THE AUTHENTIC SELF

AC: In light of everything we've been discussing, I'd like to speak a little bit about what real maturity is in relationship to spiritual transformation. Even though it doesn't sound very romantic, the truth is, I think, that in the end, sustained character development carries more spiritual weight, for most of us, than the peak experience, the ecstatic episode, the transitory event of samadhi or satori. The whole point is, how much real maturity, in human terms, is the seeker able to express in their relationship to life as a result of the spiritual experiences they've had? As you've clearly explained, ultimately it has to do with the degree of mature development. And the specific aspect of this that I'm very interested in has to do with narcissism, and how its presence, to varying degrees, makes it so difficult for the seeker—and also some teachers—to let go for real during the spiritual experience and as a result embrace a relationship to life that expresses real strength, dignity, and maturity.

In regard to this question, I wanted to bring up what I call the "authentic self." Sri Aurobindo referred to this as the "psychic being," and in Integral Psychology you call it the "deeper psychic."

KW: Yes, which is the opening to authentic being beyond conventional and egoic modes.

AC: Sri Aurobindo writes:

It is this secret psychic entity which is the true original Conscience in us deeper than the constructive and conventional conscience of the moralist, for it is this which points always towards Truth, and Right, and Beauty, towards Love, and Harmony and all that is a divine possibility in us, and persists till these things become the major need of our nature. It is the psychic personality in us that flowers as the saint, the sage, the seer; when it reaches its full strength, it turns the being towards the Knowledge of Self and the Divine, towards the supreme Truth, the supreme Good, the supreme Beauty, Love and Bliss, the divine heights and largenesses, and opens us to the touch of spiritual sympathy, universality, oneness. . . . If the secret psychic Person can come forward into the front and, replacing the desire-soul, govern overtly and entirely and not only partially and from behind the veil this outer nature of mind, life and body, then these can be cast into soul images of what is true, right and beautiful, and in the end the whole nature can be turned towards the real aim of life, the supreme victory, the ascent into spiritual existence.

What's become apparent in my work with students is that unless the seeker becomes grounded in this authentic self, or psychic being—which is the true self, beyond ego, or the awakened spiritual conscience—then higher nondual enlightenment experiences are never going to stick. There's not going to be a firm ground for those potentially liberating and transformative experiences to take root. This kind of development—the awakening of the authentic self—is missing from the picture in many enlightenment teachings these days. And I think that's why these genuine higher experiences rarely result in real maturity—a human being whose awareness is resting in an awakened higher conscience.

KW: Yes. I think that's really true. And I would say that boomeritis is kind of a scab over that authentic self. I think it's actually the last major roadblock to an awakening of this deeper psychic disposition. That's one of the reasons that it really concerns me. Boomeritis ensconces the ego and the self-contraction as an unassailable entity that cannot be judged because "You are not allowed to judge me. How dare you?" And under those circumstances you're never going to find your own authentic self because the authentic self itself passes that same judgment on your self-contraction. So as long as you won't accept that judgment from your teacher, you won't accept it from your own higher self either.

AC: That's right. And unless one is emotionally grounded in the authentic self or soul, under pressure one will waver, one will betray that authentic self to the ego.

KW: Yes. What really tends to hold sway in people is indeed their emotional disposition. I call it the "center of gravity"—it's actually where you "live" so to speak. Under pressure is really when you find out where the person's "soul" is, where their center of gravity is, and unless it reaches into the deepest emotional disposition of a person, it is a superficial realization at best.


TOP-DOWN VS. BOTTOM-UP

AC: In relationship to this question of transformation, I thought it would be good to speak a little bit about a very important distinction between what we might call a bottom-up and a top-down model of how we relate to the human experience. In other words, the distinction between ego psychology and a psychology of liberation. Ego psychology gives us a bottom-up model: a relationship to the human experience that's based on the presumption that there's something wrong, that there's a fundamental problem. A psychology of liberation, however, gives us a top-down model, one that is based on the opposite presumption, that there's absolutely nothing wrong and that one is inherently free right now and in every moment.

If one is lucky, a certain moment will come where one GETS IT. One gets the whole picture. In that moment, one directly experiences one's own inherently liberated self, beyond mind and beyond time, and in that, knows for the first time one's very real potential for liberation in this life, because one sees the ego, and the conditioned mind, for what it truly is—relative, impermanent, and ultimately unreal.

Now, if one has had a very deep experience of the inherently liberated self, if one has directly seen that one has never actually been unfree, then one would be in a very unusual position. One would potentially be able to embrace a completely different relationship to one's own conditioned mind and emotions—a relationship that would be the expression of liberation itself. And for this to become the case, one would have to surrender wholeheartedly to what one has seen. One would have to consciously—

KW: —align oneself with it.

AC: Yes. And if through intense aspiration and profound surrender one is able to align oneself with the liberating truth of what one has seen, then we can say that such a person has awakened. To what degree is another issue, but we can say that a transformation has indeed occurred. And it would be obvious. For this kind of top-down transformation to be sustained, what's demanded is literally a different psychology—a psychology of liberation.

Just to illustrate this, I can tell you a story about one of my students. She has a Ph.D. in psychology, and she is very smart, an unusually bright human being. She really got my teaching, had a deep experience of it, and as a result became a passionate supporter of my work. And then, as usually happens around someone like me, after a few years she came bang up against her own narcissism, her own raging ego.

KW: What fun for you!

AC: What fun indeed! Well, that's the downside of being a guru. Anyway, as soon as her ego was challenged, she abandoned the top-down model, which she had had a very deep grasp of, and which would have demanded that she change there and then in accordance with what she knew to be true, and she suddenly declared, "I think I need to see a therapist in order to find out why I don't want to let go of my ego."

KW: (Laughs)

AC: I said, "What do you mean? You don't want to let go of your ego for the same reason everybody doesn't want to let go of it. There's only one reason. There's nothing unique about your reason." You see, from the top down, in the psychology of liberation, everything in the human experience becomes radically impersonal. And in that light, of course, it takes great maturity to truly embrace a liberated relationship to our own experience.

KW: What's so interesting to me is that both top-down and bottom-up have a role to play. That awakening event—when a person acknowledges that the already liberated self is something that is in the fabric of their awareness that they had simply not noticed—is profound transformation. But then the person comes out of that state. And, as you say, there's the whole process of how much does it stick, can they align themselves with it?

AC: Can they live it?

KW: Right. Because the alternative to living the already realized state is that they become a seeker. And a seeker, of course, is somebody who relates to the world in terms of a fundamental lack, who presupposes a lack of Spirit, a lack of already enlightened self. All of that is in the contracted realm. But to the extent that they can stay aligned with that already liberated self—that's the top-down model—it starts reconfiguring their entire psychology.

AC: Exactly!

KW: So the top-down approach is important because a person has to really get a fundamental reorientation to the already liberated nature of their present condition. And that true awakening becomes the foundation of true spiritual practice and replaces the disposition of egoic seeking.

So when that top-down transformative enlightening experience occurs, then the question becomes, what level of development is the person at? If they are at a traditional, or a modern, or a postmodern, or an integral wave—are they going to interpret it differently and perhaps be able to handle it differently? Are they going to carry it differently? Will one wave be able to carry it better than others? Will it stick? Are they going to be able to stand in the fire long enough for it to really reconfigure their entire being? Or are they going to contract and start picking fights with the teacher?

AC: (Laughs)

KW: So what needs to happen from the bottom up, so to speak? How much development and maturity do we need to inculcate in students in order for them to be able to hold the top-down disposition long enough for it to reconfigure their entire being? A traditionalist can have a strong satori, but it will quickly get turned into fundamentalist dogma. A postmodernist can have a strong satori, but it will often degenerate into boomeritis. In other words, development beyond green seems very important to being able to carry this realization effectively. So this is where we need to marry top-down realization with bottom-up development.

AC: Yes, I agree. And you know, in the end, I have found, it always simply boils down to this: How much do we care? How interested are we really, and how much do we care? Because you see, when we're under pressure, when our back is against the wall, the only thing that really counts is how much we care. And that's when this whole question of the authentic self, or soul, comes in, because when this is cultivated, then a deeper capacity to care—to care more about truth, about what is higher—begins to emerge. And our capacity to not be swayed from that position is strengthened, which then makes it possible to actually carry the already liberated state through the trials, tests, and challenges of life.

KW: And also, once there's that acknowledgment and recognition of the already free and liberated condition, then that becomes the basis of a motivation of, in a sense, duty.

AC: Yes, an obligation.

KW: You're not motivated out of lack. You're not motivated out of "I'm seeking or grasping something." I mean, a lot of people say, "If you had the experience of being one with everything, how can you be motivated at all?"

AC: Actually, you'd be more motivated.

KW: You're more motivated—of course. You're motivated now to express that, to make that happen, as a duty, to be true to that nature that's been awakened.

AC: That's what we're here for.

KW: At that point your center of gravity shifts to the authentic self, the deeper psychic, because you can never go back now.

AC: Yes.

KW: And frankly that's what boomeritis prevents. If you want to get to the deeper psychic and never go back, you've really got to get over yourself. And that means let go of boomeritis and stop being so self-satisfied, forget therapy, and get back to hating yourself!

AC: Yes, because at that point the way we relate to our self and also to other people has to change. There is no going back, no matter how we may happen to feel on any given day, even if we're having a hard time, even if things are not going our way. Because of what we have seen, and because of what we've said yes to, we just can't go back anymore. And that's the ultimate challenge of transformation on a deeply human level: Are we willing to be a different person, no matter what?