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Self-Awareness and Ultimate Selfhood (Nasr)

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Self-Awareness and Ultimate Selfhood (Nasr) Self-Awareness and Ultimate Selfhood Author(s): Seyyed Hossein Nasr Source: Religious Studies, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Sep., 1977), pp. 319-325 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20005423 Accessed: 26/01/2010 17:57 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Religious Studies. http://www.jstor.org Rel. Stud. I3, pp. 319-325 SEYYED HOSSEIN NASR Director, ImperialIranian Academy of Philosophy SELF-AWARENESS AND ULTIMATE SELFHOOD The fruit of several centuries of rationalistic thought in theWest has been to reduce both the objective and the subjective poles of knowledge to a single level. In the same way that the Cogito of Descartes is based on reducing the knowing subject to a single mode of awareness, the external world which this 'knowing self' perceives is reduced to a spatio-temporal complex limited to a single level of reality -no matter how far this complex is extended beyond the galaxies or into aeons of time, past and future. The traditional view as expressed in the metaphysical teachings of both the Eastern andWestern traditions is based, on the contrary, upon a hierarchic vision of reality, not only of reality's objective aspect but also of its subjective one. Not only are there many levels of reality or existence stretching from thematerial plane toAbsolute and Infinite Reality, but there are also many levels of subjective reality or consciousness, many envelopes of the self, leading to theUltimate Self which is Infinite and Eternal and which is none other than theTranscendent Reality beyond.' Moreover, the relation between the subjective and the objective is not bound to a single mode. There is .not just one form of perception or awareness. There are modes and degrees of awareness leading from the so-called 'normal' perception by man of both his own 'ego' and the external world to awareness of Ultimate Selfhood, in which the subject and object of knowledge become unified in a single reality beyond all separation and distinction. Self-awareness, from the point of view of traditional metaphysics, is not simply a biological fact of life common to all human beings. There ismore than one level of meaning to 'self' and more than one degree of awareness. Man is aware of his self or ego, but one also speaks of self control, and therefore implies even in daily life the presence of another selfwhich controls the lower self. Tradition, therefore, speaks clearly of the distinction between the self and the Self, or the self and the Spirit which is the first reflection of the ultimate Self; hence the primary distinction between anima and spiritus 1 Traditional metaphysics speaks of Ultimate Reality either as the absolutely Transcendent or the absolutely Immanent which however are one, brahman being the same as atman. Hindu meta physics, however, emphasizes more the language of immanence, and Islamic metaphysics that of transcendence without one language excluding the other. See F. Schuon, Spiritual Perspectivesand Human Facts, trans. by D. M. Matheson (London, 1953), pp. 95 ff. See also Schuon, Languageof theSelf trans. by M. Pallis and D. M. Matheson (Madras, 1959), especially chapter xi, 'Gnosis, Language of the Self'. 320 SEYYED HOSSEIN NASR or nafs and rzh of Islamic thought and emphasis upon the fact that there is within every man both an outer and an inner man, a lower self and a higher one. That is why also tradition speaks of the self as being totally distinct from theUltimate Self, from atman or ousia, and yet as a reflection of it and as the solar gate through which man must pass to reach the Self. Traditional metaphysics is in fact primarily an autology, to quote A. K. Coomaraswamy,l for to know is ultimately to know the Self. The Hadith, 'He who knoweth himself knoweth his Lord' attests to this basic truth. There are, moreover, many stages which separate the self and the Self. In its descent towards manifestation, the Self becomes shrouded by many bodies, many sheaths, which must be shed in returning to the One. That is why the Buddhist and Hindu traditions speak of the various subtle bodies of man, and certain Sufis such as 'Ala' al-Dawlah Simnani analyze the 'physiology' of the inner man or the man of light in terms of the latd'if or subtle bodies which man 'carries' within himself and which he must 'traverse' and also cast aside in order to reach the Self.2 In order to reach the Ultimate Self through the expansion of awareness of the centre of consciousness, man must reverse the cosmogonic process which has crystallized both the variations and reverberations of the Self within what appears through the cosmic veil (hijab) as separate and objective existence. And this reversal must of necessity begin with the negation of the lower self, with the performance of sacrifice, which is an echo here below of the primordial sacrifice, the sacrifice which has brought the cosmos into existence. The doctrine of the creation of the cosmos, whether expounded metaphysically or mythically in various traditions, is based upon the mani festation of the Principle, which is at the same time the sacrifice (the yajfna of Hinduism) of the luminous pole of existence, of the Universal Man (al-insdn al-kdmil), of Purusa, of the Divine Logos which is also light, of the Spirit (al-riih)which resides within the proximity of the Ultimate Self and at the centre of the cosmos. The Ultimate Self in its inner infinitude is beyond all determination and cosmic polarization, but the Spirit or Intellect which is both created and uncreated, is already its first determination in the direction of manifestation. It is mdya in atma and the centre of all the numerous levels of cosmic and universal existence.3 Through its 'sacrifice' the lower levels of the cosmic order in its objective as well as subjective aspects become manifest. The human self, as usually experienced by men who have become separated from their archetypal reality, is itself a faint echo upon the cosmic plane of the Spirit and ultimately of the Self, and exists only by virtue of the original sacrifice of its celestial Principle. Hence, 1 See A. K. Coomaraswamy, Hinduism and Buddhism (New York, 1943), pp. 1O ff. 2 See H. Corbin, L'homme de lumiere dans le soufisme iranien (Paris, 1971). In diverse traditions, the return of the self to Self has been compared to the shedding of outward skin by a snake which by virtue of this unsheathing gains a new skin and a new life. 3 See F. Schuon, 'Atma-Maya', Studies in Comparative Religion (summer 1973), pp. 130-8. SELF-AWARENESS AND ULTIMATE SELFHOOD 32I it is through the denial of itself or of sacrifice that the self can again become it-Self and regain the luminous empyrean from which it has descended to the corporeal realm. Self-awareness can only reach the Ultimate Self provided it is helped by that message from the Divine Intellect which is called 'revelation' or tradition in its universal sense. The gates through which the Spirit has descended to the level of the human self are hermetically sealed and protected by the dragons which cannot be subdued save with the help of the angelic forces. Self-awareness in the sense of experimenting with the boundaries of the psyche, with new experiences, with the heights and depths of the psychological world, does not result in any way inmoving closer to the proximity of the Self. The attempted expansion of awareness in this sense, which is so common among modern man anxious to break the boundaries of the prison of the materialistic world he has created for himself, results only in a horizontal expansion, but not in a vertical one. Its result is a never ending wandering in the labyrinth of the psychic world and not the end of all wandering in the presence of the Sun which alone is. Only the sacred can enable the awareness of the self to expand in the direction of the Self. The Divine reveals to man his Sacred Name as a holy vessel which carries man from the limited world of his self to the shores of the World of the Spirit where alone man is his Real Self. That is why the famous Sufi, Mansuir al-Hallaj, through whom the Self uttered 'I am the Truth' (ana'l Iaqq) prays in this famous verse to the Self to remove the veil which separates man's illusory I from the Self who alone is I in the absolute sense.
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