The Being

There have been innumerable philosophical arguments concerning the nature of the "self". The "self" has fallen into disfavor with some modern philosophers, who complain that this concept is based on grammatical and syntactical misunderstandings. Likewise, behaviorists do not speak of the "self" but only of physical behavior of the body. Yet, to each of us, philosophical quibbles aside, it appears that Descartes was right in saying "I think, therefore I am" -- in asserting the existence of the self as a basic truth. Furthermore, everyone acts as though his existence is a basic fact of life, so pragmatically, we must accept the existence of the self. Yet some philosophical systems assert that the self is illusory and that we should espouse the idea that we are "one with the universe". This may be a good idea, but even if one is "one with the universe", the question could still be asked, "What is one with the universe?" or "What wants to be one with the universe?" Perhaps there is a higher, more truthful viewpoint from which the self is a figment of something's imagination. But until we, or something, is/are able to attain to that truth, our experience continues to tell us that we exist.

So we are going to accept, with the majority, the pragmatic concept that we exist and others exist, and in the rest of the IRM releases, we are going to refer to you, and other people, as "beings", to distinguish us from things that exist but are not sentient. Assuming we exist, then it is a fair question to ask, "What is our nature?" In attempting to answer this question, the best initial approach is to describe what a being is not. We have already, by definition, distinguished the being from non-aware objects, such as tables, chairs, planets, stars, etc.. But the question inevitably arises: "What about the body?" and "What about the brain?" A principle that will aid our understanding is one mentioned by Michael Polanyi, in Personal Knowledge: the being is not that which the being perceives. Or, alternatively, the being is separate from that of which the being is conscious or focally aware. Since, from one moment to another, a being may expand, contract, or change that of which he is aware, this concept includes the idea that the scope or identity of a being may expand, contract, or shift around, at different times.

Beings use various means of perception. They use the various senses, but they also use telescopes, microscopes, radio, television, glasses, hearing aids, and the like, to perceive the world. If you are skilled in the use of an instrument of perception, it "becomes part of you", phenomenologically. Bodily sense organs require no less skill than non-bodily perceptual aids; it takes a child quite a bit of time and practice to become skilled in their use.

The being is separate from what he perceives, but he is also separate from that on which he is aware of acting. The bridge that both connects and separates the being from his object in the first case is perception; the bridge in the second place is action. If I raise a glass of water from a table, then the act of raising the glass is something I am doing; it is not me. In the act of raising the glass, my arm is a part of me, an instrument of action from which I am not phenomenologically separate at that time, though at another time, when my arm becomes an object of perception or action, I can be phenomenologically separate from it as well. As with perceptual skill, instrumental skill develops with practice. A young child needs to learn to use his body, much as, later, he needs to learn to use a car. After the use of the body is mastered, when one uses the body to act on something else, the body is viewed as a part of oneself. Likewise, if you use a hammer to drive a nail, the hammer becomes an extension of yourself, just as a good motorist may feel that his car is a part of him.

Finally, the being is separate from that which he is understanding at a particular time, i.e. what the being conceptualizes. When a being understands a word or symbol, the concept that he gets is "seen" by the "light" of understanding and, at that moment, is phenomenologically separate from him. New concepts are based on and defined by already understood concepts. The concept "five miles" is based on the concept "five" and the concept "mile". Concepts, in other words, may be used as tools and construction materials for constructing other concepts. While one is using one or more concepts as conceptual tools, one is only aware of the new concept on which one is focusing at that moment; the concepts that are being used to construct the new concept are, phenomenologically, "a part of one".

Each time the being succeeds in perceiving, acting, or understanding, he tends to expand to incorporate what is perceived, done, or understood, and the focus of attention or action moves outward. This is what is sometimes called "personal growth", "increased awareness", or "increased ability". Each success involves the incorporation of an element of instrumental or perceptual skill into the being.

While we have separated perception, action and understanding from each other, normally all three activities are present simultaneously in any given act. Driving a nail (an action) involves a correct perception of the nail, in relation to the hammer, and a concept of how to drive a nail. Viewing a star through a telescope involves skill in manipulating the telescope and a concept of what a star is and what a telescope is. One's understanding of what air is -- understanding that it exists and has weight -- can be considerably enhanced by an experiment in which one weighs a deflated basket ball and then pumps it full of air and re-weighs it and perceives that it is heavier. One's ability to have this understanding, then, involves being able to perceive a scale properly and knowing how to use a pump and a scale. It is because of the value of physical demonstration in developing understanding that most science curricula include laboratory work, and part of learning a subject is developing practical skill. The practical aspect of learning is, unfortunately, often neglected in education, much to the detriment of the subject.

Sometimes a person reaches a point of diminishing returns in his attempts to expand his capacity to understand, perceive, or act. When this happens, he must "step back" from his point of expansion and examine things that, previously, were a part of him. He must, in other words, unlearn limiting incorporated patterns of conception, perception, or action. Then, having learned better patterns, he can exercise these new skills and expand outwards again.

One example in the area of action is a "hunt-and-peck" typist who reaches a limit in his typing speed. In order to make a major gain in speed, he must "step back" and put his attention on what he is doing when he types the letter "a", instead of just typing the letter "a". He suffers a temporary reduction in identity from being a typist to being a student of typing. He retreats to a point from which he can examine the action of typing the letter "a", in terms of finger position and action. Here is where training and drilling comes in. If a simple action is practiced enough, the being can then do this action without attending to it. In other words, the being then reexpands to incorporate the improved method of typing, and can now again focus on typing the letter "a" or on typing sentences, and it all goes a lot faster. Furthermore, after relearning the skill, the being will be able to expand further in the area of typing. Perhaps now he can focus on the content of what he is typing, where before he was focusing on typing the letter "a". Typing the letter "a" has now become a part of him.

So the price of optimum expansion is often a temporary contraction under controlled conditions, followed by a greater reexpansion.

The sense of contraction and introversion that follows failure could thus be viewed as a natural adaptive function. When this introversion is used and pursued systematically and thoroughly and a new modus operandi is arrived at, good results occur. If, however, having failed, the being does not use his introversion to repair or enhance his skill, then he simply retreats from that area of life, and his expansion in that area may be chronically or permanently blunted.

The identity of a being, then, is a package, including viewpoints, intentions, awarenesses, and conceptual, perceptual, and practical abilities. It can also include the way in which the being chooses to appear to others. A being, then, has no fixed identity. He assumes an identity in order to act, perceive, and/or understand by formulating intentions and then incorporating into himself the conceptual, perceptual, and practical tools with which to carry out the intentions, i.e. with which to view, understand, and act on something else "outside" himself, as he current defines himself. For instance, a skilled musician "becomes" her instrument, her skills, and her musical knowledge and appreciation and acts to create a musical product (e.g., a sonata) that is separate from her. Conceivably, she can even "become" the sonata, if she is trying to do something else with it, such as impressing her boyfriend. The same person, at another time, can "become" a teacher, incorporating teaching skills as part of herself in instructing students. At other times she is "being" a car, en route to rehearsals, or "being" a wife, or "being" a mother.

So in speaking of "personal expansion" as a goal, what we really want is to develop the ability to expand or contract freely at will. A person, to realize his full potential, must be able and willing to assume different identities at different times without becoming "stuck" in any of them. It was fine for Louis XIV to say, "L'\*'etat, c'est moi," while he was using France to accomplish some international purpose (assuming that he was capable of such a degree of personal expansion), so long as he did not become fixed in this viewpoint chronically but could be flexible enough to "be" a father, a student, a courtier, and so forth.

A desire for fame or power is not the only thing that can fix a person in an identity. Commonly, people get fixed in identities that are somehow "safe". They may have observed that someone else with this identity was doing well in life, so they decide they have to "be" that person. Or the identity may be constructed, rather than adopted. A self-deprecating identity is sometimes constructed because, being already self-attacking, it is regarded as safe from external attack.

The goal of personal expansion is not to expand an individual greatly and then leave him indefinitely in an overexpanded state. A person must also be able to release identities at will and become something simpler and less specialized. I have observed many instances of what I call the "Great Man Syndrome". This occurs when a person, having made some genuinely fine contribution in a certain area and having expanded greatly in that area, incorporates that area as part of himself as a chronic fixed identity. How often have we seen an able politician who has to hang onto his role as a politician chronically? Or a great actress who is always acting? A person who is thus fixed in being an identity loses the ability to assume other identities, such as that of a marital partner -- or a friend. Certainly, as a minimum, everybody needs to have the ability to be a student from time to time if they are going to learn anything further. A person who loses this ability ossifies and will eventually substitute fixed ideas for actual knowledge, fixed patterns of behavior for self-determined action, and a fixed viewpoint for real perception.

Identities tend to become fixed when they are assumed, not for the purpose of doing, perceiving, and conceiving, but for the purpose of being viewed, perceived, and conceived in a certain way by others. In the latter case, the being is assuming the role of an object for other beings -- and an object doesn't think, perceive, or act. In other words, the being "becomes" an object; he becomes interesting, instead of being interested.

We have not yet really answered the question, "What is a being?" We have discused the ability of a being to expand, to contract, or to shift his identity, depending on the needs of the moment. But is there an identity that stays constant, that underlies the identities that one assumes at different times?

Certainly there appears to be a hierarchy amongst identities. A person in a particular identity can assume subsidiary or "junior" identities, while still retaining the "senior" identity. For example, a person can be various identities, such as a driver, a lover, a musician, or an actor. As each, he exercises the basic skills and uses the basic tools appropriate to that identity. As an actor, though, he may one day "be" Hamlet, another day "be" Macbeth, Tartuffe, etc.. As a musician, he may at one time be a guitarist, at another time a pianist, at another time a singer. As a guitarist, furthermore, he may be sometimes a rhythm guitarist, sometimes a classical guitarist, sometimes a folk guitarist, a flamenco guitarist, etc.. In fact, as any of these types of guitarist, he has to assume a new identity to fit the mood of each piece he is playing, if he does his job correctly.

Presumably, too, a rhythm guitarist can "step back" and just be a guitarist, and then he could step back again to just be a musician, again to just be an artist, can step back again to just be something else that is "senior" to being an artist, whatever that may be for that being. At some point, one would think, one would reach a limit to this "stepping back" process and would arrive at the "basic identity" of an individual or being -- an identity from which the being or individual is unable or unwilling to retreat. A person with a "Great Man Syndrome" will, presumably, reach this limit early on. For instance, he may be unwilling or unable to retreat from being "a Great Statesman". But also, anyone who feels insecure or uncertain of receiving approval may adopt a fixed identity to handle the situation. Someone who is being "Mr. Cool" or being a "Marlboro Man" may become very queasy at the idea of climbing down off of this identity and "just being himself" -- i.e. being a senior identity.

But it is not at all clear that there is a basic personality or basic identity. There is just the being, who transcends all the roles he adopts for different purposes.

An identity, then, is a tool for getting something done, a means to an end, a role one assumes in order to play a certain game. As one's purpose determines what tools one will use, so a purpose or intention "rules" an identity. In life, when one is finished with a particular job, it is customary and desirable to put away one's tools and pick up the tools appropriate to the next job. Similarly, when one has stopped working on a particular purpose, and turns to another purpose, one must be willing and able to lay aside the corresponding identity, with all its conceptual, perceptual, and practical tools and assume a new identity that corresponds to the next purpose.

A fully-functional being is able greatly to expand or contract his scope of identity at will, or to shift entirely to a different identity.

A major goal of metapsychology is to find techniques for achieving the ability to be flexible in one's assumptions of identities.

Frank A. Gerbode, M.D.
Director, IRM