Higher Self – Spark of the Mind – Summit of the Soul: Early History of an Important Concept of Transpersonal Psychology in the West בפידיאף Harald Walach

In: The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 2005, Volume 24

הפסיכואנליטיקאי האיטלקי Roberto Assagioli (1888-1974), מייסד התחום המכונה psychosynthesis, הכניס לראשונה את המונח Higher Self לתחום של פסיכולוגיה בין-אישית (transpersonal psychology) כדי להתייחס למסורת הנוצרית המיסטית ולתאר את העצמי שאופייני לחוויות מיסטיות. "העצמי הגבוה יותר" מרכז נפשי אקטיבי, שאחראי לאינטרגרציה נפשית ולהתפתחות רוחנית. From introduction: Harald Walach writes in “Higher Self" about the historical origins of the notion of the higher Self as introduced by Roberto Assagioli in psychosynthesis. This notion has origins stemming from antiquity, especially through the neo-Platonic tradi- tion. The importance of transpersonal psychologists understanding the traditional roots for many of the field’s core concepts is emphasized.

The Higher Self is a concept introduced into transpersonal psychology by Roberto Assagioli, the founder of psychosynthesis. This notion is explained and linked up with the Western mystical tradition. Here, coming from antiquity and specifically from the neo-Platonic tradition, a similiar concept has been developed which became known as the spark of the soul, or summit of the mind. During the middle ages [the term] was developed into a psychology of mysticism by Thomas Gallus, popularized by Bonaventure, and radicalized by the Carthusian writer Hugh of Balma. Spark of the soul signifies an "organ of the mystical experience." It is argued that the split introduced into history between outer and inner experience has lain dormant ever since the 13th century, with inner experience relegated to the private and mystical realm. By introducing this concept, transpersonal psychology reconnects with this tradition and has to be aware of the legacy: to achieve the theoretical, and if possible scientific, integration of both types of experience by drawing on the expe-riential nature of this concept and fostering good research.

Psychology, as a scientific discipline, is comparatively young with a history of rough- ly 150 years; the first blinded psychological experiment dating back to Peirce’s and Jastrow’s attempt to find out about the smallest perceptible sense difference in 1883 (Kaptchuk, 1998).

[today there are] many different research paradigms in Kuhn’s sense (Kuhn, 1977) competing for priority. It is only in some disciplines within psychology, like in experimen- tal or applied psychology, that a comparatively unitary canon of methods and accepted standards of problem solving seems to have been accepted by the whole community. Clinical psychology seems to be very much in a preparadigmatic stage, where many rivalling theories exist, which not only suggest different modes of action contradictory to those of competing theories, but also rest on theoretical presuppostions excluding each other. And yet they seem to be effective to some degree independent of their theoretical underpinnings and irrespective of the fact that they are using seemingly opposite interventions. It is mostly within the context of clinical psychology, that a new movement arose at the end of the 60s, which called itself “Transpersonal Psychology” (Sutich, 1969, 1976). [the impulse for founding this movement] seems to have been the realization that there were realities and experiences pointing beyond the personal self, and [experiencs that] transcend the individual self and relate with a “transpersonal” value. [this stems from the understanding that] the historical awareness that religious and spiritual needs have always been and likely will remain part of human life and therefore should be part and parcel of any scientific endeavour to understand human psychology. However, Transpersonal Psychology is not a unitary school. It is rather a loose connection of many move- nts and groups whose common denominator prob- ably is the emphasis on and interest in experiences which are termed “spiritual,” “mystical,” or “religious,”.

One of the early members of the transpersonal movement .. was the Italian psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli (1888-1974). Originally one of the early advocates of psychoanalysis in Italy (Assagioli, 1911), he quickly developed a psychological concept of his own. Thereby, he used the depth-psychological terminology introduced by Freud and developed by Jung and dif-ferentiated it. His main thrust was to discriminate between what he called lower and higher unconscious and to introduce the concept of the Higher Self. The lower unconscious can roughly be compared to what Freud intended with this notion: past and unconscious experiences, drives and impuls- es, our bio-psychological past, as it were. The higher unconscious, in contrast, was a notion to differentiate “higher” impulses from the lower unconscious: esthetic values, inspiration and intu-ition, “higher” drives like altruistic impulses or artistic inspiration, and also a kind of repository of future developmental possibilities. In that Assagioli tried to differentiate the Jungian notion of collective unconscious into the part which comprises the impulses towards development and wholeness from that which stands for disintegra-tive forces (Assagioli, 1974). Assagioli pointed towards the importance of the human will as a resource for integration and development, and thereby, incidentally, foreshadowed an important modern movement within self-regulation theory (Kuhl,

1996, 1998, 1999). Assagioli underlined that the process of integration and synthesis which human development represents is neither a random nor a simple cumulative process, but one which seems to be mediated, super- vised or even fostered by some transpersonal centre. This centre, which both acts as the inner guideline and impulse—as well as a regulating and attracting goal, he called Higher Self. It is my aim is to show that the notion of Higher Self has a long tradition in the West which can be located mainly within the Platonic, neo-Platonic and mystical traditions. I want to sketch out this tradition and therebey connect the seemingly unconnected modern practice and terminology with the tradition.

Roots in Antiquity The first written trace of the idea that there is some higher, spiritual nature within man we can see in Heraklitos [fragment B119], if the Greek ETHOS ANTHROPO DAIMON is interpreted as “home for man is the god(ly)”. The fragment can be understood as "The god(ly) is home to man", meaning surrounding, but also in the centre of man, central to his innermost personality there is something godly. We next explicitly meet the idea of some inner God or godlike inner voice in the Platonic dialogue, “The Apology of Socrates” (Plato, 1964), [where] Socrates confirms that he experiences an inner voice that is sometimes warning him against doing things. Plato, of course, with his teaching that the soul stems from the realm of ideas from where it comes into the body, bringing a trace of the ideal worlds of immutable ideas and of the Beauty and Good with it into the human being, laid the foundation for the later teaching of an immortal soul or rather, an immortal part within the soul. Even Aristotle… in his “De anima - on the soul” (Aristoteles, 1983) said that the highest part of the soul, the agent intellect, the active part of the intellect, came from “outside. The next step was made within the neo-Platonic Tradition. The hallmark of Plotinus' teaching is an ontology which starts from the insight or experience that pure consciousness. Plotinos called the principal source of everything “the One,” which he conceived to be all and everything in one, beyond every limitation, out of which everything emanates in four stages: first the NOUS, the intellect, which is pure intelligibility and reservoir of the world of ideas in the Platonic sense. From the intellect emanates the world soul which gives life to everything. And from this, at last, emanates the material world. However, there is an imprint of the divine One in every single soul, as it were, a trace of the One which is at the same time mark of and spurn to the One. It is the impulse with- in the soul to return, turn round to the One again and, in mystical contemplation, seek reunion with the One. … He saw the soul as “containing” two parts, a higher and lower part. The higher part, he thought, was like a mark of the divine, a trace of the One, which was experienced by the individual as a desire to reunite with the One. This was possible, Plotinos taught, by contemplation, by receding the faculties and powers of the soul from the outside world and turning inwards until, in total stillness, this divine part of the soul reunites with the One. This was one of the main sources of the contemplative traditions in the West. The idea of a special part of the soul was finally introduced by Proclos, one of Plotinos’ followers and the systematizer of Plotinos’ ideas. Proclos was important insofar as he probably was the teacher of a Syrian monk who was known in later centuries as Pseudo-Dionysios (Ps.- Dionysios), the Areopagite. this neo-Platonic tradition made its way into the Christian middle ages, neo-Platonism baptized, as it were. The teachings of Ps.-Dionysios the Areopagite endowed with Apostolic authority, have been highly influential in the middle ages. Ps.- Dionysius takes up the teachings of Proclos and also speaks of a higher part of the soul, which is the faculty of union of man with God.

הוא מתאר גם את תולדות "העצמי הגבוה" בימי הביניים – דילגתי Higher Self: The Heritage and the Future Agenda It is within psychosynthesis as described by Assogioli that the concept of a Higher Self makes it quasi-official reappearance on the agenda of modern psychology. It seems evident that what Assagioli had in mind by this notion is probably very similar to what was expressed in the tradition by the terms “spark of the soul,” “summit of the mind,”. .. While the mystical tradition used the term more in the context of the mystical experience of union with God, Assagioli assigns more mundane tasks to the Higher Self. In his psychology…., the Higher Self is an active centre, activating and thereby pulling the individual toward his or her development. The Higher Self of Assagioli has a psychological function: unification, and spiritual development of the ,During the middle ages [!!!"זה כמו בספר על הנוירולוגיה של הדת: "עצמי מרכזי", "אקזקוטיבי] .psyche this was identical to deification: becoming God-like or union with God. The historical distance from the middle ages can be traced in the fact that nowadays we also recognize psy- chological needs more readily. We acknowledge that sometimes psychological problems have to be solved before or after spiritual experiences, and that the power of such a mystical experience can be severely hampered by psychological malfunctioning of the rest of the person. what is meant by the Higher Self [by Assagioli] and "the spark of the soul" in the middle ages seems to be the same : Both signify the highest part of the soul , basically untouched by psychological suffering, sound and available as a resource, in modern parlance . Both attribute to this part an active role in the unification of the personality. While for Assagioli, this is a kind of ever present synthesizing and motivating activity, for the mystical writers of the middle ages this was the innate spurn to embark on the spiritual quest, to let oneself be drawn by the call of God. Apart from the different and clerical language this is couched in, it describes the same basic experience. Both traditions see the experience of this inner-most part, our godlike nature, .. as the most important and most ful- filling experience, to which everyone is drawn. in the Higher Self of Transpersonal Psychology, the old concept of “spark of the soul” makes its reappearance. within transpersonal psychology some of the legacies of the mystical tradition are present. By the rules and standards of academic psychology a concept like that of the Higher Self is at the first glance utterly unscientific: there is no way of verifying or falsifying it, it seems; What is the criterion that in any experience of Higher Self? Traditions usually have a pragmatic answer: True expe- riences transform people and leave them changed such that they are able to do things or perform tasks which they previously were unable to.[…] The rationale is not much different from that of common tests: What can be tested for (intelligence, motor performance, school aptitude), likely exists. The Higher Self or Spark of the Soul initially was a concept derived from experience. Plotinos reported- ly had quite a few spiritual experiences himself, as probably did the other writers. It was inner experience, subjective in the first place, but linked up with philo- sophical and traditional terminology, and thus inter- subjective in result. We need something similar today,it seems.

Historical and theoretical research should establish firm links between concepts of different cultures and times. One guiding principle would be the possibility that basic human experiences and conditions are uni- versal but interpreted differently according to different historical and cultural backgrounds.

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