2.2: Binary identity

In the drama “Closed Society” by French writer Jean-Paul Sartre, three people find themselves trapped in hell after their physical death due to their earthly sins, constantly harassing each other and getting on each other’s nerves: “Hell is [always] the others.”

With Sartre, the play ends with hopelessness of the protagonists, they don’t know how to get out of this out of this hell and resign themselves to it. Garcin says: “So –
let’s get on with it!”

But he is wrong, there is a way out. It is to recognise the ego as such and as a control programme from programme from “below” and then to deactivate it step by step by observing and deactivating it step by step:

A top-class professional footballer, who was banned from playing several times because he had bitten opponents, was asked why: “I can’t explain it.
It just happens, there’s such anger in me.” (Spiegel 41/2014).

He didn’t recognise the reason, but at least lifted a corner of the veil. The way out is to overcome hell, i.e. distance from others, with ego death, i.e. practical neighbourly love, not only in relation to friends, but first and foremost to strangers (“daily dying”).
to strangers (“daily dying” of the instinctive soul). The Islamic mystic Rumi tells the famous story of the parrot in the cage on the subject of ego death:

A merchant had a beautiful parrot in a cage. The man wanted to go on a business trip to India and asked all the people in his household what he should bring them. He also asked the parrot for a souvenir. He asked the merchant to tell other parrots there in India about the situation he was in in this cage and that he would like them to tell him what a solution might be for him. The trader promised to pass this on.
When he arrived in India, he met some parrots and made the request. Immediately after hearing this, one of them fell to the ground dead.
When he returned home, the traveller told his parrot what he had heard. When the parrot heard this, it fell dead on the floor of its cage. The merchant was deeply saddened and took the bird out of the cage. It suddenly spread its wings and flew up a tree. He explained the deceptive manoeuvre to the astonished man: the parrot in India had faked its death to signal to the prisoner that he too should “die” in order to finally be free. (Rumi: Mesnevi I, 1556 – 1920)

rfcansole Can Stock Photo csp 17167163

Since man “can do nothing of himself…” (John 5), behavioural control takes place through the influx from “below” and from “above”. This means that man is controlled by both instinct and soul. He therefore behaves in a divine or animalistic way on the basis of his instinctual soul and his spiritual soul. The source of his behaviour therefore does not come from himself. In this respect, there is an independent identity only insofar as he can use his free will to operate the mixer lever. The place for this lever between mind and body is the soul, which contains material – physical and mental – as well as spiritual parts.

Wikimedia Commons: Three-way mixer.svg (Biezl)

This free will of man has the mixing valve in his hand and can (more or less) freely decide whether and how much influence the respective influx has on his consciousness. Of course, this presupposes that he is aware of this existential situation, which – as already mentioned – is usually not the case. Until then, his free will is severely restricted or only exists as a potential. The decisive factor, however, is that he can learn to detach himself from the drive control. He can then consciously free himself from his instinct- and logic-driven behavioral control in every decision-making situation and give space to intuitive guidance. The symbol for this is the confrontation with the two trees in paradise: The fact of having to choose one of the two has not changed in the slightest to this day. In any case, the paternity for human behavior is of a spiritual nature, regardless of whether it comes from “below” or “above.”

Everyone is, so to speak, both luci-fer and Christo-fer
(ferre: to carry).

“Heaven is within you
and also the torment of hell,
what you choose and want,
you have everywhere.”
Angelus Silesius: Cherubinischer Wandermann, Book I, Verse 145)

The individuality of man consists from the specific alloy of instinctual and spiritual soul. From the instances of above and below he has the mixing valve in his hand and can the mixing valve and can decide on the mixing ratio. Its relay share of its behavioural control is quantitatively minimal and amounts to – let’s say – 1%.
1 %, but qualitatively decisive. To use the terminology of mathematical physics (chaos theory): The flap of a butterfly’s wings triggers a hurricane. However, this one per cent requires all our effort and all our endurance. While the decisions for self-preservation are practically handed to us on a platter, recognising the divine life
behind our material, life is the result of an arduous path.

In this constellation, the human mind is only an instance of operative perception in this constellation, an instrument, that receives input and can process it intelligently, but is not independently creative. The fact that the mind cannot create, is a serious insult to the ego, especially to the ego of the natural sciences.
They imagine that they can create anything with the mind, to be able to do all sorts of things with the mind, to play God, for example through human design or cloning. The misunderstanding is, that the computational and other operations of the mind with their intelligent results would be created by this mind and suggest self-control. Thus
meteorological computers, for example, develop forecasts for the future based on their programming and data, meteorological computers develop forecasts about the development of the weather with a high probability. This then looks as if it was the computer itself, that generated the forecasts. The fact that the programmers are behind it.

Man seems to have creative power, which can be seen in the devastation caused by wars or the destruction of the climate, but also in medical, technical and social progress. However, murder and manslaughter on the one hand and rescuers in disasters or emergency helpers on the other are impulses from “below” or “above”. But people can – at least in principle – make a decision between them and thus turn their lives into a product of success or failure. Under certain conditions, they can move the lever up or down and use their intellect to work out and implement these concepts and even optimize them: Do I build a nuclear bomb, do I found a Red Cross? Do I embezzle money from the club treasury? Do I put my life at risk by extinguishing a forest fire or providing development aid in war zones?
The laws of nature on the level of principles were already there before man, he has nothing to do with their creation and can only deal with them. Einstein did not invent relativity, he only discovered it.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

The lion in the steppe has a single programme, that controls it, the mammalian programme of self-preservation. It hunts, feeds, mates, defends its territory, bites away competitors, protects its offspring and gathers fresh strength during its rest periods. It is at the mercy of this programme, it cannot get out of it.

Humans – this is the difference to mammals – have two programmes. Firstly, he follows exactly the same animalistic programme of self-preservation as the lion. In addition, however, he has the spiritual programme of overcoming separation, called love, from the soul. (This kind of love is spiritual, goes beyond the two levels of earthly love such as erotic and sympathetic (see Chapter 6) and is based on looking trough). The human being is the only mammal that can break out of animal control. This second programme is the qualitative difference to the animal. It is there to overcome the first programme. It is intended to lead man to his destiny, to self-realisation of the inner divine being that lifts him out of the world of suffering. The path to this second programme of consciousness and behaviour is the single theme of all wisdom writings of all cultures and peoples.