Yo no soy yo.
Soy este
que va a mi lado sin yo verlo;
que, a veces, voy a ver,
y que, a veces, olvido.
El que calla, sereno, cuando hablo,
el que perdona, dulce, cuando odio,
el que pasea por donde no estoy,
el que quedara en pie cuando yo muero.
(Juan Ramón Jiménez)
[approximate translation:
I am not I.
I am the one
Who walks invisibly by my side;
Whom sometimes I make an effort to see,
And whom sometimes I forget.
One who stays silent while I talk,
One who is forgiving, gentle, while I hate,
One who can get to where I am not,
One who will still be standing when I die.]
The course
teaches that we are not what we think we are. We live according to an internal
image of ourselves, acting and reacting, liking and disliking, succeeding and
failing in accordance with a self concept that is learned, constructed and reshaped
minute by minute, year by year. The body we inhabit - which we believe we are - embodies the unique personality, the
story-so-far, the sense of a separate self that we believe is the hub of our
reality.
As long as we
think this physical, emotional, intellectual, multifaceted self is really who
we are, we must suffer from its frailties and frustrations. Its understanding
of reality is selective, variable, relative to what seems to be so at any one
minute: this little self can never be entirely sure of anything. The cost of
being an individual is that you can only see through a minutely limited point
of view. The cost of believing you are a body is that you feel constantly vulnerable
to attack from both within and without, motivated by need and by fear of loss.
All this is no
more than a construct in the mind, the course reminds us. It is like the
character or avatar that you assume when you play a computer game. You choose
it, adopt its special characteristics and goals, and thereafter see through its
eyes, advance as if in its body through an external environment, deal with the
situations in which it finds itself, negotiate or fight with the other figures
it perceives. And for the duration of the game, you really may imagine that
this is who you are.
But it is not
who you are. Like the player of the game, you can pretend for a while, knowing you
are pretending, and free to stop at any moment; or you can become so enthralled
- in thrall, enslaved - that you no
longer remember who you really are, and neglect real life for the sake of a
virtual one. But even then, the real you does not disappear. It is only temporarily
forgotten.
This is
analogous to what the course teaches about our real nature. It would have us
first only be willing to suspend disbelief long enough to consider what it says
as a theoretical possibility. Then it shows us how to try out the idea as if it were true. For we can only be
convinced by discovering for ourselves that it is true. But long before we are convinced, most of us have already experienced
some feeling of unreality, or some sense that we are faking it, putting on an
act; or the fearful insecurity of not knowing who we are or what we are doing,
or why, or whom we can trust. No wonder, the course tells us, and quite right:
we are fooling ourselves, and nothing
and no one in the game is real.
But beyond this
fluctuating idea of the self there is also an unchanging part in each of us that
knows what is true and who we really
are. There are always two of us, one imaginary self and one real. The problem -
any problem - is that we are convinced that the fabricated version is who we
really are, while the real Self barely impinges on our awareness at all. As the
poem puts it, I am not myself, yet I am always with me.
Knowledge, as
the course uses the word, is nothing to do with information, or with anything
the body’s senses can perceive or brain can rationalize. This part-that-knows
does not know about something: it is what it knows. It is like
consciousness, but not the consciousness of being anything or anyone in
particular, not the consciousness of ‘self’ as distinct from ‘other’. It is a
state of mind such as Krishnamurti meant when he said ‘the observer and the
observed are one;’ or what the course calls a oneness joined as one (T25 I 7).
From the perspective of the true Self, there is no inner and outer, no here and
there, no you and me. There is only what is.
There is a part
of our mind, then, that remains for ever in touch with infinite reality, while
the part that perceives and lives in the world of form is entirely preoccupied
with what only seems real. They are
mutually exclusive. The moment you give your mind over to one or the other and
experience its effects, the other vanishes from your awareness. While you are
busily identifying with your physical and psychological self and its apparent
needs and interests, you think you or someone else is the one who knows, and
the deeper part of your mind is switched off: your Self seems to sleep, while the part of your mind that weaves
illusions in its sleep appears to be awake (W68). But when we let the ego
and its elaborate fantasies fade away, what remains is our reality: selflessness is Self (S1 V 2).
This emphasis
on a mind that is divided, not between good and evil, but between reality and
illusions, helps us to move on from the idea of supernatural beings in an
endless tussle for our souls between Hell and Heaven, like the little angel and
devil we picture in cartoons. It also frees us from the limiting concept of
ourselves as merely physical bodies, or brain-directed organisms. You are responsible for what you think (T2
VI 2), and what you think makes up the reality you see. There are no idle thoughts. All
thinking produces form at some level (T2 VI 13).
There is a
technique in psychotherapy which helps you to better understand aspects of your
personality or your problems by imagining them as ‘sub-personalities’ or
‘parts’ of yourself. In much the same way, the course personifies the ego as if
it were an obstructive or undermining force, and the Self as if it were a
loving presence that reliably heals even as the ego harms, and knits back
whatever the ego unravels. But the ego and the Self, or Christ, or Holy Spirit,
or whatever words you prefer, are only symbols that express how we choose to
use our minds: to dream, or to wake up. To believe in a false concept of the
self, or know yourself as mind, not body; one, not separate. The Self or 'One
Who knows', by any name or symbol is not an entity but a choice that we make.
You know not where you go. But One Who knows goes
with you (W155 10)
…there is a Child in you Who… knows that He is alien
here (W182 4
…there is One Who knows all that is best for me (W242)
…let the darkness be dispelled by Him Who
knows the light (T22 VI 9)
It does not
matter what name or form or symbol you give this ‘One Who knows’, this Self in
you that is not your physical or psychological self. But it stands for love that is not of this world (M23 4). It walks
with us, whether we acknowledge it or not. As Jung put it: 'Called or not
called, the god is present.'
