Click here to obtain the complete manuscript in pdf format (pdf preserved the formatting of footnotes from the original manuscript). For the html introduction, summary and abstract, click here.

This is my 1995 doctoral project and I've had it up for sale through the years -- not much action on it, however. I'm offering it free to those who are willing to discuss it on this thread. Anyone else who grabs it and doesn't leave a comment will be considered a free-loader and in serious trouble with my guardian angel.

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People mean different things when they speak of Self, God, Ego, etc. This work attempts to clarify these terms using the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and the psychology of Carl G. Jung. It's not an easy read, I'll grant, but one does have to impress a doctoral committee somehow. Do hang with it, however, and I think you'll find it a viable alternative to viewpoints on consciousness by Wilber, Hawkins and Easterners.

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Feel free to raise questions, request clarifications, comment, express disagreements, etc. I am thinking of revising the work and publishing it, so the exchanges here will be helpful.

- - - This image of what I've called the "Cosmic Egg" is an updated depiction of Figure One from the manuscript.

I'm going to print that out and finish reading it. I read about 1/3 of it several week or months ago. First question, what painting is that on page one?

The fall, then expulsion from Eden, by Michaelangelo, Sistine Chapel in Rome.

This wasn't on the dissertation, of course.

Consider this a precursor to a discussion rather than a diversion. Sometimes throwing one's self into art can put one into a receptive frame of mind for new ideas. It's an interesting discussion about that particular fresco on this forum:

Analyze This: Michelangelo�s The Fall of Man from the Sistine Chapel

A larger version.

quote:

OK, here goes......Michaelangelo, the consummate painter. Every time I see his women, I think "My God, its a man with boobs stuck on!" Now I am not denigrating his work. It is just my initial reaction.

Look at the woman on the left. Now unless she's a body builder, that extended arm is just not to be believed. No lady of his time would have had that pronounced a musculature. As far as I know people were not into body building at that time.
Is this because he couldn't get women to pose for him? I really do not know. I love his painting. But I always walk away with a feeling that he is totally gender confused. We see so much in his work and so much of it speaks to human religious issues that trandscend time and generations. But this issue has ALWAYS bothered me in his work. His males are definitely male. But many of his females are questionnable, or at the very least people I would not want to tick off. Am I the only one who feels this way???

quote:

The Fall of Man and The Expulsion are like two frames in a modern comic book, reading from left to right - in the left half we see Adam and Eve, in the Garden, and as we look into the central area we see the tree of knowledge, and the chimeric serpent handing Eve the fruit, The tree (and this event) also serve as the boundary of the right hand area, in which we see Adam and Eve being expelled rightward into a barren plain - the diagonal of the rockery of the garden suggests our own viewpoint being within the garden and emphasises the idea that they have crossed a threshold and are on the outside.

Study of the Ceiling Frescoes

From Stephen, on another thread:

quote:

Completeness in Christ would seem from scripture to be a direct result of Christ's sacrifice on the cross, and, if, as Phil, says:

"Through the "I" in every person, then, something of the glory and numinosity of Existence Itself shines forth. Those who are awake to their own 'I' know this truth",

how then is that shining forth of existence fully realised without a conscious belief in the sacrifice of Christ? And is any process not superfluous to belief in order to realise that existence? Is that shining forth of existence not only fully realised in an eternal setting, in God, while we only engage in, if you like, a mirror image of that glory, and can only reflect God's presence? I refer particularly to the idea that belief/faith is, perhaps, the only recipient factor of God's grace.

Stephen, these are excellent, clarifying questions. What I was referring to is not the "completeness in Christ" that comes through faith and the Christian journey, but the more natural reflection of God that human beings (and all creatures) evidence through the simple fact of existence. I tried to depict this graphically in the Christian mysteries teachings. The series of slides also demonstrates how that reflection has been darkened through the Fall, and the full manuscript explains how this brought about the development of the false self system and its cancerous consequences to the Ego and unconscious levels of our being.

Hello Phil,

Just downloaded your ms., will start reading tonight and check's in the mail.

Hope it's not too late to get this thread going.

One comment on the quote 'from Stephen, on another thread': "how then is that shining forth of existence fully realised without a conscious belief in the sacrifice of Christ?"

This seems to be a pretty common notion today, thinking which leads to doubt about the spiritual ability of non-Christians, based largely, I think, on Paul's theology.

In my own travels, I came through the idea of reality as information to the conclusion that the process of spiritual birth can be seen in almost any human. Assuming (as I do) that the necessary prerequisite to any movement by the intellect toward morality necessitates a regeneration of human spirit's informational structure from false to true, it quickly becomes apparent that every human is "born again" to some degree, and thus capable of some measure of spiritual apprehension/communion with God, be he/she Hindu, Christian, atheist, Mormon, Jew, Moslem, etc.

To be "in Christ" in the sense Paul teaches is thus mostly a matter of degree, not an 'either/or' situation.

More later....

I think we're on the same wavelength with this, Bernie. I do see the incarnation and subsequent events as changing the relationship between God and human nature, regardless of one's subjective attitudes. Nevertheless, faith enables one to more consciously access and benefit from the redemption won by Christ.

It'll be interesting to hear your comments on this manuscript.

Hi Phil,

Just got started on your ms. Life's been nuts lately, hope to be able to slow down the next couple weeks or so and get more reading done.

Quick question or two: on p.5 you note, "God gives the creature its essence or being through an act, which is the gift of existence."

Do you mean that we are given being through a particular act [grace] of God, or that our being and thus our existence is realized in act itself, such as in our own acts?

Also would be interested to hear your clarification of this: "If the sense of individual life is identified as Ego consciousness, then the Ego is nothing but an illusion. Why such an illusion should be so intensely and universally cherisehd is not explained to any great degree of intellectual satisfaction." [p.7...hope I have page numbers right, they're not marked in the ms.]

This is an interesting point to me, probably the one which I struggle with the most in that [to me] somewhat ambiguous distinction between pantheism and panentheism. In my own theological travels, I've come to call our human nature "the Horrible Thing", so-called because of its two primary characteristics: Pride and Deception. By the term Horrible Thing, am referring to the unregenerate spirit, or rather the unregenerate spirit's effect in intellect, as I don't think of spirit itself as capable per se of intellectual power, but as the animator of matter, creating this power we call intellect.

Understand that I am abysmally ignorant of psychological terminology and principles. My own studies have been concentrated on human behavior as principally spirit-endued, or spirit-caused. To my thinking, psychology seems to be the most popular way to describe our spiritual disorders. Am telling you this so you know where I'm coming from with my questions.

As to the notion of Ego as illusion, not sure I understand yet how you define Ego, but the concept of illusion in spiritual matters seems on the surface to make sense of illusion as another form of false information, that which hides from us what we are in God. I stop short of supposing that we're God in the pantheistic sense, but insist that what we are in Him is not at all clear. Through a glass darkly and all that, as Paul says.

I've argued with others about evil as illusion, but despite my insistence on the reality of evil, there still exists illusion as an important aspect of evil, and while the nature of deception imposed on the intellect by the unregenerate spirit tends to the assumption by its possessor of a literal righteousness which does not exist, the possiblity that some portion (or all?) of this spiritual pathology is a sort of reverse deception that evil is real does have some interesting connotations.

That being said, I think I understand your arguments against pure pantheism better by your comparison of St. Thomas' concept of essence and existence with Hindu and Buddhist beliefs ...another area in which I qualify as an idiot.

You note that "If only existence (or God) is real, then I (whatever that is) am not." Might not false information form the illusion that we are 'individual', if individual is taken to be sovereign and independent in our own right? Perhaps individualism itself is a disease, preventing us from being properly assimilated into the "hive mind"? The popular concept of Ego as badness certainly seems to fit this bill.

Here I can see a sort of Hegelian pathology or wound in God, the illusion of separation from what we were created to be as an injury or cancer in His essence. Of course, if you and Thomas are right and God is equally, completely and simultaneously pure essence AND existence, or pure and total act, then I also see why you've argued against pantheism as an idea.

Essence defined as a 'certain capacity to exist' is a new idea to me. I find just when I think I'm starting to understand Aquinas, I run across concepts of his that provide a new wrinkle and give new light. What a mind that guy had!

Sorry, I'm rambling. Tired. Time for bed. More later.

Hi Bernie. I'll respond to a few of your points:

Quick question or two: on p.5 you note, "God gives the creature its essence or being through an act, which is the gift of existence."

Do you mean that we are given being through a particular act [grace] of God, or that our being and thus our existence is realized in act itself, such as in our own acts?

These are not mutually exclusive statements, but I intended the first meaning.

Re. Ego. I think if you read on, you'll see what I mean by the term. The section on the false self also has implications for understanding evil, I believe.

It sounds like you're picking up some new nuances on Aquinas' work. Yes indeed -- powerful charisms of knowledge and wisdom at work in him.

Hello again, Phil.

Life's been nuts--I just last night FINALLY finished Part One of your ms.

It's interesting to see a number of parallels in our thinking, which as professing Christians isn't really that unusual, of course. My own view of reality as information, and of information existing as either true or false touches on some of what you put forth in GS&E. For instance, when you say "the Ego...strains against the false self", my own view interprets this as the natural tension and resistance produced in intellect by the contraries of T and F information in human spirit...in other words, the natural animosity between evil (false information) and truth, or regenerate and unregenerate (false) portions of the spirit.

On the other hand, I'm having some trouble understanding the distinction you make between Ego and Self. I use mostly a tripartite understanding of our ethereal structure because it makes the most sense to me. Have no problem with a dichotomy, either, though. Each has its strengths and weaknesses as a model of incorporeality.

Maybe my problem here is in trying to translate your concepts into mine, which I tend to do naturally in all my reading, to seek out mutual connections. I understand when you say Ego and Self are not really two different entities; for me, spirit energizing matter to equal intellect (thus, spirit/intellect are two-in-one) are not really two different 'things', but different aspects of the same thing. I think you're saying the same thing here, but not sure I understand the significance of each in cognition. Would Self be the material, physiological aspect of being with Ego performing the intellectual functions, or have I got it all wrong?

Also appreciated your notion of the unity of perfection in creation being lost in a "dynamic of fragmentation". My own notion of fragmented spirit seems a close cousin here in explaining evil as a pathology, for which I thank God and St. Thomas for helping me understand this idea.

As the world's only esoteric fundamentalist, though, I ran into a stumbling block with the concept of false self. The notion of our environment being one of conditionality does make sense. This to my thinking represents the reality of a creation permeated with false information, its natural tension and resistance with true informaiton, and their complex associations in the meeting of time and space with incorporeality.

But if I understand your idea of False Self, it consists essentially in a set of circumstances which lies outside each individual, producing negative effects in created intellect. Is this right? This seems a description of evil as exterior, which seems to be in great demand today. I don't deny that there are certain correlations in Scripture: "...."Awake, sleeper, And arise from the dead, And Christ will shine on you."" (Ephesians 5:14)...which tend to support the idea of evil as in some sense illusory. This is an area I need to explore a bit more when time permits.

The primary problem here to my thinking is in placing evil outside Self and Ego, insofar as I understand the contexts you intend for each. I also see this is the one big faux pas of St. Thomas I've encountered. Don't recall now where it appears in the Summa, but I remember immediately shaking my head when he described man's relationship as primarily a hunger and attraction to God and the good. In GS&E, you parallel Thomas' view here, which I find to be a fairly common idea in Christianity. Your notion of False Self as a sort of illusory evil seems to have become, as mentioned earlier, very popular today.

I don't dispute that this attraction exists; I reject that it exists to the extent you or St. Thomas suggest. For me, the notion of man's relationship with God as desirable to the intellect is itself illusory. Biblically, Jesus had virtually nothing good to say about human goodness in a general sense. He noted a few instances of strong faith, but never, that I've seen, praised human nature. The Old Testament also is basically a testimony of man's inherent evil.

This inner evil (Mat 15:18-20) prevents us from even wanting a relationship with God. Jesus noted this reality when He noted that we love the darkness of false information (Jn 3:19). To place evil as a force which lies outside the intellect rather than in is, in my fundamentalist theology, a deep errors in Christianity today.

Enough for now. Awaiting your response, will try to print and read Part Two of your ms. soon.

Bernie, thanks for the thoughtful reply. I'll just pick a couple of points that seem to be "of the essence" and we'll see how it goes.

Maybe my problem here is in trying to translate your concepts into mine, which I tend to do naturally in all my reading, to seek out mutual connections.

I think you're right about this, and I have the same problem. It's almost like when one learns a foreign language; the initial phase is to translate it to one's own to understand what's being said, then formulate a response in one's own and translate back. While I get a sense of what you're doing, much of the terminology you use and the way you've put things together seems quite different from the way I understand things. That doesn't mean you're all wet, of course; there are obviously lots of ways to conceptualize these issues.

The primary problem here to my thinking is in placing evil outside Self and Ego, insofar as I understand the contexts you intend for each. I also see this is the one big faux pas of St. Thomas I've encountered. Don't recall now where it appears in the Summa, but I remember immediately shaking my head when he described man's relationship as primarily a hunger and attraction to God and the good. In GS&E, you parallel Thomas' view here, which I find to be a fairly common idea in Christianity. Your notion of False Self as a sort of illusory evil seems to have become, as mentioned earlier, very popular today.

This is one of those disagreements between Catholics and many Protestant groups. We view human nature as essentially good, but wounded by Original Sin. Even so, as Aquinas and the Church maintains, human reason is still capable of recognizing the existence of God and even finding its way to God's truth. Same goes for the will and its attraction to goodness. The natural graces built into human nature that move us to truth, beauty and goodness have not been totally destroyed, which explains how and why non-Christians show evidence of beauty, truth and goodness. It also explains how non-Christian religions have found a way to a kind of liberation. Finally, there are many Scriptural references which support this position. It would seem that the burden of proof would be on excarnationalists to explain how a human nature that is supposedly intrinsically evil can manifest good. There's a great deal of denial about this, imo, and the tendency to view Eastern religions as diabolical is further evidence of this desperate position. Not that you do any of this, of course, but it's the logical consequence of the view that human nature has become intrinsically evil since the Fall.

Maybe it would help to say that it's not a matter of placing evil "outside" of the Self or Ego, as you characterize my view. I say no such thing, and neither would Thomas Aquinas, if he were to use such psychological language. Evil has no substantive reality, as God creates nothing but good. So, in a sense, evil is "nothing," and isn't really located "anywhere." Rather, it is a distortion or deprivation of the good. Hence, evil is a distorting/lying influence, which twists the will and confuses the intellect (goes right along with your idea of false information, I believe). So evil in this sense IS found in the Self and Ego, though not in the sense that these psychological realities are themselves evil per se.

I don't dispute that this attraction exists; I reject that it exists to the extent you or St. Thomas suggest.

Feel free to disagree with me all you want, as I'm but an amateur; when you take isse with a Doctor of the Church on such an important matter, however, you'd best re-examine your own views.

Just following up,here, which relates somewhat to a discussion on Bernies Book and Movie review thread of his book.

Biblically, Jesus had virtually nothing good to say about human goodness in a general sense. He noted a few instances of strong faith, but never, that I've seen, praised human nature. The Old Testament also is basically a testimony of man's inherent evil.

This is wrong! Jesus called people the salt of the earth and the light of the world (Mt. 5: 13-16). He also recognizes that some will have lived good lives but never even heard of him (Mt. 25: 33 - )

It's also patently wrong to believe that the Jews viewed human nature as inherently evil. This was not their view of human nature, as exigetes of the Old Testament point out.

I'm going to print that out and finish reading it. I read about 1/3 of it several week or months ago.

Promises promises. Well, I do have it printed out. It�s a bit embarrassing to admit that I�ve put Merton and C.S. Lewis before you�but just barely! Only by a nose! Let me place yesterday�s HNIL musing here as a sort of appeasement.

Here now in love is not something that normally pours over you, although it can do that at times, I think. It is not something that infuses into you while lounging in a chair passively. It is something you infuse and electrify yourself with. It is a matter of effort or will, no matter how small that effort.

I don�t know why, but the steady state or at-rest state for many of us tends to be a state where we slide, even if by only the smallest fraction, out of a loving orientation and back more into our self-centered selves. Whether by prayer, acts of kindness, thoughts of love, or whatever, at least some of us (perhaps all of us) need to make a gentle effort to remain here now in a more loving orientation lest we slip too easily into anger, cynicism, bitterness or discontentment. Surely I can�t be the only one who at first thinks that a good god would simply pour love down and into us as if filling a balloon with air or a waffle iron with batter and that we merely need to wait for this powerful and inevitably flow. And although I�m quite sure that there�s always a positive "pressure" from this direction, I think we can imagine our wills as pinching shut or opening wider the narrow neck of a balloon or the nozzle of a beach ball. We can easily close ourselves off from this loving flow and it can take the smallest of efforts�just as it can take the smallest of efforts to open it again and keep it open. It may not be a matter of needing large changes of pressure in our balloons. It may be enough simply to facilitate a positive pressure so that we gentle stay filled, or at least filling, and do not let the daily hardships and disappointments of life distract us from making the willing effort towards love.

Biblically, Jesus had virtually nothing good to say about human goodness in a general sense. He noted a few instances of strong faith, but never, that I've seen, praised human nature. The Old Testament also is basically a testimony of man's inherent evil.

I have been touched deeply at times by other than human goodness, so I think I can speak with at least some human authority on this subject, although obviously not biblical authority. Although I have all my limbs and have not been trespassed against in some of the truly horrible ways that others have (and who have the scars to show for it), I recognize the need to forgive those who have trespassed against me. I have to a great extent, but not completely. And make no mistake about it, there are some truly twisted, warped and hateful people out there�dangerous people, people who would kill you if they could. I don�t wish to diminish this fact or to sweep it under the carpet. But I can�t help think that when we hold a belief that is negative regarding human goodness that we are letting our angers at the injustices committed against us by distinct individuals to spill out onto all of mankind. I do think that very often the object of such feelings are right there, and known to us, and thus we need not lash out at humans in general. Shall we face this or shall we continue to try to blame all of humanity and thus, in reality, existence and god as well? Believe me, you�re talking to someone who still has a lot of trouble loving god. It�s not always easy to reconcile the pain with a loving creator. But we somehow must or we become ourselves unloving uncreators. We start holding doctrines that humans are all bad, inherently evil. This saddens me because I do know what it is to be isolated without love. I�ve been there. It�s the place where indeed the rest of the world feels inherently evil. But we must forgive and turn towards love and forgive and thus understand that we are inherently good because we have the capacity for love. We are, however, inherently weak and misguided because we do not activate this capacity sooner and every chance we get.

Really good reflections, Brad. I also like your metaphor distinguishing between inherent goodness and weakness/misguidedness, as it reminds of how Catholic theologians understand sin to arise in the will, not in the intellect. We know the good, and can often embrace it beyond mere intellectual knowledge, but have a weakness toward its fullness in us. But we know our weakness as weakness, or come around to that understanding eventually because of the hurt we inflict in our own consciences, which are seated in the will/heart itself.

If sin were located in the intellect, then there'd be precious little freedom in humans. Theologians that hold to this view of sin probably, not surprisingly, subscribe to a strict view of predestination as well. And if the goodness of the heart buried within its own misplaced longings is never known, then just the ability to hold the debate, as in a sort of epistemological freedom, won't seem much of a freedom at all.

Thank you, WC.

We know the good, and can often embrace it beyond mere intellectual knowledge, but have a weakness toward its fullness in us. But we know our weakness as weakness, or come around to that understanding eventually because of the hurt we inflict in our own consciences, which are seated in the will/heart itself.

I've just started a thread in the Transformation forum along similar lines. Even with a god up there full of hope and sunshine, we still, as independent beings, have to use our will (heart also? okay) to reach out. If this weren't the case we would be little more than marionettes having our strings pulled and being stuffed with more stuffing whenever we were looking a little thin and ragged. So we're in a situation where, no matter how badly wounded we may be, we have to reach out. Especially if we are wounded we have to reach out with love as best we can. It seems the weaker we are the stronger we have to be yet, in actuality, when we are weak we can often do very little but, we will do one thing very well. When we catch a flu bug we often are bed-ridden with a fever and it physically hurts to move or to try to do anything else. So the one thing we can do (rest) we put 100% into. And so if we are spiritually weak we can, if willing, focus all of our energy into bed-rest for the soul and this is love. In the first scenario we have no choice about the bed rest�and therefore we get better. In the second scenario we may actively numb or otherwise escape our spiritual sickness because it's a matter of will, not of necessity, that we enact the cure.

Yes, we know the good and this is probably why it remains so important not to play games with good, and then include perverting the truth as we do in hundreds of different ways (and I mean this quite separately from reasonable difference of opinion or interpretation of the facts). When we lose sight of good we are ruined.

What we can and must do is live attentively, honestly, intelligently, responsibly a la Lonergan. This fosters an authenticity that goes against the grain of the false self and deepens the soils of the soul to receive the seeds of grace given by God.

In terms of practice, we can focus on being aware, being honest, and being benevolent (i.e., being here now in love). Sustained effort in these directions is certainly a good thing, no matter what one believes about God, if for no other reason than we can say without hesitation that the converse leads to a very undesirable and unpleasant psycho-spiritual situation.

THAT we CAN make the effort to be more attentive, honest and benevolent, and THAT we CAN even make progress in these directions is a testament to the residual capacity for goodness that still exists in our human nature. It falls short of the goodness wrought by grace, of course, but our efforts in these directions seems to be necessary to grow in grace.

Thank you for those words, Phil. They sound like a lot of work. And truthfully that stuff is work. But at least it is the work of our lives and we can be 100% assured of a good return on that investment of effort. Such can not be said for many of the other things we spend our energies on.

Regarding this whole idea of false selves and the inherent goodness/badness of man/woman, I�d like to attempt to make a distinction that I�m sure y�all have other, established words and ideas for, but that distinction would be between bypassing and transcending.

It�s my rough back-of-the-envelope belief that fundamentalism and the more condemnatory forms of religion are involved in bypassing. Grief, anger, fear and shame are bypassed, rather than dealt with head-on. I think implicit in transcending something is seeing things for what they are, loving and forgiving them, and thereby transforming or going through those things rather than going around them. When bypassing we complete the illusion of not having done so by skipping straight to god as sort of the Schwarzeneggerian terminator-in-the-sky who will right all our wrongs. After all, if one is in touch with the idea of god then surely one has taken one�s problems to the highest authority and is dealing with them appropriately. But hiding in god is surely different than living in god. At least that�s how I see it. And I have no shame to place on anyone who does the former because this is surely needed in our lives from time to time. We need a refuge.

And that�s just how our false selves start out, I think, as a refuge. It makes sense to do so, especially when we are children and can not possibly be expected to deal sensibly and healthily with the hardships we face. And the same can be said of many of us as adults. We surely may feel ashamed of still not being able to deal with some of this stuff and seeking refuge, escape, and bypassing instead of head-on transformation, but there is no reason to do so. That�s just letting the hurt we�ve undergone continue to bang us over the head�but we do this enough that we need to admit that we are now the ones primarily wielding the hammer.

It is my belief that a deepening trust in god will mean accepting that we and others are inherently good and thus there is no need for fundamentalist (or hard line) religion or false selves. These are transitional phases, at best. But to be stuck in them and to then try to rationalize them as the final destination is to bypass the need to transcend these phases and is to simply impose the worst elements of these transitional phases on ourselves, others and the world.

I agree, Brad, that in the worst of cases, religion can be used as an escape from oneself--especially painful emotional experience. It can also distract one from dealing with injustices in a culture -- hence, Marx's criticism that it is an "opium of the people." So religious activity itself can become a "fix" and an addictive involvement, and it has been described as such in several places.
- see http://fundamentalists-anonymous.org/
- also: http://www.fatherleo.com/shop/...previd=1&prevstart=0

It's not a black/white situation, however, even regarding fundamentalism. Many times, a conversion in such a church does move one to become more judgmental and addictive, but no always. Many of these preachers do emphasize forgiveness, and God's grace surely works through those traditions. I've seen people's lives turned around in a very positive way through conversions in biblical fundamentalist churches; much depends on the kind of teaching and guidance that comes. Taking the bible literally (the essence of fundamentalism) doesn't remove one from all those teachings on love, forgiveness, corporal works of mercy, and so forth. So fundamentalism does foster what G,S and E calls the Ego-God relationship, though in its own unique way.

It might help, here, to read the section on Ego Authenticity to see how the work speaks to some of the other issues that have recently been raised. Just back-trackiing a little, here . . .

It might help, here, to read the section on Ego Authenticity

Will do. And thanks for the instruction/insights, brother Guru.

Phil:

When you mention, in your last post on this thread to Brad, "the section on Ego Authenticity," what is the source you are referring him to?

The "God, Self and Ego" manuscript, starting on p. 26.