Allow me to exercise a bit of precision once more.
Unbeliever said:
I said:
I don't believe dissolving the ego includes dissolving individual identity. I think ego dissolution involves the mechanistic variables of our identity.
Agreed. The dissolution of the ego would be more related to the dissolution of his
impression of self. With the Impression of self gone, the ego can start talking objectively and becomes a pure channel. Pure in the sense that it is transparent. Transparent because it is free of those parasites.
Needless to say that even the impression of humanity is gone at that point and that any concept has lost its value.
We must be careful with the term "impression of self" as it can be taken at various levels of depth of awareness. Since you agree with me, I take it that you mean
mechanistic impression of self or the impression of the mechanistic self. This is important because it qualifies what follows in your statement.
The ego becomes a pure channel, and again we need to understand "purity". You state that it is "pure in the sense that it is transparent", and free of parasites. We need to be careful that we do not confuse "transparent" with nonexistent. A lens is transparent and thus affects what light passes through it. The natural ego or individualized true self allows for the inner essence to express through personality patterns in the outer world.
Without these patterns, relating to the world of form is meaningless because we have no reference and no axis of inner I. So the natural ego is both transparent as a focusing lens of higher awareness in terms of grounded physicality and is also a transparent prism to differentiate that awareness in terms of personal qualities.
This ego is not precisely the real I in essence, but the link between it and our physiological being. There are states, and I have experienced them briefly myself, where this link can be taken at least partially off-line (never severed because then we die), when cortical brain activity isolates itself from the rest of the body, either through trance, trauma or chemical induction.
Sometimes this state can be attained through practice. However, if you make this link, "transparent" in the way you say, you lose body identification and thereby the whole meaning of physical existence in your life. Those who who have attained this state consciously must be taken care of as infants because they have no sense of taking care of themselves. This material reality is an illusion to them, not because it IS an illusion, but because they are dissociated regardless of the specialized enhancement of their conscousness identification.
This enhancement is transcendent consciousness, but it is not grounded in the body aside from specialized cortical activity. To these people the body is "other" and a beast in which they reside. Even if part of them is in Divine awareness, this is still a schizoid state, and therefore undesireable to one practicing balanced center opening and grounding, and contradicts the purposes of self-observations as described here.
Now if we consider the impressions being removed as mechanistic, then we cannot include "the impression of humanity" as one of them. The impression of humanity is not an impression, but a reflection of our physical and genetic state of being.
So we must be careful because those (and I speak of possible trans-human influences as well as human ones)who would encourage us to deny our "impression" of humanity, or who may "inspire" us to believe it is desireable, may have it in their interest to use our then neglected humanity for their own reasons.
One does not so easily discard the gifts of manifest being, in my opinion. That would be a "step" in the wrong direction, as I see things.
Unbeliever said:
May I add that the dissolution of the ego brings about the neutralization of instinctive consciousness against the mental.
Once again, we have to be careful not to confuse our terms. Neutralization of instinctive consciousness is not necessarily the same as neutralization of mechanistic consciousness. The latter is formed by conditioning, and perverts the former. Many sages have followed this path only to come into conflict with their own instinctive being, a battle that all bodies must lose because life depends on this consciousness.
Instinctive consciousness is not the enemy in and of itself. What allows mechanistic consciousness to get a hold is the separation of instinctive consciousness from the rest of our being, emotional and mental. Instinctive, emotive and mental expression must come into coherence and resonance. These three elements must act as one to become a true vehicle of the real I, or else its presence cannot be sustained.
One of the reasons (aside from what G wrote in Ryans quote) that we feel discomfort in our brief confrontations with the real I, one of the reasons we feel naked, is because we have not yet integrated instinct, emotion and mentation into a coherent system that can contain, and BE the vehicle of expression for the real I.
Yet, it is the presence of this "I" that pulls these aspects together, so even though uncomfortable, the longer we can sustain these experiences, and the more frequent they become, the easier it will be to sustain them. That is because our real foundation of instinct/emotion/cognition is then coherent enough so we don't feel like we are coming apart, or naked as a fish out of water. In this case, the central I is the fish and the "water" is the medium of triple center integration.
So rather than dissociate the instinctual from the mental, which would be counterproductive if we truly seek integration/wholeness, we must align them, bring them into resonance so that wherever our attention moves these three centers move along with it. This is called developing singularity of being in the lower centers.
When this is accomplished, the mechanistic dynamics will have already dissolved, because they cannot coexist in this complete state, and a natural flow from higher center potential commences (probably already partially initiated as we continued to integrate the lower centers prior to full alignment), where we affirm true expanded self instead of deny its "lower" aspects.
So we may not really be in such close agreement, after all, and this from what you have written so far, as it stands. In your next post you seem to qualify your statments further, so permit me to examine if what you are stating above is the same as what you are stating below. I gather you are using specific terminologies, which makes understanding a bit difficult because we do not have a common reference of meaning.
In any case, you have qualified "Impression of self" in the former post in one way, where its apparent loss would lead to inevitable schizoid dissociation. Here you qualify it as follows:
UB said:
With the dissolution of the egoic illusions...the ego will not be in a state of 'self-observation'.
It won't because it will have lost its impression of self.
The Impression of self already comes from the identification of the ego to those energies that some call the program. (I prefer to refer to these energies as active principles rather than just mechanical programs, even though the ego under these influences becomes very mechanical)
This understanding of Impression of self is different than the previous you mentioned, because "loss of identification with alienating energies" is different than "loss of value for every concept". When
every concept loses value there can be no comparison of differences, and hence all choice is the same, hence choice itself and freewill loses all meaning and function. You understand the implications of what you are saying.
You see, when you identify Impression of self as energies that are really not natural to who we really are physically/genetically, as well as at the fundamental awareness level of individuality, then losing the Impression of self implies losing what
inhibits self-observation, because this self has cleared all obstructions from feeding back into itself.
Without awareness-feedback or self-reflection, which is not really reflection, but the ouroboros of awareness looping back into itself, there is no
sense of self, there is only an open-ended sense of non-identification. It is this self-identification that is the identification with the soul-self, and THAT is what is qualified to make transcendent connections without fragmentation.
So according to your definition, loss of the Impression of self, which is really the false impression created by obstructions to pure awareness flows, leads to true self-observation.
UB said:
With the loss of the impression of self comes also the loss of the egoic drives.
This is a principle that stems from the separation of egoic consciousness and the consciousness of death (astral).
I agree, if we qualify the reunion of these two modes of consciousness as the establishment of the continuity of consciousness regardless of the event of physical death, and the transcendence of the "bardo" state.
UB said:
Self-observation in itself is an egoic wish because it stems from a spiritual programming.
This would contradict your definition of Impression of self, where the conclusion is quite the opposite. I will agree, however, that self-observation is a natural function of the obstruction-free ego or individuality container of true I awareness, resulting from the alignment of the lower centers (instinct/emotion/cognition).
UB said:
In fact, the ego should not seek to self-observe so much that he should simply observe.
You are correct, again if we qualify that statement as "should not
only seek to self-observe", for if you lose awareness of self then you are not the center of your own existence. If
you are not, then who or what is? Being the center of your own existence is not to be confused with selfishness. It is a prespective at the root of being an individual. And from that perspective, then awareness can incorporate greater vistas, identifying with consciousness-field of those vistas, and not with those vistas as the ego self.
In other words, the central I is grounded in the individuality form generated by the body, and the alignment of the three centers, as I see it, but also has the option of greater identification. The I self-observes and is self-aware, and it can also expand beyond that into greater identifications beyond the vehicle, while still remaining rooted in it during life.
To not do so is to dissociate as when one is in trance, where often possession is a danger. At least it is a neglect of our grounded being and a reversal of our higher centers from our lower ones, which defeats the purpose of esoteric unfoldment. And that purpose is to be more of total, living, physically-grounded self FIRST, before you attempt any greater vistas. Otherwise, the purpose of incarnation is defeated.
UB said:
That observation of course requires a great deal of energy because the ego is constantly quieried through its very fabric.
I actually, I have long practiced something similar to what you refer. If you are familiar with Ramana Maharshi, it is the dissolution of the I-thought, so THAT which underlies it is revealed. And I do not disagree with you that it is a major experience, and part of esoteric development, to those inclined to that direction.
From experience, however, I can tell you that it is an incomplete method, because without a firm grounding in the individuality of physicality represented by the three coherent lower centers, it leads to a dissociated transcendent state. And let me tell you in metaphoric terms (as it is hard to conceptualize these things):
When you meet the "Face of God", as it were through such an experience, you enter into a situation as if this F
Face were saying: "What the hell are you doing here? If I wanted to come back empty handed to Myself I wouldn't have gone to the trouble of creating anything in the first place!" Of course there is no I/You relationship in such states, but the understanding is clear, nevertheless.
UB said:
The ego, technically speaking, is what it contains.
Actually, the ego is a container or pattern generated by the three centers, fragmented when they are fragmented, coherent when they are coherent, and the individual I is what it contains when coherent.
UB said:
The actual war between light and the forces of darkness referred to the possession of that psychic territory. It is the possession of that territory that defines the mind of the reincarnate.
This is true if by "light" you mean creative Living Being and by "darkeness" you mean entropic decay. And it is for this reason that we should not dissociate from our individuality completely, because it leaves that field wide open to unwanted infiltration.
UB said:
The most powerful key to drive a spike into the psychic trap that imposes a karmic law that must be supported by the ego is the knowledge of the real nature of thoughts. The one most important item in the seemingly infinite list of egoic identification.
You are correct, but this correct statment supports an erroneous conclusion as far as self-observation is concerned, IMO. Let's see what you mean by "the true nature of thoughts".
UB said:
So long as we believe that we think by ourselves, no matter what is observed, the subjective nature of the ego will remain and his observation will remain at the level of the impression, adding to the experience of the soul rather than adding to the ego's ability to control his life, therefore possess his soul, eventually become that 'higher self' by integration of his principles.
You may have wanted to say "adding to the ego's ability to control his life rather than adding to the experience of soul", but then I may have misunderstood. Frankly, you get my drift I think, and I have analyzed your text enough.
Let me present my understanding in brief:
Certain directions of esoteric thought pose three grades of awareness, the Immanent, the Pervading and the Transcendent. The first is the Divine within, the second the Divine around (pervading creation), and the third the Divine beyond. All three are the same in essence and different in reference, and all three are interlocked, but phenomenally obstructed from each other in this pervasive entropic state of affairs.
To maintain continuity of BEING none of these three must be sacrificed for any other, as far as we are concerned, and as long as we are alive, and even after, the Divine Within is the Primary Reference. We may shift and we may fuse references, but we never premanently lose that sense of the Inner Divine rooted in the energies formed by the lower centers, or rather in what is called the magnetic center (according to 4th Way terminology).
This is our Core and our Center. Thus when WE enter into environmental (Pandeistic) or Transcendent Communion, that Core is what enters into Communion, and it is not so restricted so that it has to deny its physical rooting to do so.
Beyond this, I urge caution when you use the words like "possession", as you do in the next sentence in your post. Such terms can easily be taken the wrong way, or make people think "possession" is the deeper motive for what you are developing here. Especially if in a reality of essential Unity and Oneness, you undermine the redemptive potential of the individual true I claiming that "another" energy is needed.
