The Psychology of Self-Estrangement
Monday, August 18th, 2008From Yoga and the Quest for Self by Stephen Cope.
We’ve forgotten we’re simply the fantastic play of consiousness and energy, of shiva and shakti. We’ve become ensnared in a gross misidentification. We have become exclusively identified with our physical bodies, with our possessions, with our thoughts, with our personalities. We think we’re our ideas, our careers, our families, our countries. We live our lives in utter ignorance of the vastness of our real nature, estranged from our true selves. This is the source of our suffering.
In yogic philosophy, the source of this alienation from the true self is not sin or wrongdoing of any kind. It’s simply ignorance-avidya. As they awaken to themselves, the fundamental problem is not guilt, it’s delusion. The Upanishadic sages described this ignorance as a “viel of illusion” that obscures the truth and confuses the mind so that it cannot discriminate between reality and appearance.
In the yogic view, suffering has its origins in a process called extroversion (unmesha). The soul gradually becomes completely identified with the material plane of existence, even though this “gross material plane – the physical body and the personality – is only the most outward and visible aspect of her true home. This is a disasterous misidentification because, in addition to the body, mind and personality, yoga teaches that the true home of the soul is also beyond time and space, in the eternal now of consciousness. When we live disconnected from these vast roots of the Self, we suffer.
Self is capitalized here because it refers to the divine, awake, free self. Given the yogic view of our predicament, it’s not suprising that we so often feel estranged, that we feel unreal, that we feel disconnected from our center. That is precisely our condition.
Yoga psychology gets very specific about the exact nature of the conditioning that keeps us ensnared in delusion about our true nature. The classical scriptures identify five “afflictions” or kleshas – five conditioned beliefs and behaviors that keep us bound to “gross apparent reality.” They are:
1. Avidya: Ignorance
2. Asmitta: “I-ness”
3. Raga: Attraction
4. Dvesha: Aversion
5. Abhinivesha: Clinging to the life and fear of death.