from pole to pole
Unregistered. In this unending space I,
A speck, resume unseen my solitary way.
In this eternal toll of hours I,
A millisecond, tick my finite single tick
And disappear. In the great gasp of God I
Am swallowed up, an only atom of air
Thrust through the mighty mouth and
Rushed into the cavernous lungs and
Sucked into the hot, roaring flood
Of God’s great blood, ripped
Through the arteries and hurled
Through narrow streams
To feed at last a single cell
Of bone in the great I AM.
God grins.
The healthy human being aims not for unity but for multiplicity, aims not for a stable self marching consistently through a hostile world, but an ever-expanding variety of selves wandering playfully through a world of our own creation. Although most humans are frightened at the idea of multiplicity, some of us, having opened ourselves to variety and inconsistency, eventually find ourselves emerging into a joyful fulfilment we’d rarely experienced traipsing the endless road of self and order.
The self is a dead skin which keeps new beings from being born. Shed it.
We are not ourselves; actually there is nothing we can call a ‘self’ anymore; we are many-fold, we have as many selves as there are groups to which we belong. The neurotic has overtly a disease from which everybody is suffering.
– J. H. DAN DEN BERG
In internally consistent societies the narrow personality has value; men can fulfil themselves with only one self. But today we are bombarded every moment with conflicting messages about who we should be and how we should act. Most religious traditions urge restraint or abstinence in sexual matters, but our mass media, TV sitcoms, soaps, popular fiction, popular music, MTV, the internet are urging us unendingly to be sexually attractive, and not, presumably, so we will look better in church.
Society both urges us to save money and to spend. It urges us to work hard but to vacation. It urges us to buy bigger and better and to live within our means. Our religions condemn vanity and our whole culture encourages vanity. Our religions condemn greed and our whole culture is based on the duty of every man to fight hard to climb the economic ladder and accumulate and preserve things. Our religions condemn lust and our whole culture stimulates lust.
As a result, each of us has hundreds of aspirations and potential selves which never let us forget that no matter how mightily we step along the narrow single path of our personality, our deepest desire is to be multiple: to explore many aspirations and play many roles. We are all husbands, wives, saints, adulterers, artists, actors, businessmen, heroes, good-for-nothings … In a multivalent society, the multiple personality is the only one which can fulfil. The normal person fights multiplicity; the wise man embraces it.
WHIM AND THE PSYCHIATRIST
It’s not clear exactly when Whim began referring to himself as ‘we’ and ‘us’, but soon enough it led to his being forced to visit a psychiatrist.
‘Why do you call yourself “we”,’ the psychiatrist asked.
‘Because we are,’ said Whim.
‘I only see one of you,’ said the psychiatrist.
‘We only operate one at a time and use the same body.’
‘Show me another of you.’
‘Here I am.’
‘Who are you now?’
‘Whim, we of many chances.’
‘But which Whim?’ insisted the psychiatrist.
‘Here today, gone tomorrow.’
The psychiatrist had been scribbling frantically but he now stopped.
‘So you feel you have many personalities,’ he commented cautiously.
‘Yes, we do,’ said Whim cheerfully.
‘And do the voices of these other personalities sometimes speak to you?’
‘We talk to each other sometimes.’
‘And do some of your other selves frighten you?’ asked the psychiatrist, sensing a breakthrough.
‘Of course not,’ said Whim. ‘We’re friends.’
‘Which of your selves do you like the best?’
‘Me.’
‘Who’s “me”?’
‘Meherenow,’ said Whim.
‘What’s meherenow like?’
‘He’s like himtherethen a few seconds ago. Now the one I like best is the new meherenow.’
‘I see,’ said the psychiatrist, his face twitching slightly. ‘Don’t you feel any continuity between your consecutive selves?’
‘Oh, sure,’ said Whim. ‘There are family resemblances.’
‘But what do you want to do with your life?’
‘Whose life?’
‘The lives of yourselves,’ answered the psychiatrist, not believing he was having this conversation.
‘Oh, we all have different plans,’ said Whim.
‘Well, what determines which one of you acts at any given moment?’ the psychiatrist asked. Whim smiled.
‘Ignorance and chance,’ he replied.
How many people have you been today?
To go from the cage of a single self to the amusement park of multiple living, we need to exercise: to play games which break down our self-imposed limitations and uncover new selves, experiences and talents.
Of course, the killing of the self is for most of us as difficult as physical suicide, although rather more rewarding. The challenge to
