One no longer is one’s own. Moreover, in the measure that this transformation is effective, development comes not merely from below upwards but more fundamentally from above downwards. There has begun a life in which the heart has reasons which reason does not know. There has been opened up a new world in which the old adage, “Nothing is loved unless it is first known,” yields to a new truth, “Nothing is truly known unless it is first loved.” It is such transforming love than enables Paul to say: “The life I now live is not my life, but the life which Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).
Once our turning toward the Source, the Great Center, has become fully conscious and freely chosen, so that we take it explicitly now as the Center of our own lives in vertical self-transcendence, a process Bernard Lonergan calls falling in love with God, then at this point the natural process of self-development of the person undergoes a kind of reversal.
Although the phases of human development are by no means watertight, rigidly demarcated from each other in a linear sequence, still the main thrust of development has been up to now from below upwards: from childhood to mature adulthood, advancing through growing self-possession, active self-communication, and self-transcendence on a horizontal level towards other human beings.
But as we move more and more into the phase of vertical self-transcendence, putting off our self-centered consciousness to open up the Great Center and its transforming power, then a profound reversal in the movement of self-development takes place: it now flows primarily from above downwards, transforming us from above. As Lonergan puts it:
Such transforming love has its occasions, its conditions, its causes. But once it comes and as long as it lasts, it takes over. One no longer is one’s own. Moreover, in the measure that this transformation is effective, development comes not merely from below upwards but more fundamentally from above downwards. There has begun a life in which the heart has reasons which reason does not know. There has been opened up a new world in which the old adage, “Nothing is loved unless it is first known,” yields to a new truth, “Nothing is truly known unless it is first loved.” It is such transforming love than enables Paul to say: “The life I now live is not my life, but the life which Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).”
Bernard Lonergan, Christology Today, Methodological Reflections
Something like this has been taught in all the great spiritual traditions. Jesus has warned us that “only he who loses himself will find himself.” One of the central teachings of the Buddha is the “no-self” doctrine, which, if we get behind its later metaphysical interpretations, seems to have meant primarily a spiritual attitude of radical selflessness, such that the letting go of self mysteriously releases the springs of deep, universal love and compassion for all living things, even though no mention is made of a higher Self or divine principle. In Hindu Advaita Vedanta, the Atman or individual self finally lets go the illusion of its separateness and becomes one with the Atman or Great Self. The Sufi mystics become so intoxicated with the love of God that they beg God to “take away this I that stands between me and Thee.
This type of vertical self-transcendence is obviously not the ordinary mode of consciousness of every person who has reached psychological maturity, though many more slip quietly into it, I suspect, than are self-consciously aware of it. It is a phase in the journey toward full self-development as a person that usually emerges somewhere toward mid-life, though for some who are particularly generous and spiritually awake it can be woven into their lives earlier, or even be concentrated in a dramatic conversion-type experience.
But more ordinarily, as Carl Jung has so insightfully outlined in his theory of individuation and integration, the first part of a person’s life is focused primarily on one’s own self-development, on the discovery and actualization of one’s own basic potentialities and skills, on affirming oneself and establishing one’s position in the world, in a word, on acquiring a strong and secure sense of self and what it can do.
But once this sense of self and what it can do is securely established, somewhere around the mid-point of our life’s journey, sometimes earlier, sometimes later, a kind of call comes to us from our own depths — or beyond – sometimes clear, more often obscure. We come to realize that our self-development cannot go on to full term if we continue living the same way. To move on further some radical shift of focus must take place.
This is the call to radical self-transcendence, to let go of our own selves as center of interest and take on the Great Center as our own new center of consciousness and open ourselves to let its life flow through us and express itself more and more fully in our lives. A profound transformation of our lives now occurs, so that we begin to shine forth more and more as images of God’s own loving presence making itself known on earth. And now our self-communication to others becomes, mysteriously, more and more, of a God-communication through us.
This movement towards self-transcendence, however; is not an automatic one. Some heed the call and keep growing, discovering their deeper or “true selves” in the process. Some do not; they stagnate, wonder what is wrong with them now that the old ways of self-fulfillment no longer seem to work as effectively as before; they become restless, wander on the horizontal level looking for new challenges, new stimuli that will fill the mysterious void they feel developing, but avoiding the shift to a new self-transcending level of consciousness that will allow them to move forward again.
Others more or less consciously and deliberately cling tenaciously to their self-centered ego, for fear of giving up “being in charge” of their lives and surrendering their wills to another, with the attendant implications for their life-style to which they have become attached; thus they positively block the flow of the Transcendent Center in them and through them, with the final consequence of stagnation or perhaps even disintegration of the self-development they have achieved.
Why is it that such a paradoxical decentering and letting go of self on the conscious level is necessary in order that any finite person may be able to go on to his or her full self-development? Can philosophy be of any help to us here? I think it can. The answer, insofar as it can be conceptualized, lies in the nature of spiritual intellect and will as dynamic faculties oriented by a built-in natural drive toward the fullness of their formal object, being and goodness as such.
Every created spiritual intellect, angelic, human, or whatever, is endowed according to St. Thomas, with a radical innate drive toward the whole of being, the unlimited horizon of being as intelligible. Now since the Source and fullness of all being is Infinite Being, there is in every spiritual intellect a natural drive to know God as Source, fullness of being, and final goal of all knowing, and also, included in this, to know all other things from his point of view, as he himself is, a natural drive in us as images of God to transcend our own limited point of view in knowing and take on his total one as far as is possible for us.
So too in the order of spiritual will there is a natural drive toward all being as good, the unlimited horizon of goodness as such. Now here too, since God is the Source, center, and fullness of all goodness, there is a natural drive to love him as Infinite Goodness beyond all other goods, even ourselves, and also, included implicitly in this, to love all other goods as he himself loves them, from his point of view.
Thus we are drawn to transcend our own limited, self-absorbed perspective of loving to love and care for the whole universe, for the whole order of goods as they truly exist and are loved by him in ordered unity around himself as Center. And this includes loving my own self, no longer as the center of my focus, but as I truly am, and am known and loved by him, within this total order. I now wish, as far as I can, to put off my own and take on God’s point of view by knowing, evaluating, loving caring for all things, including myself, as he does.
Here shines forth the magnificent, liberating paradox of personal development: because the person is endowed with a spiritual intellect and will, possessing a natural drive toward the infinite, the fullness of truth and goodness, the only way it can reach its own fullness of perfection as spirit is precisely to transcend its own — and any other – limited viewpoint to take on the divine point of view for knowing and loving all things, including itself.
Only by de-centering ourselves, transcending our finite selves (in consciousness, of course, not in our essential being) to take on the Infinite Center, the authentic Center of all being, as our own center and perspective of knowing and loving all things, including ourselves, can we fully become our own true selves as embodied spirits and thus fulfill completely the potentialities of personal being as such.
The fullness of personal development turns out to be a losing or letting go of oneself that is simultaneously and by that very fact a new finding of oneself at a deeper level. Self-transcendence is thus of the very essence of all personal development at its highest, whether the person involved identifies explicitly his new Center as God or not. Only by reaching beyond the human can we succeed in becoming fully human. To refuse to do so condemns us to fall short of the human itself. To be a human person fully means to self-transcend toward the infinite.
