(3)

Despite the increasingly exacting definitions of "consciousness," "self," "ego," and etc. that I have been formulating here, and despite even the occasional breakthroughs I have had with regard to realizing my experiential self, I feel less and less certain that I accomplish anything worthwhile by continuing to postulate theoretical constructs with regard the internal processes revealed to me through self-examination.  In both form and intent these constructs are, to use a punning simile I think entirely to the point, like that of an eye that's trying to see itself see; and a scientific understanding of how the eye operates does not necessarily bring one any closer to an understanding of the experience of vision.  Consciousness is fluid, and any attempt it makes to deconstruct itself will result in a kind of "blind spot" being created precisely because of this fluidity:  consciousness is too slippery to be pinned down.  Consciousness may perhaps best be defined, simply, as "the state of being aware"; but when one endeavors to define what that awareness consists of, or, more particularly, what it is that causes the existence of awareness in the first place, one is bound to discover sooner or later that the quantifying language of theoretical definition rather misses the point.  Any attempt made to reveal the causality of "self," because of the self-referential nature of the endeavor, is doomed to failure.  Self defies, in the essence of its experiential existence, all logic, all scientific reasoning.  In fact, I believe that it is best described as being of the realm of the miraculous.  I mean this quite literally:  in its essence, I find that the self of experiential consciousness exists – regardless of arguments in favor of its need for a life-form to sustain it, or of a theoretical construct to define it – without any specific support:  it simply is.  I don't mean to imply, by the vast simplicity of this statement, that my past theories as to the nature of the self and consciousness are thereby rendered invalid.  I do mean, however, to acknowledge that they may have been limited by any number of varying factors:  cultural bias, personal and historical limitations of knowledge, the idiosyncrasies of my own personality, the changing nature of the contextual field of my psyche's self-knowledge – to name only those possibilities which come immediately to mind.  The story of my attempts to quantify self is, in the end, just that:  a story.  This particular story can only be judged successful insofar as it has successfully transcribed the transformations of self and consciousness which have occurred during, and through, that story's telling.

Having said this much, I would like now to attempt to clarify some of the terms I have used while formulating these constructs, the better (hopefully) to finally dispose of them.  First, as to the difference between "self," "consciousness," and "ego":  "self" I take as a general designation of the life-impulse – the "point of particularity" in the "flow of experience" that constitutes the "ground-of-all-being" – which gives rise to consciousness, and "consciousness" I take to be the cognizance rendered to the self through intellectual, emotional, and physical sensation.  The former I call "self" because it is the self-generating energetic essence of life, and of consciousness; "consciousness" consists of this energetic essence as shaped by intellectual, emotional, and physical sensation.  "Ego," then, is the totality of the various manifestations of consciousness.  Ego is "falsely transcendent" when the manifestations of consciousness become fixed as an ideational construct that is believed to have an existence independent of the experiential self.  The "experiential self" is self-explanatory with regard its definition:  it is self experiencing self, and as such it exists at all times, though varying in its different manifestations with regard the degree to which it has been recognized.  Animals, for instance, have an experiential consciousness, but, lacking the self-reflective capacity of human beings, lack the ability to have but a rudimentary knowledge of their experiential natures.  At the opposite end of the scale, the "enlightened" human being has a complete knowledge of his or her experiential nature, but embodies that knowledge in such a way that there no longer exists any division between his or her "self" and it.  A "Warrior" is one who has achieved recognition of the experiential self, but does so in order to achieve a greater degree of maneuverability, thereby increasing the opportunities for learning, adaptation, and survival.  The "Witness" is the experiential self manifesting as the self-reflective aspect of human consciousness, thereby acting as a recorder of the impressions made upon consciousness via intellectual, emotional, and physical sensation.  The "Seeker" is the experiential self probing the process of its own sensate awareness through the ego, its purpose being the discovery of a unified field of consciousness with regard to both external and internal environments.  All the aforementioned aspects of the manifesting self (and there are surely others which I have neglected to describe), when combined, are generally conceptualized as, and referred to by, the term "I."  "I," however, is in reality a falsely transcendent figure:  "I" does not really exist.  "Self," however, as defined above, does exist – that is, there does exist an energetic manifestation, self-generating and self-supporting, which has Existence.  Existence, then, may be defined as that which has been spontaneously born of a generative power having its origins in a state of Non-existence.

Having reached this point in my descriptions, I feel it now in my best interest to discard all theoretical constructs thus far given – which have, in any case, grown too unwieldy for convenient use, and become somewhat haphazardly described in their particulars – in favor of new fields of experiential endeavor.  At any rate, I believe that I have, by this time, arrived at a critical point in my understanding:  to wit, that it is the desire for sensate experience that most fruitfully describes the fundamental motive power of the self's existence.  It has been through the manipulation of this desire that I have achieved such variations in sensate experience as I have been endeavoring to describe these past few months.  Yet it seems that the exact source of my compulsion to continually manifest new variations of experience is rather difficult to pinpoint.  On the one hand, it would appear that the self, defined as a "point of particularity" in the "flow of experience," exists as part of a larger energetic manifestation, and that this larger energetic manifestation inhabits the individualized self (consciousness manifesting as ego) for the purpose of gaining sensate experience.  Insofar as the ego is perceived as a falsely transcendent "I," it feels threatened by this inhabitation:  there is a sense of the larger energetic manifestation taking on predatory characteristics, hungering for and devouring the sensate experiences of the "I" and, in consequence, the "I" itself.  Moreover, this perception of a devouring force existing "out there" would appear to be responsible for the sense we have of some fundamentally horrifying element pervading all of Existence, manifesting itself not only via the cruelty human beings visit upon each other, nonhuman animals, and the earth, but which all life-forms seem compelled to enact, all life-forms being "consumed" by the need (and hence by desire) to devour other life-forms.  In the Christian religion, this devouring force is attributed, in some instances, to God, being then described as the "wrath" of God or (at best) as the sense of "mystery" which seems so often to human perception to enshroud the motives and operations of God.  In other instances, it's attributed to the Beast, Satan, and his drive to plunder the human penchant for sensual experience.  Likewise, in Buddhist theology, manifestations of sensate experience are held as being fundamentally illusory, and thus are considered to be, at best, of only relative value.  On the other hand, it would seem that when the ego experientially realizes itself as being an extension of the larger energetic manifestation, and thus knows itself to be, so to speak, "at one" with it, the predatory characteristics of the larger energetic manifestation no longer invoke fear.  The sense of "I" has been rediscovered, and discovered to be exactly that:  the sense, or sensation, of "I."  That is, it is not the falsely transcendent self signified by the verbalization of "I," but rather, the mental sensation (or experiential condition) which exists congruent to the verbalization of "I."  This "sensate I" has a corollary value to the "falsely transcendent I":  it exists as a collective valuation of ego, but one that is experientially, as opposed to intellectually, then verbally, rendered.

It is by this means, then, that the larger energetic manifestation becomes individuated.  But the question which remains is:  What is the purpose of this individuation?  What goal does it portend?  I wonder, for instance, about the valuation to be placed on the human capacity for language.  The mentally sensate experience of the falsely transcendent self is, of course, experiential, and therefore cannot in any way be considered transcendent.  But then, why develop the capacity for language in the first place?  One possibility is that it was simply an evolutionary mistake; certainly it seems to me plausible that beings could yet evolve who have an ability for sophisticated, mentally sensate experience without the development of a verbal, symbolically-encased language.  But the fact remains that such a language does indeed exist, and that it provides its own measure of sensate experience.  And so the following question arises:  What sensate experience is contained in the "transcendent" aspect of the falsely transcendent self?  It is the seat of power, though whether real or assumed I do not know.  It is the fount of all human ferocity, of our desire to rule, control, and devour.  It is that which gives us the value of the ultimate "other"; as such, it makes us want to devour even ourselves.  Yet as but one more aspect of the experiential self, all this must be accepted in order to attain a state of realization.  But, what purpose does it serve?  This question is not one which I believe can be answered using the theoretical constructs thus far given; rather, I must look to the exploration of a more purely experiential mode of existence to find a reply.  And the story of this reply is one which must, I think, be conveyed through a language that is based in the imagistic field of a poetically creative awareness.  Given that I am a creature of language, the sensate experience of its (falsely) transcendent aspect must be looked to not only as the causal factor that gives rise to the sense of otherness, but which also provides the reason of its being.