As regular readers know, for some time I've been annoyingly fixated on the question, "What is the real you?" In other words, what part of us is ultimately real and lasting?
If you listen to nondualist mystics like Eckhart Tolle, you get the impression that the real you is an impersonal witness, pure awareness stripped of all personal characteristics. On the other hand, a great deal of channeled information suggests that the personality does endure even after the physical body has been left behind. F.W.H. Myers' classic book on evidence for the afterlife is even titled Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death.
So … what survives? The personality, or an impersonal observer?
In some ways, neither prospect appeals to me. The personality has too many unattractive elements; it doesn't seem like something we'd want to lug around for all eternity. Imagine being shackled to our fears, resentments, and disappointments forever!
At the same time, the impersonal witness leaves me rather cold. I'm inclined to agree with C.S. Lewis, who argued that personality is actually a higher development than the impersonal, and that people who imagine God as an impersonal force – an "energy field," say – are actually making God something less than human, rather than something more.
Well, it seemed I was between a rock and a hard place. But last night it occurred to me to take a look at the Bible and see if I could find any clues to the answer there.
I should say that I'm not a Christan and do not turn to the Bible as an infallible source of knowledge. But I do think that many of the Biblical writings reflect a high level of spiritual inspiration. No doubt the writings of other major religions do, as well, but I am much more familiar with the Judeo-Christian tradition than with any other.
In any event, I opened a little pocket Bible I had lying around and, after a little searching, remembered a famous passage from 1 Corinthians. A tribute to love, it is often recited at weddings, though the love in question is really agape, or brotherly love, rather than romantic love. It is one of the most quoted passages in the New Testament, and I'm surprised I hadn't thought of it before:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1 Cor 13:4-7; NIV)
Now, when I read this, I felt I had stumbled upon the answer to my question. I think that the real you, the part that lasts and deserves to last, is precisely described by this passage. The highest parts of ourselves are the parts that endure the longest, while the lesser parts are gradually cleansed and removed. It is somewhat analogous to the process of purifying pig iron. The iron is heated so that impurities come to the surface; these are removed, and then the iron is heated again, and more impurities float free, and so on, until finally the brittle pig iron has become hardened steel.
Note that while love is not ego-driven, it also is not impersonal. You could have ten people in a room, all of whom have loving dispositions, and yet they would all be distinct individuals. The refinement of the personality to eliminate egoic impurities does not result in the absence of any personality at all. On the contrary, it results in a more elevated personality.
If we take the description supplied by St. Paul and invert it, we have a good description of the ego – by which I mean the lower aspects of the self. The ego is impatient, unkind, envious, boastful, proud (arrogant), rude, self-seeking, easily angered (irritable, touchy, thin-skinned), and resentful (likely to hold a grudge). The ego often does evil (it lies and misleads) and has no interest in the truth (only in perpetuating itself). The ego harms us and others, mistrusts everybody, inculcates hopelessness and victimhood, and is more likely to quit in disgust or despair than to persevere.
Basically, the ego fears, and because it fears, it also hates. And hate, of course, is the opposite of love. When we hate, we are being unspiritual. We are giving in to our lowest aspects, rather than our highest.
I'm not saying that egoic qualities disappear immediately upon making the transition to the next life. I don't think they do. But they will disappear eventually, leaving not a void of personality but a rarefied personality that thinks, feels, and acts in accordance with Paul's description.
This, I believe, is the real you. It is personal but not narrowly egocentric, distinctively individual in its character but selfless in its moral action. In the trials of life, this part of ourselves may glimmer only dimly now, but someday it will shine with brilliant light. Or as Paul puts it just a few verses later:
Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
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P.S. A good follow-up to this blog post would be the channeled book Testimony of Light, by Helen Greaves. The book covers the idea of the further spiritual progress that we undertake in the next life.