THE SELF

1. I think with my brain, my brain does not think for me; on the contrary, it is me, the central nervous system, composed of a myriad nerve fibres, which avails of the brain's capacity for thought, for verbal and other symbols, to order thought in such a way that what is thought will be meaningful to me and able to assist me, the central nervous system, to both understand and cope with the world, life, my problems, etc., as I see fit.

2. The brain does not think for me; it is a tool of my self, the CNS, or brain stem. I lock into the brain but I am not the brain, even though it performs many duties that are indispensable to my well-being, including the regulation of bodily functions.

3. I am really that which is first and last, the most essential being that both precedes the body in time and succeeds it in Eternity.

4. I have developed all these bodily limbs and organs for purposes of surviving in the world, but I will one day leave them behind as I die to the flesh and am 'reborn' in the spirit or, rather, the soul, the essence of my being. I will, in a sense, come 'face to face' with my self, not the way one comes face to face with oneself in the mirror, but internally, as incandescent soul.

5. First I was id, or instinct; then I developed the capacity for thought through the ego, which is the conscious focal-point of the self; finally I shall be soul, the residue of what remains to the self when the ego passes away with the body's death and the id turns inward, as from bodily manipulation towards a self-consuming apocalypse of nervous tension, a cannibalistic orgy of self-realization in the lamp of the self, the soul.

6. The central nervous system passes from id to ego to soul or, more correctly, from id to ego and mind to soul, as from unconscious to conscious and superconscious to subconscious.

7. For if in the beginning there is id-controlled will, the will of the not-self (any not-self), what follows is ego-controlled id, spirit controlled mind, and, last but hardly least, the soul that ensues upon an egoless id that no longer has a will to control, and is beholden to no-one and to nothing but itself or, rather, the self of which it is the alpha, the instinctual beginning, and out of which is destined to shine the omega, the transfused end.

8. For what is the central nervous system, the myriad nerve fibres of the self, but an instrument of instinctive will that can only turn upon itself in the absence of organic will to manipulate with or without egocentric prompting?

9. Not only are the various organic not-selves, the bodily organs, discarded at death; the ego, which depends on the will, and the mind, which depends on the spirit, are also discarded at death - transcended in and by the soul, which is the transformed id, the id that, no longer having bodily organs to manipulate from the standpoint of the self (which should not be confused with the actual workings, through bodily will, of those organs), turns inward and becomes the soul.

10. Thus the self as central nervous system passes from id to soul, instinct to illumination, alpha to omega, self-consuming until such time as it has effectively 'burnt itself out' and ceased, in consequence, to incandesce. Even the inner light must eventually fade and die.