Theos-Talk Archives (December 1996 Message tl00700)

Replying to Tom

>I have never understood why the "higher self" is referred to as both being
>a part of the individual and as acting on the individual.  If it knows
>something that I do not know, then it is not me.

That's one I've wrestled with for a long time. Perhaps the (an!) answer is
that the individual you experience yourself to be is a moveable focus of
awareness, and that there are whole areas of your being which that active
focus has not visited yet but, as they stir into activity, begin to exert a
pressure for change both short-term and long-term. Short-term as in an
interchange with a person or a meditation, and long-term in the sense of
maturation and evolution.

Richard Ihle's psychogenetic ideas are extremely relevant and helpful here.

So there is a sort-of funnel of consciousness, to coin an image for it, and
as the point of our awareness or self-identification rises, its scope
becomes wider. This point can rise up and down form moment to moment and, as
I was saying, in a more long-term way. Furthermore, the "funnel" for each
person, though separate at its lower levels, begins to overlap with and
ultimately merge at the top, with those of others. This applies to so many
things; try it on karma, for instance.

"If it knows something that I do not know, then it is not me" loses its
relevance and power when the ground under your definition/experience of "me"
shifts, and believe me, it can change radically.

Murray