Realization of the Transcendent Self

Realization of the Transcendent Self

I assume at the outset that the apotheosis of consciousness is realized as pure reason, that is, a consciousness whose thoughts and ideas flow according to the dictates of reason and are in every sense "reasonable." Presumably, if this is so, every conscious being is then inspired and quickened by the seed of reason, so that each knows, intuitively if not explicitly, the desideratum of its existence.
In the course of ordinary life, however, it does not always seem clear how to operate according to the dictates of reason. Ethical decisions are certainly good candidates for one paradigm of reason: when conditions are such that a dilemma involving the choice of right over wrong is mandated, the faculty of reason is evoked and either realized, by doing right, or denied, by doing wrong.
In fact, in to the extent that the very nature of conscious being-in-the-world can be described as an ongoing positing of "how to act", every decision is really an ethical decision. According to this view, there can be no such thing as a naturalistic fallacy, no "is-ought" gap. States of affairs or phenomena exist for consciousness qua reason exactly insofar as they figure in the manifestation of reason. Furthermore, for a given state of affairs, when a reasonable assessment is made versus an unreasonable one, then the new state of affairs which has as one of its elements the reasonable judgement must in some sense be intrinsically superior to that with an unreasonable judgement.
Now, states of affairs are being assessed not in and of themselves, but purely in aid of the manifestation of reason. Reason is being discovered, exhibited, created, or otherwise brought into being. This suggests that the exercise of reason is simultaneously the exhibition of reason (further denuding the naturalistic fallacy). There are not nor could ever be vacantly empirical premises. The nearest thing would be a solitary noun like "tree", but it would have to be devoid of any context, implication, even any sense of "pointing." In fact, the very positing of something as a premise, or statement or even a "fact" makes of the thing a mental construct, with all that implies (one cannot posit then deny the fact of positing).
Thus, whenever consciousness evaluates states of affairs, it is in fact evaluating the manifestation of reason implicit within some framing context with respect to some further manifestation of reasonableness on its own part. Indeed, the manifestations of reason are not merely the actions of other conscious beings since these, viewed in isolation, would mean little more than "tree." Rather, what is being grasped and responded to is the underlying theme or essence of the conscious-acting being. In other words, there is an ongoing dialogue with not only the proximate consciousnesses of the immediate context, but a deeper embedded conscious framework extending throughout the entire socio-historic framework.
At the outset we suggested that ethics often appears as the day-to-day paradigm of reason, which led to the recognition of the extrusion of consciousness into the world via its own "act-being." If an ethical dilemma is a common significator of the reasonable faculty, wherein lies the difficulty which makes such a state of affairs a dilemma? On the one hand, reason must identify the correct choice. But there must be some other choice as well, with compelling inducements to counteract the force of right judgement. How can reason be sufficient to reveal the right choice yet not be adequate to assure it?
Consciousness exists, yet it does not fully comprehend why or how. Accordingly, it constantly seeks to posit and affirm its own existence. The "self" of the individual consciousness is the thematic thread that binds the indubitable but still mysterious fact of present awareness simultaneously to a past and future being united by a unique pattern of behaviours. The course of this investigation has suggested the ultimate goal of fully reasoned behaviour; but what is the more common reality? Clearly there is no clear consensus as to reasonable behaviour, beyond the few universally shared aphorisms of the major religions perhaps. These may indeed form the foundations of the first being of consciousness (and the attraction of the Jungian model). But the need for a present being of the self requires act-principles applicable in a much wider variety of situations.
One of the indicators of reason is deliberation, that is, of not hastening to judgement if at all possible (cf. Descartes). Of course, where the dictates of reason are clearly spelled out, (almost) no one hesitates to make the ethical choice (at least while under scrutiny). Likewise, no one is praised for doing so. It must be that the dictates of reason are, in some sense, difficult to apprehend (cf. Aristotle's observation that wisdom is what is difficult and not easy to acquire). Probably we are wont to act too precipitously and forced, therefore, to rely upon the examples of others rather than our own judgement.
The basic pattern for the social self is that of ethical egoism; to wit: actions which enhance the self-concept are valid. But the social self and the reasonable self are not the same. Often, it is in the best interest of the social self to dissimulate, to appear generous in small ways so as to facilitate a deeper greed, to feign a friendship in order to attack a weakness. This implies the existence of another ethic than the ethical egoism of the social self, one which can countermand or counterbalance the ethic of the reasonable self. We may call the being based upon this ethic the hidden self. We now have the framework to consider the intrinsic superiority of reasonable actions.
Recall we said that when people are assessing data towards an act, what they are really doing is evaluating the actions (or act-history) of others. Earlier, it was stipulated that what is being evaluated is the "manifestation of reason in a framing context." If the acts of others are not reasonable acts but merely dissimulations concealing unreasonable acts, then there can be no question of formulating a reasonable response thereto. Communication breaks down. Reason can only follow reason. Furthermore, reason is constructive, which is why it is difficult, and why the less reasonable alternatives are always easier. It is the difference between decay and growth, between entropy and evolution. It is why a life without reason is said to be one of dissipation or dissolution.
If the social self provides the mere illusion of reality and the true being of consciousness lies in its embrace of the reasonable self, where does that leave us if much of what transpires in everyday life is merely the machinations of the social self?
Aristotle suggests that wrong action, being ex hypothesi harmful to the self, must be involuntary. If someone dissimulates a reasonable facade in aid of some other (unreasonable) purpose, do the apparently reasonable actions still have meaning? Perhaps there is a schism of being, where the facade persona actually possesses a more substantial reality than the hidden self. To put it another way, recognizing the need for the facade is itself an exercise of reason which implicates the hidden self. Too, if most people rely only instinctively on the faculty of reason, and the only examples they have ever seen are the reasonable facades of others, small wonder that the common conception of reason is its utility in constructing a reasonable facade to house the hidden self.
Before we make of this something sinister, recall the inherently mysterious nature of consciousness. Perhaps, for the most part, what appears to be reasonable can be taken as such. Perhaps the hidden self serves as an early form of "ego defense" allowing the nascent consciousness to maintain its ipseity when faced with the interpersonal barrage of the social framework. Then, as the being of consciousness becomes more fully elaborated by reason, there must be a shift of the identity from the hidden to the social self. It is in the recognition of this shift and in the embrace of the new identity that the reasonable self begins to emerge.