CYCLE TEN: ALTERNATIVE KINDS OF SELF AND MIND

1. It would seem, then, that the metaphysical self, be it outer or inner, is only unselfish in mind, and that to achieve mind it must be consciously committed, via the will of the relevant not-self, to selfless universality, thereby becoming spiritualized to an extent which precipitates it back upon its own inner core as soul-mind, be it in connection with the subconscious or, more sensibly, with the superconscious.

2. Such soul-mind makes the mind that experiences itself ... more fully than would otherwise be possible ... unselfish to a deeper degree, since it is now enriched, metaphysically, by the feeling of joy, and joy is the profoundest and most sublime feeling known to mankind.

3. But neither pure mind nor soul-mind, spiritual superconsciousness nor sentient superconsciousness, numinously enrapt in sublime feelings, are greatly congenial to the self for any length of time, since the self is the bedrock, so to speak, of mind, and consequently there will be a returning to selfhood, be it subegocentric or superegocentric, before any prospect of renewed progression to selfless universality via the appropriate not-self can be anticipated, since it is not mind which embraces the not-self, but the self that is determined to progress through not-selfhood into selfless universality, and thus become mind anew.

4. Now in becoming mind anew, one is liberated from self into that which, being psychic, is unselfish, be it in subconscious (from subegocentric) or in superconscious (from superegocentric) terms, and is therefore in a position to dive beneath self, via selfless universality, to the profounder unselfishness of soul-mind, which is the raison d'être of metaphysical commitment, be it in relation to listening to music or, more sensibly, to meditating upon the spirit, the subconscious and superconscious poles of metaphysical life which, being noumenal, is eternal.

5. Of course, there are what may be called psychic poles of other types of life, or lifestyle, as we withdraw, in imagination, from the element of air to the elements of vegetation (physical), water (chemical), and fire (metachemical), and these less than idealistic types of lifestyle also have their psychological bases in one kind or another of selfhood.

6. If the metaphysical self of the subego and/or superego, centred in the noumenal form of truth, becomes subconscious and/or superconscious through the noumenal content(ment) of joy, then the physical self of the outer and lower ego and/or the inner and upper ego, centred in the phenomenal form of knowledge, becomes lower conscious and/or upper conscious through the phenomenal content(ment) of pleasure.

7. Similarly, if the chemical self of the outer and upper unego (sensual id) and/or the inner and lower unego (sensible id), based in the phenomenal power of strength, becomes upper unconscious and/or lower unconscious through the phenomenal glory of pride, then the metachemical self of the super-unego (sensual soul) and/or sub-unego (sensible soul), based in the noumenal power of beauty, becomes super-unconscious and/or sub-unconscious through the noumenal glory of love.

8. There are of course negative alternatives to what, in the above-mentioned examples, are all positive attributes, but such negative alternatives apply less to selves than to antiselves, as discussed elsewhere in my overall philosophy.

9. We can also further distinguish the outer manifestations of selfhood from the inner manifestations thereof, the sensual from the sensible and vice versa, with the aid of the axial progressions which bisect the planes of space, time, volume, and mass, and which enable us to plot the descent, in noumenal objectivity, of metachemistry from spatial space to repetitive time in space-time materialism; the descent, in phenomenal objectivity, of chemistry from volumetric volume to massed mass in volume-mass realism; the ascent, in phenomenal subjectivity, of physics from massive mass to voluminous volume in mass-volume naturalism; and last, but hardly least, the ascent, in noumenal subjectivity, of metaphysics from sequential time to spaced space in time-space idealism.

10. Hence it is that outer and inner forms of the same type of self exist, and that the outer, correlating with what religion would call 'once born', is the sensual inferior of the 're-born' inner manifestation of any given self, be it metachemically objective and/or chemically objective on the female side of life, or physically subjective and/or metaphysically subjective on its male side, the difference, in elemental terms, between fire and water on the one hand, and vegetation and air on the other.

11. Yet each of these alternative selves has a not-self and a mode of selfless universality (if noumenal) or personality (if phenomenal) peculiar to it, which provides it with an escape into unselfishness of one kind or another, with the possibility of a deeper experience of itself through a soulful order of unselfishness than would otherwise be possible. Pleasure, pride, and love are alternative modes of self- or, rather, unself-realization, but they are all, without exception, elementally inferior to joy, as knowledge, strength, and beauty are such to truth.