to be a healthy youngster, and eventually to a healthy adult. Where did the child go? The body of the child did not die. But she does not exist any more. The material of her very real physical being gradually transformed itself into something else.

No cell of your present body was there seven years ago. The body has cast off all its old cells and replaced them with brand new ones. So, given that no part of our body, brain included, is more than seven years old, why must we age? The rules are hidden from our conscious mind.

Where then does reality lie? It lies in the underlying principle. The principles do not change. The game may change, even the rules may change, but the principles do not. The principle of justice exists independent of any personal act of justice or injustice, of any talk or writing about it, of any civil law. The actions, the talk, the writing, the laws, may embody the principle or be based upon it, may denigrate it or flout it, but these are only instances of the principle, not the principle itself. The principle, although it exists within the instance, cannot be confined to it, for the principle is eternal and infinite, not material. It can only be exemplified in time-space, not contained by it. The principle is permanent, real.

The instance existing in time-space, no matter how enduring, is not eternal. The reality of the instance, including time-space itself, is impermanent. Is a physical object, such as a table, or an object of thought, such as a mathematical problem, more or less real than the principles upon which they are based? With all due respect to the immense importance we believe we have in the general scheme of things, it seems apparent that if we apply the criteria of permanence, then the principle is much more real than any of its instances, including us, for the principle is permanent, undying because never born. The principle is Is-ness.

I can hear your challenge: What about the tree crashing to the ground in the forest when no one is around to hear it? Is there sound, does sound exist if no one hears it? The answer is that the phenomenon of sound unquestionably exists. If no human is there to label it, this changes nothing of the reality of the instance. There is only the absence of human perception of the given instance and its relationship to the supreme and much abused human gift of language. The event, undefined in terms of human perception, is nonetheless an instance of a principle, real in those terms. Man is the measure of all he experiences. What he does not experience is measured in other terms.

We can measure indirectly the radiation in what appears to us to be empty space, waves of a variety of shapes and qualities. We know that what is not perceptible to us is nevertheless there. Our impersonal, non-sensory methods assure us that what does not appear to be, in fact, is. The superior capacities of other species in a variety of areas may point to the reality of their superior ability to respond directly to principles and transform them into instance without the tool of language as interface.

Civilizations sit lightly on the face of the earth and can be wiped out with astonishing swiftness. Their thought and intellectual accomplishments and creative works can go up in smoke as easily as did the library at Alexandria. We are presently, at the opening of the third millennium after Jesus Christ, witnessing the wrecking of Western societies. We watch the decline and fall of the American dream that each individual can live in peace and in freedom in a harmonious society. We see the threat to the future hope of a new flowering of European civilization as generations drink in the backwash of totalitarian capitalism.

Can we accept that nothing will remain of what went before, that nothing will remain of the world our ancestors left in our care? Can we say that nothing matters, that everything we do or try to do is meaningless in the long perspective of the history of this little planet? Well, if we are judging in material terms, in human terms, yes. If we believe that our work matters for its own sake, or for the sake of its immediate and apparent beneficiaries, or for the sake of self-satisfaction or of doing our duty, and so on, then yes, we must admit that it is ultimately insignificant.

If we say we are doing it for God, we must face the fact that no God worthy of the name needs our help. And if we have no sense of the divine at all, oh, how lonely and terrifYing it is to feel that eternity cares not for us, that there is not left to us even the great, loving, all-knowing, all-wise Father in Heaven of our infantile hopes, who is going to make it all come out all right. The loss of a personal God is shattering to the personal ego, that self which defines itself as a good human being capable of love and kindness, honour and goodness, meriting a heavenly reward which will replace our pain with joy, our anguish with satisfaction, our ignorance with full understanding.

Abandoning childish illusions, sophomoric cynicism, into the narrow dark path, on and on, breathing only the Name of God, the dis-illusioned struggle on with the Angel of Enlightenment, knowing that the blessing will come because that is the ultimate Divine Law - that is the Principle underlying all that is, and our task is to dance out that struggle with our partner-self.

For we seem to be two. 'I talk to my self; I held my self back, I made my self do it, I heard my self say, I must discipline my self ... ' Who is that self? Who is the 'I'? Who are these two inhabitants of my animal nature?

The human is like Janus, two-faced, a subtle energy field of enormous power, with one face gazing out on the world and the other face seemingly half asleep, drowsily giving directions perceptible from time to time. The subtle energy field is of the same substance as noetic knowledge and is itself the divine ground of Being, the field of God. The sleepy face of the subconscious is in fact busy running things and does not have much time for conversation. It is the interface to the energy field wherein lies the Principle in its infinite aspects. Following the narrow path into its great mystery leads to the heart of the Principle. It is our way home.

The face we know best is the one focused on the world. Remember the story of the great guru a certain seeker found at last in a high mountain cave: the seeker fell at the guru's feet and begged for wisdom, and at length the guru spoke, but one word only: "Attention." "Yes", mused the seeker, and meditated upon that. After the long meditation, he wanted more, an explanation. "Speak again, wise Master", he pleaded. After a silence, the guru said: "Attention. Attention." The seeker had traveled a long distance through many perils and much suffering. He tried to be patient, but finally asked, "What does it mean, honoured one?" "Attention", the sage replied, "means attention."

We will never know if that weary seeker went back down the mountain frustrated or enlightened: turning from intellectual exercise to deep listening requires profound submission and most often takes years of work to achieve.

The renewing of your mind is literally a tectonic revolution. It is a shift in the focus of the most basic attention. That running stream of language just behind your eyes must be allowed to babble on without you, if it will, for you want to follow that narrow path where your 'other' self holds out a patient hand of welcome. You want to turn your attention away from the world. This is not an intellectual act during which we think about higher matters for a while.

That is still of the world, for when your intellect is dealing with the higher matters they are no longer higher. They are still part of the stream of language, higher only in relation to the whole mass of what is on your mind, to the general current of banalities.

Attention to the field of God, to the narrow and clouded path leading to the Divine Source of all that is, requires us to be absent to the instances and present to the Principle. Turning away from the multitude of instances, we face what seems like a great emptiness. We have no skills that can be used there. If we are determined to make the divine connection, we hang suspended over a great void, reaching for the next trapeze we feel sure is out there somewhere in the mist. Or we hang there for brief seconds amazed at our possibilities, then quickly grab the old trapeze, saying "Not yet ... some day ... not yet ... "

We will have an infinite number of opportunities to practice for the great leap. Perhaps, this time, it is enough just to know that it is there and that we are invited to try.

SO WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?

'Putting off the old man' in Biblical terms is that act of letting go, once and for all, of the old trapeze, and consenting to the renewing of your mind, the shifting of the basis of self- perception.

Spiritual development is what we are here for. It is what the exercise of incarnation is all about. To quote George C. Fraser of the US National Bar Association:

"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; We are spiritual beings having a human experience."

We incarnate in order to elect grace, to choose to know God. This is to say, we, spiritual beings, incarnate - or, focus our energies into the pinpoint of a human consciousness - in order to have the opportunity to expand the pinpoint to infinity; that is, to know God. The condition of our humanity is the tool of our task.

We have to deal with personality conflicts, with family disorders, with our sexuality, with trauma and tragedy, often with harsh economic realities, with our own failings and inadequacies and agonizing disappointments, and with emotions sometimes beyond our ability to govern successfully. In the process, we can, if we know about it and are working at it, get wisdom and understanding.

On the foundation of wisdom and understanding, we may move beyond to spiritual growth. For spiritual growth does not flower in the arid soil of escape from the responsibility for our personal human development. Prayer petitioning a fatherly God to take away all our problems and difficulties is a prayer of ignorance. The difficulties are gifts. They are lumps of raw clay, mud thrown at us by life. With them we may create the building blocks of patience, of kindness, of true humility, of gentleness, of forgiveness, of self-respect, of strength and of the will to lose everything unlike divinity. With those blocks, we commence the structuring of the temple of the spirit of holiness, the instrument of divine service we may become. And so we pray for strength and for clarity, we pray to learn what we need to learn from each experience, to struggle like Jacob with the Angel until we wring the full blessing out of adversity.

At the end of the cycle of such experiences, the perspective will have widened and we will be aware only of God, of the Principle, of the All That Is. The poet Alfred Lord Tennyson refers to "the one, far-off, divine event toward which the whole Creation moves." In the midst of that "one, far off, divine event", all instance, including the individualized consciousness, is seen pervaded by and unseparated from Principle. The pervasive and consuming reality of that event may come as curious news to our busy human consciousness, but in the very essence of the energy field of our own being; the place where consciousness flows to the Divine Source of all that is, we have, of course, known it all along.

The Theosophical Society 2007
reproduced from 'Insight' Spring 2007, The Journal of The Theosophical Society in England