I think, therefore, I am (a thinker). Clearly human beings do think. They are thinkers. They think in concepts and images.

Upon birth on earth, it seems that their first order of business is to think out an idea of who they think that they are. Each human child comes up with a self concept, an idea of who he thinks that he is; he also comes up with ideas, concepts of who he thinks that other people are and what things in the world are. He then translates his concepts into images. He has a self concept and translates that to a self image, concepts and images of other people and the world he lives in. Human beings are concept and image makers.

All human beings think in a certain pattern, the human pattern of thinking. Within this overall pattern of thinking, each of them has his own pattern of thinking, a pattern of thinking that characterizes his personality.

The individual invents a self concept. That self concept is made by him, building on his childhood experiences and his inherited biological constitution. Subsequently, the individual sees himself as the self concept and self image he invented and strives to defend it as if it is who he, in fact, is.

One defends ones self concept and ones self image with the various ego defense mechanisms that Psychoanalysts talk about.

If other people validate ones self concept, self image, one feels (temporarily) at ease, but if they do not confirm it, one feels upset. One feels angry at those who do not recognize ones self image as who one is. Ones life is devoted to getting other people to colluding with one to accept the false self one made for one; and one gets along with people to the extent that they affirm ones self concept, self image and avoids them to the extent that they refuse to validate ones cherished self concept and self image.

The self concept and self image is an idol, a craven image one made and one is proud of it and defends it as if it is who one, in fact, is. One forgets that one is the concept and image maker and not the concept and image itself.

Ones true identity is as a part of God; man is the Son of God (God being the ultimate thinker). Human beings real self is the Christ, the holy son of God; they are unified with God and all God’s creation. There is no separation between the Son of God and his father; no separation between one son of God and another. The Son of God is in his father and his father is in him. Where you see the Son of God you see God, for God is not apart from his Son and his Son is not apart from Him. Where God ends and his Son begin is no where. There is no space and gap between God and his Son, no space and gap between one son of God and another, for they are all in each other. There is no you and I in God, no subject and object, no seer and seen in God, for all creation is one with its creator.

If one recognizes that one is the thinker, that the thinker is not his thoughts and stops defending ones thoughts, concepts and images, one is not likely to feel emotional upsets like fear (of loosing ones self concept, image) anger (at those who do not recognize ones self concept, image), depressed (from not having the self concept succeed in life), paranoid (from not becoming the all important self the self concept and image ones wants to become).

The individual is like an artist and creates concepts and images but the artist is not his creation, not his work. (By the same token, God created us and is not us; God is the ultimate thinker/artist; he is not his creations, he has a self that is not his creations self, though they are like him and do create, do think like he does; his creation share his creative self but are not him).

A good artist identifies with his creations and does defend them when others attack them; but a mature artist understands that he is not his art work and does not defend his creations. A mature artist knows that he creates with matter and that matter: rocks, stone, canvas, paint etc must wear down and disappear into nature. All things composed of matter must decay, dust to dust, ashes to ashes, elements to elements, atoms to atoms and particles to particles. We created our bodies, matter, and identify with them, but eventually our bodies must die, decompose, and return to the particles, atoms and elements that they are made of.

When one does not defend ones self concept and self image, ones idol, ones craven self image, one tends to be calm, peaceful and happy.

In every situation one finds ones self in, one must, therefore, ask: am I my self concept, am I my self image, am I my personality? The answer is no. Therefore, one must not look at attacks on ones self concepts/images as attack on ones real self.

If you know and accept this fact, you would be calm and peaceful as the world attacks your self concept and personality; you would know that people who attack your self concept/image are not attacking your real self.

Your real self is the thinker, who is not his thinking. The thinker is Spirit. In the here and now, the thinker, spirit, appears to live in body and creates with body, matter, but he is not the material with which he creates. You are not your body; you, as part of collective spirit, invented matter, body, as a means of fashioning self concepts and self images to live in the temporal universe with.

Alfred Adler (see his The Neurotic Constitution) talked about the neurotic inventing/creating a false, superior self concept and acting as if he is that fiction of his creation and defending it. Karen Horney (see her Neurosis and Human Growth) talked about the neurotic inventing/creating an ideal self concept and desiring to become it and feeling anxious to the extent that he does not approximate it. Helen Schucman (see her A Course in Miracles) talked about the neurotic inventing/creating a false special ego self and defending that false self. The Founders of Unity Church, Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, in the 1880s, talked about how each of us is a thinker and uses his thinking to construct his world, and how what the person thinks materializes in his world: how ones thinking is responsible for what happens to one. Buddha, twenty five hundred years ago, talked about people being different from their thoughts, how the human personality, a thought that the individual thinks that he is and defends as if it is in fact who he is, is not who he is, and how the individual could tune out his ego conceptual thinking and become silent; in meditation, the individual negates all conceptual thinking, negates his self concept and self image and negates his ego personality and in the ensuing emptied mind, void, silence experience his real self, what he called nirvana, unified life that has no separated selves, a world of total harmony, hence a world of peace and joy.

All these people are essentially saying the same thing: that we are thinkers and that our thinking is responsible for the world we seem to live in and that we are not our thinking, hence not the effects we have produced, not the world we see around us.

SELF ANALYSIS

On a personal note, I invented a big self concept/big self image. I invented a superior self concept/image. Deep down, I consider myself superior to other people.

Since I was a child, if I do not get my way, I feel angry. For example, I tend to feel angry if others keep me waiting on line, say if a teller at a bank is taking long to attend to me. It is like they are keeping a king, me, waiting; a king that ought to be served right away.

I do not care who one is, a judge, a president of a superpower country, if he does not do what I want, I feel outraged and ask who the hell he thinks that he is. That is to say that deep down one feels superior to the allegedly most powerful person on earth. In fact, I do not even think that the president of the sole superpower is worthy of my attention.

Alfred Adler would say that I am a neurotic and pursue a superior self and want to become my desired superior self concept/self image. He would say that my real self is the same and equal with all other selves but that, for biological and social deficit reasons, I perceived that real self as inferior, hated and rejected it and invented a compensatory fictional superior self and identified with that imaginary self. Karen Horney would say that I hated my real self and posited an alternative ideal-perfect self and want to become the false ideal self and want other people to see me as that fictional self and feel anxious when I am not that false ideal, perfect self. Helen Schucman (A Course in Miracles) would see me as inventing a special separated ego self, a self that sees itself as self created and as the creator of other people and the creator of God, a grandiose and deluded self and want other people to see me as I want to see me.

Of course, other people are not obligated to see me as I see me. They see me as just another human being and treat me as such. I feel angry at them for treating me as an ordinary self.

My grandiose and delusional self concept and self image is not validated and affirmed by other people, as they should not, for if they did they would collude with me and make me believe that I am a false self, hence an insane self.

Desiring to be my ideal self, I avoid other people. In social avoidance, in social withdrawal, in isolation I retain my grandiose self concept, self image. In separation, I fancy myself superior to other people.

(I have taken most recognized intelligence and personality tests; most of them indicate that I have the type of personality I already know that I have: avoidant personality, shyness, with passive aggressive features. I wish that most people would take these tests and know who they are. Most people have problematic personalities but do not know it. If only they could find out whom they are, and seek therapy, the world would be a better place. If I had a choice in the matter, I would have all adults take the MMPI and WAIS and all children take WISC and Stanford Binnet. This would improve their self knowledge and, ultimately, as Harold Laswell observed, help them improve their social behaviors; more importantly, they would stop actualizing their personal psychopathologies in the political arena.)

I particularly fancy myself superior to white folks. For some reasons, I have always considered white folks like children and if any of them, I do not care what his social position is, dared oppose me, I feel outraged and angry, and want him punished, even killed. As it were, I say: how dare an inferior white person, a morally bankrupt animal, a slaver, oppose me?

Helen Schucman would say that I feel superior to God himself and want God to obey me. I have never found it easy to worship God. Even as a child, I did not like praying to God. I did not like to kneel down before God, as my parents asked me to do. In my mind was the thought, who the hell is this god guy that I am supposed to worship, he ought to be the one worshipping me.

Schucman would say that my behavior is the nature of the self concept; that the self concept was invented by the Son of God in his vain attempt to create himself, create God and create his brothers, that it is a replacement self, a self we invented to substitute for our real self, the son of God created by God.

The son of God, as God created him, is the same and equal to all selves; the self concept is designed to make one seem superior to other people and superior to God. The self concept, the ego, the idol, the craven idol, the antichrist, the unholy self must be let go for one to experience ones real self, the unified self, the holy self who is one with his creator and all his brothers. The real self is inside one, not out side one; when one identifies with the real self, unified self, feels equal with all, and let’s go of the false superior wishing self, one feels peace and happiness.

HAVING A SPECIAL SEPARATED SELF AND FAILURE IN SOCIETY

According to both Alfred Adler and Karen Horney, if a person pursues a superior, ideal self, that is, is a neurotic, he is likely to fail in extant society. Extant society is meant for normal persons.

The normal person does not see himself as better than other people. As such, he is able to get along with other people and is able to operate within groups. He can work in normal work organizations, where there are bosses and servants. He can take marching orders and directions from his school teachers and work bosses. He can be in the military and is told what to do, including to go kill and he does as told. The normal person is meant to succeed in organized society.

The neurotic invented and posited an ideal, superior self and wants to attain it. He, therefore, resents other people telling him what to do. He would like to be the boss at all times. If a child, at home, his big self resents his parents telling him what to do. At school, his big self resents teachers telling him what to do and he often drops out of school because he is in power struggle with teachers and do not want to listen to them. He is in constant power struggle with his parents and elders and does not want them to tell him what to do.

(These days, these children are called oppositional defiant disordered children, the stubborn, willful and unruly child.)

On the job he is in power struggle with his bosses and resents them telling him what to do. He may actively tell the bosses to go get lost and quite his jobs, or he may withdraw from them socially and keep to himself, tuning them out and not really listening to them. In social isolation, he manages to maintain his sense of superiority and idealism.

Since the power seeking person is perceived as insubordinate by his bosses, he may be fired from his job, not because he does not know how to do the job but because of his perceived oppositionality, his attitude problems.

Thus, generally, the neurotic fails at interpersonal relationships, for he tends to avoid people, to prevent them from telling him what to do; he avoids people to go retain his grandiose self concept; he fails at school and he fails at work for similar reasons.

Secular psychologists like Adler and Horney recommend that the neurotic and psychotic (who has even a more grandiose, deluded self concept) shrink his self concept to normal proportions. That is why these psychologists are called shrinks; they shrink folk’s swollen self concepts and self images down to normal proportions, so that they can be able to operate in our hierarchical world.

Normal secular therapists do not aim at eliminating the self concept and self image, but want to change it, to shrink it to normal proportions, so that one is better fitted to live in a command oriented society. Our society is organized along the military command model, with commanders and commanded. In our world, every person is told what to do by every person else. If you are going to make it in our world, be it in interpersonal relationships, school and work, you must have a less swollen ego self, you must be normal in your ego structure.

Spiritual psychologists like Helen Schucman, on the other hand, think that to have a self concept and self image of any kind is to have a problem. While acknowledging the problems of exaggerated self concepts and the need to reduce them to normal proportions, they teach that even normal egos must be let go. The self concept and self image itself is the problem. As long as one has a self concept and self image, one has defined ones self by ones self; one has attempted to create ones self and rejected the self God created one as.

The self concept and self image is always a separated self, a self that adapts to the separated world of space, time and matter and is, therefore, ip so facto, a false self. The self we know ourselves as, in this world, normal, neurotic or psychotic, is a replacement self, a substitute self we made to mask the real self that God created us as.

The self God created us as is a holy self, a self unified with him and with all other selves as one self.

It is obvious that the self in matter, in body, cannot unify with other selves, for matter is meant to divide and separate people. Only the spiritual, the same and equal self can unify. Our real self is spirit, unified spirit self, which is not the self that we are currently aware of.

Spiritual psychologists say that we have to tune out our current self concept and self image, normal, neurotic and psychotic, to become aware of our real self, the unified spirit self. That is what meditation is meant to accomplish. In meditation, one consciously rejects the self concept, the self image, and rejects all conceptual selves and imageries; one rejects all concepts and attempts to reach a non-conceptual self; one tries to keep quiet, to silence the chattering of ones ego; one empties ones thinking of all ego based thoughts, becomes a void and in the mind wiped clean of all ego thinking, a new self dawns on one, the self, as God created it, a unified spirit self that is not in body, a self that we cannot explain in ego conceptual categories, for the ego made language and language is an adaptation to the world of separation and division and understands the world of you and I, seen and seer, subject and object.

The world of God is a unified world; language is not necessary in God’s world. The world of God is a non-conceptual and non-perceptual world; it is a knowing world, a world where perception (which exists in our separated world) does not reach.

To reach the world of God, which to spiritual psychologists is to be successful, success as defined by God, one must jettison all self concepts, all self images and all ideas of separated, special self. One must have no self that one made to adapt to this world before one comes to ones God. One must re-embrace the self that God created one as, the unified self, a loving and forgiving self, before one can return to heaven, to the state of union.

You cannot be separated and come to a place of union; you cannot feel special, superior and ideal and come to a place of sameness and equality. God’s kingdom is a place of union, sameness and equality, a place of spirit, not matter.

SCIENCE AND EPIPHENOMENALISM

Is spiritual psychology and its claims true or just escape from empirical reality? According to materialistic science, all we can ascertain is the workings of matter and energy in space and time. Our very thinking seems the products of the configurations of particles, atoms and elements in our brains. Neurons fire in a certain manner and that is all that we can say for sure about thinking. Thinking is an electrical behavior in our brains. Thinking is done through the auspices of light in a biological and chemical medium. Thus thinking/mind is epiphenomenal. This is the view of science. Therefore, science dismisses the teachings of spiritual psychology, religion and even philosophy as having no basis in the empirical world?

If you follow the scientific methodology approach to phenomena, in a strict manner, you will waste your time and energy talking about spiritual psychology. That was my position in the past.

In the present, I derive meaning and purpose from spiritual psychology, aka metaphysics. I am not imposing what makes sense to me on anyone. At any rate, no one will accept what does not yet make sense for him.

When you are ready to embrace spiritual psychology you will do so, but until then, retain your secular psychology, for, as noted, it does help shrink the ego to normal proportion. The ego needs to be shrunk, if one is to live in this world. If your ego is swollen, if you feel superior to other people, as in neurosis and or psychosis, you must live in perpetual anxiety. The superior desiring ego must fear not measuring up to its desired ideal, superior self. The neurotic lives in anxiety disorder. The psychotic appears to have overcome anxiety by denying reality altogether and totally identifying with the false ideal self that he made and is no longer comparing it to reality and seeing its falsity hence feeling anxious.

By all means stick to normal ego secular psychology; up to a point, it is useful. But if it is time for you to transcend the ego self altogether, to let go of all ego self concepts and self images, to close the gap between you and other people, to end separation and specialness and return to the world of unified spirit self, you will find your way to spiritual psychology, aka Hinduism, Buddhism, metaphysical Churches like Unity Church, A Course In Miracles etc.

CONCLUSION

Rene Descartes said: cogito ergo sum, I think, therefore, I am. Whatever he may have meant by that, what is self evident to me is that human beings do think. Human beings are thinkers. They think in concepts and images. We are concept makers and image makers. We make concepts and images for ourselves. The individual makes concepts and images for himself, for other people and for everything in his world.

Having invented self concepts and self images we defend them, as if they are, in fact, who we are. Defense of these inventions of ours seem to make them real in our thinking, minds. We forget that we made the concepts and images that we defend.

The thinker is different from his thoughts; the image maker is different from his images.

We must learn to separate ourselves from the concepts, images, and ideas we made. We must stop defending the conceptual selves we made. When we stop defending the separated, special, superior and ideal selves we made, we feel peaceful and happy and less anxious.

When we give up making self concepts and self images and accept our real selves, unified spirit self, we feel totally peaceful, happy and fearless. When we have no self we made and accept the self the universe created us as, we return to our real self, to union with God and all creation and to bliss.

This ultimate result entails escaping from this world, negating this world of space, time and matter. The middle ground is what secular psychology attains: to keep the self concept and self image we made, but shrink it so that it is not too big and does not cause one tremendous anxiety and lack of peace. To the extent that one has a separated, superior self one lacks peace and one lives in fear.

No separated self means no fear, anxiety, and presence of peace. Less separated special, superior and ideal self means less fear and anxiety, but some presence of anxiety, nevertheless. The individual must choose what he wants, no separated, special self hence total fearlessness and peace, or some refined separated, special self and some disturbance of ones peace?

Ozodi Thomas Osuji

[email protected]

Many persons do not reveal their actual selves to other people; they think that they can hide who they are from other persons’ perception. Actually, other people, more or less, do know who we are. We might as well reveal ourselves to others, as I do in my essays. There is nothing to hide from any one. Truth heals all of us. Truth makes us happy. Try to know who you, in fact, are, and if you have personality issues deal with them. The chances are that if you are reading this material you are not insane, for only two percent of the population has mental disorders and those do not read abstract materials, like this essay. (1% of the population, world wide, has schizophrenia, 1% has bipolar affective disorder; those two are considered real mental disorders, with delusional disorder a strong third?)

By and large, most human beings are normal, actually, normal-neurotic, for all of us have a bit of neurosis in us. Each of us believes what is not true as true, such as fancy ourselves better than other people. Mental health means belief in the truth; the truth of our inherent sameness and equality. All God’s children: Hausas, Yorubas, Igbos, every person, man, woman and child are the same and equal.

If you feel superior to other people, if you consider your race or tribe superior to others, you are a neurotic, aka personality disordered, such as paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal, narcissistic, histrionic, anti social, borderline, avoidant, possessive compulsive, dependent and passive aggressive and need to heal that mild mental disorder, so that you know and accept the truth, the truth of our oneness, sameness and equality. We are all children of one family, God’s one family.