THE MYSTERY OF PERSONALITY
It will have been noticed that throughout this book there has been a
tendency to return again and again to the question of what we mean by
the Self. As I have said before (see ch. xii., _supra_), one might very
naturally suppose that as the _ego_ underruns all experience, and we
cannot make any observation of the world at all except through its
activity, the general problem of the nature of the ego would be the
first to be attacked, and the very first to be solved; whereas,
curiously enough, it seems to be the last! Only towards the conclusion
of philosophical speculation does the importance of this problem force
itself on men’s minds. Nevertheless, I think we may say that in the
department of philosophy it is the great main problem which lies before
this age for solution; and that one of the greatest services a man can
do is—by psychologic study and manifold experience, by poetical
expression, especially in lyrical form, and by philosophic thought and
investigation—to make clear to himself and the world what he means by
the letter ‘I,’ what he means by his ‘self.’
To the unthinking person nothing seems simpler, more obvious, than his
own existence—and hardly needing definition. Yet the least thought
shows how complex and elusive this ‘self’ is. It is one of those cases
with which the world teems—a juggle of the open daylight—in which an
object _appears_ so perfectly simple, frank, innocent, and without
concealment, and yet is really profoundly complex, deliberate, and
unfathomable.
The most elementary considerations easily illustrate what I mean.[138]
When we speak of the ego, do we mean the self of to-day, or of
yesterday, or of some years back—or possibly some years in the future
when we shall have found the expression now unhappily denied us? Do we
mean the self of boyhood, or even of babyhood? or do we mean that of
maturity, or of old age? Do we mean the self indicated by the mind
alone, or by the spirit, apart from the body? or do we mean that
indicated specially by the body, or even (as some folk seem to consider)
by the _clothes_? It would be very puzzling to be asked to place one’s
finger, so to speak, on any one of these manifestations as really and
completely representative. Rather perhaps we should be inclined, if
pressed, to say that our real self was something underrunning _all_
these forms—that it required all the expressions, from infancy, through
maturity, even to old age, and all the apparatus of body and mind, in
order to convey its meaning; and that to pin it down to any particular
moment of time, or to any particular phase of the material or spiritual,
would be to do it a great injustice.
If so, we seem at once compelled to think of the Self as something
greatly larger than any ordinary form of it that we know, as something
perhaps on a different plane of being—underrunning, and therefore in a
sense beyond, Time; and similarly underrunning, and therefore in a sense
beyond, both body and mind. And this all the more, because, as I have
said on an earlier page, we all feel that at best much of our real
selves remains in life-long defect of expression; and that there are
great deeps of the Under-self (as in chapter viii.) which, though
organically related to our ordinary consciousness, are still for the
most part hidden and unexplored. All, in fact, points to the existence
within us of a very profound self, which so far we may justifiably
conclude to be much greater than any one known manifestation of it;
which requires for its expression the forms of a lifetime; and still
stretches on and beyond; which perhaps belongs to another sphere of
being—as the ship in the air and the sunlight belongs to another sphere
than the hull buried deep in the water.
But we may go further in our exploration of the “abysmal deeps.” We have
once or twice in the foregoing chapters alluded to the possibility of
the self dividing into two personalities, or even more. We have
supposed, for instance, that at death the psychic organism may possibly
split up—some more terrestrial portion remaining operant and active on
the earth-plane, and some other portion removing to a subtler and more
ethereal region. Are we—we may ask—and those others who propound the
same ideas talking nonsense in doing so? Is it anyhow possible for a
self to be active in two bodies or in two places at the same time? It
may indeed seem impossible and absurd—until we envisage the actual
facts; but when we do so, when we study the facts of the alternation of
personalities, so much in evidence at the present time, when we find
that two or more personalities, or coherent bodies of consciousness, may
not only succeed each other in one human organism, but may
_simultaneously_ be active in the same,[139] when we find that there is
such a thing as ‘bilocation,’ and that the apparition of a person may
come and deliver a message while the original person is far away and
otherwise engaged, when we notice carefully our own internal psychology
and find that we not unfrequently “talk to ourselves” and in other ways
behave as two persons in one body—we see that the absurdity or
unlikelihood of the suggestion may not by any means be so great as
supposed, and that we may after all be forced to largely remodel our
conception of what Personality is.[140]
That one Personality should divide into two or more may seem to be
foreign to our habitual views; yet we must remember that worms,
annelids, and molluscs of various kinds commonly so divide; and
though it is puzzling to think what becomes of the ‘I’ or ‘self’ of
a sea-anemone when the latter is cut in twain and each part goes its
way as a new creature, we must not therefore refuse to envisage the
fact and the problem thus flowing from it. As to the Protozoa, which
certainly exhibit signs of considerable intelligence, _fission_ of one
cell into two or more is one of the most normal and frequent events of
their lives. The same, of course, is true of the elementary cells of
the human body; the fission even of whole organs of the body is not
uncommon, though more pathological in character; and the fission of the
personality, as just mentioned, is quite frequent; and in some cases—as
in the well-known case of Sally Beauchamp—very striking, on account
of the furious apparent opposition developed between one portion and
another.[141]
The conception therefore of Personality must, it would seem, include the
thought of possible bilocation—that is, of possible manifestation in
two places at the same time; and it must not refuse the thought of
inclusion—_i.e._ of one personality being possibly included within
another—as of living and intelligent cells within the body.[142]
Furthermore, we must not only allow _division_ of self as one of the
attributes of personality, but also, apparently, _fusion_ with other
selves. This may seem far-fetched and unreasonable at first, but on
consideration we cannot but see that in one degree or another it is
quite in the order of Nature. The Protozoa, of course, quite frequently
combine with each other, and so make a new start in life; in the higher
organisms the sperm-cell and germ-cell fuse completely for the
conception of the offspring, and the organisms themselves fuse partially
and interchange elements during the process of conjunction; and in the
psychology of love among human beings we notice a similar fusion, and
sometimes also almost a confusion, of personalities.
The little self-conscious mind (of the civilized man) no doubt protests
against all this. It desires to think of itself as a separate and
definite entity, distinct from (and perhaps superior to) all others; and
it finds any theories of possible fission or fusion of personalities
quite baffling and impracticable. Yet in the light of the All-self—the
key-thought of this book—the whole thing is obvious, and there is
really no difficulty, except perhaps in the linking up (through memory)
of the continuity of each lesser self.
What we said in the last chapter, namely that “the personal
self-consciousness can only survive by ever fading and changing toward
the universal,” must be borne in mind. Continual _expansion_ is a normal
condition of consciousness. Time is an integral element of it.[143]
Consciousness must continually grow. Through memory it preserves the
past, through the present it adds to its stores. The author of _The
Science of Peace_ illustrates the subject (p. 303) by asking us to
consider the spheres of consciousness of various officials in a country
whose departments more or less overlap each other: “There are
administrative officers in charge of each department, whose
consciousness may be said to include the consciousness of their
subordinates in that department, to exclude those of their compeers, and
to be in turn included in those of their superiors. The more complicated
the machinery of the government, the better the illustration will be of
inclusions and exclusions and partial or complete coincidences, and
overlappings and communions of consciousness. At last we come to the
head of the government, whose consciousness may be said to include the
consciousnesses, whose knowledge and power include the knowledges and
powers of all the public servants in the land, and whose consciousness
is so expanded as to enable him to be in touch with them all and feel
and act through them all constantly. An officer promoted through the
grades of such an administration would clearly pass through expansions
of consciousness.... Such expansion of consciousness, then, is not in
its nature more mysterious and recondite than any other item in the
world-process, but a thing of daily and hourly occurrence. In terms of
metaphysic it is the coming of an individual Self into relation with a
larger and larger not-self.”
In the light of the All-self, I say, the difficulties disappear. It is
the question of Memory (explicit or implicit) which seems to decide the
limits of personalities and their survival. The One Self is experiencing
in all forms, but the stores of experience and memory are kept separate.
Here is a man who has a Town house and a Country house and an Italian
villa. When he changes his abode from one to the other he becomes to a
great extent a different person. His surroundings and associations, his
pursuits and occupations, his dress and habits, his language may be, are
changed. It may even happen that each of his three lives goes on growing
and expanding after its own pattern, and becoming more and more
different from the two others; and yet the ultimate person behind them
all remains the same. Is it not possible that the lives of us human
beings may go on expanding and growing each according to its own law,
and yet the ultimate individual or Being behind them all may remain the
same?
If a worm be supposed to have memory (and worms no doubt have memory in
some degree), then it might well be supposed that, if divided in two,
each of the parts would inherit the said memory complete. But from that
moment the experiences of the two portions, moving in different
directions, would bifurcate, and the future stores of memory would be
different. Thus we should have a bifurcation of the stream of memory,
and a bifurcation of personality—until ultimately, as time went on, and
the common memory faded into the background, the two new personalities
would begin to feel themselves almost quite separate. Is not this again
something like what may have happened to ourselves from Creation’s
birth? The stream of life has bifurcated and bifurcated till we have
lost our common memory and have become convinced of the absolute
separation of our personalities one from the other.
On the other hand, the conjunction and fusion of two streams of memory
in one is as probable and intelligible as the bifurcation of one into
two. Two protozoa fuse; but the race-self in one is the same as in the
other, and in reality the process is only a fusion of organic memories
and experiences. A man who had been in the habit of changing every year
from his Town to his Country house might some day find it convenient to
combine his establishments in one suburban residence. Certainly if he
had so far forgot _himself_ that in changing houses he had always
_quite_ changed his memories, then it would seem impossible to him to
combine the two lives in one. Otherwise there would be no difficulty in
the process. The stores of one establishment, with their associations
and memories would after a time (and not without some
maturation-divisions and extrusions!) be got into relation with the
stores of the other establishment; and the two bodies of memory and
association would settle down together.
* * * * *
All this seems to suggest to us that our conception of personality must
be considerably altered from its ordinary form, and rendered more
fluent, in order to tally with the real facts. There is no such thing as
a fixed and limited personality, of definite content and character,
which we can credit to our account, or to the account of our friends.
All is in flux and change, the consciousness ever enlarging, the _ego_
which is at the root of that consciousness ever growing in the knowledge
of itself as a vital portion of the All-self. That last alone is fixed;
that alone as the ‘universal witness’ is permanent. But the streams of
memory and experience, by which from all sides that central fact and
consciousness is reached, are infinite in number and variety. It is in
the continuity of a stream of memory that what we call personality must
be supposed to consist; and when this continuity covers not only a
single life, but extends from life to life, then we must find a new name
for the persistent being and call him not a personality, but, if we
will, an _individuality_. Such individualities must exist by millions
and billions; they must be as numerous as all the possible lines of
experience (and these are quasi-infinite in number) by which the soul
may grow from its birth in the simplest speck of matter to its
realization of divine and universal life. The author (Bhagavan Das) of
_The Science of Peace_ illustrates this infinitude of individualities,
and how they are all contained in the All-self, and each in a sense as
an aspect of the One, by the simile of a museum or gallery. “If a
spectator,” he says (p. 289), “wondered unrestingly through the halls of
a vast museum or great art gallery, at the dead of night, with a single
small lamp in one hand, each of the natural objects, the pictured
scenes, the statues, the portraits, would be illumined by that lamp in
succession for a single moment, while all the rest were in darkness, and
after that single moment would fall into darkness again. Let there now
be not one but countless such spectators, as many in endless numbers as
the objects of sight within the place, each spectator wandering in and
out incessantly through the great crowd of all the others, each lamp
bringing momentarily into light one object, and for only that spectator
who holds that lamp.” Then he goes on to say that each line or
succession of experiences might represent an individuality; each
individuality in the end would reach the totality of experience, but in
a different order and in a different manner from any other; and all the
individualities would all the time—though changing themselves—remain
within the unchanging intelligence of the absolute, and would only be
exploring that intelligence each in a different order. “For,” he again
says (p. 317), “an individuality can no otherwise be described,
discriminated and fixed, than by enumerating the experiences of that
individual, by narrating its biography.”
We may also illustrate the matter by the conception of a Tree. A single
leaf at the end of a twig may seem to have a little separate self of its
own; but it is very ephemeral. It perishes with the season and another
leaf takes its place. There is a deeper self, in the twig, which
endures, and from which new leaves spring. And again the twig springs
from a small spray, which is the source of other twigs and leaves.
Should the leaf desire to trace its complete and total self it would
have to follow its life-line through the twig and the spray, to the
branch, and so right down to the central trunk. It could not stop at any
halfway point, and say, This is my final self. But on its way to the
trunk, at different points, it would find that its sap or life was
flowing into other twigs and leaves, as well as the twig and leaf first
mentioned. It would come into relation, so to speak, with other bodies
beside the first. If we were to call the first leaf and twig a
personality we should have to call some deeper self involving many twigs
and leaves an Individuality, and so on to the All-self of the tree. The
self of every leaf would approach the main trunk along a different line,
and through various ranges of individuality; but all would ultimately
participate in one whole.
I think some such view is clearly the most satisfactory way of looking
at the matter. We are all essentially one; our differentiation from
each other does not consist in differences in the central ego, but in
the different lines of experience and memory. We can none of us boast,
at any point, of a rounded, definite and stationary self, apart from
all others; but we are all approaching the universal from different
sides. Yet, also, it is perfectly true that consciousness is born in us
first _through_ our very limitations. Through the very obstacles that
surround us, and through the things that seem to divide us from others,
first simple consciousness and then self-consciousness are born. Then
comes a time when the limitations and the barriers become intolerable.
The soul that at first gloried in them comes to find the burden of
self-consciousness too great. Why should it be forever John Smith? As
Mrs. Stetson says:—
“What an exceeding rest ’twill be
When I can leave off being Me!...
Done with the varying distress
Of retroactive consciousness!...
Why should I long to have John Smith
Eternally to struggle with?”
When the consciousness arises of this fact, that we need not be tied to
John Smith forever—that our real self is far vaster, and essentially
one with others, then in each of us the Divine Soul is born; a vista of
glory and splendor opens in front, and on all sides the barriers fall to
the ground. On the way to this supreme conclusion the stream of memories
which one calls oneself may of course take on form after form; it may
bifurcate, or it may fuse with other streams. That does not very much
matter. The real identity, once established, can hardly be lost. For
every leaf there is a channel of sap which connects it with the main
trunk. Personality is real, but it yields itself up in the greater
Individual of which it is the expression; and the individual or divine
soul is real—enduring perhaps many thousands of years—but it yields
itself up ultimately in the All. Finally, in that union, Memory itself,
in its mortal form, ceases, for it is swallowed up in actual
realization, in the power of actual presence in all space and time. The
divine soul which has thus completed its union needs memory no more. It
is there wherever it desires to be. As the author of _Siderische Geburt_
(Berlin, 1910) says, “We mortals are separated from the divine
all-embracing universal Vision; and Memory is only a first glimmering
reawakening—a beginning of renewed seraphic life and a coming into
relation with all that lies beyond the little world-corner of our
presence.”[144]
* * * * *
At first sight, and to one who does not yet realize the inner unity of
being, these views on the nature of Personality and Individuality may
appear strange and even painful. For such a person the thought of the
dissociation of his ‘self,’ of its separation into two or more
parts—either in life or in death—and the divergence of the two parts
from each other, must be grotesque and terrible, and verging even
towards madness. And so also must be the thought of the possible
dissociation of the personalities of his friends. And yet it may be
necessary for us at length and by degrees to understand and assimilate
such a view. Certain it is that, as we come to understand it, we shall
see that any dissociation that may occur can only be of the superficial
elements—something of the nature of a divergence of the chains of
memory; and that dissociation of the real and intimate self is a thing
quite impossible. We shall see that by degrees the self may learn to
deal with such dissociations, and to express itself in various guises,
and in more than one personality at a time. If, for instance, there does
occur at death a certain break-up of the psychic organism—if the animal
soul, and the human soul, and the divine soul do to a certain extent
part from each other and go along different ways, we may see that it is
quite possible that the personal stream of memory may correspondingly
branch in different directions. One portion of the consciousness, having
always been animal and terrestrial in character, may identify itself
mainly with the animal vitality of the residue and its corresponding
memories—and may persevere for some time as a wandering passional
centre, liable to attach itself to the organisms of living folk, or to
figure as a ‘ghost’ of very limited activities and occupied with eternal
repetitions of the same action; another portion, more distinctly human,
may linger in some intermediate state, partly in touch with the
earth-life and the souls of mortal friends, yet partly drawn onward into
wider spheres; and may function on for a long time in a kind of
dreamland—creating perhaps the objects of its own consumption till it
wearies of them, or building up imaginative worlds of occupations and
activities similar to our own, as in “the happy hunting grounds” of
Indians, or the worlds described from time to time by mediumistic
‘controls.’ And again a third portion may pass into that far wider and
grander state of being which we have described—that of the ‘divine’
soul which recognizes its equality and unity with all others, and its
freedom of the whole universe. In all these cases the main stream of
memory, branching, must pour itself into the section of life which
follows, and render the latter quite continuous with the former—though
naturally with some differences, both in the memories transmitted, and
in the degrees of community, in each case.
We may apply these considerations to the question of the messages and
apparitions from the unseen world which have been alluded to in former
chapters. How far or in what special way these communications really
represent the active and continuing consciousness of our departed
friends is a question which is generally admitted to be most doubtful
and difficult. And its difficulty is not lessened, I think, by our
conclusions (so far) on the nature of Personality. If the stream of a
man’s earth-life memory may diverge at death into two or more streams,
then it must remain difficult for us to say whether the communication
which is coming to us proceeds from a mere overflow of that stream,
which has eddied itself, so to speak, into the brain of the medium; or
from some ‘astral’ shell of the departed one, which has already begun
decaying and dissipating, in our atmosphere; or again from the true soul
of the man which is pushing forward into the world beyond. Probably we
do not yet know enough about the matter to form decisive judgments. In
either case the memory exhibited may be surprisingly perfect. And it
seems to me that in most cases nothing but personal evidence and
personal detail, even down to the minutest points, can decide—and even
then not in such a way as to decide for others. And perhaps it is best
and most natural so. In our world of ordinary life it is so. If an
apparent stranger turns up from the other side of the earth and claims a
far-back acquaintance; if another makes the same claim over the
telephone; if a known friend behaves strangely, and we are in doubt
whether to attribute his conduct to _bona fides_ or to incipient
madness; in these and a thousand other cases, personal relationship and
personal understanding (though by no means unerring) count for more than
all science and legal proof. And perhaps this is the healthiest way to
take the subject: not to be over-curious or speculative or sentimental,
but where solid help and a permanent and useful relationship seems to be
gained, there to accept the communications as so far commending and
justifying themselves.
If, as I have just said, there is something a little disquieting and
even terrible in the thought that our personality may thus be subject to
rupture or dissociation into two or more portions, that matter after all
depends upon how we look upon it—whether from below, as it were, or
from above. There is nothing particularly terrible in the thought that
our bodily organs and parts—our “Little Marys,” and so forth—may have
(probably do have) very distinct personalities of their own. We look
down upon them, so to speak, and include them. And we shall one day no
doubt, and in the realization of our greater selves, have the splendid
experience of including two (or more) bodies—of having them at our
service, and available for command and expression. Even now we are
sometimes conscious of having one envelope of a more ethereal and
intense nature, swift and far-reaching both in movement and perception
in the innermost regions, and another more local body, in touch with
terrestrial life. And there would be nothing surprising or dreadful in
finding, after death, that an ethereal and a terrestrial body were both
still at our command—though both perhaps more developed and more
differentiated from each other than at present;—or even that we might
be capable of inhabiting several such bodies.
It is of course puzzling, under our ordinary conceptions of Space and
Time, to imagine how it could be possible to deal with several bodies at
the same time; but in reality it is no more puzzling than the problem
which we habitually solve every day and every hour of our lives. How do
we, for instance, deal with and dispose the activities of our hands and
our feet and our eyes and our brain, with simultaneous care, say, in
walking through the streets? We inhabit these separate organs, these
distinct personalities, simultaneously, and ordain their movements and
gather in their perceptions by the act of _attention_. Attention in the
world of the spirit corresponds to _extension_ in the physical world.
Whatever your spirit attends to, that some physical radiation from
yourself extends to. And similarly if you had bodies in different worlds
and regions, by the simple act of attention your spirit would reach
them. Nevertheless—to return to the one body and the various organs,
like hands and feet and eyes, which we seem to have under control—it is
clear that our minds could not possibly overlook all the details of
their management, unless there were some general ordaining spirit in the
body which was in close touch and sympathy, and ready to act with and
aid us; and similarly it is clear that we could not ordain and organize
any movement of a secondary body at a distance—even though ‘belonging’
to us—unless there were a spirit, in that body and the intervening
spaces, in touch and sympathy with ours. It is the knowledge that there
is such a community of life, such an abounding Self, which gives the
‘divine’ soul its great joy and its great power—“for whatever he
desires, that he obtains from the Self.” He who knows has indeed the
freedom of the universe, and of all its powers—who knows that the
Spirit of the whole _is_ his own.
It is natural therefore to suppose that that portion of the
consciousness which has circled and centred very definitely and
conclusively round the All-self—or such aspect of the same as specially
belongs to it; or (what perhaps comes to the same thing) has circled
very definitely round the divine soul of a loved one; will pass through
death easily and without much loss of continuity. It will with its
attendant memories pass easily and continuously into the inmost sphere;
or (to put the matter in another way) _remaining_ in that sphere it will
simply become aware that a mass of husks have been shed off, which
clouded it. It will become aware of the glorious state of being to which
it has always implicitly belonged, and of its connection with not one
only but many bodies.
It may be—and I think one almost feels that it must be—that the most
intimate self of any of us cannot be realized short of externalization
in a vast number of separate manifestations or lives. One has the
impression with regard to one’s body, that “this is one of my bodies”;
or that “this body represents a portion of myself”; but one does _not_
feel “this body represents my total, complete and final self.” And as we
have just suggested that in a more intimate state of being we may become
distinctly aware of having relation to several bodies simultaneously, so
the world-old doctrine of reincarnation in its general form has long
suggested that our most intimate selves are related to a great number of
bodies in _succession_ to each other in Time. The higher or inner
Individual—of agelong and æonian life—is reincarnated (it is said)
thousands of times; thus to embody that aspect of the Divine which it
represents.
These embodiments may be in forms by no means resembling each
other—though doubtless there will be a thread of similarity running
through; and one embodiment may have little idea (except in moments of
inspiration) of its relation to the others, or of any continuity of
memory between itself and the others. Yet the memories of these lives
and embodiments passing into the inner sphere are ultimately gathered
together and drawn up to constitute that most glorious world of each
Being of which we have spoken—a world in which each overlooks and
ordains its various lives and manifestations as from a mountain-top.
These are indeed “the ageless immortal gods who seek ever to come in the
forms of men”—whom we ever and anon seem to feel and hear knocking at
the inner door of our little local selves, as though they would gain
admittance and acknowledgment.