self and Self: The Distinction That Matters

Consider a ball, a solid and perfect sphere. You see the ball as a whole. Each chunk or particle of it is part of that whole. You could point to any part of the ball and rightly call it a ball. But only if every part plays its role is there a ball. So it is with us.

Agency builds up from quantum level particles, through atoms, molecules, cells, organs, and body systems to a whole human body. This direct, matter-based buildup of agency culminates at the level of our psychology. One researcher, Anil Seth, presents this level as being made up of five selves: the embodied self, the perspectival self, the volitional self, the narrative self, and the social self. We may experience our inner world as also including even more selves, persistent but partial, often at odds with each other, and taking the reins of our body, mind, and heart at every opportunity. One self takes the center stage, the center of our being, and we identify with it, treating it in accord with its — and our — belief that it is the whole person, that it is who we are. Each self assumes it is independent, complete, and the rightful owner of the whole body, of this whole human person. They elbow their way, through the crowd of selves, toward center stage, toward control.

A self that has a sweet tooth notices a delicious-looking cake, nearby and available. In its excitement, sweet-tooth self grabs our reins and starts eating and savoring cake, non-stop. Until our need-to-be-healthy self or our do-not-gain-weight self notices and takes the reins from our sweet-tooth self, stops the cake consumption, and remains vigilant, lest our sweet-tooth self make another foray toward the cake, which, of course, it soon does. This is a disjointed and problematic way to live.

In a fully developed and psychologically healthy person, all these selves, instead of claiming independence, subordinate themselves to and serve our overarching Self, our unified I, which is the true primary agent of our being. This I, this Self takes appropriate care of our totality, the merger of all our parts, which is one reason our partial selves consent to join together in creating this whole. What is good for the whole turns out to be good for the parts. The Self of all our selves forms when the partial selves are free of self-focused egoism, free to serve the whole, free to be the whole, free to enter the big tent of Self, and do so.

That relationship of unity through service enables agency to be passed upwards to a greater whole. This is not imposed from the top down, but rises voluntarily from the bottom up. Why voluntarily become part of the next level whole? The primary driver at the psychological level and above is the search for meaning: the greater the whole, the greater the meaning. This is the great attractor, the Divine attractor, acting at the level of our scattered psychology.

Each level of agency within us generates wonderful, new, emergent capabilities not found in its now unified subcomponents. Emerging into the next higher level of agency does not erase or diminish the wholeness in the current level. As individuals we are each unique and whole. In becoming part of a higher, more global unity, we do not give up our individuality: we become whole in a greater whole. However, in this, we must not confuse individuality with egoism, or self-serving, self-referential separateness. Ego attempts to fill the void in our core, whereas individuality connects to others and the higher through that void.

That void is the world of will, the world of our reality, the world of the Reality. Will is immaterial, but directs matter. Which is why, when we look for ourselves, we do not find anything, or rather we do not find a thing. We are not a thing. We are not our body. We are our will. And that will, which grants us agency, cannot be seen, for it is the one who is looking, from the void.

To become part of the next higher Whole, we must first be whole in ourselves. We need to come into our own individuality, our I, rather than remaining a loose collection of often competing, sometimes collaborating, selves, intent on serving their own narrow interests. This is the crucial transition, the core task facing us as humans, to fulfill our potential, to justify our existence by becoming inwardly unified and thereby able to set our vision toward transcending ourselves in the next higher level.

Perhaps we set our sights on God as that next step up the hierarchy of agency, but along the way we come into community. The inner void, the inner emptiness that we are beginning to understand as our source, is the same in all of us, in all life. At that level we are not separate. Your I is there and so is mine. Yet that oneness, that sameness does not preclude uniqueness. One of the 99 names of God in Islam is The Unique. That uniqueness flows down to us and makes us unique, not only in our body, but in our innermost Self. We are all one and the same, and we are each unique.

Yet many of us have groomed our uniqueness since childhood, while ignoring our sameness, our oneness. The way to the Real passes through individuality into community, be it family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and so forth up the scale to the whole of humanity, to the whole of life on this Earth. An empty glass is a clear glass. If we can live in that clarity, if we can be with another person, not only as our unique Self, but also as the Self that encompasses us both, then we enter that next rung of emergent agency, the rung of community. If we can see the Sacred in each other, then we are near the Sacred, and the Sacred is seeing through us, as us. This is love.

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