I think that I have a self. You probably think that you have a self. We think that we have selves. (Descartes said: cogito ergo sum: I think, therefore, I am.)

The self is not a self-evident reality. The self is not something that any of us can touch and ascertain. The self is intangible; the self is an idea, a concept we individually and collectively have of our selves. As a concept, it is not self evidently true or false.

As an idea, the self is whatever the individual says that it is. Some persons, apparently, have positive self-views and behave accordingly. On the other hand, some people have negative opinions of their selves and behave according.

External perception of the individual is not the easiest way to ascertain what he thinks of himself. One can look very handsome and have negative self esteem, whereas one can, as the world sees these things, look ugly and have a very positive self-esteem.

Psychologists tell us that the self esteem, the individual’s opinion of who he is, is a product of his past experiences; that how he was raised, loving or not, and what type of feedback he has received from his environment, supportive or not, affect his self evaluation.

There are two levels of conceptualizing the self, the individual and social level. The individual has an idea of what his self means to him. The society he lives in also has an idea of the individual’s self. Sometimes, the social constructed self and the individual constructed self agree. When there is congruence between whom the individual thinks that he is and what his society thinks that he is, he is, more or less, said to be normal. On the other hand, if who the individual thinks that he is, is not what other people in his society think that he is, he is said to be abnormal. For example, the neurotic would like to think that he is a very important person; the psychotic believes that he is already a very important person. The people around these two see them as ordinary human beings. Thus, there is a disconnect between the individual’s self-perception and social perception of him in mental disorders.

The human personality is an idea, a concept. The concept of personality is derived from persona, Latin for mask. The idea is that each of us has a persona, a social self that he wears in interacting with other people. That social self plays the roles that society expects of him: child, schoolboy, worker, father, mother etc. The social self, the persona, the mask each of us wears in society, however, may not be all there is to the individual. The self may be more than meets the eyes. Some persons, for example, believe that the real self, as opposed to the social self, is a spiritual being. Beneath the mask of personality is a different, albeit unknown, self, Carl Jung tells us.

George Kelly tells us that personality is an idea, a concept, and a mental construct. He believes that each human child takes from his inherited biological constitution and social experiences and uses both variables to construct a personality for himself.

For our present purposes, the salient point is that personality is a product of the individual’s thinking. Personality and self are ideas in our thinking, aka our minds. (Mind is concretization of thinking. I have a mind means that I do think. There is no such thing as mind outside our thinking.)

Each of us has idea of what the self and the world are. He tends to behave in accordance with his conception of his self, other selves and the world.

Is the world in our thinking or is it outside us? Let us see. Science seems to believe that the world is out there and that it can be perceived by our five senses: seen, heard from, smelled, felt and touched. To science, the world of space, time and matter are external to the individual human being. All of us can see a tree out there; we can touch and study it. Therefore, the tree seems outside us.

The belief that the world is outside us and that it is composed of matter is called materialism. Science is predicated on material monism. (See English Empiricists and French Logical Positivists, such as David Hume, John Stuart Mill, Saint Simon and August Comte.)

On the other hand, some observers hold that the world seems inside the perceiver of the world. Consider the old philosophical question: if a tree falls and there is no human being around to perceive it fall, did a tree fall? It seems that it takes human beings to perceive the existence of trees, their falling and the sound they make? George Berkeley, in his Dialogues, suggested that the external world might, in fact, be an idea in our minds. The view that the seeming external world may be in our minds is called solipsism.

The philosophy that the world is our idea is called idealism, or idealistic monism. (See German Idealistic philosophers like Emmanuel Kant, George Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, even Leibniz and Nietzsche.)

If the world is an idea in our minds, one may legitimately ask: how come it seems outside us? We do see a world that seems external to us. Berkeley did not convince this reader that the world is inside his mind.

What Berkeley did not resolve, some contemporary new age religionists believe that they have done. Professor Helen Schucman of Columbia University, New York City, in her book, A Course in Miracles, argues that the seeming external world is an idea in our minds; she claims that we think and project our thoughts out, and see them as the world we see as external to us. She used the dream analogy to explicate her thesis. At night, we sleep and dream. In our dreams, we see a world that seems external to us. Each of us sees himself, other people, trees, animals, stars and planets in his dream world. In our dreams, we see a world that looks like the world we see during the day. But when we wake up from our sleeping and dreaming, that seeming external world disappears. Where has the dream world gone?

Dr Schucman pointed out that the seeming external world of our dreams is our thinking (she said that we think in images) projected out and experienced as if it is outside us. She proceeded to argue that what we call our wake living, daytime, is also our thinking in pictorial form, projected out and made to seem real. The world, the lady clinical psychologist claims, is an outward picture of thoughts in our minds. The world we see as outside us, this amazing psychologist cum theologian claims, is a pictorial representation of our thinking. The world is made of ideas in our minds; ideas that we projected out and see as if they are objective things outside us.

As Dr Schucman sees it, the world we seem to live in is a dream in each of our minds. As it were, the collective us dreams the world and each of us is a part of that collective self and contributes to it. Each person, as it were, has his or her dream, which is a part of the collective dream of mankind.

Put differently, the seeming objective world is in our minds. We think the world, deny that it is the product of our thinking, dissociate from it and project it out.

Because the world is our individual and collective thinking/dreaming, Dr Schucman argues that each of us is responsible for the world and for what happens to him. As she sees it, each of us is dreaming what is happening to him.

If the individual sees other people discriminate against him, he is in a dream where he thinks that discrimination is possible and dreams himself being discriminated against. He projects out a seeming real world, and in that world projects out people who seem to be discriminating against him. In other words, what one sees other people and the world do to one, one, in real terms, did to one. It is one who, in ones dream, projects the world out and places dream figures (people) in the roles one sees in one’s dream.

The implication of Dr Schucman’s philosophy (or is it rationalization for evil?) is that if whites discriminate against a black man, he is the one who did so to himself. The black man dreams that discrimination is possible, projects out those he calls white persons and places them in roles where they discriminate against him. As long as he is asleep, the dream world seems real to him. In our world, a dream ala Dr Schucman, it would seem like white people are discriminating against the black man. But it is the black man that is dreaming that he is discriminated against. He is doing it all to himself. No external person is doing anything to him.

As Dr Schucman sees it, if it were possible for what the individual does not want to experience to happen to him, the world would be unfair. To her, an unfair world is a world without God. As she sees it, God’s existence requires that there be justice in the world, for God is justice itself. Justice, God, requires that nothing the individual does not want to experience happen to him. Dr Schucman says that there are no accidents and randomness in the world.

Science, on the other hand, posits that every thing in this world is a product of accidence and chance. In the empirical world we do see what seems like accidence does occur. A chap could be relaxing in his house and a car being chased by the police badges into his house and kills him. (This is an actual case that I witnessed at Los Angeles, California.) To science, there does not seem planning and design in nature. There does not seem justice in this world. If justice existed, how come Westerners are well fed while Africans are starving? If God existed and is just, why does he permit African-American children to grow up malnourished hence find easy American schools difficult to do well at?

Obviously, religion and science operate on different premises. Dr Schucman is operating on a religious paradigm. Let us grant her audience and complete reviewing her theology before we criticize it.

Dr Schucman argues that the individual is the one who dreams whatever he sees happen to him in his world. To her, the fact that the individual experiences only what he wants to experience proves that there is justice. In God’s universe, she claims that nothing God’s children do not want to experience can happen to them.

In Dr Schucman’s view, the world is a game, a trick we perform on ourselves. We attack ourselves and project our self-attack unto what seems like other people attacking us. The dreamer wants to be discriminated against and projects out a world that seems to discriminate against him. As long as he is sleeping and the world of dreams seems external to him, he necessarily believes that other people are discriminating against him. But he is the one discriminating against him. Nobody else is discriminating against him. The world is the individual’s dream.

The world is a dream of self-attack. The individual wants to attack his self and projects out a world that seems to attack him. He experiences this attack in his own preferred ways, such as being discriminated against, being raped, not being loved etc. Either way, the individual does something to himself but do so through seeming other people. He then forgets that he did everything that seems to happen to him and sees other people doing them to him. He feels like he is a victim of other people’s uncalled for attacks and justifies being afraid of other people and being angry with them.

If you are a woman, and in your dream, a man rapes you, you feel like you are a victim of the rapist; you feel justifiably angry with him. You want him arrested and jailed, even killed for inflicting pain on you. Then you wake up from your dream, and realize that the man who raped you in your dream was a dream man, and not a real man. It was only a dream rape. You quickly forget the dream.

Dr Schucman claims that our day living is like our dreams at night. The man who rapes you during the day is exactly like the man who does so in your dream at night. In both cases, you project out the rapist. It is a dream rape. Nothing, in fact, has happened to you; you have never been raped in your day or night dreams. You merely dream that you have been raped.

If you are a black person, despite seeing white persons discriminate against you, nobody has, in fact, discriminated against you. You merely dreamed that white folks, your dream figures, discriminated against you.

As long as you are in the dream, and believe that the dream is real, you feel angry with those who seem to be doing something bad to you. But when you wake up from your dream of self-attack, you recognize that no one did any wrong to you.

Dr Schucman claims that one is caught in a world of one’s making. To her, this world is not real: we made it up. She said that literally, not figuratively we, the children of God, invent the world we live in.

What we made we can unmake; but if we were not the ones who made the world we would not be able to get out of. If we were victims of this world, we would, indeed, be stuck. To her, thank God that we invented the world and can, therefore, reinvent it, change and transform it into a better world.

She says that there are three ways to approach this world. The first is real, the second is semi real and the third is false. We are already engaged in the third option: our present ego ways. The ego is the self that adapts to the realities of this world and perpetuates it on its own terms. Whenever the individual sees himself as different from other people, as not the same with all people and as not equal with all people and whenever he works for his self interest only and not social interests, he is in ego state; he is perpetuating this world.

Since the world is a dream, the individual can resolve to awaken from it, right now, and do so and walk away from it. Dr Schucman did not quite explain how one is to accomplish this goal, but one supposes that it means rejecting this world and its attractions, giving up the ego and its body and dying to the world? Since she inveighs against suicide, one supposes that she means some sort of spiritual overcoming of this world of woes. Let us just say that she was vague in explaining how to accomplish this first option. All that can be made of what she said is that she says that our real self is unified spirit and that when we awaken from the dream of this world, we return to the awareness of ourselves as immortal, unified spirit.

The second approach to the dream, the world, is to stay in it and make it a lovely dream. Dr Schucman elaborated on this option; in fact, her book can be seen as effort to expatiate on this manner of attaining salvation.

According to this path to deliverance, one still dreams, but dreams with love and forgiveness. How is this done? One loves all the people one sees in the world. And since despite ones apparent love for all people some would seem to do bad things to one (one did that bad things to one and projects them out to others. One also did all the good things one sees other persons do to one, one did so through them), one should forgive them. One should forgive those who seem to do bad things to one.

In Dr Schucman’s views, there are only two permitted ways to respond to other people: love them or see their unloving acts as calls for one to love them. If other people do bad things to you, forgive them.

To forgive is the true meaning of love. If you truly love people, you must not only love them when they do good things to you, but must also love them when they do bad things to you. To forgive is to love.

All attacks on you by other people are calls to you, by them, to forgive them, hence to love them. Attack is a call for love when love is perceived as missing.

If some one attacks you, discriminates against you, does bad things to you, he or she must have perceived you to have not loved him and to have done bad things to him. He then attacks you to give you the choice of doing one of two things: one, counter attacks him and perpetuates the egos world, or forgives hence love him and in the process transcend the egos world.

Other people’s attacks on you give you the opportunity to choose forgiveness/love. Choose again, hitherto you chose attack and hate hence are in this world, now choose love and escape from this world and return to unified state.

To be in this world, you had chosen attack, now, choose differently, choose love over hate. If attacked, choose forgiveness, that is, love the attacker. If a white man discriminates against you, forgive him, that is, love him.

Since the attacker you see attack you is you, you projected out, dissociated from, denied as you, when you forgive him, you have forgiven you your self attack. When you love the person who does bad things to you, since he is you, you, in effect, have loved you. The people you see love you and generally do good things to you is you projected out as another person. In effect, you love you through seeming loving other persons, just as you hate your through seeming hateful other persons.

What is the benefit of forgiving other people? If you forgive other people, since they are you projected out in your dream of separation, you, in effect, forgive yourself. Since forgiveness is love, you, in effect, love yourself.

Love is union. In forgiving other people, in loving other people, you unify with them. You form union with those you forgive/love.

In earthly union, you return to semblance of your heavenly unified state, your natural state before the genesis of this world.

When we all love and forgive one another, Dr Schucman claims that we transform our world into what she called a happy dream. She has other metaphors for her idea of a loving world, such as gate of heaven and real world.

Heaven’s gate is not heaven; it is a world that approximates heaven’s reality, but not totally so. Heaven is perfect union. In our world we are separated. At heaven’s gate we are still separated but now we are using our seeming separated selves to love one another. That which was designed to separate with, ego and body, are now used to love with, to unify with.

The resultant world is said to be a happy world, a world where the will of God is obeyed, rather than the wishes of the ego. That world is said to be more peaceful and happy, though not quiet like the perfect peace and joy of heaven.

Heaven requires perfect union, which requires an end to separation. We cannot perfectly unify as long as we are in bodies. Perfect union requires us to shed our bodies and be spirit. Heaven is formless, for only the formless, spirit, can unify.

ORIGINAL SIN: THE FALL FROM GRACE

Let us examine Dr Schucman’s mythology of the origin of the empirical world. As Dr Schucman sees it, originally (and still so), we are unified spirit. In her view, there is God. God is spirit. God is creative. God creates his children. One God extends his one self to his children. Thus, there are in heaven God and his children. But all of them are unified and know themselves as sharing one self and one mind. Heaven is composed of God and his infinite children, all of whom are one literal self. If you like, you can visualize this reality as one God manifesting in infinite parts, children, all of whom are him, and he them. God is simultaneously himself and his creation.

God gives his children his creative self.

The child of God is exactly like God; he is spirit and is creative. He creates his own children. Creation has no beginning and no end. There was never a time when God did not exist. Since, by definition, God is a father, without his children he would not be a father. God has always had children. In effect, the children of God have existed for as long as God has existed. God and his children are of the same age, which is forever.

But there is one attribute of God that his children do not have. God created his children. God’s children did not create God and did not create themselves. Though each of us is creative and do help in creating other children of God, we do so with the creative power of God in us. We do not create by ourselves, but by the power of God in us.

Dr Schuman believes that the children of God resented the fact that God created them and that they did not create themselves or create God. They wished that they created God and themselves. Since it is impossible for the son to be his own father, the Son of God, as it were, became insane and imagined a world where he seemed to have created himself, created his brothers and created God. As it were, he cast a magical spell on himself, forgot about his unified nature and seemed to sleep and dream that he is separated from God, his brothers and his real self.

The dream of the Son of God, all of us, is this empirical world. In that dream, this world, each of us invents a self-concept for himself, and invents concepts for other people, and they do so for him and for themselves.

The invention of the self-concept, the separated ego self, as Dr Schulman sees it, is tantamount to self-creation. The self concept, the ego, is a replacement self, a substitute self; we use the ego self to hide our real self.

Our real self is unified self, also called Christ self. We replace that real self with a false self, the separated, ego self.

To Dr Schucman, in forming a separated self for one’s self and for other people, one lives in delusion, psychosis, insanity, and madness.

What is madness? It is the belief that one created ones self, the separated ego self housed in body.

What is sanity? It is the knowledge that God created one, and created one holy, that is, unified self.

One is not God but the mad person believes that he is God, for he has done what only God does, create him, by creating himself, create other people and create the world, not in reality but in fantasy.

In our dreams, at night, we create other people and the world and assign roles to our dream persons to play for us, so as to enable us, to achieve whatever dream objective we seek. The day world, Dr Schucman tells us is exactly like the night’s dream world.

In so far that there are differences in the two, it is that in night dreams each of us individually invented his dream world and is the king that assigns roles to all his dream figures. But in the day dream, our world, we dream it collectively and collectively assign roles to all the people in the world.

The day world (dream) lasts longer than the night world (dream) because the day dream is a shared dream, whereas the night dream is not a shared dream. An unshared dream does not last long; only shared dreams lasts long. Our world is a shared dream and lasts longer than our nightly unshared individual dreams. Heaven is shared experience hence lasts forever. Heaven is permanent and changeless.

As it were, we are now the authors of reality, the creators of our world; we are, it seems to us, as powerful as God.

The world, dream, is a symbol of the Son of God killing his father, usurping his throne and sitting on it. The world means that we have created ourselves. God is no longer the creator of reality, now we are. We are now as powerful as God.

As Dr Schucman sees it, each of us came to this world to play god, to create himself, create other people and create God. This is insanity. The world is an insane place. In sanity, in reality, God created us.

Reality is unified. The world created by God is a unified, spirit world. We invented the opposite of God’s unified world, our separated world.

We invented space (separation) time and matter. We use matter to invent bodies for each of us. We now seem to live in bodies. (But at no time do we live in bodies, Dr Schucman reassures us.)

Bodies are calculated to give each of us a sense that he is separated from other people and that he is not other people. Body gives us boundary from one another.

By the same token, space and time give us boundaries. I am over here at Seattle, and you are a long distance from me (space- time interval) and live in a different body, hence we seem separated from each other.

As Dr Schucman sees it, this entire world is designed to give us the illusion that we are separated from God and from each other.

What is the purpose of the empirical world? The world is designed to give us the appearance that we are separated from each other and from God. The world is a means of separation, is used to maintain separation and make it seem real.

Dr Schuman believes that none of this whole song and dance is real. To her, we have not separated from God and from each other. We do not live in our world of space, time and matter. We are still in the world of unified spirit.

While in unified spirit, we imagine ourselves in this world. The world is a dream in the mind of the children of God.

As it were, you are right now in unified spirit, with God and all of us, and seem to be sleeping and dreaming this separated world. All of us do the same. In your dream, you assign roles to all God’s children to play for you and they assign roles to you to play for them.

The Son of God, Dr Schucman says, cannot disobey the will of his father. No human being can disobey God. All we can do is wish that we had different wills from God. We then dream out our wishes. Wishes and the fantasies designed to gratify them are not real. The world is a fantasy, a wish, and a dream. The world does not negate the existence of God, his unified spirit and unified mind.

Nevertheless, the separated world can obscure the awareness of God’s unified world. As it were, our world is like a veil with which we prevent ourselves from seeing God’s world. The world is a cloud that covers the light of God. The world is a block that prevents us from seeing the face of Christ in each other.

God is love. Love is union. We always live in love, in union. While inside love, in union with each other, we do not know that we are in the presence of love, that we are unified with each other. In love, we dream hate. In union, we dream separation. Dream is not reality.

Dr Schucman proposes to enable us awaken to God’s unified reality. How is that done? Since God is love, to return to the awareness of God, we must love each other. Since we do attack each other, and love requires forgiveness, we must forgive each other. Dr Schucman teaches that we must love and forgive each other. She says that when we do so, that we have met the condition for the awareness of God.

God is love and knows only love. When you love/forgive, you have met the condition for knowing God.

HOLY INSTANT

Dr Schucman says that if you love and forgive at all times, that every now and then that you would experience what she called the Holy Instant. Here, you experience yourself as one with God and with all people. As it were, you temporarily return to heaven and experience your self as unified with God and all people. Since only the formless spirit can unify, you experience yourself as formless, unified spirit. You literally feel as if you are one with all creation and its creator. In that state, you feel immortal and eternal, not born and do not die. In it you know everything (not things concerning the separated world, but heavenly, spiritual world). In it, you do not see space and gap between you and other people. In it, there is no subject and object, no seer and seen, no I and thou. All are literally one shared self. You literally feel like God is in you and that you are in God; that you are in all people and that they are in you. Where God ends and his children begin is nowhere.

Of course, one cannot be in Holy Instant for long, for if one does so, one exits from this world of separation. Thus, one returns to the awareness of separation, space, time and matter. One, again, sees people who seem apart from one. However, now one knows that separation is an illusion and that union is reality. One loves and forgives all people, for one knows that all people are part of one and in loving them all one loves ones real self.

If one has attained this state, what Roman Catholicism calls mystical union, Hinduism calls Samadhi, Buddhism calls Nirvana and Zen Buddhism calls Satori, one has re-established direct communication link with God. God reveals himself to one. (The Holy Spirit is the bridge linking the temporal and permanent worlds; he is the voice for God, telling us about God and our true nature; he is our comforter in distress.)

As Dr Schucman sees it, God is always communicating with all of us. But, in as much, as we believe in separation, space and time, we seem separated from God and do not hear his voice. But when we believe ourselves unified with God, meet the conditions of heaven, love and forgive each other, we have reestablished our channel of communication with God. We talk directly to God and God talks to them. This type of relationship with God, Dr Schucman says, is like our original relationship with God and one another and is called communion. In eternity, we commune with God and each other.

In communion, we know ourselves to have one spirit self and one mind and know exactly what each other is thinking and respond to each other. In eternity, all minds are joined and respond to the thoughts in other minds.

Visualize a giant computer. All of us are tuned to it. When each of us thinks something, all of us know what he is thinking, as he knows what we are thinking; we respond to him, as he responds to us.

This spiritual state is still taking place in the world of space, time and matter, but not in a conscious manner. We are still tuned to each others thinking and respond to each other but we are not conscious of doing so. What other people do to you is what you want to experience and your mind sends out a call, a signal and other minds respond to you and do so to you.

If you want to experience discrimination, you make that request, send that signal out into the universal ego mind, computer, and other people, apparently, those who want to experience discriminating against other children of God, come to your world and discriminate against you. You then see yourself as a victim and blame them. Seeing yourself as a victim, you attack them. They, then, see themselves as victims and defend themselves by counter attacking you. The result is our world of mutual attacks and wars.

Dr Schucman tells us that you did to you, through other people, what you see other people do to you. She asks you to love those who did bad things to you. To love them is to forgive them.

When you forgive and love other people, you have loved and forgiven your self. In doing so, you feel at peace and experience joy. You are now at the metaphoric gate of heaven, experiencing the world as a happy dream; you now live in the real world. Occasionally, you experience the Holy Instant. You are now a teacher of love, a teacher of union, a teacher of forgiveness, all of which means that you are a teacher of God. A teacher of God is a teacher of peace and love.

HOLY SPIRIT

As Dr Schucman sees it, when the children of God separated from him and seem to sleep and dream this world, God came to the world with them. God, as it were, entered his children’s dream as the Holy Spirit.

Thus, there now seems three Gods. God the father (who remains in heaven as the transcendental God), God the Son (the real you, the unified Christ you, the sleeping you that dreams this world) and God the Holy Spirit.

DEATH AND RESURRECTION

When the real you, Christ, unified spirit, went to sleep, as it were, Christ has metaphorically died. To be in this world is to be metaphorically dead. Look around you; all the people in this world, yourself included, are metaphorically dead. (Each person is at different stages in waking up from death, in returning to his real self, unified spirit.)

As long as the Son of God seems dead, is sleeping and dreaming that he is in this world, God, as the Holy Spirit, the immanent God, entered his mind and tries to resurrect him.

In our mind is the ego. The ego is the dreaming self, the self that sees itself as separated from God and his children. The ego mind is now where the Christ mind is supposed to be.

The Christ mind knows himself as the Son of God and as unified with God and all God’s children. The Christ mind in us is sleeping and forgets about his union with all creation and its creator.

God, as the Holy Spirit, enters our mind and occupies the place the Christ mind ought to be. Thus, now in our sleeping minds are (1) our unified mind, the mind we share with God and each other, (2) the Holy Spirit ( or, right mind) and (3) the Ego or wrong mind.

The ego asks us to separate from God and from one another, and to defend ourselves when other people attack us. Defense leads to separation, as much as attack does.

The Holy Spirit asks us to forgive, hence love one another. Forgiveness and love leads to the awareness of union. In effect, the Holy Spirit reminds us of our condition in heaven, unified.

God talks to his sleeping children through the Holy Spirit.

When you listen to the message of the Holy Spirit, God, and love and forgive at all times, you experience the Holy Instant. Subsequently, you no longer need the Holy Spirit to mediate between you and God. You have reawakened to your Christ status. Jesus Christ did so. Jesus has resumed communing with God and all of us, in a direct manner, without the auspices of the Holy Spirit or other awakened children of God.

When you return your thinking, mind, to the condition that God created it (unified), not what you have made of it (separated), you have reconciled the ego and Christ, the earth and heaven. You have resurrected from death (ego is metaphoric death). You are reborn in God.

Ozodi Thomas Osuji

Seattle, Washington

africainstitute@yahoo.com