One self with many unique, inviolate, and eternally valid aspects. On the other hand, there are not two independent and separate selves in us, only one Self manifested in two different aspects and degrees of awareness and self-realization. The conscious Self or “I” is the three-dimensional face of the Higher transpersonal Self, the universal self in its concrete particularity. “It is, in other words, not a new and different light but a projection of its luminous source” (Assagioli, 1993, p. 20).
The fact that we have spoken of the ordinary self and the profounder Self, must not be taken to mean that there are two separate and independent I’s, two beings in us. The Self in reality is one. What we call the ordinary self is that small part of the deeper Self that the waking consciousness is able to assimilate in a given moment. It is therefore something contingent and changing, a ‘variable quality’. It is a reflection of what can become ever more clear and vivid; and it can perhaps someday succeed in uniting itself with its source. (Assagioli, quoted in Hardy, 1987, p. 31)
Contacting the Transpersonal Self
When the individual is aware of the existence of the higher, transpersonal self, they can consciously draw upon its greater energy, understanding, and strength through the use of waking or hypnotic suggestion, creative visualization, active imagination, meditation, and dream work. It is inherently available. The individual’s belief and expectation helps awaken, harness, and direct energies from these other “unconscious” portions of their being into the field of consciousness of their daily life.
|
How does our Transpersonal Self manifest itself in our experience? Our inner, transpersonal self manifests itself in numerous ways in your life. It is that small, still voice that whispers even now within the inner recesses of one’s own consciousness. It is the origin of those moments in which
we receive our higher intuitions and inspirations – artistic, philosophic or scientific, ethical ‘imperative’ and urges to humanitarian and heroic action. It is the source of the higher feelings, such as altruistic love; of genius and of the states of contemplation, illumination, and ecstasy. (Assagioli, 1993, pp. 17-18)
Abraham Maslow and the superconscious. Abraham Maslow believed that a subgroup of self-actualizing individuals (called “transcending self-actualizers”) were in touch with superconscious material (Maslow, 1971, chap. 22). Supersonscious experiences are similar to what Abraham Maslow called “peak experiences” that satisfy “meta-needs” (needs for truth, beauty, honesty, love, beauty, justice, order, creativity, and so forth) that were biologically pertinent. Maslow saw that “the spiritual life is part of our biological life. It is the ‘highest’ part of it, but yet part of it” (quoted in Ferrucci, 1982, p. 132).
Superconscious experiences may take many different forms. Piero Ferrucci in his book, What We May Be: Techniques for Psychological and Spiritual Growth Through Psychosynthesis (Ferrucci, 1982, pp. 130-131), identifies some of the multiple and diverse forms in which superconscious experiences may manifest themselves in ordinary egoic states of awareness, as reported by people from many cultures, times, and walks of life (see also Ferrucci, 1990):
|
