Thyself

Above all else, man must constantly strive to realize unity in himself, in all that constitutes him, through all the modalities of his human manifestation.

René Guénon (The Symbolism of the Cross, Ch.8)

Many of the ills affecting humanity in the modern world could reasonably be traced back to our confusion as to who we are and the desperate struggle for identity. If a man is unable to find a sufficient answer to the question of his being, he is left with a void in his soul that cries out to be filled - a vacuum the sort of which nature abhors. And so, lacking a better answer, he will define himself by his political views, his daily activity, his place of birth, or perhaps even the faithfulness with which he imitates other, more influential individuals. Some maintain their identity by reassuring themselves of their superiority to others and so build a habit of mistreating people. Some rely on their belief systems and become rigid fanatics, dedicated more to their own fixed impression of a doctrine than the doctrine itself. Yet no such constructed personhood is firm enough to hold together the varying tendencies and competing opposites of which the soul is made up, and the soul of one whose sense of self depends on such useful lies is liable to fall into pieces as soon as reality begins to expose them.

The problems that inevitably arise from a scattered psyche are innumerable.

During a state of fragmentation, in addition to a lack of identity and lack of sense of self-worth, the individual also experiences a sense of inner conflict. No energy is available for goal-directed activities, and though action is possible, an intense inner pressure to act in a multitude of directions is nonetheless felt. He says, “I don’t know what to do with myself.” Although the ego is intact, the Self¹ is not. No single functioning unitary motive exists, but rather a multiplicity of urges based on the fragmented, independently functioning instincts.²

A person suffering from such a fragmentation will remain depressed, sullen, or angry regardless of attempts to undo the damage.³

If we recall the inherent Unity of the Good; that things in this world possess being only insofar as they participate in the One Being, and that multiplicity can only arise from a deficiency - one that generates more disorder the further it multiplies - it will not be hard to believe that the merit of an individual can be measured solely by the extent to which the elements of his soul cooperate with each other.

[The wicked] are at variance with themselves […] their soul is, as it were, rent by faction, and the one principle, by reason of the depravity in them, is grieved at abstaining from certain things, while the other and better principle is pleased thereat; and the one drags them this way and the other that way, as though actually tearing them asunder […] It is plain then that the wicked man cannot be in the position of a friend even towards himself, because he has in himself nothing which can excite the sentiment of Friendship.⁴

The Antichrist must evidently be as near as it is possible to be to ‘disintegration’, so that one could say that his individuality, while it is developed in a monstrous fashion, is nevertheless at the same time almost annihilated, thus realizing the inverse of the effacement of the ‘ego’ before the ‘Self’, or in other words, realizing confusion in ‘chaos’ as against fusion in principial Unity; and this state, as represented by the very deformity and disproportion of his bodily shape, is actually at the lower limit of the possibilities of our individual state, so that the summit of the ‘counter-hierarchy’ is indeed the place that really befits him in the ‘world upside down’ that will be his.⁵

If we wished to find something meaningful in our personhood, recognising that purpose is contrary to accident, it would be vain to look to effects before considering causes. That is to say, our concern must be with the principle of our selfhood before anything else, and the principle of a multiplicity is, naturally, its unity. This synthetic, principial fusion is not equivalent to the ‘functional unity’ between cooperative yet distinct parts that results immediately from it, yet the former cannot be reached without passing through the latter; things find their common principle in their common centre, where the whole reality is located, but should any of these things pull away in some other direction, it will sabotage the whole effort of resolution. In this way, conflict between parts accelerates the descent towards the relative, whereas cooperation is a step in the direction of the absolute. Hence the following experience:

When the psyche is functioning in a stable and harmonious fashion; when there is a relationship amongst its parts, a functional unity exists and is perceived by the ego as the sense of identity.⁶

Yet, as we have stated, this ‘functional unity’, insofar as it is functional, is entirely dependent on something that transcends its own constituent elements, even if this transcendent principle be only vaguely intuited.⁷ After all, what could carry the individual from one moment to another if not the atemporal? What could give shape to his mind and body if not the supra-formal? What in him could experience objects if not the indefinable?

This treasured “personality” of ours is at once a prison and a fallacy, from which only the Truth shall set you free: a prison, because all definition limits that which is defined, and a fallacy because in this ever-changing composite and corruptible psychophysical “personality” it is impossible to grasp a constant, and impossible therefore to recognize any authentic or “real” substance.⁸

We are therefore left to say with the Buddha, “This is not my self”;⁹ Attachment to the ‘ego’ or any other reductive conception of the personality can only lead to its disintegration.

In order, then, to ‘Know Thyself’, to sustain an inner unity and stability, a certain denial of the contingent individual will and contingent individual selfhood is in order; these accidents must be confined to their proper place to make room for the Truth. Yet

There is no question of a suppression of the outer man, but only of integration, only of the substitution of autonomy for the subjection to his ruling passions that l’homme moyen sensuel suffers from. When the peace has been made, friendship and co-operation replace conflict.¹⁰

Nor ought this to be at the expense of happiness. Quite the opposite.

The man self-naughted is a happy man; not so those still conscious of their human ties.¹¹

Indeed, Aristotle and the Bhagavad-Gita are in agreement that man’s highest fulfilment is the result of an act, external goods being merely peripheral.

[Happiness, Ευδαιμονία] is a working of the soul in the way of excellence or virtue of a certain kind.¹²

He from Whom is the emanation of beings, by Whom all This is pervaded, by worshipping Him in his own duty a man winneth perfection.¹³

And without sacrificing the egoistic quest for momentary pleasure, we’re deprived of any chance at attaining the supreme pleasure of the Self’s Eternal Moment. If, as Aristotle claims, every well-done work is consummated by pleasure, which “perfects the act of working not in the way of an inherent state but as a supervening finish”¹⁴, what could be more pleasurable than to attain the state of pure Act? If a desire fulfilled is satisfying and the zenith of pleasure is reached during the process of fulfilment, what could be more pleasurable than the state beyond time, in which the fulfilling and the state of fulfilment are ever united in unfaltering synthesis?

To have all that has being and is lustily to be desired and brings delight; to have it simultaneously and partless in the soul entire and that in God, revealed in its unveiled perfection, where first it burgeons forth and in the ground of its essence, and all there grasped where God grasps himself,—that is happiness.¹⁵

In the final analysis, the only definitive response to the question “who am I?” must be “I am Brahma.”¹⁶ But these words can only belong to the Self; as for the name-and-form, if ever he claims to be anything, he is telling a half-truth at best and risks invoking great distress from the other, unspoken half. If he wishes to be honest with himself, he can only say, “I am nothing.”¹⁷

What this means practically is not easy to say, but it will here be best to present the following words with which Coomaraswamy concluded an essay on this very subject:

Few or none of “us” are yet qualified to abandon ourselves. As far as there is a Way, it can be trodden step by step. […] But a long stride has been taken if at least we have learned to accept the idea of the naughting of self as a good, however contrary it may be to our “natural” desire. […] For if the spirit be thus willing, the time will come when the “flesh,” whether in this or any other ensemble of possibilities forming a “world,” will be no longer weak. The doctrine of self-naughting is therefore addressed to all, in measure of their capacity, and by no means only to those who have already formally abandoned name and lineage. It is not the saint, but the sinner, that is called to repent of his existence.¹⁸

1. Not the transcendent principle of the being, but the ‘functional unity of the psyche’. Coomaraswamy (Ākiṃcañña - Self-Naughting) is right to criticise the fact that “The modern psychologist's only concern and curiosity are with the all-too-human self, that very self which even in its highest and least suspected extensions is still a prison.”

2. Jeffrey Satinover, Puer Aeternus: The Narcissistic Relation to the Self

3. Ibid.

4. Nicomachean Ethics, 1166b

5. René Guénon, The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, Ch.39

6. Jeffrey Satinover, loc. cit.

7. This vague intuition is that 'Being is', the irrational foundation of all logic which Guénon speaks of as the only necessary proof of God (The Symbolism of the Cross, Ch.17, note 4). The individual who loses sight of this axiom may fall into a vain and meaningless mode of living, but it's also possible that an individual who lacks discernment will fail to separate his sense of it with the contingent elements of his individual personality, leading him to feel that Being is his personal property and fall into unconscious self-aggrandising delusions.

8. Ananda Coomaraswamy, Ākiṃcañña - Self-Naughting

9. Aniccasuttaṁ, SN 22.45

10. Ananda Coomaraswamy, What is Civilisation and other Essays, Ch.11

11. Ananda Coomaraswamy, Ākiṃcañña - Self-Naughting

12. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1099b

13. Bhagavad-Gita, 18.46

14. Nicomachean Ethics, 1174b

15. Meister Eckhart, Vision is the whole Reward, Pfeiffer I.30. Quoted by Coomaraswamy in Time and Eternity, Ch.5

16. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 1.4.10

17. 2 Corinthians 12:11

18. Ākiṃcañña - Self-Naughting