Great quote on lay paths to the transcendent function from Abraham Maslow

"I wish to underscore one main paradox I have dealt with above which we must face even if we don't understand it. The goal of identity (self-actualization, autonomy, individuation, Horney's real self, authenticity, etc.) seems to be simultaneously an end-goal in itself, and also a transitional goal, a rite of passage, a step along the path to the transcendence of identity. This is like saying its function is to erase itself. Put the other way about, if our goal is the Eastern one of ego-transcendence and obliteration, of leaving behind self-consciousness and self-observation, of fusion with the world and identification with it... then it looks as if the best path to this goal for most people is via achieving identity, a strong real self, and via basic-need-gratitification rather than via asceticism."

- Abraham Maslow

So similar in tone to the messages in John Welwood and Robert Augustus Masters' on what they call spiritual bybassing, and evocative of my favourite Jack Engler quotes: "You have to be somebody before you can be nobody" and "Ontological emptiness does not mean psychological emptiness" (the last one I quote to myself endlessly).

I'm doing a mountain of uni reading on Carl Rogers and Abe Maslow, and it's such solid stuff for our ego-psychology. There'll me a lot more of Rogers on the way I'm sure. He has a dignity and virtuous, respectful regard for people and their process like few others I've studied. His is genuinely heartwarming stuff.

Just brainfarting a little more here while I'm on a plane from Argentina to Sydney... It's interesting too to think of a quote from Nathaniel Branden about how he frames presence of the ego:

"We can talk about transcending a limited self-concept. We cannot talk—rationally—about transcending the self. We can talk about transcending an overrestricted concept of ego. We cannot talk—rationally—about transcending ego (not if we understand what ego really is and don't associate it with vanity or defensiveness)....Being present to what we are doing does not mean "being in the now" in a way that drops all connection to past and future. Living consciously entails being in the present without losing the wider context. The context is there as background, and what we are doing is foreground. Then we are in the moment but not trapped in the moment. This is the state that makes optimal action possible. I stress this point because injunctions like "be here now" are sometimes interpreted (or misinterpreted) to mean a shrinking of awareness to encompass only the immediate moment, with the rest of one's knowledge cast into oblivion and with no concern for the future consequences of one's acts. The ultimate absurdity of this understanding of "be here now" is captured in the cartoon showing a man falling from a skyscraper who remarks mid-flight, "So far, so good".

Funny too how he and one of my heroes Ken Wilber battled this one out, as so hilariously captured by Ken's late wife Treya in her journal notes published as Grace and Grit:

"Nathaniel and Ken had the same friendly argument they always have. I don't think either of them will ever give up! Nathaniel: "I think you are the clearest writer on mysticism around, and yet your whole position is self-contradictory. You say that mysticism is becoming one with the whole. But if I become one with the whole, there would be no motivation left to me as an individual. I might as well just roll over and die. Human beings are individuals, not amorphous wholes, so if I succeed in becoming one with all, there wouldn't even be any reason left for me to eat, let alone do anything else."

Ken: "Whole and part are not mutually exclusive. Mystics still feel pain, and hunger, and laughter, and joy. To be part of a larger whole doesn't mean that the part evaporates, just that the part finds its ground or its meaning. You are an individual, yet you also feel that you are a part of the larger unit of a family, which is part of the larger unit of a society. You already feel that, you already feel that you are a part of several larger wholes, and those wholes – like your life with Devers – give your life much value and meaning. Mysticism is just the even larger identity of also feeling part of the cosmos at large, and thus finding even greater meaning and value. Nothing contradictory about that. It's a direct experience of a larger identity, it doesn't mean your arms fall off."

"And so it went!"