This implies that the human being contains within his innermost truest self the imprint of the whole universe because we are all of us a part of the universe. We are representative of the universe in the sense that the Ageless Wisdom says the great law is: “As above, so below.”
Robert: Welcome. Inner sight is simply seeing that which is always present but not yet fully recognized. You have within you the ability to see yourself and the world around you in a new way, with new eyes, so stay with us and together we’ll look at the world and ourselves with inner sight. Today’s theme is the ancient psychology of the Delphic Oracle, “Man, know thyself; then thou shalt know the universe…” Why is it so important to know oneself and what does that really mean?
Sarah: It’s one of those great mysteries obviously if the Delphic Oracle said it and we still haven’t figured it out. It goes back several thousand years; “Man know thyself and thou shalt know the universe.” I think this implies that the human being contains within his innermost truest self the imprint of the whole universe because we are all of us a part of the universe. We are representative of the universe in the sense that the Ageless Wisdom says the great law is: “As above, so below.” Human beings function according to the same laws that govern the universe as an entity. We’re not separate from it. But I think the problem in knowing ourselves is that we don’t know who the “self” is, who the “I” is. A lot of us probably mistake our role in life as mother or friend or citizen for who we are, or we might mistake our paycheck, our salary, our net worth for who we really are. “I am a rich person.” “I am worth five million” or “I am a poor person.” That qualifies who I am. We mistake the outer personality for who we really are, and the very word personality comes from persona, which I think is a term meaning mask. The ancient Greek theater presented dramas with the actors wearing a mask, and that’s what the persona is. The personality is a mask that hides the true self, and yet we think the personality is, in fact, who we really are.
Dale: And that’s probably one reason why we haven’t really discovered what the universe is, because we haven’t discovered what man is yet. Truly, we’re still pretty much looking at the physical man, just as we are looking at the physical universe. As soon as we recognize that the same laws that make up the universe, also are responsible for our own creation. We are made of the substance of the universe. The human is created out of a similar type of patterns and laws—spiritual laws—of which the universe is made. There is a consciousness and a self, contained within what we call man, and probably—if “as above so below” is true—there is this consciousness and beingness in those other great planets and solar systems of the universe.
Sarah: The very term psychology, I think, gives us a key because psyche means soul and logi comes from the Greek word root logos meaning word. So, psychology is the word of the soul or you could say the note of the soul. The understanding of the human being then is the recognition of the basic initiating power of the soul, which is one with all souls, and yet when you think about modern psychology—which is quite a modern science, it really started basically with Freud, didn’t it? —it’s mostly concerned with the persona, the outer aspect, with the personality and its problems and deficiencies. Only a relative few psychologists have really concerned themselves with understanding the soul. Jung was one. Assagioli, the great Italian founder of Psychosynthesis, was another. They recognized that when you peel away the outer layers of the personality to the essential inner being, then you are getting at a true understanding of the self.
Dale: And that brings up an interesting dilemma. How do you discover that self? Because it has to do and relates to what you said about God being immanent in the universe, immanent within and transcendent also. So, there is that relationship between the spiritual within and the spirit without.
Sarah: In fact, the Hindu teacher Radhakrishnan said that “The Supreme [meaning God] is within us. God’s light dwells in the self and nowhere else. It shines alike in every living being and one can see it with one’s mind steadied.” Aha! That’s the key. With one’s mind steadied, then you can see this inner being.
Dale: It takes a certain amount of control over the mind and the mental nature and the emotional nature to bring everything to a point of peace and quiet.
Sarah: I think it also requires an ability to peel away layer upon layer of encrustation; like a mollusk at the bottom of the ocean builds layer upon layer of sediment around himself, so does the personality over many lifetimes build up layers of experience and of assumptions about itself that has to be peeled away, because the Ageless Wisdom speaks of the Self with a capital S which is the One Self. We are linked with all of our fellow men on the level of that higher self. And then there is the not-self, which is the personality, and I think it’s interesting that it’s defined by a negative—the not-self—because you mentioned having to peel away or to discard.
Dale: Through a process of elimination, you discover the self by eliminating everything that it is not. And it is not this physical body. It is not the emotional nature or the feelings, it is not even the mind. It is something else, something other than that. If you strip away or eliminate all of those, all of that three-fold aspect of the personality, what are you left with? You’re left with being.
Sarah: Well, that question is where some people experience their breakdown, when they have to realize they are not their beauty, they are not their salary, they are not their net worth, they are not the status in the community that they have cherished and struggled to attain, they are not their fame and the good opinion of the people they admire. And when they realize that none of that really defines who they are, they don’t know what to do. And actually, at that point of breakdown, one enters into a very constructive state of receptivity to a new understanding. So, I’m not saying that’s necessarily a terrible thing.
Dale: But I think this is where psychology is today, pretty much. They may recognize this place of a self, but really identifying what that self is and finding a place for it in one’s everyday life may not have taken place yet in the average everyday psychology.
Sarah: Well, yes, I guess what you’re saying is you have to prepare a place and a space in your own consciousness for recognizing this innermost being, and that’s why practices like meditation, reflection, self-examination are absolutely essential. Wasn’t it Socrates who said the “unexamined life is not worth living?” If you don’t take a look at yourself and see your reflection in your relationships with others—because they are all reflecting back to you who you really are. That’s what relationship is. They just mirror back to you what you are basically expressing out of your own force field. If you aren’t willing to look at that, then you’re not going to recognize your self, even if it were handed to you on a platter.
Dale: I don’t know if psychology recognizes this self in that way: of the being within. It seems to have been reduced to some kind of functions of the brain. Of course, it’s much more than that but it takes recognition to go beyond that point, I think.
Robert: I’m intrigued by what you’re talking about: the self. I’d like to get to know myself better, and sometimes I think that the director within me is maybe the self, that part of me that decides I will do this or I’ll focus on that. Do you think there’s some truth in that thought?
Sarah: Yes, there is an inner director. Another term might be an observer. There is an observer within each of us that is not really actively participating in the world but is standing apart from it and observing, and one can begin to cultivate an awareness of that observer that is somewhat detached from whatever is going on in the outer world. You can become more able to see yourself in action, so to speak, if you cultivate this awareness. In fact, sometimes you become aware of this director or observer watching even in the midst of a drama that might be unfolding within your life. Sometimes in periods of real crisis, people will be aware of actually being two selves, the one who is suffering and struggling through the crisis, but also one who is simply observing and watching. And that observer, that director, is the soul, which is enduring and free of pain and suffering such as the personality experiences because it is not so totally identified with the physical plane in the outer world where all the pain and suffering happens.
Dale: Yes, and this factor of control is very important because too often—I think it’s very much the case with people today—they are controlled by emotional reactions pretty much. Desire and fear and anxiety, a whole range of emotions; these emotions tend to take over. And that’s what’s controlling you. You are not in control when those emotions are very prominent and demanding attention. And the whole objective, of course, is to turn that thing around, to turn the controlling factor around so that you, the soul, the self, the one within this particular personality becomes the controller.
Sarah: The reason we decided to have this program on the psychology of the self was because of something you said last week and I’ve been sitting here trying to recall what it was and I don’t really remember it but you said something to the effect that there is a psychology of the well. That struck a chord in us because so much of modern psychology seems to deal with illness and neurosis and sometimes psychosis with: what’s wrong with me, I’m not happy, what’s wrong with me? But there is an understanding of the self that identifies our basic wellness and as Assagioli and others have said, our basic goodness. Most people are fundamentally at base good, but they are in various stages of achieving that goodness. We are works in progress. We’re not finished. God isn’t finished with us yet. As Jesse Jackson said, “Be patient—God is not finished with me yet.” We’re works in progress. We’re developing. And to me, one of the liberating things about psychology is that it identifies or it helps us to see ourselves, whatever we are, as essentially what we have to be and what we need to be. In other words, we might not express our basic temperaments and our basic tendencies very well, but that urge that makes us head in a particular direction is what we need to be. What I’m getting at is that the study of the seven rays identifies the seven basic attributes of divinity, which are: Will, Love, Intelligence, Harmony, Knowledge, Devotion and Law or Order, as basic psychological drives. To me this helps us understand people and to accept them as works in progress who are becoming what their soul demands they be, especially when you look at children. We all tend to label children as the little bossy one, the little dictator, the little peacemaker, the little mother. These are tendencies that we get labeled with as children and they stay with us all our lives and we feel that they identify something that’s not quite right or acceptable about us. But we can begin to take those tendencies and see that this is what this human being must become. The little dictator is someone who has to become a true leader. The little mother is someone who must love and nurture. One who is obsessed with detail is one who is on a path of perfection that will unfold in its proper way given time. So, to me there’s a very loving view of human nature in this understanding of the seven rays.
Dale: And that’s another whole basis for psychology. You mentioned the psychology of the well, and that’s exactly what it is if one can apply these seven rays, which are essentially seven basic divine qualities that manifest through every human being. We look at those, and we study those rays, and we find out that this is what we’re made of. So, it’s another whole phase of psychology, of looking at oneself and strengthening your self, your outer personality self, and also your inner soul self, and bringing that to the foreground and saying, “This is what I am, because I am made of these energies and these qualities, and this is the way it’s meant to be in this particular lifetime.”
Sarah: It also reaffirms that, as Radhakrishnan said, “The Supreme is within us.” God is within each one of us, and through these seven rays, we begin to identify our essential divine tendency. We’re not a perfect expression of harmony or of spiritual will or of love, but we are working in that direction, we’re unfolding. The psychology of the well helps people to become more of their best self. Instead of focusing on neuroses and deficiencies, maybe we could foster more of what is already sound and healthy within a human being and bring that more to the surface.
Dale: Absolutely, especially to bring to the surface the qualities of the soul because the soul is also on one of these seven rays, and that is the basic quality towards which you the individual should be working.
Sarah: I think to get at that quality, though, we have to peel away and strip away a lot that gets in the way of our understanding of ourselves. Modern life we all realize is so complicated, and yet the writings of Alice Bailey speak of the simplicity of the soul. So, we aren’t going to find that true self until we learn to simplify our life, simplify our thinking, our reactions.
Dale: And a study of the rays can help to do that. One has to, as you say, strip away a lot of the glamour and the illusions that we’ve built up around ourselves.
Sarah: And the distractions.
Dale: Yes, and all the material distractions, they give us a false impression of who we are. And a study of the rays can help change that.
Robert: You’ve been listening to Inner Sight. Now we would like to close with a world prayer called the Great Invocation. It’s a call for light and love and goodwill to flow into the world and into our hearts. Let’s listen for a moment to these powerful words.
Sarah: Closes the program by reciting the adapted version of the Great Invocation.
(This is an edited transcript of a recorded radio program called “Inner Sight.” This conversation was recorded between the host, Robert Anderson, and the then President and Vice-President of Lucis Trust, Sarah and Dale McKechnie.)
(Transcribed and edited by Carla McLeod)
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