By Way of Introduction: a Theoretical Panorama

I will speak here about personality in general and also about the process of what we may call the degradation of consciousness-what is technically called the "theory of neurosis u-and which finds symbolic echo in the spiritual traditions in the mythical stories of the "fall from paradise." I will not make a distinction between the spiritual "fall" of consciousness and the psychological process of aberrated development. Let me just point out, as a beginning, that this degradation of consciousness is such that in the end the affected individual does not know the difference, i.e., does not know that there has been such a thing as a loss, a limitation, or a failure to develop his full potential. The fall is such that awareness comes to be blind in regard to its own blindness, and limited to the point of believing itself free. It is in view of this that Oriental traditions frequently use, in connection with the ordinary condition of humankind, the analogy of a person who is asleep-an analogy that invites us to conceive that the difference between our potential condition and our present state is as great as the condition between ordinary wakefulness and dreaming. To speak of a degradation of consciousness, of course, implies the ihea that the process of the "fall" is one of becoming less aware or relatively unconscious; yet the "fall" is not only a fall in "consciousness" proper; it is also, concomitantly, a degradation in the emotional life, a degradation in the quality of our motivation. We may say that our psychological energy flows differently in the healthy/enlightened condition and in the condition that we call "normal." We may say, echoing Maslow, that the fully functioning human being is motivated out of abundance, while in a sub-optimal condition, motivations have the quality of "deficiency": a quality which may be described as a desire to fill up a lack rather than as an overflowing out of a basic satisfaction. We may say that the and the "lower" conditions is n deficient desiring. Still a mor which we find in Buddhism fallenness in terms of what is (triangular diagram below wt dependence of an active u (commonly called ignorance in the other a pair of opposites thi deficiency motivation: unconscic Uncons L Aversion We are all acquainted neurosis consists basically in an i It was Freud's contention that th in relation to his parents was …