Know Thyself

I warn you, whoever you are, Oh! You who want to probe the arcana of nature, that if you do not find within yourself that which you are looking for, you shall not find it outside either! If you ignore the excellences of your own house, how do you pretend to find other excellencies? Within you is hidden the treasure of treasures! Know thyself and you will know the Universe and the Gods. (Inscription on the frontispiece of the Temple of Apollo on Mount Parnassus, Greece, 500 B.C.).

Certainly, if we don’t find within ourselves that which we seek, we will never be able to find it outside. With just reason Socrates affirmed: “Only the knowledge that comes from within is the true knowledge.”

In this time when everything invites us to exteriorize, to enjoy the sensations that life offers us, to pay honour to the new Lord of the world –hedonism–, we have forgotten the most important thing: ourselves.

We laugh and we cry, we dare and we fear, we love and we hate… and all that without perceiving the secret resort that leads us to it. We believe we know ourselves, but what do we really know about ourselves? Our name was given to us. Our body was lent to us. Our knowledge we acquired. Then, who are we?

Is there anything more sad in life than to go from the cradle to the grave and continue ignoring who we are and why we have come to this world? Tragic is the existence of those who die without having known the reason for their life…

Everybody believes that they know themselves, but they do not even remotely suspect that they are not “one,” but “many.” Really, the self-assumed individuality turns into multiplicity. We are like a boat full of people where every passenger wants to take the helm in order to lead the ship wherever he pleases.

The I that swears eternal love to a lady is displaced by another I that leaves her at the altar to run away with another. The I that swears fidelity to its country is displaced by another who sells its secrets to the highest bidder. The I that promises a transparent government to the multitudes is displaced by another that handles dirty money. The I that worships God today is displaced shortly after with another totally sceptical.

To deny the “doctrine of the many” would be too naive, as it is not possible in any way to deny intimate contradictions that every one of us possesses.

If we could see ourselves in a full length mirror as we are, we would discover for ourselves in a direct way this “doctrine of the many.”

If we would have a true individuality, if we would possess a unity instead of a multiplicity, we would also have continuity of purposes, awakened consciousness, constancy, will…

We need to know ourselves in order to eliminate that what is in excess in us and to acquire that what we lack if it is that we want to abandon the illusory and trivial world in which we live and submerge into the great ocean of life that is the Real, beyond the body, affections and mind.

Thomas à Kempis emphasized: “the humble knowledge of yourself is a safer path towards God than the path of science.” Buddha himself stated: “there are those who lament their foolishness, but this already is not foolishness; more foolish is someone who calls himself intelligent without knowing himself.”

Arriving at this point, the kind reader will surely ask: how can I carry out that inner transformation? How can I achieve the awakening of consciousness?… We let C. G. Jung himself shed some light on this interesting question:

In order to produce this transformation the circumambulation or exclusive concentration on a centre, instead of creative transformation is indispensable. In this process one is “bitten” by animals, that is, one has to expose himself to the animal impulses of the unconscious, without identifying with them or “escaping from them,” as escaping from the unconscious would make the object of the procedure illusory. One has to continue in it; that is, the process initiated in this case by self-observation - has to be lived in its entire vicissitudes and annexed to the conscious by means of the best possible comprehension. (Psychology and Alchemy)

Those animals that bite are, without a doubt, the animals of desire that we carry within our interior; the “psychological aggregates” as they are called in the East; the “I” of experimental psychology; the defects or debilities of various beliefs. They sink their sharp teeth into our intimate flesh to suck our mental, emotional or volitional energies. As Jung indicated, it is not by running away from those inner beasts that we transform ourselves. On the contrary, what is advisable is to observe them like the police observes a thief who roams around a house, waiting that he commits the crime in order to catch him in flagrante.

The foundation is SELF-OBSERVATION. One who does not observe does not know, and the one who does not know cannot change.

To the extent one practices inner self-observation he is discovering by himself many people, many “I´s” that live within our own personality.

The sense of intimate self-observation is found atrophied in all human beings, but by exercising it, by self-observing from moment to moment, that sense will develop in a progressive way.

As the sense of self-observation continues its development through constant use, we are becoming every time more capable of perceiving in a direct way those I´s about which we never had any data related with their existence.

We have formed false concepts about ourselves… Many things that we don´t believe we have, we have and many that we believe we have, we don’t have. We assume that we possess such and such qualities, which in reality we do not possess, and many virtues that we possess we certainly ignore.

We are the sad people that Plato describes in his myth of the cave; individuals tied with chains who take the shadows projected by the objects that march between them and a glowing fire for real. What we believe real is a simple illusion.

We need to break the chains of the I in order to be able to awaken consciousness and touch the great realities of life and death.

Many sacred texts tell us of the need to awaken, but none of them clearly explain how to do it.

Undoubtedly, the first step to take the consciousness from its sleep is to profoundly self-observe. Only in this way could we get to know the transactions, the interests, the tastes, the sympathies, etc., of each I, and, likewise, the consequences that it provokes within us and within others. But undoubtedly, self-observation is not everything. The path that has to lead us to illumination demands from us to UNDERSTAND and ELIMINATE the observed. But this, dear reader, is a matter that necessarily needs to be tackled in a different setting, such as the one that our courses provide…

To finish, allow us patient reader, to close this first chapter of the science of AWAKENING, by remembering maxim of Saint Augustine:

NOLI FORAS IRE, IN TEIPSUM REDDI; IN INTERIORE HOMINE HABITAT VERITAS

«Do not go outside; enter within yourself, in the inner man dwells the truth.»

Know Thyself

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