I have heard it said that self is an illusion. But even a foolish self that is tricked by illusion is still a real self, and so this claim does not hold up. Moreover, a foolish self implies the existence of a greater self from which the foolish self grew out and to which the foolish self will return. The trickery of illusion brings certitude back to the question of selfness, and the self is found to be transformative in the sense that better self identification is sought.

The self is real for the sole justification provided by self evidence. It is only the self identification that changes, and therefore most of us spend a lifetime searching for our true self. The foolish self that has been educated of its foolishness is now only the ego. The ego finds itself attached to things of its own inventiveness. The ego is attached to its caricatures, and one day the caricatures must be released as they are revealed to be only illusions that outlived their usefulness. The ego`s persistent attachment is revealed as foolishness, but this self-evidence only draws the ego closer to the greater self because illusion can no longer captivate spirit.

The claim that self is an illusion means only that the egoic attachment to caricatures are illusionary. The caricature giver is not the illusion, only the caricature is the illusion. The ego is attached to caricatures, and may grow intoxicated by the sweet nectar that is offered. The ambient nectar is strong enough to blind us of our true identities, and so it must be very close to our source. It will drive us to foolishness like mere puppet that are unable to control their impulses, until one day we wake up and see the mess we made of things. The sweet intoxication now transforms into an agitation, one we cannot sleep through. And so we awaken from our sleep and the self transforms. Therefore, the two-phase oscillation, of following a blind euphoria up to the turning point, of feeling the newly discovered agitation that leads to transformation, must also be close to source.

The felt oscillation is self-evident. They grow more refined, and distant to the unstable oscillations of a bipolar personality that only represents pathology. When properly recognized, the mood swings will allow us to penetrate deeper into the transcendental that becomes more self evident. We follow our hopes, and adjust course when disappointments are felt. We follow inductive logic, and subject it to a critical deduction. We follow the ego, but discipline the ego when it acts only for selfish reasons. We concentrate on a problem with great effort, and step away and relax and then solve the problem without effort.

This life force, the self-evident oscillation, must be shared by all life. The life force relates to the universal, and so it has the power to move well beyond our isolated egos. And because it relates to the universal there must also be a universal grammar. There must be a way to translate our provisional attitudes into God`s language, even when we are misbehaving. Misbehaving is the ego getting drunk enough on the sweet nectar until the time comes that the ego can feel the misbehaving too. Getting drunk on the sweet nectar will lead to the felt heartburn, and this calls for paying back the karmic debt. In other words, the side effects of misbehaving were meant to be felt. That is, the revealed self-evident affirms the existence of the universal grammar. Strangely we can translate this essay into God`s language, and sing about an angel with a smile on her face that had fooled the ego once again:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24bwBb__O2A&feature=related

Stephen