CHAPTER FIVE
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ESSENCE
N THE LAST CHAPTER we discussed the way of return to essence, to our being. We have discussed in particular a certain psychodynamic method, the Diamond Approach. This approach is based on the understanding of how essence is lost, as we described it in Chapter Three. We have discussed so far the most crucial aspect of this method, the process of the recovery and retrieval of the buried essence. This approach implies theoretically and demonstrates in practice that essence can never be totally, literally lost. What happens is that it gets buried, covered over by layers of the personality—essence becomes repressed, relegated to the unconscious. That is precisely why a psychodynamic approach can be effective. Psychodynamic methods are based on the topology of the mind, as Freud formulated it. They assume that part of the mind is conscious and another part, where conscious awareness does not penetrate, is unconscious.
On this matter we differ from Freud only in that we see that the unconscious includes in it the essence itself. Freud looked at the mind and concluded that parts of its tripartite structure—the id, ego, and superego—are buried in the unconscious. But like most Western depth psychologists, his understanding of the mind constrained him from going beneath the level of the chakra system. He stayed within the realm of the personality and its instinctual sources, which do not operate deeper than the chakra system. However, his topological and structural point of view is very useful for us, as we have already seen and as we will further see as we discuss the continuing development of essence. Since essence becomes repressed (as do affects, ideas, and fantasies), the job of retrieving essence becomes simple and obvious: to make the unconscious conscious. This will, however, alter the structure of the personality itself and will change its position in the overall economy of the human organism. This is because, as we discussed in Chapter Three, the structure of the personality is based in large part on the experience of the loss of essence. So when essence is unrepresssed and freed, it will change the personality structure.
AWARENESS
This simple dictum, to make the unconscious conscious, is the most fundamental, basic, and necessary aspect of the Diamond Approach and of all other genuine methods of the Work. The individual begins with consciousness and ends with consciousness—consciousness is simply expanded further and further. We must point out here that by consciousness we mean awareness, because the word consciousness is sometimes used to denote other concepts. Some authors, in fact, use the word consciousness to refer to essence.
Therefore, as in all systems of inner development, to apply the Diamond Approach, the individual cultivates awareness. The main method is to erase unconsciousness through psychodynamic techniques. However, even to start this process, the person must learn how to pay attention, how to be aware of inner and outer happenings. Awareness is needed to collect observations that can then be used for the psychodynamic understanding. Without awareness, the person will not know what thoughts go through his mind, what emotions fill his heart, or what sensations there are in his body. So there will be no impression, no material for understanding, if there is not enough awareness.
The ordinary person has awareness, but it is very restricted, confined, and selective. In awareness training, the individual learns to expand his awareness, to let it not be confined by his habitual and compulsive patterns. As awareness is freed more and more, the powers of observation expand, and the material for understanding becomes more available.
Awareness is necessary not just for collecting observations for the process of understanding but really for all aspects of the work of inner development. It is also, of course, necessary for everyday practical living. Awareness is a characteristic of life itself, of all living matter.
The cultivation of awareness is necessary also for its own sake. Ultimately, awareness itself is an aspect of essence, necessary in its own right, as a part of our very being. Awareness is a basic characteristic of all aspects of essence. Essence is spontaneously self-aware. However, awareness can exist on its own. In other words, an individual can experience himself as awareness, as just pure, naked awareness.
Awareness occupies a very special place among essential aspects. In a sense, inner development as a whole—the work on both personality and essence—can be seen as the freeing and the expansion of awareness. The reason behind this is that the most basic function of the personality is the reduction of awareness. In fact, the deepest aspect of the personality is a restriction of awareness. The ego identity, which normally is called the self, exists on the deepest level as a contraction of awareness, a restriction of consciousness. To say it more accurately, the ego identity (the I) as a structure is on the deepest level a hole of awareness, or a deficiency of awareness, because of the loss of intrinsic and basic awakeness. This is the deepest and most defended hole in the personality.
This deepest hole in the personality, around which its identity is structured, is the avoidance (the loss) of the awareness of death. More accurately, the personality does not understand death, and it avoids the perception of its possibility and its existence. It is terrified of death because it means its own annihilation. We are not referring here to the death of the body, although the personality cannot conceive of any other kind of death because of its identification with the body. We mean the experience of nonexistence, which is the absence of experience. But this nonexistence is the deepest nature of the personality, its very center.
The personality's fear and avoidance of death creates a gap (a hole) in awareness around which the personality is structured. This gap is the kernel of the unconscious. Unconsciousness develops as the personality develops and is structured around this hole. Unconsciousness is ultimately unconsciousness of death, which is necessitated by the lack of understanding of what death is.
So we can say that inner development is the expansion of awareness. Complete awareness is just that. It excludes nothing, not even the direct awareness of nonexistence (death). The Work is the expansion of awareness until the personality becomes aware of its most hidden secret, death. When this is revealed, there will be no fear in the personality; fears start dropping away. And then the deepest contraction and tension in the personality, which is the avoidance of the awareness of death, is loosened. This leads to the loosening of identification with the personality, because the identification is based on this deepest contraction within the personality. This in turn helps the essence to attain its true position as master.
This deepest secret in the unconscious of the personality, like the rest of its deep and repressed sectors, is so inaccessible to the ordinary consciousness and so defended against that it is practically impossible to reach. Relying solely on the direct cultivation of awareness is in most instances not sufficient to penetrate these deepest recesses of the mind. This is one reason the systems that work only on cultivating awareness turn out not to be so efficient in inner development.
Here we find one of the greatest uses of essence. Essence can penetrate to these deep, dark corners of the personality. Essence can go all the way because it is the deep. And because essence is intrinsically characterized by awareness, it can take our consciousness to these deep and normally inaccessible places of the unconscious and expose them to observation and understanding. This will in turn expose more holes, so that new and deeper aspects of essence are retrieved.
We see here a reciprocal process, in which understanding the personality brings out the essence, and then the essence brings out deeper layers of the personality and so on. This process continues, and awareness expands, until all of the personality is understood, all the way to the experience of its own death and nonexistence. In addition, all aspects of essence will be recognized and developed in the process. This naturally sets the ground for the spontaneous arising of the perception of enlightenment.
We see here a glimpse of the great assistance that essence provides for the work of freedom from the personality, the condition of enlightenment. We are stressing this point because much of Work literature makes it sound as if the Work is designed to accomplish freedom from personality and then the development of essence. Although this is possible, it is very unlikely and happens extremely rarely because of the complexity, depth, and subtlety of the personality. In this method, the Diamond Approach, there is no need to wait for the experience of ego death before one understands essence. A person can traverse the path by going through small “deaths,” which will bring out the aspects of essence, which will in turn lead to the final experience of ego death.
SENSITIVITY AND THE SUBTLE PERCEPTIONS
A major necessary part of awareness training is the sensitization of the body. The tendency toward insensitivity needed to support unconsciousness has to be reversed. Repression and the defenses of the ego are not just mental attitudes. They are, more than anything else, tensions and tension patterns in the body. These physical blocks and tensions are what keep emotions and ideas unconscious. This point was emphasized by Wilhelm Reich in his formulation of the concept of character armor and muscular armor. His main insight was that the defensive functions of the character are identical with muscular rigidities in the body: “In character-analytic practice, we discover the armor functioning in the form of a chronic, frozen, muscular-like bearing. First and foremost, the identity of these various functions stands out; they can be comprehended on the basis of one principle only, namely of the armoring of the periphery of the biopsychic system.”1
Emotions and feelings are primarily sensations, and these are sensations of the body. If the body is insensitive, there will be no awareness of these sensations and hence no awareness of feelings. This will preclude the possibility of understanding. So sensitization of the body is required via the dissolution of muscular armor and its tension patterns.
But the sensitization of the body is not just for the awareness of sensations and feelings. These are the first to be encountered by the expanding awareness. But the sensitivity, in time, needs to get deeper, and the perceptions need to get finer so that the organism can be aware of the subtler presence of essence itself. Essence is an embodied existence and will be experienced in the body, not somewhere else or abstractly.
When some authors write of the refinement of perception, there is more intended than to make the mind sharper and the body more feeling. By awakening the body and refining its sensitivity, the deeper and subtler capacities of perception are awakened and developed. These subtle capacities are organized by the subtle energetic centers, which are to be found in various locations in the body. And these subtle capacities for perception are needed for awareness of essential presence.
Essence, as we have seen, is a subtle substance that has physical characteristics. This means that in order to experience essence the physical organism has to become sensitive enough to perceive these physical characteristics, which are usually coexistent with the ordinary physical sensations. The physical characteristics of essential substance are very subtle, in the sense that they are quiet and silent compared to the sensations of the body and its feelings. Usually, they are drowned by the grosser sensations. They might be present, but because the person is attuned only to the grosser, more familiar physical sensations, he might not be aware of their presence. So his awareness will have to become refined enough to be sensitive to the subtler and finer sensations of essence.
The capacity to sense oneself must become so refined that the individual can discriminate between physical sensation and the sensation of essential substance. It is not enough that the mind be quiet. It is also necessary for the body to be sensitive. The mind can be quiet while the body is deadened. The body has to be awakened so that the center of sensing, the belly center, can be activated. The belly center, or what Gurdjieff called the physical center, is the center of sensing for all parts of the body. Its deepest function is the subtle sensing, the sensing of essential presence, that the Sufis call the organ for touch.
Touch is, in a sense, the most intimate of the physical senses. The skin must be directly against an object to touch it. There is no intermediary medium, like sound for hearing or light for seeing. So this subtle capacity is a very intimate one. Accurately speaking, it is sensing essence by being essence. It is the most direct way of perception. This capacity of touch, connected with the belly center, is very intimately connected with the embodiment of essence. It is the body center; its mode of perception is embodiment. Here, perception as touch, and being, are the same act. So this capacity is the most important one.
Also, touch gives us information about the physical characteristics of texture, density, temperature, viscosity, and the like. The term touch is used because, in fact, it is more accurate than the term sensing when it comes to essential experience. Sensing is used by the ordinary person to gain information about feelings and sensations. These usually do not have characteristics of texture, density, and viscosity. But essence does have these characteristics because it is a substance, although it is in a subtle dimension.
We can see very clearly that refinement of perception cannot be restricted to the mental. The mind, as we ordinarily understand it, cannot reach essence. The body must be sensitized so that the subtle organs of perception can be awakened.
Sensitizing the body will also awaken the capacity for taste, centered in the heart in the chest. “The heart (qalb) is the organ which produces true knowledge. . . . It is the organ of a perception which is both experience and intimate taste (dhowq).”2
This organ of perception (dhowq) is different and distinct from the organ of sensing, although it operates similarly to it. Just like the tongue, it can touch, and it also tastes in the same act of touching. It gives us information about the important physical characteristic of taste, needed for the appreciation of the essence and the fulfillment of the heart. The popular feeling that love is sweet is based on the essential aspect of love, which has a sweet taste. There are many kinds of love on the essential dimension, and each has its distinct sweetness. This capacity for inner taste is important also for appreciation and enjoyment, for discriminating and understanding the various kinds of love, and for the other essential aspects, which also have different kinds of tastes.
Speaking of the “flavor” of an idea, situation, or perception is probably based on the reality of inner taste. Essence literally has a flavor. When we refer to subtle perceptions of essence as taste, we are not only speaking metaphorically. The metaphor is valid, but the literal and actual reality exists as well.
The third major capacity for subtle perception is that of seeing, connected with the head center in the forehead. This capacity provides information about color and shape, so necessary for understanding essence, for discriminating the various aspects, and for the aesthetic appreciation of the beauty of essence.
The popular expression “I see,” meaning “I understand,” is probably rooted in the fact of this capacity for perception. Here seeing is tantamount to understanding. The capacity for subtle seeing can be developed to the point of being freed from limitations of space and time. One can see inside the body, can see the anatomical parts of the body, even the cells and the molecules; one can see the emotions, the subtle energies, the essence. One can see things at a distance or in other times.
There are other capacities for subtle perception, such as smelling and hearing, but here we are giving examples only for general illustration. Connecting these various capacities with different energetic centers does not mean that it is only in those locations that the capacities are exercised. In fact, such capacities can be exercised, when developed, at any location in the body; indeed, they overlap. Texture can be discriminated by taste, even by seeing, as can density and viscosity. This is also true for the physical senses. However, here the phenomenon points to a very deep truth, that of the unity of senses, or capacities of perception. At the deeper dimension of essence, the centers lose their importance. They are important only at the start, as points of orientation or origination. Later, we see that these capacities are part of the essence itself, that essence itself has the capacity for touch, taste, seeing, hearing, smelling, intuition, knowing, and so on. In other words, the essence is the organ of perception. On this level of realization, all of the capacities are one capacity. It is one act of essence. It is possible to say that essence is consciousness, pure consciousness.
A deep characteristic of essence is that the deeper the realization, the more unification there is in the experience. At some point, even the capacities for perception are unified. The essence is self-aware. It knows itself, intuits itself, sees itself, hears itself, smells itself, tastes itself, touches itself. But all this is in one act, one unified perception. Of course, there is no separation between subject and object in this self-awareness. Essence is itself the consciousness.
The discrimination between the capacities, which happens at a different level of experience, is, so to speak, a result of analysis of the one capacity, the one sensitivity. The body, with its subtle physiology, acts like a prism on the basic sensitivity. This analysis and discrimination is needed for specialization at other levels of functioning.
THE SEQUENCE OF DEVELOPMENT
As awareness expands and sensitivity deepens, the individual undergoes successive experiences and transformations that necessitate dealing with various sectors of the personality and the life situations connected to them. There is a general sequence of inner events that will transform the person. In the Diamond Approach, this sequence is not rigid, and students often do not follow it exactly. Since the Approach works with the personality, there are many variations in sequence because personality differs in character, type, rigidity, level of organization, and history, from one person to another. The point of beginning can differ, and the sequence itself can differ. This characteristic of the Approach has the advantage of being geared to individual needs and situations instead of being a technique that has to be applied to all, the same way, regardless of character or extent of development. Each student works specifically with the material he comes with: his own personality, his actual life, at the time he starts the journey. This contributes to efficiency and economy in time and energy. This characteristic of the Approach also guards it from becoming a mechanical device that can be applied without understanding. Mechanicalness robs any method of the life element and in time renders it useless.
Still, there is a general sequence of events and realizations that people generally follow spontaneously. There are primary and universal signposts. The variations exist within an overall pattern. This pattern is dictated by the basic general structure of personality. The work starts from the surface layers of the personality and moves deeper and deeper. The structure of the personality determines the sequence of inner experiences and transformations. Because most people have a similar general structure, the developmental work follows a general sequence.
Important deviations from this general sequence are connected to deviated structures of the personality—structural deficiencies or distortions. For instance, a strongly borderline structure will begin essential unfoldment with an aspect of essence that the normal structure will not experience until after a long term of development. So in our discussion of sequence we are referring mostly to the normal structure, a structure with a well-developed ego and a cohesive sense of self.
One way of seeing this sequence is through the structural model of the personality introduced first by Sigmund Freud. The structure of the personality, which he called the psychic apparatus, consists of three structural units, arranged hierarchically; namely, the id, ego, and superego.
The id forms the instinctual, mostly psychophysiological basis of the whole structure. The ego, which is mostly based on the id, is the part that comes in contact with the external world. It is formed by the process of contact with and adaptation to the environment, mostly the parents. The superego is a structure that forms the apex of the psychic structure and includes the ideals of the personality and the principles of judgment. It is the seat of what is customarily called the conscience. It develops mainly by internalizing and identifying with the prohibitions, rules, values, and preferences of the parents and society at large.
The sequence of development in the Diamond Approach follows the line of regression of this structure. The part last formed and organized, the superego, becomes the first part the individual deals with and understands. Then the ego becomes the focus, and finally the id itself with its instincts and drives.
As we have already stated, this is the sequence of development that usually occurs for the normal person or the mildly neurotic person. For the severely neurotic person or the individual with character disorders, such as the borderline syndromes, the narcissistic personality disorders, and the psychoses, there is generally no such sequence because in the severe pathologies, the structure of the personality itself is distorted and flawed.
This does not mean that people with severe pathologies are candidates for the work of inner development. They are not, except under very special circumstances. They are in need of something else: the development of a well-functioning structure. It is only theoretically possible at this point that the Diamond Approach be used for such people, using the presence of essence to develop a balanced and well-functioning structure. This possibility is still in the stage of investigation, and no definite conclusions can be drawn yet.
However, even neurotic and normal personalities have features similar to these severe pathologies. Sometimes the difference is only in the degree of pathology. The extent of the presence of borderline, narcissistic, and psychotic features in neurotic and normal personality structures is just beginning to be acknowledged in psychological circles. It is still very far from being seen objectively.
From our perspective, everybody has neurotic, borderline, narcissistic, and psychotic features in his personality, each stemming from its developmental anlage in the process of ego development. People differ in the preponderance and intensity of the different developmental features in their personalities. Diagnosis in terms of neurotic, borderline, and so on is useful only for the practical purposes of applying technique and judging what is the best sequence of development for a particular student. For instance, a normal person with borderline tendencies might need to deal to some extent with some of the features of his ego structure before it is possible or even desirable to deal effectively with his superego.
THE SUPEREGO
We will discuss briefly, and very generally, the salient features of the sequence of development in the case of the normal person. We will leave the more precise description for future publications. The deepest and most direct truths will have to be left to the oral transmission, to the process of teaching itself.
As awareness expands, the person becomes aware first of the necessity to find ways of dealing with his superego. This is the first important task. Without this ability, the individual will find it extremely difficult to expand his awareness and deal with his unconscious.
The reason is that the status quo of the personality is maintained by the superego. In particular, the status quo is continued by keeping the unconscious unconscious, by enforcing the defensive mechanisms of the ego. The agent that enforces these defensive functions is the superego.
We need to understand the process of repression in order to understand this mechanism more fully: awareness of unconscious material causes anxiety to the ego. The ego responds to anxiety with repression; it cuts off awareness from the arising unconscious material. In this way it avoids experiencing the anxiety and thus avoids the disintegrating effect of the anxiety on the ego structure.
Originally, the anxiety was the fear of the coercive agencies in childhood, mostly represented by the parents. Whenever the parents disapprove of a certain action or feeling of the child—and this happens repeatedly—the child learns, out of fear of this disapproval and also out of love for the parents, to suppress and finally repress this particular action or feeling. However, the disapproval becomes internalized in time as part of the child's own superego. So eventually, whenever a situation provokes this particular action or emotional state, the child's own superego disapproves and, in fact, punishes the child with guilt, shame, and other painful affects. The fear becomes a fear of one's own superego. The child, out of this fear of the superego and the punishment, learns to defend himself the way he did with his parents. He represses the particular action or feeling. He cuts off his awareness from his own impulses, feelings, and actions. For this to be effective, the whole operation must become unconscious and automatic. The unconscious remains unconscious out of fear of the superego and to defend against its attacks. Thus, the superego becomes the inner coercive agency that guards the status quo of the personality.
This means that in developing awareness and becoming aware of some parts of the unconscious, the individual will run into the fear of the superego and into its painful attacks themselves if he goes beyond the fear. Besides causing much pain and suffering, this confrontation with the superego will inhibit awareness and its expansion unless the person finds a solution for this situation.
Psychoanalysis deals with this situation by analyzing it and understanding its genesis. In time, this process ameliorates the situation. The superego becomes more realistic in its demands and standards, and its attacks become gentler. Other schools use different methods to deal with the superego directly or indirectly, but all psychotherapeutic methods work only to ameliorate the situation. The superego continues to be an important and active part of the personality. The possibility of the complete dissolution of the superego is not envisioned in psychotherapy nor is it seen as a desirable end.
This is obviously because the Weltanschauung, the world view of the analyst and the psychotherapist, does not include the fact of essence. The presence of essence, with its direct and objective perception and its balanced human nature, is not known, so the possibility of a life without the superego but instead with such an objective perception is not envisioned. The capacity of the essence to know and to act according to knowledge is not seen. So there remains always the belief in the need for ideals, morals, and rules to govern one's life. From our perspective, the superego is the inner coercive agency that stands against the expansion of awareness and inner development, regardless of how mild or reasonable it becomes. It is a substitute, and a cruel one, for direct perception and knowledge. Inner development requires that in time there be no internal coercive agencies. There will be instead inner regulation based on objective perception, understanding, and love.
The best approach is to decrease the power and influence of the superego and to replace it with awareness as much as possible, all the way to the final and complete dethronement of the superego. This establishes, in turn, some important aspects of essence.
The ego automatically and unconsciously responds to the superego with repression of parts of the personality, to defend itself against its painful attacks. An effective way to deal with the superego is to learn to defend against its attacks in a different way, without having to use repression and the other unconscious defense mechanisms of the ego.3 The method has to be conscious and intentional, in contrast to the habitual automatic ways that can only foster unconsciousness. Learning how to defend consciously and intentionally against the superego and its attacks is learning a whole understanding and a whole inner technology.4 It is taking into consideration the understanding of what the superego is and using one's own intelligence to deal with it and defend against its attacks.
Let's take a simple example to illustrate this method. Let's suppose a man feels ashamed every time he feels tenderness toward another person. The superego attacks him with shame and belittling, according to the judgment that tenderness in a man means he is weak and feminine. To begin work on his superego, first the man needs to be aware of the attack, its content, and the content of the judgment. Then he needs to understand the judgment psychodynamically. For instance, he might remember that his father had the attitude that men should be tough, that tenderness belongs to girls and women. Here he understands that he introjected his father's attitude and made it part of his superego. He usually responds to this attitude, which is an attack on himself, with shame and repression. Now, in applying this method, he envisions his father and tells him, in his mind: “Daddy, go to hell! Who cares what you think of me?” Here he is dealing with his superego in a way he could not have dealt with his father in his childhood. He was not able to defend against his father because he believed him, was scared of him, and needed him. This method might not work the first time, but if it is done repeatedly, it will bring out the man's aggression, and he will be able to assert himself and separate from his father's attitude.
The defense needs to be intelligent to be effective. For instance, if the man responds with: “Father, it's not true I am feminine and weak. Tenderness is good and does not mean weakness or femininity,” then he is being reasonable with a superego that is not really rational. Also, he probably has tried this response many times but without success because in this response the man is on the defensive; he is trying to justify his feeling and to account to somebody else for its being okay. Any justification already implies some guilt, and so it won't work. The response of “Daddy, go to hell” is effective because there is no attempt at explanation or justification and thus no implication of unconscious guilt. The man just throws back the attack and refuses to listen to its content. He completely disengages from the superego and does not give it any power over him.
It is difficult to appreciate the power and effectiveness of this method, without learning it and trying it for some time. But when a person does learn to defend against his superego, in time he will not need to use the unconscious defense mechanisms. Then a little work on paying attention will bring out the unconscious material. This is a gradual process of opening the unconscious, which is of paramount importance for inner development. The individual learns to become so skilled and facile in dealing with the superego that the superego gradually loses its grip. The structure of the superego itself becomes exposed for understanding, which helps to dissolve its structural basis.
This method, if applied all the way, will lead to the realization and development of several essential aspects. The activation of aggression for defense and assertion leads to the essential aspect of strength. In time it will lead to the essential aspect of the self, the true identity. The intelligence needed for this method develops in time into the essential aspect of objective consciousness, the diamond body. The moral rules and standards of judgment in time give way to essential conscience. This aspect of essence becomes the true protector of essence, the real defense, replacing the unconscious defense mechanisms of the ego.
However, working toward that level of realization will lead to working on the ego and the id, the deeper determinants of the structure of the superego.
THE CHAKRAS
The work on the superego, on expanding the awareness and deepening the sensitivity of the body, involves the activation and freeing the chakra level of energetic functioning. This does not necessarily mean direct work on the physical location of the chakras. It is basically clearing the mind and opening the body, which inevitably involves the clearing of the chakra system. The chakra system is basically the level of emotions, thinking processes, and physiological functioning. Freeing these functions from the unconscious, defending against the superego, and clearing the conflicts in the mind, is itself the work on clearing the chakras.
Of course, there are other methods of dealing with this level of work. Some systems work directly on the chakra system and its centers. Others activate the kundalini energy and use it to activate and clear the chakras. Others use yogic physical techniques. Psychotherapy and the body therapies also are attempts in this direction.
The chakras do not function properly because of the body armor and its patterns of psychophysical tensions. The work on the superego, especially if coupled with somatic-energetic techniques, such as those that employ breathing, is a powerful and efficient method for clearing this level. It also guards against the fascination and the excitement characteristic of direct work on the chakras.
Clearing this level of the personality leads at some point to the regaining of the pure emotional energy, and culminates in the experience of the void.
THE VOID
The work on the superego ultimately will expose one of its cornerstones: castration anxiety. Freud established that the superego is based mainly on the castration complex. He explained that for the child to resolve his castration fear he develops and strengthens his identification with the parent of the same sex. In particular, the child identifies with the parent's prohibiting and admonishing attitudes, and this is the main identification that builds the structure of the superego. There are deeper bases for the superego's structure, originating in the symbiotic stage of ego development, but we are now dealing only with the selective identifications that occur during the oedipal period and that form the major structure of the superego.
By learning to defend consciously against the superego, the individual is really rejecting, or rather separating from, this identification with the parent of the same sex, which will ultimately bring out to consciousness the basis of the identification. Since the identifications relevant here are with the parent of the same sex, they include a sexual identification. Dealing with this identification and the deeper castration complex is tantamount, in the Diamond Approach, to dealing with a certain specific hole in the personality. This hole is related to a distortion in self-image, particularly in the genital part of the body image. The castration complex is itself the main cause of this distortion; this is true for both sexes.
So we see that dealing with the superego will at some point expose the identifications that repress the castration complex. Dealing with this issue brings out the specific hole connected with castration, which is a distortion in the body image aspect of the self-image. The hole or deficiency is simply an unconscious body image of having no genitals or no sexuality. Accepting and understanding this feeling and belief of deficiency will bring forth its corresponding essential aspect, which turns out to be the void (space). This essential aspect is the correction of the distortion in the body image. This distortion is really a distortion of space. The void is the experience of oneself, one's essence, as empty space. It is an experience of expansion, spaciousness, openness, and boundlessness. The mind is not bound by the rigid boundaries of the personality's self-image. Its effect on perception is to see things as they are, without distortion. The experience of the genital hole is a distortion of how things are because there is really no hole there. The emerging space erases this distortion.
The void is really nothing but the absence of the personality and its various distortions. The mind is empty then, completely empty of the personality. It is as if the inner space is cleaned out, emptied, of the personality and its patterns, mental or physical. The person feels free, fresh, light, and unhampered. The mind is seen as it is, an immaculate emptiness.
THE LATAIF
This experience of space heralds the process of essential realization and development. There is room now for something other than the world of the personality. Before this realization, the personality filled everything. There was no space for essence.
It is this experience that many people call ego death, contending that it is necessary for the birth of essence. In reality, it is the beginning of ego death. The personality must go through many transformations, called deaths, before it relinquishes its hold. But this experience of space does lead to the rebirth, the emergence of essence.
This condition of openness and spaciousness usually leads, by itself, to the activation of the centers of the subtle physiology, called the lataif. We let the foremost representative of Sufism in the West, Seyyid Idries Shah, discuss the lataif: “The human being is stated, in Sufi representation, to contain five elements of the ‘relative’ and five of the ‘absolute’ .... There are said to be five centers of spiritual perception, corresponding to these ranges of experience. They are conceived of as having physical locations in the human body.”5
Most Sufi writers agree that there are five primary lataif, or centers of perception, and there is a general agreement about the colors associated with them and their localizations in the human body.
The one at the left side of the body is usually called qalb, meaning “heart.” The color yellow is associated with it. The state of consciousness here is that of true joy and delight in which essence exists in the condition of unadulterated joy. Its activation and realization also are connected with the transformation of a certain sector of the personality, a process that is sometimes referred to as the yellow death.
The latifa on the right side of the body is usually called rouh, meaning “spirit” or “soul.” The color is red, and the consciousness is of true and real strength. It is like the fire of essence and requires the transformation of the personality referred to as the red death, or the freedom from fear of people.
The third latifa is located at the solar plexus and is associated with the color white, or silver. The consciousness is that of true will, which is the support for essence and its life. The white death is the transformation of the personality relevant here, which is death into God. The name of this latifa is sirr, which means “secret.” In fact, the activation of this center is seen often as the initial step or the transition from the world of the personality to the dimension of essence.
The fourth latifa is at the forehead between and just above the eyebrows. It is called khafi, meaning “hidden,” and the color is a shining black. The consciousness is a state of peace and absolute stillness, related to the activity of intuition and objective understanding. It is connected to the black death, which is the state of annihilation of the sense of identity of the ego, which is the false self.
The fifth latifa is at the center of the chest, called akhfa, meaning “more hidden,” and the color is emerald green. The consciousness is that of loving-kindness and compassion. The Sufis take this latifa to be the most central and most important. This is understandable for many reasons. Compassion is selflessness and is equated with selfless action. This latifa also leads to the nature of the heart, which is the essential aspect of absolute truth. Also, this center is connected to the essential aspect that is referred to in the literature as the pearl beyond price, which is the personal being.
The lataif, as Shah says, are not only centers but also forms of consciousness, operating on the subtle dimension. These forms of consciousness when understood precisely, will be seen as a dimension of essence, a subtle form of substance. They comprise the subtle body (Jism latif). They are the beginning experience of essence in some of its basic aspects. For instance, the green latifa is the beginning of compassion, or the loving kindness aspect of essence. The red latifa is the beginning of the strength aspect of essence, and so on.
They are called lataif, meaning qualities that have subtlety, gentleness, and refinement to them, and are the first subtle and fine manifestation of essence. To use an analogy: if essence is like the oil of a perfume, the lataif will be its aromas. A latifa is like the vapor of the oil, which, in turn, is the essential substance. So the lataif are forms of essence that is a fine, very subtle, and gentle presence that pervades space. It is so fine and so subtle that it is very likely that an individual will fail to discriminate it from space, the void.
Of course, as each latifa is activated, it will bring out with it to consciousness a certain sector of the personality, which must be confronted and understood objectively. The experience of the void does not indicate that the work on the personality has ended, definitely not. It heralds the beginning of essential development.
We say here that space leads to the activation of the lataif, which is the beginning of essential realization. But the process does not always occur in this sequence. This sequence is the natural one, and many systems, such as Buddhism, take it into consideration in their methods. The Buddhist counterpart to the realm of the lataif is what is called the realm of the five Dhyani-Buddhas, the peaceful deities of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
At the center of all bardo visions stand the five Tath
gastas (TrGyal-ba rigs Inga). They form a first pentad in Buddhist mandala, and in their comprehensive multiplicity of meaning they constitute a many-leveled background for the development of most of the esoteric teachings of Vajrayana Buddhism. For the various versions of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which has its own tradition, they are the essence and the foundation for statements about the nature of man and his psychological structure, and they are at the same time the primordial images for the spiritual path to transcendence and liberation. The doctrine of the five Tathagatas concerns possibilities of clarification of awareness in this earthly life as well as the possibility of attaining the illuminated path of wisdom of the Buddhas in the bardo.6
The Dhyani-Buddhas (Tathagatas) do not coincide exactly with the five lataif; the Buddhist system has the consciousness connected to the color blue, instead of the black of the Sufis.
Other work systems, like the Sufi one, do not follow this sequence and attempt to activate the lataif directly. This occurs sometimes in the Diamond Approach if the person happens to be working on the particular personality segment connected with one of the lataif. Working on this segment all the way can lead to the related hole, which will activate the connected latifa and its particular subtle essence. This can happen before the discovery of space, but it is not the norm.
Other methods attempt first, through certain techniques plus interactions of teacher with student, to bring out the essential substance. Then the essential substance is used to activate the lataif. The activation of the lataif will, in turn, transsubstantiate the essence, that is, transform the essential substance into the various aspects and dimensions.
However, space must be realized at some point; otherwise the personality will come back and clamp down strongly against the emerging essence. This will make it difficult for the essence to be present permanently, and techniques and practices will have to be employed all the time in order to stay in touch with it. The Sufi method of Dhikr (remembrance) and the tantric method of mantra (chanting) are some of these methods that must be done continually to remember essence and keep present.
THE ESSENCE
The work on developing the lataif then continues by understanding the emerging sectors of the personality. Each one of the lataif has a sector of the personality connected to it that acts as a substitute for it and has the memory of the situations that led to its burial. All of these phenomena must be understood, precisely and exactly, for the centers to be permanently active.
Each of the subtle forms of the consciousness is then understood, experienced, and embodied. The effects of the lataif on the person's consciousness are understood and integrated. This has a permanent influence on the personality; the personality is in fact transformed by accommodating the impact of the lataif on its structure and consciousness.
Beyond that, each of the lataif functions, so to speak, as a door or entry into a whole universe, a whole dimension of essence. Each is an entry into a realm of the being that has in it many essential aspects. For instance, the yellow latifa leads to the essential aspects of pleasure, fulfillment, satisfaction, contentment, and various forms of love.
The situation can be looked at either as each of the lataif developing and expanding into deeper and deeper dimensions of essence, or as each of the lataif as a door leading into different realms of essence. Experientially, the two points of view are the same.
As we have said, the relation of the lataif to essence is like the perfume to the oil of the perfume. By following the scent, the perfume, we will be led to the substance of the perfume—the concentrated perfume, the essence—provided we have a good nose, that is, well-developed capacities of perception.
The process is like the one we described in Chapter Four in the example of the merging essence. Psychological constellations will present themselves both inside—as emotional conflicts and physical tension—and outside—as difficulties, conflicts, issues, dissatisfactions, and lack of understanding of the environment and the people in it. Since at this stage it is easy to deal with the superego, now the unconscious material is more available. The teacher will be able to see the large patterns, the specific psychological constellations that form sectors of the personality, each related to an essential aspect. This will help the student to focus more on the real issues and to be more precise in his observations.
The psychological constellation, when understood exactly for what it is, will lead spontaneously to a related hole of the personality, which the individual will experience emotionally as a certain lack or deficiency, usually defended against by various antics. Acceptance of this hole leads to experiencing the personality as an emptiness. This emptiness, this void, is like a death for the personality. It is actually a death of the particular sector of the personality but is experienced psychologically as an overall death of the personality.
When this “death” is completely understood and accepted, the corresponding aspect of essence emerges and fills the emptiness left by the personality. The essential aspect that emerges will be exactly what was lacking and will be precisely what the individual has been attempting to get from the outside, through the related personality patterns. The exactness, the fitness, is usually difficult to believe. It is completely precise. The individual realizes that he had known unconsciously exactly what he was missing and that his thoughts, emotions, and actions were motivated by this unconscious knowing, without his even suspecting it. The experience can be termed “mind-blowing.” It is usually, however, a quiet and peaceful experience, mostly invisible to the outside observer; but its exactness and its meaningfulness are staggering.
This emergence of essence is what is usually referred to in Work literature as a “rebirth.” The essence is born again, having been buried for years. The birth is a completion of a cycle, preceding the beginning of another cycle. The whole process repeats itself; understanding a new constellation or sector of the personality leads to its specific deficient hole (emptiness) and ends with the emergence of the corresponding essential aspect. There is awakening, death, and rebirth for each aspect of the essence—awakening to a certain sector of the personality, the death of this sector in the experience of emptiness, and then the rebirth as the emerging of the aspect of essence. This cycle is repeated as many times as there are holes in the personality.
As we see, there is no one death and no one rebirth, unless we take the first emergence of essence as the unitary experience. The personality dies gradually, one sector at a time. We see here the meaning of the cycle of death and rebirth. This sequence of awakening, death, and rebirth is the usual one known from ancient times, but here it is seen with diamond clarity. Gurdjieff puts it this way:
“When a man awakes he can die; when he dies he can be born.”
We must find out what this means.
“To awake,” “to die,” “to be born.” These are three successive stages. If you study the Gospels attentively you will see that references are often made to the possibility of being born, several references are made to the necessity of “dying,” and there are very many references to the necessity of “awakening”—“watch, for you know not the day and the hour ...” and so on.7
The Diamond Approach adds precision and lawfulness to this process. This precision is responsible for the effectiveness and efficiency of the Diamond Approach. The vague, metaphoric, or poetic ways of describing the process of rebirth often add more confusion than clarification. The metaphoric and poetic formulations are aesthetically appealing and often powerfully inspiring, but for a person who is thirsting—even dying—a beautiful way of describing the road that leads to the well is not as important as a clear, precise, and succinct way. Also, the precision has an aesthetic of its own, a clear and luminous beauty like the beauty of a precious diamond.
ESSENTIAL ASPECTS
We have said that essence has various aspects that are unique and distinct from each other. They are all essence, all substantial, but different in qualitative experience, function, and influence on the personality. It is as if they are different organs of the same organism, and this organism is one's being. They are all necessary, and the being is incomplete without any one of them.
Also, these aspects are absolute. They are absolute in the sense that they cannot be reduced further to something else or analyzed into simpler constituents. Love is love and is always love. And love is not the same as will. Will is always will, although it is essence, just as love is essence. These absolute aspects of essence are reminiscent of the Platonic forms or ideas that Plato recorded from Socrates' arguments.
In fact, Socrates knew that these absolute forms of the human essence are within us, because he asserted and proved logically (for example, in Plato's Meno) that they cannot be learned. He thought that a person can only remember them, that nobody can learn them from somebody else or through deduction or experience. A person can know them only by remembering them.
This is a deep truth that Socrates knew without having the knowledge about the personality that is available to us now. Now we understand his philosophy psychodynamically; we understand psychologically why we can only remember essence states.
We saw in Chapter Three, in our discussion of the theory of holes, that a hole gets filled by a sector of the personality that is related to the lost aspect of essence. We also saw that this sector of the personality is related to its particular aspect of essence by the unconscious memories of the experiences and situations that led to the loss and of the emotions involved in those experiences. In fact, this sector of the personality has in it the memory of the essential aspect itself, and so it is intimately connected to this aspect of essence. Its beginning and development contain the memory of the lost aspect, but the memory is mostly repressed. To remember it consciously involves confronting the painful situations that instituted the repression.
So Socrates is right. Essential aspects or absolute forms can be known only by being remembered, by being dredged up from the deepest recesses of the unconscious and experienced consciously. We have not shown, however, that it cannot be known in a different way, such as from somebody else (the way math is learned, for example.) We won't attempt this. However, it is enough for our purposes to point out that essence is a category of experience not accessible to the logical, “mental” mind. It cannot be communicated by the mind to somebody else. Most teachers, in fact, stress that essence is found inside, that the teacher can only point to it, or at best can ignite the inner flame with his own. But the flame is one's own and can be known only directly, within oneself, by oneself.
That the personality has the memory of the lost essence somewhere in its unconscious is evident in the manifestations of the personality in its patterns, dreams, and hopes. We saw this in the last chapter, with respect to the merging essence, in the desire of the personality for the experience of merging with somebody else when all boundaries of the personality are melted away. We see the movement toward the lost merging essence in the desire for closeness, community, or physical contact, just to mention a few.
An object relations psychologist might object to this assertion by saying that the individual is not remembering the merging love of essence but is rather remembering the symbiotic relationship with the mother. It is true that the individual is remembering the symbiotic relationship, the dual unity, in this instance; but this does not explain all the facts. It does not explain the utterances and the fantasies, many of which seem not to involve the mother, that some people have when they are deeply feeling this desire. It does not explain why they think this desired contact is sweet, that it has a melting quality to it, that it has a golden glow—all characteristics of the merging essence. It does not explain why some people have the fantasy of entering a golden womb or being drowned in a golden puddle when they experience the symbiotic wish.
More thorough documentation, including case histories, will be presented in future publications. It is enough for us now to have some inkling of the truth that the personality has the memory, albeit unconscious, of essence and its aspects.
The personality not only has the memory of the essential aspects but in fact uses this unconscious memory in its attempt to fill the particular hole, by filling it with a fake quality or with hopes of getting it from outside. The final picture is that this sector of the personality takes the place of the essential aspect. It acts as a substitute for it. The servant of the house behaves after a while as the master of the house.
All sectors of the personality, all qualities of the personality, all characteristics of the personality are substitutes for the essential ones. The personality, in fact, is an exact replica of the essence, but it is false. It is made up, a reaction, an outcome, and does not have the reality of essence. It is a plastic substitute that lacks the aliveness, freshness, realness, and luminous clarity of the real thing.
This is a painful and difficult situation, but in this situation resides the key to its resolution. Because all sectors of the personality are substitutes for and imitations of the aspects of essence, they are really faithful pointers to these aspects. By understanding these sectors we can regain the aspects of essence. Instead of condemning the personality, as most work systems do, we can use it as a guide and a faithful guide at that. The personality contains the keys to its own riddles. Some of the ancient schools realized this fact, and employed it in their work.
This understanding is of a great help in the journey of return. The personality is seen not only as the barrier but also as containing the keys. It brings out in the student an attitude of acceptance, compassion, and a genuine desire to understand the truth of the personality. This is exactly the attitude needed for doing the work of inner development.
Let's use a simple example to illustrate this point. Let's take one of the deepest characteristics of the personality, greed. This quality of wanting more and more, of never having enough, has always been observed in the personality and has been criticized and condemned by almost all systems and teachers. Greed has generally been viewed from a materialistic perspective and not much attempt has been made to understand it objectively.
Let's apply to this example our perspective that each characteristic of the personality is a false substitute for a characteristic of the essence. The personality usually wants what the essence is, but sees it as outside and also sees it in a distorted way. We saw these factors in our discussion of the merging essence. The personality wants to get the merging essence from outside and imagines it as some kind of a completely fulfilling contact with another being. But the resolution of this desire is an aspect of essence that exists inside us, as us.
Greed is wanting more and more from outside. Also, greed is not the desire for something in particular; it is a characteristic of insatiable desire. So it must be a reflection of a characteristic of essence per se and not of a particular essential aspect. It must function as an attempt to fill the hole, the deficiency resulting from the loss of this characteristic of essence.
The characteristic of essence that is connected to greed in the personality has a sense of “more and more,” of limitlessness and endlessness. In fact, this quality of endlessness is a profound characteristic of essence. Each aspect of essence exists in an unlimited way or extent. The substance of essence is not limited in extent; it is infinite, limitless. In other words, we can say that each aspect of essence is really a boundless ocean of this quality. Merging essence, for example, does not exist in a certain amount. When the individual is open to this aspect, he is in fact connected to a limitless ocean of merging essence, to a whole infinite dimension of this sweet quality.
The personality has a memory of the endlessness of essence and its inexhaustability. But this abundance is projected outward, and then the personality wants more and more from the outside. So the hole filled by greed is the hole (deficiency) resulting from the loss of the characteristic of essence of abundance and infinity. In this characteristic of greed we find the pointer to the expansion, endlessness, and inexhaustability of essence. The personality wants what was lost, and what was lost is endless. The personality is not going to be stopped by moralistically accusing it of being greedy. It knows better. Its knowledge is deep. The characteristic of greed will not disappear unless its hole is experienced and filled with the actual abundance of essence.
There is another kind of greed, a greed for variety, of wanting many things, more and more things, all different. “I want this, and this, and that, and that, this one too; how about that one and that one. . . .” We see this quality of greed with children most clearly and straightforwardly.
But this characteristic of the personality reflects another characteristic of essence, which is the endlessness of its forms, aspects, characteristics, and dimensions. This is a deep truth of essence; essence has no end. There is no end of learning, no end of expansion. New qualities and aspects, new characteristics and different dimensions keep coming to the correctly oriented individual. The development keeps going; different dimensions, different qualities, different realms. Each one of them, in turn, goes through a development, an expansion. The process is limitless, endless, in all its sides and dimensions. Every time an individual believes he reached the end, a whole new dimension opens up. Dimensions can emerge from unexpected angles; developments can go in any direction. The endlessness of essence is what Gurdjieff is referring to in his major book, All and Everything, when he gives God the title of “his endlessness.”
It is important to see here that understanding greed is not sanctioning greed. For the work to be done effectively, greed has to be understood instead of being acted out. The individual must observe and understand this characteristic of the personality, until its hole is revealed, which will reveal the ignorance of the essential characteristic of endlessness. This will then bring out the perception and the realization of the infinite richness of essence. Here greed dies.
When we refer to the different aspects of essence we do not indicate that we are seeing essence from different perspectives or different points of view. It does not mean we are seeing the same reality under different conditions or that we are calling it different names. We actually mean different distinct aspects. They are all essence, but they are distinct in their qualities and influence. They are like the various organs of the body. They are all the body, but they are not the same. The heart is not the same as the brain, and both are different from a leg. But they are all parts of the body.
Seeing essence in its various aspects, seeing these aspects as different and distinct, and giving each one a specific name, can lead to some difficulties for the student. This discrimination of aspects, and naming them, in a sense concretizes them. This specificity and delineation can lead to a certain form of attachment. It becomes easy for the personality to be attached to some of these aspects. The individual might want to experience the same aspect over and over. He might try to hold onto it and become afraid of losing it. He might develop the attitude of hoarding, of collecting more and more substance, or collecting various kinds of aspects. Essence is then being treated like any material possession. In other words, the objectification of the aspects can and does lead to spiritual materialism. This materialism, this attachment can then strengthen, instead of weakening, the rigid grip of the personality. This is counter to what is needed for inner work, where the personality must learn to let go, especially of its attachments. In fact, the personality's basic characteristic is attachment, which is the main cause of suffering.
Systems that are aware of this fact are usually very cautious—in fact, paranoid—about the possibility of spiritual materialism. Essence is referred to very vaguely. The aspects are not mentioned nor even conceived of. The whole thing is left formless, vague, and even referred to as unknowable.
But the belief that experiencing and naming the aspects of essence must lead to spiritual materialism is not completely accurate. It reflects a lack of complete trust in the nature of essence. When we talk about essence as the elixir, as the agent of transformation, we mean it literally. It is what catalyzes the inner transformation. It is true that objectivizing the aspects can lead to attachment and spiritual materialism. But this is not a negative development. In fact, we can see it in a positive light.
As long as an individual can be attached, then nothing will stop him from being so. Trying to avoid this attachment, as some systems do, will only keep it and its possibility repressed, still living in the unconscious. The personality will find any object to be attached to, if it still needs to. So the best approach, if the individual is interested in pursuing the truth all the way, is to bring this attachment to the surface so that it can be observed, understood, and truly resolved.
Spiritual materialism is not avoided in the Diamond Approach. It is allowed to surface, to come out into the light of consciousness. Then the attachments are studied and understood like any other characteristics of the personality.
In fact, essence itself will make sure that this happens. Attachments to essence or to some of its aspects cannot be ignored, especially not in the Diamond Approach. This attachment will be revealed naturally as a contraction or a restriction. The purity of essence and the process of its expansion will expose it as such. The individual will not be able to be attached and still experience essence freely. Attachment is personality, and it will manifest as a conflict that leads to suffering. In fact the more essence is manifesting, the more this conflict will be obvious.
Essence will reveal the attachments. There will emerge specific essential aspects whose particular effect on the individual is to expose these attachments. There will also emerge other essential aspects that will give the understanding that will specifically lead to nonattachment, to the freedom from all attachments. In fact, the deepest essential aspects cannot be realized and freed without dealing with the issues of attachment and spiritual materialism.
We see here that essence includes all the safeguards needed for inner freedom. It is truly and genuinely the agent of transformation. Trusting essence has to be complete. No experience can be shied away from if there is this total trust. It is the trust that essence will act in the best way, the most intelligent way, and the most compassionate way. It will strengthen parts of our personality only to expose them, so that there will be only freedom, a genuine freedom that is based on truth, not on control.
STATES AND STATIONS
The rebirth of an essential aspect is the beginning of its life. It does not yet mean that this aspect is completely established. In fact, the rebirth might just be an isolated experience that fills the heart with joy for some time and then disappears. Or the aspect might show up once in a while, under certain circumstances, but not every time it is actually needed. This means that this aspect of essence is not completely freed; it is not yet made one's own.
The appearance or the experience of essence can happen sometimes without the individual going through the inner work of understanding and without experiencing the deficiency. This happens in isolated instances and usually has no lasting effect on the personality. It also can happen if the individual is associating with another who embodies the essence. This is the customary situation of disciples with their teachers and guides. If the disciple is open enough or is capable of empathic identification with his or her teacher, or most likely when the disciple is able to merge with the consciousness of the teacher, he or she might at certain times experience essence in some of its aspects.
This is, in fact, one of the main methods of transmission used by many teachers. It is sometimes referred to as initiation. However, as we have already pointed out, this is an isolated instance and does not mean the disciple has made the essence his own yet. Usually, the personality comes back and clamps down on the new openness. This is expected, because if essence is activated, it will bring out from the unconscious all of the psychological material associated with it, the material that led to its loss. If the individual does not then deal with this material, it will just bury the essence again, as it did in the first place. This is why work systems that do not have a methodology of working through the unconscious aspects of the personality are inefficient, even though the teacher might know and even embody the essence.
The disciples come to the presence of the teacher or guru, merge with his consciousness, and experience the essence, but they cannot take it with them. They leave it with the teacher because it is still his. This usually leads to a condition of dependency on and idealization of the teacher, which is contrary to the whole point of inner development. Those teaching systems become supply sources: the kids come to their mother, nurse at her breast, then go away, to return when their bellies are empty. The kids never grow, because they do not have the means to learn how to nurse themselves.
Idries Shah relates a story in which a visitor asks a Sufi how come some countries are full of gurus and spiritual teachers when there are only a few Sufis who appear to be teaching. The Sufi answers: “India, for instance, is full of gurus and shrine worshippers, and public Sufis of real truth are more than rare because the gurus and their followers are at play and the Sufis are at work. Without Sufi work, humanity would die out.”8
It is not easy to recognize or appreciate true essential work. It is not a matter of having ecstatic experiences, of seeing visions, and so on, although these events happen as part of the learning process. The work is more for an individual to be a true and real human adult, integrated on all levels from the most physical to the most sublime. The work is oriented toward reality, truth, objectivity, completeness, and so on, and these things are not usually visible to one without inner development. Experiences are not only for enjoyment but are to be digested as nutrition essential for a human being if he is to grow to be an actual complete adult.
The condition of having isolated experiences of an essential aspect is termed by the Sufis the stage of the hal; the experience is still a state. A state is contrasted with a station (maqam) when the essential aspect is made one's own, when it is attained by one's own efforts and established permanently by such efforts.
That an essential aspect has become a station does not mean it is always present. This condition exists after it is just established, but as other aspects emerge they will displace it. In this case, a station means that the aspect is permanently available; it is present whenever the situation requires it.
Even in using the Diamond Approach, activating the essential aspects by going through the death of the corresponding sectors of the personality does not necessarily make them into stations. In some instances it does, but usually more work is needed. Sometimes not all relevant parts of the personality are seen and understood. The emerging essence will expose them. Then the inner work is on understanding all the arising parts of the personality associated with this aspect and the effect of the essential aspect on them.
The work that leads to the activation of an essential aspect usually exposes the main conflict around that aspect. But then this central conflict has many kinds of ramifications, all kinds of connections to other parts of the personality, and might bring about other central conflicts of the personality, connected to other aspects of essence. For instance, in the example of the merging essence, we saw in Chapters Three and Four that the central conflict is around the symbiotic wish for the mother. But when the merging essence is activated, it might expose another conflict—between its presence and the aspect of will, for instance. An individual might find out that when he was a child he repeatedly lost the symbiotic contact with his mother every time he asserted his will. This conflict will have to be resolved; otherwise, the individual will not be able to experience his merging essence whenever he happens to be experiencing essential will. In another case, the merging essence might become repressed again because the symbiotic wish for the mother might activate the oedipal wish for her, which may still be repressed. There are usually several intertwined conflicts around a given emerging aspect of essence.
This process of turning a state into a station can be seen in a way that sheds a different light on it. The process is that of working on having the essence, in whatever aspect it happens to be, present in all of an individual's life situations. He might experience essence in a certain situation but find it difficult to be essentially present when he is in a different situation. It is time then to turn one's attention to that situation to understand what exactly is causing the difficulty. The individual will then confront his anxiety and attempt to understand the unconscious material causing it, until it becomes possible for essence to be present in this situation. A person does not usually need to look for these situations; they are usually presented to him by his own personality functioning in his life. The culmination of this process is that the individual will be able to embody the essential aspect in all relevant situations; it becomes a station.
This process of making possible the presence of essence in external situations goes along with a similar process of freeing the essence in the inner environment. The essential aspect may flow in certain locations of the body but not in others. This is an indication of more issues to be resolved regarding the particular essence. The work then is understanding and resolving these barriers and blocks in the body, until the essence flows into them unhindered.
Let's take again our example of the merging essence. The individual might realize that his experience of it is restricted to the chest only, that whenever this aspect is present it does not go beyond the boundaries of the chest. He might want to believe that it is a heart quality, and that is why it is always located in the chest. But essence cannot be restricted this way. To be completely established, any aspect must attain the freedom to be anywhere in the body.
The individual might notice, if he applies his attention, that the merging essence is blocked from going downward into the body, particularly into the pelvis. Usually the essence will spontaneously go to the blocked area and expose the repression in it related to the particular aspect. But the individual must be interested in seeing the truth, whatever it is, for the process to proceed. The individual might find out, for instance, that when the merging essence flows into the genital area it activates the wish for genital merging. This might bring out conflicts around sexuality, oedipal and otherwise. These conflicts need to be understood and resolved for the merging essence to exist freely in the genital area.
This process usually continues of its own accord if the individual is committed to the truth. The essence keeps extending its territory, displacing the personality, until it reclaims the totality of the body. Then the essence fills the whole body, the totality of the organism. Each cell is then full and vivified by the presence of essence. The whole organism is then unified and integrated.
This is a true experience of integration. It is not only that the individual experiences his body as a whole, as one unit, but he experiences himself, all of himself, as a unified, integrated, homogeneous presence. There are no barriers, no partitions inside. There are no parts experienced together, as integration is usually understood. On the essential dimension, integration is actual and literal. The individual experiences himself as one homogeneous medium, which is the substance of essence. It is truly being one.
Many people consider the experience of unity or integration as the experience of all the parts fitting together, working together, and in harmony with each other. This experience is still mechanical from the perspective of essence. When an essential aspect is completely integrated, when it is a station, then it is experienced as one homogeneous substance without partitions. Instead of parts integrated, it is like a pool of water. And the individual experiences himself as this pool—complete unification and true integration.
THE PEARL BEYOND PRICE
In the course of this chapter's discussion of essential development, the reader might have noted that the process has been more of uncovering buried aspects of essence than any actual development. This brings us to the issue of development versus uncovering.
Some systems have formulated the Work in terms of developing something that is already there, or even developing something that is not even there. Other systems have made their formulations in the form of uncovering and bringing out the essence that is already there and already formed but inaccessible to experience.
The systems of the first kind assume that essence is not there to start with, or is there in a primitive and undeveloped form that needs refinement and evolution. The second kind of system assumes the human organism has everything in it, already formed and complete and only needing to be exposed. In most circumstances this difference leads to a divergence of methods and techniques.
Another way of formulating the issue is to see development and uncovering as two complementary aspects of inner work, to assume that both are true. Sometimes they refer to the same and sometimes to different aspects or phases of inner work.
The way we have described the process so far appears as more of an uncovering. The essence is buried, and the work is to uncover it and make it conscious. Even the work on stations does not add anything new. It is just completely reowning what was there to start with but was lost. However, this process leads to the purifying of the personality, usually called the refinement of the ego.
Even the process of uncovering that we have described is experienced as a development. Seeing it as uncovering is both a theoretical formulation of the situation and a method of dealing with it. Experientially, the substance of essence is first discovered, then goes through a transformation. This transsubstantiation is the development of essence from one pure aspect to another, until the essence is completed.
Looking at it this way paves the way to arranging the aspects of essence hierarchically; the later aspects developed are higher or more refined developments. In fact, some systems view things this way.
Although it is possible to make this hierarchical arrangement, we find that experience does not correspond with it. We find that, at least to some extent, different aspects are discovered in different orders by different individuals. We also find it misleading and confusing for the student to think of essential aspects in a hierarchical order. We prefer to look at the different aspects as different parts of essence, all important and necessary, although some are more central than others. The closest analogy is the human body. All organs are necessary, and it is possible but misleading to think of them in an order. It is true that the brain is more central than the lungs, but the brain cannot function without the lungs.
From our perspective, what is discovered and realized first depends more on what sectors of the personality the individual happens to be dealing with than on an innate order of the aspects of essence. From this perspective, it is immaterial whether we look at the process as a development or an uncovering. They are equivalent formulations, provided the process is looked at experientially. Theoretically, from the perspective of an overall understanding, the process is, so far, a process of uncovering. Essence is lost, then it is retrieved.
However, seeing the process as a development applies more accurately to a certain aspect of essence, an aspect that is in a sense more central or that occupies more of a central place in the process of inner realization. Let's try to understand this.
We saw in the beginning of the chapter that work on the superego leads to the experience of space, the beginning of the experience of the void. Then the lataif are activated, and their development leads to the emergence of essence proper. The work on the superego continues because the superego has deeper roots than the castration complex, roots that originate all the way back at the beginning of life, as Edith Jacobson, for instance, has shown.9
However, the stage of developing essential aspects shifts the inner work on the personality from the superego more to the structure of the ego itself. We have seen, for example, that the merging essence is related psychologically to the symbiotic stage, of fundamental importance for the development of ego structure. Other aspects of essence are connected to different phases of ego development or to different sectors of its structure. Essential strength is connected, for example, to the differentiation subphase of the separation-individuation process of ego development, when the infant begins to perceive that his mother and he are two people. Joy and value are essential aspects related more to the practicing subphase of this developmental process, when the toddler is joyously exploring his capacities and environment.
The separation-individuation process leads ultimately to the development of the ego as a structure. Its final phase is that of object constancy, when the ego is formed and established as a permanent existence, separate from the environment (mother), and other people are seen to have separate existences. Finally, the ego is structured and developed, and the child permanently experiences himself as having a separate identity. The ego is seen here in a central position because everything else is really part of its structure. The ego is the product of the child's development.
Something similar happens in essential development. We should recall here that each part of the personality is an imitation of and a substitute for an aspect of essence. The ego structure as a whole is a substitute for a central aspect of essence, which has a central position similar to that of the ego.
This central aspect of essence is what we call the personal essence; in Work literature it is usually called “the pearl beyond price.” Some authors, such as the Sufi Alaoddawleh Semnani, have called it the “True Ego”: “The seventh and last subtle organ is related to the divine center of your being, to the eternal seal of your person (latifa haqqiya). It is the Mohammed of your being. This subtle divine center conceals the ”rare Mohammedan pearl, “that is to say, the subtle organ which is the True Ego.”10
The pearl beyond price, the incomparable pearl, the personal aspect of essence is central for many important reasons. It is actually the true essential personality. It is the person. It is experienced as oneself. When the individual finally perceives it, the contented expression often is “But this is me!” The sense is of oneself as a precious being. There is then a fullness, a completeness, and a contentment. It is as if the individual feels full and complete, realized. Nothing is lacking. No more search, no desire or wanting anything else. The person feels “Now I have myself. I am a complete individual. I am full. I am fullness. I am complete. I want nothing else.”
The experience of completeness and contentment is ineffable, so precious and so amazing in its effect on the mind. All agitation suddenly subsides. All preoccupation is suddenly released.
It is the experience of being oneself and not a response or reaction to something. It is not being something for somebody. It is in a sense complete freedom, the freedom to be.
Many people talk about wanting to be themselves, to have their personal freedom. But usually people are referring to their personality. Being free to be one's personality is not freedom, although it might seem so. In fact, it is the prison. But to be the pearl beyond price is truly to be, completely and finally, free to be oneself. Now the person can experience “I am,” and he is not referring to his personality.
The pearl is the real, complete, balanced, and rounded personality that psychologists believe they are talking about when they are discussing the ego. We must remember that the ego is a structure, or a structured process, whereas the pearl is essence, which means the pearl is an ontological presence. We call it the personal essence because among all the essential aspects it alone is personal. It is experienced as having a personal flavor to it, in contradistinction to impersonal. All aspects of essence, even love and kindness, are impersonal. But the pearl is personal. And this is its miraculous quality, totally unexpected and unfathomable.
Some people interested in inner development try to become objective and impersonal, to move away from identifying with the personality. The personality is personal, and so the personal feeling is mistrusted and avoided.
However, the pearl beyond price feels personal without being the personality. It has the capacity to make a personal contact with another human being and still be free, totally unconditioned, free from the past and its influences.
It is the most personally intimate aspect of oneself. Everyone recognizes what it is when he first sees it. Sometimes even the vaguest perception of it brings out the exclamation “but this feels like me, intimately me.” And yet it is not selfish like the personality. The personality is based on deficiency, and this is the source of its selfishness. But the pearl is based on true value and true fullness. In fact, it is itself fullness.
All of essential development is ultimately the development of the pearl. All of the essential aspects are for the pearl, for the life, use, enjoyment, and fulfillment of the pearl. That is why in the stories it is represented as a princess of unsurpassable beauty. The joy of the essence is its joy. The love is its love. The pleasure of the essence is for it, the majesty of the essence is its grandeur, the beauty of the essence is it, itself.
The whole quest—its meaning, purpose, and completion—can be understood as the realization of the pearl beyond price. Many stories have been written about it. We include here a story from the Christian tradition:
The Hymn of the Pearl
Also known as the Hymn of the robe of Glory, or the Hymn of the Soul.
The most immediately charming of all GNOSTIC writing, perhaps dating from the early third century A.D. It begins:
When I was a little child
and dwelt in the kingdom of my
father's house
and took joy in the wealth
and glory of my upbringing
my parents gave me provisions
and sent me out
from our homeland in the East.
They take off his glorious robes and send him down to Egypt to fetch the Pearl, which is guarded by a snake. On his arrival there, he puts on the Egyptian's clothes, but they drug him into forgetting his past and his mission. His father sends him a letter to awaken him. He charms the snake, seizes the Pearl, puts off the filthy and impure clothes he is wearing. His parents send his robe to greet him.
Suddenly, as I looked straight at it,
the robe seemed like a mirror-image of myself.
I saw myself entire in it
In looking at it I was looking at myself.
So he returns, and does obeisance to his Father, who promises him that he shall enter with his pearl the presence of the King of Kings.11
Unlike other aspects of essence, this personal aspect (the pearl) goes through a process of development, growth, and expansion. Here the concepts of development and growth can be seen in their true and literal meaning. This true personality of the being is born, fed, and nourished. It grows, expands, and develops in a very specific sense. It is really the development of essence from being impersonal to being personal. Others might call it God becoming a human person, an individual. Let's try to understand this.
One way of understanding the various aspects of essence is to see them as the differentiation of the source. It is like the Gnostic story called the King of Kings. What we call the essence of the essence is the white light, and the aspects of essence are the different colors of the rainbow. The aspect of the essence of the essence, the source, and the various other aspects differentiating from it are all impersonal. When all of these differentiated aspects are realized, they are then integrated in a new synthesis, a synthesis that has a personal characteristic. This integration of all aspects of essence into a new and personal synthesis is the pearl beyond price. So from the undifferentiated source, finally there emerges a synthesis, a rounded personality that is essential.
It is interesting here to contrast this with the development of the ego. The ego is also seen by ego psychologists as the final synthesis that starts at the beginning from an undifferentiated source, what Heinz Hartmann called the undifferentiated matrix. The process of the development of the ego is seen to be really an imitation of the development of the pearl. That is why, in the Diamond Approach, instead of using the terms ego and true ego, we use the terms pearl and false pearl. In reality, the ego, indeed the personality as a whole, is nothing but the grain of sand needed for the formation and development of the pearl. In most people the grain of sand takes the place of the pearl and after a while starts thinking of itself as a precious pearl.
The process of the development of the pearl is the gradual integration of all of the aspects of essence into a new form, a new substance. When the pearl is firstborn, it is usually not complete; it is the essential child. It is born as a personal kernel. Then it integrates all of the aspects of essence into its very substance by spontaneous synthesis, until it is all complete, forming a harmonious human being.
Ego psychologists consider the ego to have the functions of integration and synthesis. Its synthetic function is becoming recognized as central. We see in the pearl the real and true integration. The pearl not only synthesizes; it is the synthesis itself.
This perception of the precious pearl as the complete synthesis of essential aspects is of fundamental importance. It safeguards against imbalance in inner development, for the pearl is the balance. It safeguards against prejudice and sectarianism, for it has everything in its very substance.
Some systems and teachings equilibrate themselves around the knowledge and realization of one particular essential aspect or a cluster of essential aspects. When there is no complete knowledge, it is possible through some rigorous disciplines to focus on and establish one or a few essential aspects, to the exclusion of others. This will establish a true essential presence, with the power and beauty of essence, but that presence will be incomplete and unbalanced. This limited essential development is also an effective way of avoiding having to deal with some conflict-laden sectors of the personality.
So it is obvious how differences arise between the different systems and teachings and how this can lead to prejudice and sectarianism. If only some essential aspects are developed, then some sectors of the personality are not understood, which will bring about various kinds of distortions. This is a very tricky situation to discern, especially for the individual concerned. When an individual experiences his essence, when he sees the truth, the reality, the power, and the beauty of it, it is difficult for him to realize when something is not right. The imbalance is usually explained and rationalized away by the building of a system or a teaching centered around the essential aspect or aspects known.
The systems built around awareness, for instance, will not understand and might even oppose the systems built around the merging essence. Each believes he has the truth, and both actually have the truth. But neither has the whole truth. Another clear example is the apparent contradiction between the teachings built around emptiness and the teachings built around existence.
However, if the precious pearl becomes the objective of the system, then there is an innate and built-in safeguard. To really develop and establish the pearl, all sectors of the personality have to be explored and understood. For the pearl to develop, all aspects of essence have to be freed, which will expose all sectors of the personality. Freeing it and establishing its life enables it to displace the totality of the ego structure. Then there is balance, completeness, totality, harmony, fullness, and contentment. There is then no reason to oppose someone or to convert anyone. All inner compulsion will be gone, for the person is realized, and the realization is based on fullness, richness, and value. The individual is then a mature human being, a complete person.
Some of the ancient systems downplayed the aspects and spoke only of the pearl. They discouraged preoccupation with anything along the path, including the essential aspects, short of the incomparable pearl.
In one Sufi teaching story, the seeker becomes excited when he has his first experiences of the inner world. The story refers to these experiences as the finding of some kind of delicious dessert, the halwa of Baghdad. Only when the seeker finds the source of the halwa does it become possible for him to see that these experiences, although wonderful, are insignificant compared to the realization of the pearl beyond price. It turns out that the halwa is nothing but the remains of the cosmetic materials that a prisoner, princess Incomparable Pearl, uses for her daily baths.12
The station of the pearl beyond price is so significant because it is not a matter of a state of consciousness or a state of being; it is rather the condition of the actualization of one's realization in one's life. Being becomes personal being, a complete human being living fully the life of objective truth.
IDENTITY
We have so far discussed the essential development ensuing from the work on the superego and the ego, successively. We have discussed this development in the most general and cursory fashion. We did not discuss all of the specific holes of the personality, all of the corresponding essential aspects, or all of the relationships between the aspects on the various levels of functioning. We have also omitted discussion of many other aspects of the process, other kinds of experiences and realizations, and their effect on the life of the individual. The process is very involved, rich, and powerful in its impact on the person.
We now come to the last and deepest structure of the personality, which Freud called the id. The id is the sector of the personality that is most primitive, closest to the biological roots, and that contains the instincts and their energies and drives. The instincts and their drives are still the least understood part of depth psychology. The id, however, as Freud had already pointed out, is really the basis and the ground for the whole personality.
The instincts and their drives are usually the categories that people question least. People are driven by their instincts, and this drivenness is seen as the natural course and therefore is not questioned. People are usually not interested in being free from the deep influences of their instincts. The instincts are so deep and basic and determine the personality and its life to such an extent that it does not even occur to the individual to wonder whether it is possible to be free from instinct.
The only possibility seen by depth psychology in terms of the functioning of the instincts is their repression and distortion by the developmental process. They are either functioning normally, or they are repressed and distorted. At most they can be sublimated, that is, their energies diverted into other activities. The possibility of actually surpassing the functioning of instincts is never questioned. Instincts are taken as an unalterable part of our biological existence.
Not questioning the power of the instincts is tantamount to not questioning the most tenacious sector of the personality—the sense of identity, the sense of self, or what is called in depth psychology the ego identity. In ego psychology and object relations theory, a distinction is made between ego and ego identity. The ego is the overall process and structure. But the ego identity, the self, is the organizing center, the apex of the developmental process. It is the normal sense of identity that people have. It is what the ordinary person means when he says “I.” It is an identification tag designating the ego, which differentiates the individual psychologically from other people. It is responsible for the psychological boundaries of the individual. The relation of ego to ego-identity (self-concept) is explained in the following passage by Otto Kernberg, one of the foremost theorists of object relations theory:
Throughout the oedipal period and latency, the integration of the self-representations into an organized self-concept proceeds, and ego-identity, originally stemming from the integrating of good and bad self-representations at the time of object constancy is established, is further consolidated. Jacobson (1964) criticized Erikson (1956) for his excessively broad use of the term ego identity, and for his de-emphasis of infantile stages of identity formation. She nevertheless considered his concept of “identity formation” valuable, provided it included processes of organization within all structures of the psychic apparatus. She suggested that the objective process of normal identity formation is reflected in the normal subjective feeling of identity. The integration of the self-concept within the ego strongly influences the integration of superego forerunners and, in turn, superego integration strongly reinforces the integration of the ego, particularly of the self-concept.13
This ego identity is usually what is referred to in spiritual and Work literature as the ego. It is the ego identity that, according to most systems, has to die for essence to become master, for complete liberation. It is intimately related to self-image, because ego identity is a psychological image, or what is called in object relations theory a “representation.” Object relations theory believes that the ego identity or self-representation develops gradually in the process of structuralization of the ego. The belief is that it does not exist at the beginning of life but develops through the processes of internalization and identification. But the question of where the sense of identity itself comes from never arises. Where does the mind learn that there is such a possibility of having an identity? And how does the mind know what it feels like to have one? We are not wondering here about what differentiates one identity from another; we are asking about what differentiates identity from other categories of experience. For example, what differentiates ego identity from the feeling of ego strength? Where does the sense, the feeling, the recognition of the category of identity come from?
This is a big gap in ego and self psychology that is not yet even formulated. To assume that the sense of identity develops gradually as the various self-representations coalesce does not really answer the question. What do they coalesce around, and why do they always coalesce into a very definite experiential sense, always a sense of identity? Where does the element accounting for the feeling of identity (self) come from? Also, the sense of identity is usually experientially very vague, never really isolated. The vagueness of psychoanalytical writings on this question does not mean it has to be vague; it means only that it is still vague in the minds of the authors.
This is understandable, for this sense of identity, like all other sectors of the personality, is an imitation of a certain specific aspect of essence. Ego identity is an imitation of the identity of essence, the true self. The Hindus call it the Atman.
The sense of identity of the personality exists because there is an unconscious memory of this true self. The personality's sense of identity develops through the loss of the true self. The child had it to start with, but its loss led to the development, through internalizations and identifications, of the ego sense of identity coalesced around the vague memory of the true identity. A self-representation is felt as relating to self because of this vague memory of self. This is the reason for the vagueness about identity in everybody's experience.
This true self, the spark of our life, the most alive and most brilliant aspect of essence, is, so to speak, the source of all essential aspects. It is like the star of Bethlehem, witnessing the birth of essence. Many work systems, many teachings, aim all of their efforts toward finally beholding and realizing the true self, our source, the brilliant point of it all. This true identity, this aspect of I-ness, is what Ramana Maharshi, for instance, wanted his disciples to reach when he exhorted them to contemplate the question Who am I?
To free this aspect means finally to shift the identity from the ego to the essence. This is the most difficult part of the process. Even after essence in its various aspects is uncovered and freed, the individual finds that he still believes in his personality. He still holds tenaciously to the personality. The essence is present, but the individual still thinks of himself and very often acts, if he is not paying attention, as if he is the personality. That is why the death of this identity is so strongly stressed by all true teachings. But obviously it cannot be a burning one for the individual until essence is realized because his experience is mainly limited by the personality. In fact, until then, it is very difficult for such a person to understand or appreciate the issue of the death of the personality.
For this final shift to occur, the deepest aspects of the structure of the ego identity have to be understood. Here the deep experience of ego death happens. The experience of the annihilation of the personality deepens and becomes very profound. This is because the sense of self is very much related to the functioning of instincts and in particular to survival. In fact, the whole development of the personality is primarily for survival. To understand completely the deepest truth of the ego identity is to understand the necessity of the ego and its identity for the purposes of physical survival. This is a profound question, and answering it leads to a knowledge of the relationship between essence, the personality, and the physical body.
To understand and become free from the self-concept is to become free from instincts, from biological programming and evolutionary conditioning. This is made possible by coming to understand the relationship of life and death to each other and to essence. So to live the life of essence, the life of the pearl beyond price, the identification with the personality must end, through the discovery and the realization of the true and brilliant self.
This does not mean, as some teachings have it, that the individual must experience the essential self all the time, that he must hold onto it as the most precious thing. Many systems of teaching focus on the true self, concentrate on it, identify with it, and glorify it. This will naturally bring attachment, and attachment is personality, even if it is attachment to the essential self.
What needs to happen is to free this aspect of essence for it to become a station, to become permanently available, so that it is there when its mode of operation is needed. Therefore, all of the issues around identity and selfhood must be seen and understood, including the need for or attachment to identity. The true self exposes all misunderstanding and conflicts around identity and selfhood. Resolving the issues around the essential self eliminates all identification; or rather, identification becomes a free, conscious movement.
INSTINCTS
Part of this work is to understand the instincts, to be free from unconscious biological necessity. Depth psychology formulates and recognizes two instincts: the survival instinct and the sexual instinct. We add to these two a third one: the social instinct. All three instincts involve the physical survival of the human organism. They are organized by the nervous system and the lowest three energetic centers, the first three chakras. The survival or preservation instinct is organized by the first chakra at the perineum. The sexual instinct is organized by the second chakra at the base of the spine. The social instinct is organized by the third chakra at the solar plexus. They all function for physical survival but employ different energies and different modes of experience and functioning.
We can understand instinctual functioning by observing it in the human infant. For the infant, only the survival instinct is developed and fully operative. It uses a fundamental aspect of essence for its operation, based in the first chakra. This aspect is that of strength and activity, which at the beginning of life is very closely aligned to the operation of the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system (ANS). At that time this aspect of essence operates in cooperation with another fundamental aspect of essence, the merging aspect, which is closely aligned with the operation of the parasympathetic branch of the ANS.
When the infant is distressed, hungry or in pain, the strength essence floods the organism, and the sympathetic branch of the ANS is activated. This is expressed in activity—crying, thrashing, and so on. This brings the mothering person, who then by her caretaking ministrations removes the distress, by feeding or whatever. The stress is discharged, bringing about the dominance of the parasympathetic branch of the ANS, which goes along with flooding the organism with the merging essence, with its contented and quiet rest.
This cycle recurs every time there is a distress for the infant. If this distress or rising charge is not relieved, the physical survival of the organism is threatened. We see here how essence is used by the instinct of self-preservation for the regulation and maintenance of the organism. And we also see that the infant is totally dependent on its mother to complete this cycle, which is called autonomic regulation. The mother functions here, as object relations theorists say, as an auxiliary ego.
As the organism grows, the other two instincts develop concurrently with the development of the ego. The ego brings about autonomy and independence from the caretaking support of the mother. The ego then functions to provide these caretaking ministrations and to complete the cycle of autonomic regulation, independently of the mother. It is here that the other two instincts come into full operation.
Let's look at the feeding activity more closely. The child is hungry, needs food for survival, health, and growth. This brings about the arousal of the sympathetic branch of the ANS, with its increasing autonomic charge. The mother then feeds the baby, and the cycle is completed.
But the mother here did more than feed the baby. She also, by this very activity, helped the baby to discharge the rising autonomic charge of the ANS. She performed, in fact, two functions for the infant. She fed it and discharged its extra energy. The discharge of the energy, the autonomic regulation, is of great importance for the organism. Sometimes the mother just does that. It is quite well known that babies are sometimes distressed because of extra energy that they don't know how to discharge on their own. The mother, if she is attuned, functions then to facilitate the discharge of this extra and distressing buildup of energy. This regulates the economy of the autonomic nervous system, so important for the health of the nervous system and the equilibrium of the whole organism.
When the personality is developed, the ego becomes independent of the mother. The two functions of direct caretaking and autonomic regulation are then done by the ego, using the energies of the social and sexual instinct, respectively.
The sexual instinct develops to take care of the function of autonomic regulation. The charge-and-discharge cycle occurs through sexual activity, culminating in the orgastic discharge that eliminates the extra charge and tensions accumulated by the normal living of the organism. So instead of parasitic dependency on the mother, there is a mutual dependency between the two people in the couple, which performs the same function of autonomic regulation.
That sexuality functions for the elimination of extra energy and tension (autonomic regulation) has been understood and formulated by Wilhelm Reich, as in the following passage by one of his students:
Precise clinical studies showed that in satisfactory sexual experiences this energy was somehow concentrated in the genital area and then discharged, relieving stasis in the organism. When anxiety was present no charge reached the skin and discharge could not occur. The genital could thus be looked upon as a specialized organ of the skin capable of discharging energy.
The function of the sexual act seemed to be primarily to maintain an economic energy level in the organism.14
The details of how the sexual instinct, with its function of autonomic regulation, develops from the survival instincts is the topic of a future publication about sexuality and its relation to essence.
On the other hand, the caretaking activities of feeding, protection, and so on are organized by the social instinct. The ego is independent of the mother for this function but is mutually dependent on the community or society at large for the discharging of this function. Through mutual cooperation and work this need of the organism is taken care of by all individuals in the community.
So we see that the important functions of the mother are replaced, on a higher and more independent level of organization, by those of the sexual partner and society at large. And we see, although in a very general and sketchy way, how the sexual and social instincts are developments of the survival instinct.
This process of instinctual development is intimately connected to the development of the ego and its identity, as we will discuss in the book referred to above. There is a very close connection between the structure of the ego and the functions of the instincts. This means that for the personality to let go and for its identity to dissolve, the individual must deal with the issue of survival because it is underneath the functioning of all instincts. Dealing with the survival instinct will lead to understanding death and its relation to the personality and to essence.
There is an inner consistency and order for the process of essential development. There is no need for the mind to direct the process. In fact, directing the process by the mind can only lead to difficulty, for the mind does not know. Commitment to the truth is sufficient for the process to unfold. When the essential aspects are discovered and freed, when the incomparable pearl is realized, the process spontaneously unfolds in the direction of the instincts and ultimately of the survival issue.
Here it is not a matter of discovering new aspects of essence. It is a matter of letting go of the ego identity and living from the essence that is already present. In this phase of the work, everything becomes an object of study and understanding. It is no more an inner process. One's life, with all its situations, comes into focus. One's style of life—how one leads one's life in all its aspects—becomes understood and modified accordingly. The individual becomes aware of his environment and ascertains whether it supports or inhibits the life of essence. One's relationships to other people, intimate, sexual, social, and professional, all become clear and objective. Everything, every part of one's life, inner or outer, becomes conscious, no longer under the sway of the unconscious. This is a very deep and involved work. It leads to responsibility and maturity. It would be almost impossible to carry out this deep work if it were not for the presence of essence, with its penetrating power. Most of the unconscious material at this phase relates to the early months of life and even before that. It is material that is considered preverbal and, in fact, pre-personality. The mind cannot function at such depth. Only penetrating intuition and direct perception can be used effectively at such a level of work. Essence does penetrate to these deep strata of the personality. It exposes them to the light of understanding. In fact, essence is the true agent of transformation; it manifests the necessary aspects corresponding to the relevant sectors of the personality, and these aspects make possible the necessary understanding.
This knowledge needed at these very deep levels of work cannot come from outside. External knowledge is only information and is not effective at these levels where the mind does not have a structure yet. Only one's own essence can provide the necessary knowledge. Essence itself is the experiential knowledge. Also, essence is what takes the place of these abandoned sectors of the personality.
As we said above, at this stage of the work, it is not a matter of discovering new essential aspects. However, understanding the instincts and their relationship to the personality does affect essence in a particular way. All of the essential aspects, which are already realized, undergo a transformation, a development. The aspects keep their intrinsic qualities, but these qualities are taken to different dimensions. For instance, compassion remains compassion; its sense and its color stay the same. But it attains different dimensions that are needed for understanding the instincts. Compassion, like all other aspects, becomes more objective, and more universal, solid, and expanded.
Every time one of the instincts is understood, all of the aspects develop to another dimension of essence and become established there. A whole new dimension is then opened up and realized.
The incomparable pearl, the personal essence, also undergoes a transformation, and its relationship to the new dimensions becomes clear, free, and established. This process is referred to in the story above, “The Hymn of the Pearl,” by the wearing of a robe.
The individual becomes even more autonomous than on the ego level. In a sense, he becomes completely autonomous. On the social level, this autonomy does not mean that he does not need society at all. It means he becomes objective about society and its functions. He no longer looks at society as if it were his mother, nor relates to it the way he did to his father or mother. He does not see it as a source of emotional support or emotional protection or nourishment. He does not look to it for admiration, approval, self-esteem, respect, position, fame, identity, and the like. The issues of friendship, trust, and power become clear. His social relations become objective, rather than clouded by the personality's assumptions and hopes about society. Society is seen for what it is, and all social interactions are seen for what they are. Society is neither rejected nor accepted but understood for what it is, what it offers, what it demands, and what it needs. Society's relation to essence and its life becomes conscious.
On the sexual level, the work is primarily to understand pleasure and to reveal all the illusions and unconsciousness about it. Not only sexual pleasure but all the kinds of pleasure, inner and outer, become understood and seen in their relation to essence and its life. This clarifies the issues of intimate relations between the sexes and their place in essential life and development. All essential aspects rise to a new dimension, where they are all seen and experienced as pleasure, as all kinds of joys and delights. The pearl reaches a new integration, and its relation to this dimension of pleasure is clarified. Both outer and inner pleasures are understood objectively and harmonized with each other and with the rest of one's life.
On the preservation or survival level, the issues encountered are those of protection, security, safety, survival, and death. The deepest sectors of the personality are encountered and understood at this point. The necessity of the personality for physical survival is comprehended and appreciated. The ego function of defense as a whole is understood and seen in its rightful place, as a substitute for some part of essence related to protection. The real protection and defense for essence and its life, the citadel of essence—what is referred to sometimes as the true conscience—is understood and realized.
An important point to understand here is that the personality does not let go easily and that this characteristic of it can be seen from a positive perspective. The personality, as we have seen consistently, contains the memory of all that was lost. To ask it to let go means, according to the unconscious, letting go of its attempt to regain all that was lost. Unconsciously, it knows what has to be there, and it is not going to clear the space completely before it is sure that everything is there. On the surface, it appears that personality wants to displace essence. This is partially true, but on the deeper levels, it was formed and developed ultimately for the protection and the survival of the organism and hence for the protection and the survival of the whole essential process. And it performs this function faithfully, even though rigidly.
Therefore, it is extremely difficult for the personality, and especially for the ego identity (self-concept), to loosen its grip and let go when it believes that only lack and emptiness will result. It knows, although vaguely and unconsciously, that richness and fulfillment are possible, and it continues to hold out for them. However, if the essential aspects are uncovered and the various functions of essence realized, it is much easier for the personality to let go.
The personality then will not be letting go out of desperation and hopelessness. It will let go because of understanding. It will melt away because it will see that its life is suffering and that the fulfillment of the life of essence is impeded by its own very existence. The personality will realize that it itself is the barrier to the life of fullness and abundance. It will see the necessity of its own death. It will long for it. And then it will not only disintegrate into emptiness, it will melt and disappear into the sweet honey of the divine essence.
CREATIVE DISCOVERY
The moment essence is recognized as one's being and experienced as such, a radical transformation occurs. One's life will never be the same. Although the transformation can be total, it is usually partial. Nevertheless, it is a radical transformation: the person knows for the first time what being is and that it is his true nature. As we saw at the beginning in this chapter, this discovery initiates the process of inner transformation. This transformation is both in the mind and on the essential dimension. The mind and personality are clarified steadily, and objectivity becomes more and more complete. Essence transsubstantiates into its various aspects and dimensions.
Life is no longer the exclusive domain of the personality. As essence unfolds and expands, it exposes deeper and more basic sectors of the personality, bringing about knowledge and objectivity. And these in turn allow essence to displace the personality on more and more dimensions.
The discovery of essence is the beginning of the true life. Essence, as we have seen, is not a state experienced once and then always experienced in the same way afterward. Essence is rich and endless in its aspects, qualities, dimensions, capacities, and possibilities. All of this richness starts unfolding, bringing surprise, delight, beauty, value, and fulfillment.
Life stops being the life of strife and frustration, the wish for success and the fear of failure. More than anything else, life becomes a process of creative discovery. Discovery itself becomes the heart of life. Life becomes a continual creation because essence is the creative element in us. Suffering and problems become less important, and creative discovery becomes the actual process of living.
The unfolding of essence becomes the process of living. Life is no longer a string of disconnected experiences of pleasure and pain but a flow, a stream of aliveness. One aspect manifests after another, one dimension after another, one capacity after another. There is a constant flow of understanding, insight, knowledge, and states of being.
As this unfolding proceeds, it affects the mind, the personality, and the external life. When conflicts arise, inner or outer, it is the expression of the lack of understanding of incoming essential aspects and dimensions. It is part of the creative process of living. Every new insight or knowledge is preceded by its absence. This absence is seen from the perspective of the ego as a conflict or a problem. However, if the individual is interested in the truth, the conflict is seen for what it is, an absence of a certain understanding. The presence of this understanding is the same as the presence of a certain aspect or dimension of essence, with its qualities, capacities, insights, and mode of living.
However, the center of all this understanding, insight, knowledge, discovery, creativity, conflict, and tension is the unfolding of essential presence. This flow of essential presence becomes the true experience of time instead of the linear memory time of the personality.
At the beginning, the work of understanding continues as a necessity. However, the necessity is more apparent than real. The ego believes in the necessity of its own work, but this is due to the lack of understanding of deeper essential dimensions. As these dimensions unfold and bring about their understanding, one starts seeing how the activity of the ego (the sense of self) is the main barrier, the cause of any conflict or inner suffering.
As the pearl beyond price develops and as the true self is understood and integrated, there occurs another radical transformation. The identity starts shifting from personality to essence. The individual starts experiencing himself as essence, instead of the experiencer of essence.
Experiences of ego death occur here. Inner aloneness is accepted. Personal boundaries dissolve. Essence begins to be experienced from the perspective of essence itself. One starts to understand and experience boundlessness, timelessness, not doing, innocence, and purity. Essence and mind start becoming one. This manifests either as complete absence of thoughts, or the thoughts themselves are experienced as the spontaneous outpouring of insight.
Life continues to be a process of creative discovery. The process of learning, unfolding, and expansion never stops. Essence continues to unfold, new dimensions arise, new modes of experience and insight emerge, new capacities manifest.
The process of understanding continues; however, it is not seen as a necessity, as work, but rather as the process of creative discovery itself.
Life becomes a process of creative discovery from the moment essence is recognized and experienced as one's true being. It continues to be an endless process of creative discovery when the identity shifts to essence; however, there is now the understanding that it is so. There is now the understanding and the trust that essence will bring about whatever needs to be brought about. The ego does not need to work any more. The creative process happens on its own. Ego can only obstruct it. This is true the moment essence is discovered.
Living one's life and the work on oneself become one thing: It is “His Endlessness,” unfolding as a creative discovery. The shift of identity from personality to essence is nothing but the realization of the true self, the high self of essence. This experience of timelessness, spacelessness, and no-mind is also the entrance to the Beyond, to the Universal Impersonal, the Absolute that is the ground of all existence. This is the Ultimate that is beyond personality, mind, time, and even essence.
Realization then becomes more and more expressed in living, in action. Practical action becomes the action of the true being. There is efficiency, economy, simplicity, directness. One fully lives in the world but is constantly connected to the Beyond, the Supreme Reality.