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In this chapter, Assagioli refers to the 'foundation' and 'framework' that transpersonal psychology provides. He cites Maslow's observation that many who have achieved success in personal life and development reach a point of dissatisfaction. They have been able to satisfy the first two levels of need, which include basic psychological needs for survival, and personal needs such as belonging and love, and self-actualization.
Many years ago, I heard a song, "Is that all there is..." which, for me, captured the essence of the inner desire for something more. That desire can emerge in both those who are very healthy, and also in those who have needs from the first two levels that have not been met. In agreement with Maslow's identification of Meta-needs, Assagioli offers the examples of Viktor Frankl and Leo Tolstoy, who learned the "importance of the need for understanding the meaning of life." Another example is that of people in concentration camps whose most basic needs were not met, yet survived. Frankl himself, survived because of his connection to his life's meaning.
Assagioli thus identifies a "third and higher level" of the "constitution of man" - that is, "the area of the superconscious, which culminates in the Transpersonal Self." The superconscious involves higher needs, and these in turn, evoke the will to meet them. The Buddha is a prime example of the will to life meaning. He devoted years of study and practice until he achieved Enlightenment and could show others the way through the maze of what Suzuki called 'Ignorance.'
Being subject to such dissatisfaction, to needs we do not know how to satisfy, creates anxiety and a desire to evade it. There are two basic responses to this desire to evade anxiety caused by dissatisfaction with life and the search for meaning, says Assagioli. The first is an attempt to find some kind of primitive immersion into a collective object or group. The other evasive response is to seek transcendence by "rising above" ordinary consciousness. Both involve attempts to leave individual consciousness behind. But, Assagioli says, neither of these efforts to assuage the existential anxiety involved with questions about life's meaning will be successful. "So we need to face courageously and willingly the requirements for transcending the limitations of personal consciousness without losing the center of individual awareness." And, he says, "this is possible because individuality and universality are not mutually exclusive; they can be united in a blissful synthetic realization."
Assagioli acknowledges that sometimes people spontaneously experience "sudden, unexpected illumination." He says that in those cases the Transpersonal Self exerts a "pull from above." There is a Transpersonal Will operating from the superconscious level, which acts to exert that pull. The personal self experiences this as a "pull or call." Such experiences of being pulled or called have been variously described by writers on consciousness, by poets and mystics. Assagioli goes on to say that there can be a struggle between the Transpersonal Will and the will of the personal self. The stages of such struggles and crises and their resolution are discussed in his book, Psychosynthesis.
In addition to the search for life's meaning or for enlightenment, there are other responses to the call or urge to transcendence. They are transcendence through transpersonal love; action; beauty, or Self-realization. He says, "These ways of transcendence can also be expressed in terms of will, the fundamental will to transcend personality limitations through union with someone or something greater and higher." In each of these ways, there is the union of will and love.
Assagioli then goes on to describe in more detail what the various kinds of transcendence can entail. In the case of love, that love can be romantic union, or altruistic love, or the mystical love of God/the Divine. Transcendence through transpersonal action through use of the Transpersonal Will, even at the cost of the person's own survival needs can stem from devotion to an ideal or a cause. Transcendence through beauty is characteristic of many artists, who are impelled to create because of the Transpersonal Will, although they may also exercise their personal will in concert with it. Transcendence through Self-realization "means giving particular value to those emerging potentialities which belong to the sphere of the superconscious, and have their origin in the Transpersonal Self." Self-realization is contrasted with self-actualization. Assagioli maintains that someone can be 'self-actualized' without necessarily having any "higher motivation." Self-realization means transcendence of the ordinary human experience and can be seen as almost god-like or divine, but is still human potential, not something supernatural, as Maslow pointed out.
There are three stages of Self-realization, Assagioi writes. They are:
- activation and expression of the potentialities residing in the superconscious
- direct awareness of the SELF which culminates in the unification of the consciousness of the personal self, or 'I,' with that of the Transpersonal Self
- the communion of the Transpersonal Self with the Universal Self, and correspondingly of the individual will with the Universal Will.
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This chapter begins with a reflection on what Universal Reality is and is not. Assagioli says that one difficulty in addressing the issue of Universal Reality and Universal Will is that in the past such discussions occurred in the context of religious belief, which is now rejected by many people. Even people who accept religious understandings "live as if God did not exist." He says there is another way to approach Reality, that of the intuition. It is possible to have an "intuitive, direct experience of communion with the ultimate Reality."
A second approach is that of the "perception of analogies" and an appreciation of the "essential unity of all aspects of Reality." An example is that water is basically the same whether it is seen as a small drop of dew, an ocean or a piece of ice, a snowflake or water vapor. Human consciousness can be gradually expanded, Assagioli claims, to "experience some of those wondrous mysteries," that is, of the identity of human and Divine, of the fact that there is only the One Life we all share. Expanded consciousness, however, does not mean that the human mind can comprehend all the "wonder and mysteries of the cosmic manifestation."
There are "successive degrees" of being dis-identified from our "various psychological elements" and existentially experiencing conscious "Being - ... being a living self." He shows three diagrams of experiential realization of the relationship between the SELF and the individual psyche. In the first diagram, the energies of the SELF are "bent on influencing the whole man (person) by radiation from and through the superconscious level." In the second diagram, the activities of the SELF are distributed to show that they are tending rather equally between the personality and Reality. "(T)he subject has some realization of his participation in a universal state of Being, while preserving at the same time a vivid, even sharpened sense of individual identity." The third diagram shows that the radiation of the SELF is mostly toward transcendent Reality. Yet, even in this case, "the sense of individuality is not wholly lost."
In the last few paragraphs of this chapter, Assagioli extends the analogical discussion. He asserts that all human love participates in some way, or is an expression of "a universal principal of LOVE." Likewise individual will and Universal Will are related. "The harmonization, communion, unification and fusion of the two wills has been - and is - the deep aspiration, and ... the highest ... need of humanity." "It means tuning in and willingly participating in the rhythms of Universal Life." Mystics have written of their struggles and their movement towards unification of the individual and Universal Will. Assagioli quotes two of them, Dante and Christ.
Dante - "My will and wish were now by love impelled, The love that moves the sun and all the other stars."
Christ - "Not my will, but thine be done" and "I and the Father are one."
