Self, Realities, and the Transcendents 325“9x6” b2726 Self and the Phenomenon of Life: A Biologist Examines Life from Molecules to Humanityreligious feeling that stays above and beyond the ordinary religious sense
of fear and morality.”^23
In Indian thought originated 2,500 years ago, the personal self
is to be identified with the omnipresent, all-comprehending eternal
self — “Aum,” better known as Brahman.24,25 The Greek philosopher
Plotinus (204–270 C.E.) taught that there is a supreme, transcendent
“One,” infinite, indivisible and indistinguishable universe. In China, the
strife to unite with the universe has been the aspiration of intellectu-
als for thousands of years. Freud noted (attributing to Romain Rolland)
that the sense of boundlessness and oneness with the world is a natural
human feeling. It is not an invention of any organized religion, he said,
but rather a source of it, and in fact it has frequently been incorporated
into their belief systems.^26
To sum up, the attainment of a cosmic self is the highest form of
existence. Whether or not one believes in a personal God is a matter
of taste and, for me, of secondary importance. But that Oneness, that
cosmic Wholeness, is that which we all seek to be with.
What, then, is the meaning of self, of life, and of being? To under-
stand this question, we must analyze what we mean by “meaning.” Mean-
ing refers to the connection between parts; explanation relates one thing
to another; and value is the worth of one thing against another. All are
relative entities arising from the presence of parts or fragments. In an
undivided Oneness, all parts vanish and so does meaning (Fig. 14.3).
In our personal life, self undergoes metamorphosis. When born, self
starts with no explicit meaning. As a person matures, multiple meanings
accrue — career goals, aspirations, desire, competition, success or fail-
ure, fulfillment or despair. In the end, all meanings return to the start-
ing line, and life resumes the original purity — simple and natural. The
merging of the personal self with the cosmos results in the transcenden-
tal self, which is devoid of meaning. It is not that meaning is lost; it is that
the Wholeness leaves no room for meaning to surface.^27
If I am compelled to add more, I would say that, at least for some
people, the “meaning” of life lies in the quest of its meaning. There are