What is the real you?
We get two very different views on this subject from Eckhart Tolle and James Hillman. Tolle, a well-known writer in the tradition of non-dualistic mysticism, answers the question this way:
In you, as in each human being, there is a dimension of consciousness far deeper than thought. It is the very essence of who you are. We may call it presence, awareness, the unconditioned consciousness. In the ancient teachings, it is the Christ within, or your Buddha nature….
Attention is primordial intelligence, consciousness itself. It dissolves the barriers created by conceptual thought, and with this comes the recognition that nothing exists in and by itself. It joins the perceiver and the perceived in a unifying field of awareness.
[from Chapter Two, "Beyond the Thinking Mind," in Stillness Speaks, by Eckhart Tolle]
Hillman, a noted Jungian therapist and author of the influential book The Soul's Code, has a very different take. He writes:
A human body is … sloughing off its cells, changing its fluids, fermenting utterly fresh cultures of bacteria as others pass away. Your material stuff through time becomes altogether different, yet you remain the same you. Not one square inch of visible skin, not one palpable ounce of bone is the same, yet you are not someone different. There seems to be an innate image that does not forget your basic paradigm and that keeps you in character, true to yourself….
What causes each person and each thing to be different from other persons and things is the active force of form. No two forms can be alike. We are each maintained in our specific individual image by the principle of form…. We are unique because each of us has, or is, a specific character that stays the same.
It is most important here to grasp that we are unique qualitatively. You have your style, your history, a set of traits, and a destiny. You are essentially different from me by virtue of the lasting sameness of each of our individualized characters….
Since uniqueness depends on the qualitative differences forming the consistent sameness of your individuality, the idea of character is necessary to keep us different from one another, and the same as ourselves….
The word "character" implies a bundle of traits and qualities, habits and patterns; it requires descriptive language such as we find in character references, letters of recommendation, primary school report cards, scripts and novels, performance criticism, obituaries….
This structured, intentional, and intelligent idea of soul in general (and of each particular soul) as having definite character contrasts sharply with today's conventional clichés. What is said about the soul today is all gossamer, no fiber. "Soul" has become a refuge of mystery and mist, a fairytale land of fantasy and feeling, of dream and reverie, of mood, symbol, and vibrations, a passive loveliness, ungraspable and vulnerable as a butterfly's wing. The idea of form gives shape in character to soul and demands more rigor in thinking about it….
[There is] something timeless, the archetypal forces affecting and directing character. In the classical tradition that lasted until very recently, myths personify these forces….
Myths act out in human affairs, dramatizing our struggles and disordering our characters. Once we open the mind to myths, we can meet mythology in life and not only in books. As Jung wrote, "The Gods have become diseases." The patterns of myth and their personified powers present archetypal styles of existence, which we cannot escape or be cured of.
[from Chapter One, "Longevity," in The Force of Character and the Lasting Life, by James Hillman]
So which is it? Is our fundamental nature pure awareness, as Tolle would have it? If so, then ultimately we are all one and the same — all expressions of the same universal awareness — and our individuality, our selfhood, is only a transient illusion. Form itself, all form including the form of our personal character, is nothing but a momentary blip in the "unifying field of awareness" that constitutes true reality.
Or is our fundamental nature our character, as Hillman believes? If so, then individuality is built into us at the deepest level, never to be lost but always retained – "archetypal styles of existence, which we cannot escape" – no matter what other changes we may undergo. Form is an inescapable aspect of reality, right down to its roots.
Is the distinction between "I and thou" (or "I and it") ultimately illusory? Or is this distinction integral to reality? Are we all, finally, one and the same? Or are we all, always, ourselves and no other?
I don't have the answers. I'm just asking.