© 2008 Max Masotti
© 2008 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
In psychoanalysis, the Ego is one of the instances of the personality, precisely the one that would like to represent the whole person as united. Generally speaking, the representation of oneself is called the ego. Who am I then as a conscious subject? In the natural attitude, we have no doubt about identity. We say “but it’s me!”. We point our finger at our body and we say “me”. But what is the Ego? We are then ready to take out our identity papers and list a catalog of qualities: I am Max, born in Marseille, retired, etc. Isn’t this enumeration a rather vague answer?
If we persist in believing that the self is our true identity, we may find that this solution is not very satisfactory. Seen from this angle, I am aware that I am and not of what I am. I am someone who is conscious, capable of saying “I”. It is a way for a conscious subject to define himself. By defining myself, I am able to claim a certain identity. The “I” becomes the focus around which all representations gravitate. The “I am” is of an invincible certainty, necessarily true every time I pronounce it, or that I conceive it in my mind. I am consciousness, this is my true identity and perhaps the highest knowledge that I can have.
Human self-consciousness implies the recognition of the reality of selves other than the conscious self and further implies that such awareness is mutual; that the self is known as it knows. This is shown in a purely human manner in man’s social life. But you cannot become so absolutely certain of a fellow being’s reality as you can of the reality of the presence of God that lives within you. The social consciousness is not inalienable like the God-consciousness; it is a cultural development and is dependent on knowledge, symbols, and the contributions of the constitutive endowments of man—science, morality, and religion. And these cosmic gifts, socialized, constitute civilization. (UB 16:9.4)
Pascal, in the “Thoughts” asks the question: “Where is this self if it is neither in the body nor in the soul?” And he has a brilliant intuition about the Self: “I feel that I may not have been, because the Self consists in my thought”. The Self is not separable from thought. Is the thinker a “Self”? Is the thinker not only the subject of thought? I am a “thing that thinks”. Now, what is a thing that thinks? It is a spirit, an understanding, a thing that doubts, that conceives, that affirms, that denies, that wants, that does not want, that imagines and that feels. I can say I am a soul, because the soul is the ultimate subject, the ultimate focus of belonging.
When we search to find the “I” we find nothing. There is never anything but thought which, in its course, can give, by taking itself as an object, consistency to the idea of the I. Is the I which thinks itself only a sort of by-product of the activity of thought? The I is the individual consciousness attentive to its interests and partial in its favor. We can also say observer-observation-observed, or even the thinker, the ego, the act of thinking, the cogito, the thought…
Does this mean that the self consists only of thought? We spend our time pampering our little self against the wounds of its self-esteem! We are obsessed by the idea that “me” must situate myself in relation to “others”. We live with a sense of personal identity, the affirmation of which we constantly seek, which is an apprehension of our self. We live dominated by the relationship between me and other selves. This “me” constantly puts itself forward. It does so in speech through opinion: “I think that…” “I believe that we should…” etc.
The human Self is the Self of one or of desire. The self is the subject insofar as it asserts itself in what is mine, in a feeling of belonging. It is the seat of attachment. The attachment of the Self not only connects but it also encloses, it attaches, even binds the one who is caught in it. It holds on to the network of its attachments, it tends to want to persist in a form that it has of having it: more power, more wealth, more affection, more fame: in summary, basically, more recognition with regard to other Selves.
This is also what makes the Self the seat of self-esteem. What does self-esteem show us? The Self gives itself a valorizing self-image and desires to be recognized in this image. Its main concern is not to be, but to appear what it would like to be, to show itself. The Self is temporal. It changes and transforms itself. It is therefore inseparable from memory. He who loses his memory also loses his identity. The feeling of today is based on the past. The past of the self is one with its present. If we say: “me”, it is from the feeling of continuity, we think we are the same in time despite the change. It must be changing, it must be in the process of becoming. The Self of one era is therefore different from the self of another moment in time.
It is this same experience of evanescence in change that makes Montaigne say that we are not one but many. We are a parade of characters in time, from the child, the adolescent to the adult. Change means that the Self cannot remain constant, cannot remain the same. I am constantly changing in my thoughts and my Self changes too. The rolling of time has no respite and it spares nothing and no one.
The very being of man, the self-conscious being, implies and presupposes desire. Consequently, human reality can only be constituted and maintained within a biological reality, an animal life. But if animal desire is the necessary condition for self-consciousness, it is not the sufficient condition. By itself, this desire constitutes only the feeling of self. The Ego is put in place in order to postpone instinctual satisfaction. It allows us to move from the pleasure principle to the principle of internal reality and external reality…
There is nothing more banal than saying I or me and the daily use of these pronouns does not pose a problem. … The “I” or the “me” is interpreted as a well-defined point in the universe from which actions, words, thoughts emanate, which is affected by impressions and experiences feelings. Let us say to simplify that we have thus discovered the atomic I, an atom in the universe.
The material self has personality and identity, temporal identity; the prepersonal spirit Adjuster also has identity, eternal identity. This material personality and this spirit prepersonality are capable of so uniting their creative attributes as to bring into existence the surviving identity of the immortal soul. (UB 5:6.7)
Human happiness is achieved only when the ego desire of the self and the altruistic urge of the higher self (divine spirit) are co-ordinated and reconciled by the unified will of the integrating and supervising personality. The mind of evolutionary man is ever confronted with the intricate problem of refereeing the contest between the natural expansion of emotional impulses and the moral growth of unselfish urges predicated on spiritual insight—genuine religious reflection. (UB 103:5.5)
8. Is *unselfishness—*the spirit of self-forgetfulness—desirable? Then must mortal man live face to face with the incessant clamoring of an inescapable self for recognition and honor. Man could not dynamically choose the divine life if there were no self-life to forsake. Man could never lay saving hold on righteousness if there were no potential evil to exalt and differentiate the good by contrast. (UB 3:5.13)
Max Masotti