Unmasking the Self
The Middle Ages produced the Schoolmen. Europe during the 12th and 13th centuries enjoyed an academic prestige that is appreciated by historians as the Golden Age of Scholasticism, an age where thousands of students entered the universities eager to imbibe the “new” learning. For in the 13th century, scholars were busily investigating the Latin translations of Middle Eastern and Hellenic traditions. Original treatises that had been unknown or only fragments were now available for serious research. Suddenly both the Greek world and the accompanying Arabic commentaries were available.
The Medieval Approach
From among these theological, philosophical and medical imports, the opus of Aristotle, called “The Philosopher” by Medieval scholars, served in scope of intellectual vision to order the entire fields of knowledge. The Schoolmen relied upon Aristotle’s methodologies more than any other author in their natural sciences. And his philosophical techniques found their way into the Medieval theologies. In his scientific and philosophical investigations, man was portrayed as a unified whole.
Today, under the curious dichotomy introduced by Descartes between the mind and the body, universities accept an unfortunate, radical separation between the study of the mind and the study of the body. For Aristotle and the Schoolmen, the difference was more nuanced with distinctions and differences. For them psychology went hand in hand with biology, since both studied living things. Psychology concerned itself with the examination of the life principles of living bodies, the study of the soul in all its vital operations, The notion of soul being here the English translation of the Greek “psyche” or Latin “anima,” that principle or source whereby living things live.
The Schoolmen, following the common-sense observations and methodology of Aristotle, noted that the realm of nature comprised non-living and living things. The latter were differentiated from the former by their ability to move themselves. Rocks tumble according to the laws of force and gravity but never roll along of their own accord, whereas plants and animals initiate to some extent their own peculiar movements. As self-acting agents, these bodies must have some principle within to account for their various motions. Plato had stated that “self-motion is the very idea and essence of the soul” (Phaedrus Dialogue). It was to this puzzling question, “What accounts for living activity?” that determines the study of psychology.
The Three Souls in Nature
In the realm of nature, one does not find life as such but living bodies. Life and body exist together. Therefore, the proper study for psychology includes the organic matter associated with living activities. A separation between the two would mislead the student by undervaluing the reality under consideration. A physician who only studies a corpse for anatomy remains abysmally ignorant of how the body functions as living matter.
From a careful observation of living, natural bodies, one can discern three types of living principles or souls, corresponding to the three kinds of besouled organisms. Nature is empirically stratified with plant life, animal life, and human life. Each of these kingdoms manifests its own range of vitality. Plant life reveals itself most basically in acts of nutrition, growth and reproduction. Animal life exhibits its specialties in acts of sensitive cognition, sensitive drives, and local movement. Human life is especially characterized by rational cognition and rational appetition—reasoning and will. Therefore, the Schoolmen analyzed plant psychology, animal psychology, and human psychology, delving into the sub-details permitted by the empirical refinements of their methodology.
Human Psychology
Inheriting the Greek tradition, the Medieval viewpoint saw a human as a living entity manifesting vegetative, sensitive and rational acts. These living acts originate from a principle other than the body. Thus, their analysis revealed that a human is composed of soul and body, life and matter.
Peculiar to this relationship of soul and body is that the soul informs the body. The human body cannot subsist apart from its enlivening principle. Without the soul, the former human body disintegrates into less organized forms of chemical matter. In their human configuration, soul and body subsist together, they make a bond of mutual complementation: a human then is one single being.
Contrary to Platonists who view man as essentially a soul using a body, the Schoolmen maintained the substantial union of a besouled organism; on the other hand, against Cartesians and behaviorists, the Schoolmen would insist on the psycho-somatic nature of man’s existence. As one Schoolman said:
Although the soul of man has functions which are peculiar to itself and in which the body does not share, for instance, the acts of his intellect, there are other functions that are shared by the soul and body conjointly, such as his sensations and his emotions of fear and anger. Phenomena of this kind originate because of certain changes in definite areas of the body; from which it is manifest that they are acts of the soul and body working together. –Aquinas: De Veritate, 26, 10.
For Plato man was primarily a soul interacting with a body. Similarly for the moderns influenced by the 17th century view of Descartes. In the Cartesian viewpoint, man is not one substantial nature, but two independent substances: mind, whose essence is thought, and matter, which is mechanical in operation and whose essence is extension in space. In the latter tradition, there is an unbreachable dichotomy between soul and body, or mind and matter. The only way the two parts function in man is in a coincidental or purely mechanical manner. A contemporary offshoot is in the field of medicine where treatment of patients relies exclusively upon chemical drugs and surgery.
The Schoolmen noted the dynamic interchange between the rational and sensitive levels in man, the obvious influence of strong acts of will upon the emotions, and the reversible effect of emotionalism upon the mind. Nevertheless, the growth of Newtonian science and the material success of technology from the 17th century tended to reinforce the Cartesian viewpoint. The reluctance of viewing man as a unified whole has led to the modern cleavage between body and soul called psychophysical parallelism, as if the body and mind mimic each other.
An early acceptance of this internal division in 20th century psychology was seen in the explanations of Wilhelm Wundt, Gustav Fechner, and E. B. Titchener. These investigators saw man as a composite of psychic or mental operations and concomitant neural and physical processes, two parallel spheres of activity in man unrelated to each other in any causal dependency. The question of why the unrelated spheres synchronize at all is left unanswered. Once this position was asserted in the history of psychology, it was not too difficult for alternative monistic views to evolve in reaction to it. J.B. Watson, the pioneer of behaviorism, eventually became dissatisfied with this division and substituted behavior for consciousness, external observation for introspection, and reflexes for sensations. Instead of two spheres in association, man is simply a conditioned machine. He is without soul, without mind, and without consciousness, a being reduced entirely to
The Schoolmen’s analysis of the mind-body enigma rejects any kind of parallelism or mere mechanical interplay. The human soul, as the life principle, incorporeal and capable of subsistence by itself, nevertheless is incomplete, it needs matter for humanization. Only the composite union of soul and body, form and matter, organizes a substantial human being. Man has vegetative functions, sensitive acts of sensation, and rational and creative acts of reasoning, but these living operations do not indicate three different lives fluctuating in a composite entity. Rather these three levels of operations are conjoined into an interdependent whole. Man moves and feels and thinks of himself not as containing three lives but one life manifesting itself variously in a multi-leveled unity. Each soul or life principle individuates itself by informing its own particular body or matter. The organic body, in turn, translates the life principle or life powers of the soul into the world of time and space. The enlivened-matter or ensouled-body together form the human being. Man acts as one living substance and upon this intimate arrangement the Schoolmen understood him as a person.
The Medieval Notion of Person
The etymology of the word “person” has always occupied a prominent place in philosophical and religious discussions. Those who look to the Greek language derive it from prosopon which means “a mask,” or perisome which means “around the body.” Other scholars trace it to the Latin personare meaning “to sound through.” The Latin expression, persona, refers to the actor’s mask, constructed with a concave opening at the mouth, amplifying the actor’s voice. The persona of the Roman state easily corresponds to the prosopon of the Greek theater.
The first clearly defined use of the notion “person” was philosophically composed by Boethius in the 6th century: person is an individual substance of a rational nature. (De Persona et Duabus Naturis, Ch. 11) To speak of person as a substance treats the living subject, man, as bearer of all his acts. He distinguishes himself from other corporeal substances in nature by his rationality. Man reveals himself a human person because he possesses insight and volition; he thinks and loves in a body. The way his powers are exercised crystallizes for his person his individuality or personality. Thus, the Schoolmen distinguish between the stable rational substrate that establishes man as a person, and the dimension of his dynamic presence, man in his personality. Person is born; personality is achieved. No one is more person than another; but an individual may express more personality than another. The notion of person refers to a fixed status, an essence subsisting in nature, a certain ultimate foundation in which human acts, however variable and unpredictable, inhere. Growth and decay may alter my physical composition, the raw events of life and the randomness of thoughts may continually supplant themselves as contents in my mind, yet there remains a continuity of identity; I am the same person feelingly and thinkingly undergoing this flux of living. My thoughts and feelings may change drastically throughout the day, but I remain the same person. This dynamic presentation and its unique unfoldment, whether awkward or refined, of the various internal powers, habits and acts of man is, in a word, the personality.
The Modern Notion of Ego
The proliferation of schools of psychology and theories about man in the 20th century is so vast an examination as to require a longer essay than at hand. For comparison purposes, we have selected the flexible term “ego” which is by no means interpreted in a standard way by all schools. Nevertheless, bringing the differing approaches to understanding ego into a manageable treatment necessitates a general treatment for exposing the term. An argument that persona or personality are virtually the same as the ego could be posed.
The ego, broadly speaking, refers to the human being as he comes to grips with life’s episodes. The ego forms man’s inner world: a composite of his thoughts and feelings, strivings and hopes, fears and fantasies, including his view of what he is, what he has been, what he may become, and his attitude pertaining to his worth.
From birth onwards, this composite unfolds and alters as man interacts with his social and physical environment. The internal dynamic organization of his inner world modifies itself in relation to the world. An individual may function in each way, provided the interacting circumstances endure. Any adjustment or maladjustment to the environment indicates the ego’s capacity for modes of reorganization. The ego derives its inner mode of organization by integrating inherent impulses or instincts with the impact of outer reality. For the individual, the ego functions as a central organizing agency which can synthesize or abandon its relationships to itself or to the world. The various relations coalescing at any given time measures the individual’s ego identity.
Theoretically speaking, no limits can be set for ego formation. The multiple demands from the inner and outer world require a continual dexterity that the ego manifests in its executive or regulatory function. One’s identity, what may be referred to as the ego’s posture in life, appears out of those circumstances that are currently important to it: “The ego is principally determined by the individual’s own experience, that is to say by accidental and current events.” (S. Freud, An Outline of Psychoanalysis, Ch.1.)
The Inner World of Expanded Consciousness
Reality is one. It is people’s minds that make the difference. A child experiences a segment of reality. From his point of view, he cannot do more. He sees the world with the conscious power of a child’s eyes. Later, with continual exposure to and reflection upon reality, his point of view regarding the world undergoes profound modification. His perspective, more than reality itself, alters. Interestingly, in the field of yoga there are many statements by Patanjali that examine the dynamic structuring of man’s inner experience of the world around him from the perspective of introspective consciousness.
Both the Schoolmen and modern psychology recognize that the child and the adult share their reasonable efforts to establish an identity in life. How vexing it is when you don’t know what to do with your life. Acts of reason are involved poorly or otherwise, every time one attempts to establish a relationship with reality. To function humanly in any sense of the word requires a sufficient display of rational activity. The application of reason does not, of course, preclude other factors and dimensions found in the human complex. Phenomena such as emotions, bodily activities, and the prompting of the unconscious, are definite factors shared; but the emergence and direction of reason, more than any other single factor, constitutes man’s humanness. Using his own terminology, even discredited Freud remarked similarly that ego should replace Id in the development of the adult personality: “the ego represents what we call reason and sanity…” (The Ego and the Id, Ch.2.).
Yoga would understand the Schoolmen’s emphasis on the rational part of the soul as the core of the person and the Freudian emphasis on the ego as the organizational principle for dealing with life as the primary modes of experiencing reality. Yoga may concede that the notion of person may be equated with rational discursiveness, and, in more modern terms, the individualization of a human being may be attributed to ego development, but yoga still challenges either school with the question: Does person or ego fully define the entire essence and importance of man; is man ultimately his discursive reason or his ego?
Medieval psychology saw the essence of man in his rational soul. Personality in the Medieval sense resided in the inherent and fixed powers of the rational soul and its dynamic presentation demonstrates the various shades these powers take as habits of expression. To the contrary, in denying the existence of a soul, ego psychology posits instead a succession of life experiences that from time to time are juxtaposed by the individual into a sense of personal identity.
Yoga acknowledges that man thinks and undergoes successive experiences, involving distinguishable aspects of sensing, imagining, desiring, conceptualizing and remembering, among others. Yoga even admits that for many people the collage of events happening to them can be interpreted as the whole meaning of their existence. But assuming human identity as a process of rational activities or successive experiences leaves aside the importance of the fundamental inner experience of being self-aware of the experiential process. A serious change of mind, for example, embarking on a new career, becoming ill, moving to an entirely different part of a country, all these events absorbed by the mind would indicate a modification of the ego. Yet the entire process of altering the ego’s organization can be reflected upon by man’s inner awareness. The ego’s flexible boundaries are here but are not as wide as man’s inner world of awareness. The sense of ego and inner awareness are not fully equivalent. Man can be self-conscious of his dynamic activities without interfering with their playout. Man cannot be the ego’s core or cluster of values or personality traits with which he identifies his security or well-being, because man endures whether he possesses these associations. People can remember later that they have undergone periods of clinging to things or ideas that at the time seemed almost indispensable to their survival as persons and yet over the years they have changed their minds and relinquished possessions. They have, in other words, disassociated with the reality that appeared so indispensable to their survival at one time.
Yoga points out that human consciousness can take a non-identifiable stance toward its thoughts and feelings. One can apprehend reality without paying the price of absorbing it as one’s defendable property. One learns to know life without appropriating it as an intimate, personalized extension of self-identity. Otherwise, one cannot lighten the load of carrying emotional and conceptual baggage through life. Yoga is concerned with introducing the individual to a filtering process whereby one reaches a state of uncluttered pure awareness. The efforts to achieve this state of things gradually reveals what yoga posits as the true essence of the human being. The actual experience of unconditional awareness, what the Ancients referred to as a state of wisdom, is the substantial reality of the individual or, better, the self. To appreciate the yogic notion of human nature, one exercises the process of introspective dissociation called dhyana or meditation.
Man’s Ultimate Identity
In the yoga scripture, called the Sutras, the author remarks: “When the power of seeing and the power by which one sees have the appearance of being a single self, that is the feeling of personality.” (Ch. II. 6) When Narcissus saw his reflection in the pool, he fell exclusively in love with his image. When people seriously bind with the things of this world, they become mesmerized and easily accept these substitutes for their search for self-identity. By coveting matter and the approval of society, they fall prey to the hidden Narcissus in each one of us. Reflective analysis of the everyday experiences of the average individual can vouch for the notions of person, personality, and ego. But yoga regards these notions as either one dimension of the ultimate self or else an arbitrary series of connected phenomena. In neither instance, is there a full disclosure of human nature. Person or ego does not reveal man’s total nature. Yet they seem so inviting. Because of the proximity of tangible reality and the familiar conditioning and reliance upon the body and one’s rational mind, man ordinarily seeks to find his meaning in life in terms of concrete projects, events and the acquisition of things. This tendency can’t be avoided. Yet despite worldly success, it remains problematic when one assumes that the world at large holds the ultimate significance of life. In contrast with this tendency, yoga reminds man of another, ever-present, covert reality within him that is the basis for all his efforts and programs at self-fulfillment. Without its constant presence man could not even suggest the problem to himself regarding his fundamental need to understand life. While it may go unacknowledged, every school of thought about man’s nature presupposes it. Understanding this is impossible to be grasped or even suspected without a certain preparation.
Yoga takes the boldest stance. It proposes that the experience of the full scope of consciousness alone, what Plato refers to as the ‘wisdom of the Gods,’ forms the essence of human life. Trekking daily to that destiny, the human struggle to combat stupidity and relieve suffering remains paramount. Yoga understands everyone’s interest in living, whatever irresistible direction it may entail, as a self-revealing journey to the fullness of conscious life. Our mistakes and wasted years are not total loss, for we gradually recognize that we aren’t Narcissus. While the province of reason may define the Greek and Medieval notion of the personal soul, and the modern concept of ego may associate the personal phenomena of experience in time and space, yet in either instance man’s full nature remains uncharted. These major moments in the history of psychology remain but important fragments of truth.
Man’s real identity uses but exceeds personality and ego; the latter are but necessary instrumental stages in the expression of his development in time and space. If he seeks to bind himself to them as the answer to life, then he will be forced to endure their limiting consequences. Like a leafless tree in an unending winter garden, he remains perplexed and saddened to know where all the apples have gone.
If he, on the other hand, listens to those faint echoes from within that beckon him to “Know thyself” on all levels, if his aggressive ambition resists commandeering people to his willful ways, if he pauses from his covetedness long enough to catch more than a glimmer of how much life has already endowed him, then he can launch the choices to dissemble the self-created bindings that blind him painfully from his hidden Self. He removes all his masks and becomes eligible to live as the Gods do.