CYCLE TWENTY-FOUR

1. The bodily self is clearly an amalgam of different selves, as is the mental equivalent of this, which is called the psyche.

2. In fact, the psyche is a combination of soul, id, ego, and mind, and is thus atomically reflective of the elements, in that its constituent parts are drawn from fire, water, vegetation, and air.

3. One can transcend the psyche, just as one can transcend the egocentric aspect of it through the cultivation of pure mind, or mind-at-large.

4. One can also get behind the psyche, to the extent that the focal-point of psychological endeavour becomes the soul.

5. For the soul is as much pre-psychic as the mind is post-psychic, although both can be co-opted to the psyche and made to serve in a subordinate relationship to the id and the ego, as and when worldly criteria are paramount.

6. Both the id and the ego are dialectical, which is to say, they exist in a phenomenal and therefore relativistic relationship to each other on the basis of a feminine/masculine dichotomy, irrespective of the overall ratio in each case.

7. One should distinguish the pre-dialectical materialism of the soul from the dialectical realism of the id, further distinguishing the dialectical naturalism of the ego from the post-dialectical idealism of the mind.

8. Hence while the id and the ego tend to exist in a dialectical relationship to each other on the phenomenal planes of volume and mass, the more extreme components of the psyche tend to be either pre-dialectical or post-dialectical, as the case may be, since their correspondence to the noumenal planes of Space and Time is such that their reference-points will be rather more absolutist than relativistic, even when they are co-opted to the psychic totality of what amounts to a psychological pluralism.

9. Thus the psyche plays host to a dialectical relativity which mirrors the phenomenality of the body as it alternates between the different elements which constitute its totality, whether with a phenomenal bias towards the id and the ego or with a noumenal bias towards the soul and the spirit or, indeed, with a paradoxical combination of the two biases, depending on the individual and the age and/or type of society to which he pertains.

10. But the psyche is not the conscious mind, or spirit, any more than it is the ego by itself or the id or the soul by themselves, and therefore it is not that which is ultimate. On the contrary, the psyche is what happens when all of these elements come together and are obliged to share the same atomic setting.

11. Thus the psyche is something that can be made the subject and/or object of psychological investigation, but not of self-realization on an emotional, an instinctual, an intellectual, or a spiritual basis.

12. For self-realization requires a specific self rather than the dialectical interplay of several selves, since it follows from a choice or decision to favour one self above another, rather than from the fact of the co-existence of different selves.

13. Something that is pluralistic, like the psyche, would not decide to favour one self above another, least of all in relation to that self which, being spiritual, can transcend it, passing beyond the liberal parameters of what the psyche actually is.

14. One can argue that the psyche has layers, from the emotional to the spiritual via the instinctual and the intellectual, but that doesn't make any one layer, say the spiritual, commensurate with the psyche.

15. It is not the psyche which chooses to be emotional or instinctual or intellectual or spiritual, but the individual, either independently of or conditioned by society, whose decision in respect of each of these elements is crucial.

16. Conscience does not arise in relation to the psyche but in relation to the decision of individuals and/or societies to pursue one mode of self-realization at the expense of another, and to adhere to it, come what may.

17. Conscience is a sense of the rightness (if positive) of this as against the wrongness (if negative) of that, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the psyche, which, in any case, is effectively neutral in its capacity to embrace the totality of psychological options.

18. Gender often compounds conscience by making what is right for one sex appear wrong to the other, and vice versa, since conscience can operate on either objective (female) or subjective (male) terms, with regard to fire and water on the one hand, or with equal regard to vegetation and air on the other hand.

19. Only that person who has a principled commitment to the cultivation of any given self can experience conscience to the full, since conscience is vitiated by too liberal an adherence to psychic pluralism, which tends to retain an amoral balance, in due dialectical fashion, at the expense of immoral and/or moral extremes.

20. Because both the id and the ego are dialectical, it follows that conscience will only arise to any significant extent in connection with either pre-dialectical or post-dialectical extremes, where it will take either an emotional or a spiritual form, depending on the type of noumenal self in question.

21. Hence it is not the soul and the mind which are a threat to conscience, the sense of right from wrong, of duty, of moral necessity, so much as the amoral vitiation of conscience which occurs through the id and the ego, both of which are more deeply dialectical, and thus closely affiliated to psychic neutrality.