THE SELF, part III

THE SELF, part III - by Guenther Zuehlsdorf, translation from the original German edition into Portuguese by Huberto Rohden and translated into English by Flavio de Mello.

 

 

 

 

According to Fichte, we reached the pure Self, when we deprive of all its accidental and restrictive attributes: The identity refers exclusively to the Universal, and is based on the prior denial of all individualizing differences. But language, the word, does not give total justice to this truth, because the Self is a liberating factor, and not something that is being released. Nevertheless, it is accurate the verification that the real Self is beyond all thought and restrictive categories, although it is only an emergency process. Schopenhauer is right to criticize Fichte because he substantiate the Self fronting of the article "the", when our language does not usually express the word self as a noun. When Schopenhauer criticizes this transformation of the Self in an object, he reveals the spirit of the Upanishads, that were to him quite familiar, "because designates the Self, the subjective as such, which can never become object, that is, the knowing, in opposition and as a condition of all the known". (Parerga II)

 

 

What really is the Self remains unspeakable, so that the wisest of sapient prefer to speak in a state with no "Self" or an ego absence, for example, like the brilliant Lao-Tse:

 

"The reason why I have problems

It is because I have an ego;

If reached the absence of ego,

How could I have problems?"

 

 

But this state of absence of ego is not identical to an emptiness or self annulment; it is instead the awakening to the true Being, the experience of the source of our self-awareness, which is the foundation of the unity of our Being. According to the advice of Rudolf Otto, the word "individual", in its original meaning, refers to the indivisible, the unity of consciousness, which manifests itself in all the thinking and acting, and is the assumption of any higher intuition. Only later was introduced in this word the sense of a particular ego, which says the Upanishad Brihadaranyaka: "The individuality (in the sense of separation) arises as the result of an illusion, that is, the identification of the Self with the objects; but in divine enlightenment, disappears the awareness of plurality, and with this also, the (false) individuality. With the knowledge of the Self perishes the pseudo-individuality".

 

 

The problem of the Self converges to the knowledge that the world depends on an individual who perceives this world, a conscious individual in which the world is born and in which the world perishes. This individual is the unchanging factor, the spiritual witness of the existence and the non existence, and therefore, the scope of all perceptions, conceptions and thoughts. A perception may not perceive another perception; a conception cannot recall another conception; two conceptions arises because they are contained in the same consciousness. But nothing allows us to suppose that this consciousness resides in individual beings as private conscience; what happens is that in this consciousness are contained particular conceptions which creates an idea of a separate consciousness.

 

 

"I am what I am" is this the voice of all wisdom, Maharishi said. When man identifies himself with what is changeable, with his perishable personality that is born and dies, then he is ego-conscious. When man identifies himself with what is immutable, unlimited, so he is Cosmo-conscious. In the first case, it is his Self the expression of nothing; in the second case reflects the Whole, the essence of all beings: "Self", the highest mantra, the name of God. (+)

 

 

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Translator's Note:

 

(+) The Self is contained in God, but God is greater than the Self. The Self is an immanent God; God is a transcendent Self.

 

 

 

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