The Disturbing Spiritual Theory of Consciousness That Will Make You Rethink Reality
Follow the rabbit hole.
Jung confessed to John Freeman in an interview in 1959 at the age of 84 that he had not always been aware of existing.
He was first aware of it when he was eleven years old on his way to school.
The young Jung walked through a fog bank, and as he said, “I came out of the fog and said. I am what I am. Then I thought: what have I been before?”
I was so struck by the reflection I thought about the first time I was conscious of being alive.
It was when I was nine, on a vacation to the Canary Islands while looking in the mirror. And like Jung, I thought, “What have I been before?”
I did an article about that interview and asked people what was the first time they realized they were themselves.
And people answered all kinds of things.
But everyone (including me) could not answer, “What have I been before?”
What have I been before?
I published the article long time ago, on December 16, 2022, and ever since then, that question has haunted me.
Until Yesterday, reading a novel by Henning Mankell (The Eye of the Leopard) in the main character’s voice, Henning gave an excellent answer to that question.
The main character begins to remember his childhood and that one day, playing in an old factory, he wondered why it was him and not someone else. And that question changed everything.
I share with you Mankell’s paragraph,
“At the very moment he got the question in his head why he was him, he became a determined and, from then on, mortal person.”
Until that moment, the child could have been anyone else. Only when that self-realization of being happened did he take on identity.
The price to pay is mortality.
Mankell’s proposal states that when you become aware of the “I,” you can exist separately from the whole because individuality begins.
Ergo, the ego gives you a personality, but it also makes you mortal.
Because until that instant in which you have not realized that you exist, you can be any other being. You breathe, you play, but you are part of the whole.
In that pre-ego state, I could have been you, and you could have been me.
How do we know if we were not aware of our existence?
Then, the B side of the ego is that it makes us mortal. But the good thing is that it gives us a life.
We are all unique.
Mankell said, “He had realized that he was him and could never be anyone else. He now had a life ahead of him, a unique one, in which he could be who he is.”
Having an identity of our own gives us a life of our own, with a search for our meaning and a destiny of our own to fulfill, and that is so wonderful that the price to pay is the highest of all: to be mortal.
This brings me to Ram Dass when he wrote the book Becoming Nobody.
And the fixation Zen monks like Master Deshimaru had with the practice of Shikantaza (which can be translated as just sitting and doing nothing).
From Buddha to Zen monks through Ram Dass, they seek to transcend the ego to avoid suffering.
To stop being mortal :-)
Bingo!
That’s transcending.
This brings me to the bible (hold on because this will blow your mind).
To become immortal again.
“But Jesus said, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of the little children is the kingdom of heaven.” — Matthew 19:14.
If we assume that by being children, we mean before we ask “Who am I?” to define our ego, this would explain how we can transcend.
Before eating the apple of the tree of good and evil (realizing that we existed), we lived in the metaphorical Eden of the ignorance of the ego. — Which, on the other hand, was Lucifer’s sin, falling in love with himself (ego).
That is why we must free ourselves from the ego, idolatry, and the world’s temptations. The symbolic prize to be obtained is immortality: to ascend to paradise.
This can be understood as that state of being that Jung defined as the oceanic moment or what Hinduists call Samadhi.
In Samadhi, the meditator feels a total connection with all living beings. It reaches the oneness of the whole during meditation, understanding that he is part of an infinite whole where nothing is created or destroyed, only transformed.
Conclusion
The philosophical traditions do not seek only to free the world from suffering but to return to the whole, to enlightenment, to immortality.
It is paradoxical because we try to use consciousness (the intellect) to return to that state of detachment from the self, where we are not conscious of being conscious.
P.S.: The Disturbing Blog is a small space of spirituality, vulnerability and humor that I've created for spiritual outsiders like me, thanks to the support of readers like you.
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A virtual hug
AG
The inner game of tennis by galleway writes about intellect, conscious and the self that is detached. I feel to detach means to focus on what you are doing presently. Very provoking article you have written. It questions reality which is clowdy, and people who say they know it all do not know their reality. Thank you.