One of the most fruitful ways to make the pursuit of wisdom a living experience is to adopt an approach to personal transformation that is known as the ‘self-realisation’ paradigm. In its essence, the self-realisation paradigm teaches that the human being possesses an innate potential for spiritual evolution that mostly remains unrealised due to our immersion in systems of self-alienation. Freeing ourselves from the predominance of such systems allows us to reconnect to our innate potential to live in greater freedom, truth and joy. The conceptualisation of this idea as well as the pragmatics of it have varied widely with different cultural and historical settings. The persistent recurrence of the core teaching across generations, however, indicates its universal appeal and lasting relevance.

Below I provide the set-up for each series as well as an elucidation of my perspective on the dynamics of self-realisation.

‘Know thyself’: Socrates and ancient philosophy.

The ‘Self’ in the Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita.

Buddhist meditation on ‘selflessness.’

Nietzsche and Gurdjieff on ‘many selves.’

Nietzsche and Foucault on self-creation.

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The beginning of all philosophy is to respond to the call to ‘know thyself.’ To respond to this call means, first of all, that we accept our initial situation of not knowing exactly who, or what, we are. This basic premise of not-knowing allows us to suspend our grasping to convenient fictions regarding ourselves and commence a genuine process of self-inquiry.

The first practice is thus learning to bracket our assumed identity and open ourselves up to the novelty of new insight into the inner workings of the self. This insight will only come from the ability to be faithful observers of ourselves. And this is the second practice: to learn to observe ourselves without criticism or judgment. What we stand to discover at this junction is that what we call our ‘self’ is hardly some pre-existing identity to which we are inescapably bound up. On the contrary, we are deeply and actively involved in a continuous process of self-production or self-formation. In fact, our attachment to an identity turns out to conceal the underlying dynamic nature of the self. This is a deeply enabling insight, as it allows us to define the proper agency we possess in regard to the self that we are and make.

The discovery of our profound involvement in the dynamics of self-formation shows us our self as a fundamentally open-ended process. We thus discover our proper horizon of freedom as the generic possibility space of our potential becomings. With this, moreover, we also receive the true basis for any ethics, as we recognise that our relation to our self is the foundation that governs all possible relationships that we form throughout our lives.

Foucault’s transformative ethics.

Gurdjieff and the growth of consciousness.

Ken Wilber and the integral self.

Jung and the individuated self.

The tantric self and the dynamics of being.

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In the self-discovery phase we learned that to be a self means to be essentially involved in a creative enterprise of open-ended becoming. To be too hung up on an identity is a form of stasis that is lifeless and unnatural. The recognition of the dynamic nature of our self-formation opens us op to the possibility, and necessity, of self-transformation.

In this phase of development we learn to turn our acquired self-understanding into to active self-governance. The dynamic nature of the self means that we need not be stuck in sub-optimal modes of being. By understanding the dynamics of the self we learn to govern our mode of being and to give direction to the process of our becomings. This transformational approach to existence is first of all a practice of self-care: we come to see ourselves as a work that is ever in progress and become attuned to the possibilities of enhancing the ways in which we shape and express our selves. Our innate potential for transformation can be actualised in relation to various dimensions of life: how to be a greater source of joy to ourselves; how to be of greater value to our immediate community and to humanity at large; and how to live in deeper harmony with the Source.

What I tend to emphasise in transformational practices is our ability to redirect our mode of being away from inward disharmony and conflict and toward modes of integral unity and wholeness. We often underestimate how much of the suffering we experience is rooted in a disordered self-constitution that is characterised by inner fragmentation and division. The first practical requirement to remedy this state of affairs is to acquire a high level of awareness of the ways we produce division inwardly. In Buddhist terms, we must study the causal apparatus that produces affliction in order to bring that apparatus to a hold. In Jungian terms, we must confront and integrate the shadow side of our personality in order to bring forth a coherent and unified self. What we focus on in these sessions is is how to undertake such shadow work and start reintegrating split-off elements of our selves.

Effectively producing wholeness as our existential condition requires that we bring the totality of our being into the service of a singular and meaningful life-work. As long as our faculties (our senses, emotions, energies and intelligence) one-sidedly pursue their own satisfaction there is no unity of the self. We can bring our faculties into harmony by aligning them all to a common purpose: that which will be our existential calling. Here the importance of an encompassing vision of life becomes apparent for the integrative role that it will have in our self-constitution. Accordingly, the coaching here involves the active reflection on personal purpose and the articulation of a life-work vision. Ultimately, it is by making ourselves whole that we become a source of wholeness and become capable of effectively transcending the structures of social division that impede peace.

Heidegger and the turn toward Being.

The history of the ‘unconditioned.’

The relation between the human and the divine in Gnosticism.

The relation between the human and the divine in the Upanishads.

Deleuze and Spinoza on ‘immanence.’

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The age of materialism has convinced us that human nature is reducible to a set of physical determinations. We are now starting to recognise the devastating effects of the reductionist view of the human being on our ability to celebrate the human form and to validate our existence on earth as such. This, and the fact that the reductionist paradigm is in the process of losing its predominance over our thought makes it plain that we are now in need of a new understanding of what it means to be human. It is my conviction that in opposition to the reductionist view of the human being we need to form a transcendent self-understanding which does not reduce us to our conditioning but allows us to dwell in a space of openness beyond the aggregate of our determinations.

Transcendence is the proper spiritual potential at the very heart of the human being. While our capacity for self-transformation lies in the mastery of the dynamics of the conditional dimension of the self, the potential for self-transcendence flows from our intimacy with the unconditioned within us. All great schools of advanced spirituality have taught means for us to transcend our conditioning and enter the openness of the unconditioned. It is well worth for us to reassess our current self-understanding in this light and to reclaim our innate potential for transcendence.

Pragmatically, the unconditioned state opens up for us when we learn to suspend our self-constituting activity. In the cessation of self-production the dimension of pure potentiality is revealed that is the source and condition for all our possible manifestations. Central to the sessions at this stage is learning a set of techniques that allows us to let go of all our self-directed activity and to relax into a state of unconditioned openness.

To reconnect with this pure potentiality at our source frees us from rigid patterns of thought and action and is an experience of renewal and rejuvenation. It is here that we discover what I call the sublime element in the human being. It is that part of us that is said to be ineffable but that is consistently experienced by advanced human beings as the primal light that is the pure essence of consciousness.

Recognising the sublime within ourselves prepares us to recognise it in others. When we start to perceive the presence of the sublime at the core of each individual we discover that which is truly common to us all. As such, our acquaintance with the sublime is the condition for the birth of a true community of mankind; a community that is not thwarted by the conflict of identities because it is rooted in a common participation in the light of the Source.