Identity and Ego

Seth Early Sessions, Vol 6, Session 255

Identity and Ego

Now.  You were speaking of reincarnation, and Ruburt has just finished reading The Three Faces of Eve.

We shall tie these two subjects together.  The book should make one point plain: Identity, despite all appearances to the contrary, does not reside primarily in the ego.  Social identity may possibly there reside, but the basic identity does not.

The four faces of Eve all represented various ego manifestations of one inner identity.  The course of the ego is a precarious one, and any number of potential egos exist within any identity.  The Three Faces of Eve is an excellent title for the book, since the ego may quite legitimately be compared to the face that the identity turns toward objective reality, or the living mask that it dons.

The authors made several excellent points, without however carrying the main point in any actuality.  They conceive of the psychological structure as a gestalt, dominated by the ego, formed by various needs and potentialities.  When the dominating ego relaxes its control for any reason or becomes weakened, then according to their concept any one of the subsidiary groups may take over.

They do not know however where identity does reside, and consider it the result merely of organized perceptual patterns.  Subsidiary potential egos can then seize upon and use the organism’s sensual and perceiving apparatus.  They do mention, the authors, that this can sometimes be the result of necessity.  The next strongest takes over when the captain is down, so to speak, so that the whole can survive.

But identity is much more than this, and basic identity, while using the perceptive abilities, is not that dependent upon them.  It is true that the personality is a gestalt, and that every identity has any number of potential egos.  It is also true that on occasion one potential ego will take over from another.  But this is all highly simplified, for the ego structure is not one thing, but a changing, never constant, actually quite informal grouping of psychological patterns.  Each ego uses and interprets the organism’s perceiving apparatus in a way that in the overall is characteristic and distinctive.

This characteristic way of interpreting and perceiving data, and of reacting to it, is not as constant as it appears to be however.  The stability and illusion of permanence is highly misleading.  The four manifestations of personality all belonged to one identity, and this is perhaps the main point missed.  For if the authors say that oftentimes a subordinate or potential ego will take over control when necessary in order to insure the survival of the whole, then this implies a decision that has been made; and who has made it?

The authors ignore this question.  The decision has been made on the part of the basic identity.  It is not dependent upon any particular ego structure, but it is dependent upon an ego structure for its existence within a physical universe.

It can therefore, without loss of its basic integrity, change egos when such a change becomes necessary.  Now.  In some cases this may cause inconvenience and considerable psychological difficulties, but when such an instance occurs it is because the ego structure that is being deposed was not carrying out the main aims or goals of the identity which originally gave it that envied position of dominance.

While identity and consciousness are regarded as the result of primarily physical processes, then the nature of personality will never be understood.

The inner self is always in the process of trying to perfect the nature of that ego which it has adopted.  The ego, as you know, is never the same.  It bears indeed the stresses that result from daily encounters with physical situations, but it also reaps the rewards that are involved.

The inner self chooses from its available potential personalities the one that it finds most adequate.  Sometimes it simply makes an error, for the inner self is not a perfected thing, any more than the ego is.  But identity does exist, and the ego is but a pseudoidentity formed for utilitarian reasons, and as such it is of course a part of the basic identity from which it springs.

It has its own possibilities of development and achievement.  This should not be forgotten, and all potential egos have, also, their own possibilities.  The inner self or identity must express itself through its ego in order to manipulate within physical reality.  The inner self is composed of all the potential egos that compose it, but it is more than the sum of these.

Now these potential egos, you see, made up of various potentials and needs and abilities, these pooled resources that belong to the inner identity, did not simply spring into existence.  They are the result of psychological experience gained in past lives.

The personality structure does not make sense unless such past experience is taken into consideration.  Potentials do not simply appear, they evolve.  I have told you that the most minute portion of energy possesses consciousness and has its own identity.  This identity of itself is never annihilated.  It may form into new gestalts but the identity is retained.

The energy that composes personality therefore consists of an inconceivable number of separate identities.  These separate identities form what we call the inner self, which retains its individuality even while the energy that composes it constantly changes.  There are continual groupings and regroupings, but basic identities are always retained.  The potential egos within any given identity therefore retain their own individuality and self-knowledge, regardless of their relative importance in the order of command.

These potential egos at one time or another will have their chance, as dominant egos, in this existence or in another reincarnation.  They represent the overall potentials of the whole identity in respect to physical existence.  The identity has in other words latent abilities which it will not use within the physical system, but all of the latent ability ever available lies within the original identity.