Lower Self, Higher Self
Life is an enigma. The randomness of events and the unpredictability of human nature make things complicated at times. Not only are people so very different from one another, even individuals change with time and their behavior with different people is tinged with many different shades. One can be kind and compassionate with one person and cruel and heartless with another. So, it appears that human beings indeed function as groups and understanding a person is best done by examining his behavior with the people around him. A mathematical term, “dyad”, meaning an operator which is a combination of two vectors, perhaps best defines the situation.
I felt this by observing my father, Late Shri Krishna Chandra Tiwari. He was the kindest and the most God-fearing person. But at times, he would use harsh words and not hesitate in rendering physical punishment when I erred. Hours later, he would be regretful and even making amends. Even as a child, I wondered about this switch in his behavior. Later when I grew up, I found that it was not my father alone, but a common trait in every human being. People carry multiple personalities, layers upon layers, and show up differently to different people at different times. And when I examine my own life, I can say for sure that there is a lower and a higher self, embedded inside me and it all depends on when, which one of them get activated, and takes over my actions.
In the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita, Lord Shri Krishna declared the twofold nature of God (VII. 4-5). One is the external fold made of five elements – earth, sky, fire, water, and air – and the mind, intellect, and ego—together as the eight components of material energy. Then, there is the inner energy, which comprises the embodied souls who are the basis of life in this world. So, it is the mind, intellect, and ego that differentiate a mortal man’s animalistic and divine nature.
Persian poet Rumi (1207-1273), put it straight and rather bluntly, “Hungry, you’re a dog, angry and bad-natured. Having eaten your fill, you become a carcass; you lie down like a wall, senseless. At one time a dog, at another time a carcass, how will you run with lions, or follow the saints?” [Translation by Kabir Helminski (b. 1947)]. Rumi sees the duality of human beings as their biggest challenge. “The angel is free because of his knowledge, the beast because of his ignorance. Between the two remains the son of man to struggle.”
Sri Aurobindo (1872 –1950) described human life as essentially divine. He sees all problems of existence as problems of harmony arising from the instinct of separateness of “I” from the rest of creation. Sri Aurobindo sees human existence as “…a divine life in an animal body, an immortal aspiration or reality inhabiting a mortal tenement, a single and universal consciousness representing itself in limited minds and divided egos…”.
I have learnt from Dr APJ Abdul Kalam (1931 – 2015), the seven forms of Nafs, meaning “self” in Arabic, that one must overcome by conscious living and practice the fixation one’s “I-ness”. These are: Takabbur (pride), Tamaa (greed), Hasad (jealousy), Shahwah (lust), Gheebah (backbiting), Bokhl (stinginess), and Keena (malice). Dr Kalam said with sincere humility that with the grace of God and the blessings of his parents, he could achieve quiet early in his life an-Nafs al-Mutmaʾinnah, what he described as being at peace with himself.
Tolstoy (1828–1910) who had read best the human nature and left his observations for posterity through his novels, sees the emotion of love as the greatest mystery of life. “The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness.” According to Tolstoy, “All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town.” In either case, a man is a traveler through this world – Musafir Hun Yaaro…
American author, Neale Donald Walsch (b. 1943), published a series of books called Conversations with God, starting in 1995. Though the writer claimed he received personal revelation, to me, he was presenting Srimad Bhagavad Gita. Nevertheless, he wrote well. “All human actions are motivated at their deepest level by two emotions–fear or love. In truth, there are only two emotions–only two words in the language of the soul…. Fear wraps our bodies in clothing, love allows us to stand naked. Fear clings to and clutches all that we have, love gives all that we have away. Fear holds close, love holds dear. Fear grasps, love lets go. Fear rankles, love soothes. Fear attacks, love amends.”
Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh (b. 1926), lives in France and is considered an influential living figure in Zen Buddhism, a school of Mahayana Buddhism. He writes about Buddhist insights into the nature of the mind most eloquently. I am yet to find a better and more practical definition of compassion than that provided by Thich Nhat Hanh, “When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That’s the message he is sending.”
The way to access one’s higher self is by contemplation – withdrawing one’s senses from the external and sitting quietly for a while – and then the higher self emerges out and embraces one’s consciousness. Know your mind and senses not only as instruments given to you to navigate through the world but also to access your higher self. A life lived without accessing your higher self is indeed a life wasted. In the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita (II. 55), the truest existence of a human life is defined as “आत्मनि एव आत्मना तुष्टः” – satisfied in himself with himself. So, use your lower self to access your higher self, as a tailor uses scissors or a carpenter uses a saw, or a plumber, a wrench. Neither shun off the lower self, nor get captivated by it. If there is any art of living, it is this knowledge and this skill.
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Very well scripted blog highlighting the Lower and Higher self embedded in humanbeings, Prof Tiwariji !
Your concept of using Lower self to access Higher self for Art of Living is excellent !!
The cornerstone of Indian thought is that we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. Your blog resonates at this very elemental fact. We are made of more than just the sum of our thoughts, feelings, and life situation that we are living now. When we feel the moment directly, through the body, who we are as thought, ego, a “person,” disappears. Our individual “me” agendas fade, and we are just now, life—not separate from life, from our spirit, or our true nature.
The higher self looks to me the soul, and the lower end the body. As the body is the container of the soul, the lower self covers the higher self. Therefore, it’s vital to keep it in optimal conditions, exercising daily and eating healthy. Because food is energy, with it you rebuild your body day by day.
Very interesting blog Prof. Tiwari. I’ve always wondered why people behave the way they do, what makes people tick? I wish I had more time to study this fascinating subject. At an earlier adult age I read books on relationships; one in particular “Why Men Are the Way They Are”, by Dr. Warren Farrell, described the main differences between men and women. Later, I read books on successful people, hoping to learn more. And now I find myself watching movies on real life stories, whether tragic or joyful stories. It seems a long journey to understand what makes people tick, but as one matures I believe a better understanding is gained.
God created us with the ability to love and be compassionate as He wishes, yet with free will we also act in such terrible ways at times. Oddly, this illustrates the beauty and power of God. Only He could create such a complex creature.
There are many factors that influence human behavior; I believe each person can reflect on their life and better understand their own behaviors over time and those of others. It would be great if we all could reach inner peace as Dr. Kalam was able to achieve. The world would be such a better place if so.
Merry Christmas Season and a contented New year to you and your family. This is a philosophical piece and it’s nice to have a glimpse of your father while attempting to see our lower shelf to attain our higher self.
This article comes as a fresh breeze waking us to both the higher self and the lower self. The mere fact that there is a mind that can roam around leaving its physical body indicates that there is something that lives inside me that is more than “I”. What I gather from this blog is that with awareness and training we can interpret the working of the lower self, but we will also be able to see through it to discover the higher self in all its splendour.
We can determine which thought-forms come from the higher self, and which from the lower self. We can also determine which wishes and endeavours of the higher self may be mixed in with tendencies from the lower self, the original shade twisted, coloured, or dirtied. Lovely insights.
Thanks for sharing Tolstoy’s stunning line, “All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town.” My higher self is on a journey here in this world and my lower self is finding its way through the town. Either way, I am on the move.
Sir, I enjoyed this very refreshing blog. The awareness that every moment, there are two creatures living inside of me is most useful. I could feel my Lower Self right away – The animal-like creature which is deeply rooted in our system. Its main goal is to survive and feel good. And with some effort I can also feel my Higher Self – The evolved creature. What we call humans. It strives for progress and world peace. Its main purpose is to develop and to help fellow humans advance, and not only.
In different moments of our lives, different beings take control. For instance, when our alarm goes off in the morning, the Lower Self will be the one to hit the snooze button and sleep for 10 more minutes even though we know that we should get up, now. I crave coffee. Sort people out as friends and enemies and try to influence and dominate others around. The Higher Self, on the other hand, is compassionate, tries to understand and help others and focuses on what I can give rather than what I can take. Thank you very much for enlightening me.
Tiwariji, thanks for sharing your wonderful blog.
“Use your lower shelf to attain your higher self.”
We have many times heard from
HDH PPu Pramukh Swami Maharaj quoting Saint Kabirdas’s Doha –
Ūnchā ūnchā sab koī chāle, nīchā na chāle koī,
Nīchā nīchā jo koī chāle, to sabse uncha hoi….
Pramukhswami also often said Keep your “I” small to attain highest of your self and to overcome the seven Nafs or “selfs” as mentioned by the great Dr Kalam.
So wisely and wonderfully covered in your inspirational blog.
Thanks once again for sharing.
Dear Prof. Tiwari Life is indeed an enigma. Uncertainty and unpredictability make it challenging and interesting for some, and miserable for others. All ‘lower-self’ and ‘high-self are’ imprinted in one’s DNA. The nurture can activate or deactivate their switches.
Is it possible for an individual to slip down from ‘higher-self’ to ‘lower-self’? Certain incidents can deactivate the ‘higher-self’ switch forcing the individual to slip down to ‘lower-self’. Our lives are many layered and a person’s behavior and responses vary with the layer one is operating at any given time. Sometimes, these behaviors may be contradictory to each other. DNA is selfish. It wants to perpetuate and multiply. Who decides if a life is wasted?
Warm regards
SN Nigam
This is what we face daily in our life, the unpredictability. Some days are good and some days are bad. But what I have learnt from my experiences is to have a stableness in our thoughts. The mention about love and fear is also very clearly spelt in your blog Sir. Love is actually more powerful than fear. But we have to channelise right emotion in our life or would say give importance to it. Stay connected with our lower self.
Great piece sir!
“Satisfied in himself with himself”, is what one wants to be!
Rather than taking a moment and reflecting on things, we often run with the fear of missing out in the world.
As long as we try to fit in and check certain boxes, the fight between who we actually are vs who we are trying to be, results in duality of mankind. Most of us are guided by the norms of the society and set goals just because of peer pressure.
When we realize who we are or when we figure out what we want to do and actually do it, that’s when our mind, soul and thoughts will be unified, till then, we have to wear the mask of some other versions of ourselves.
Very interesting, Arunji! In Bhagwad Gita Krishna emphasises that a ‘Jivatman’ though basically a part and parcel of ‘Paramatman’ Himself, is supposed to be a slave to his basic Nature, which he has acquired through his Karmas in Past lives! This Nature is hard to overcome. It can only be got over through Yoga ( Connectivity with ‘Paramatman’). Till one stabilises in Yoga, through ‘Jnana’, ‘Dyana’, Bhakti, it is a struggle, and a human keeps toggling between this innate Nature and the Real Nature (Divine)!
Arunji, very nice. Thank you. Using lower self to access the higher Self is a great take away. The behaviour which is manifested externally is only reflection of one’s values, attitude, beliefs etc., In my experience I found difficult behaviour people are easy to deal with than so called easy people.
Dear Sir, You have written about life as a Philosophy, by quoting a number of great Philosophers from 18th and 19 century. The philosophy of using lower self to elevate to higher self is the most complex theory of life. In other words transforming your external self to innerself is the key technique to acheve your ultimate aim of life of achieving Nirvana. You have quoted Bhagvad Gita to illustrate your point.
As per great theories of GNOSIS prached by great philosopher Dr Samuel Un Vour of Spain in 19/20 th century, the life consists of five parts. First one is Physical Body. This ends immediately as the soul leaves the body. No. .two is Astral body (Aura of a person) which also leaves after physical body ends. The third is the personality of a person which also leaves after some time depending upon how strong or weak was the personality of a person. For Example, a common person;s personality will die after some time as compared to, for example, that of Adolf Hitlar. The fourth is your Eges and Fifth is essence. (Soul). The last two go to the Court of Karmas and never die.
Your future life is decided depending upon whether your Egos outway your essence or vice versa. People with higher self are borne with higher essence like Swami Viveka nanda. People with lower self are born with Higher Eges, like Doud Ebrahim (Don). The effort in one’s life is to tranform from a Don to Swami Vivekananda. The essence of life is therefore to transform from lower self to higher self as very aptly brought out by you. Jai Hind.
Head to toe – from the brain box to the foot, a human being is a complicated mass of nerves, veins arteries and several organs/parts interlinked to form a machine called humans. The function of each and every part is essential to perform and deliver as a composite unit. Slightest disturbance to any largest or smallest, important or not so important part disturbs the equilibrium and calls for immediate attention. Over and above this mechanical performing machine which receives instructions from the master control, the human brain – the black box, akin to the black box of an aircraft which needs to be analyzed thoroughly to arrive at the root cause of the mishap. The correction and remedial action follows. It is this black box which besides the mechanical activity of the human machine also controls and builds up emotions, feelings, love, hatred, likes, dislikes, tastes and allied, interweaves these ingredients with the function of the machine and what gets delivered is the final product – the human nature, the human behavior – the lower self, the higher self.
Rightly cornered, and elaborated on the dual personality, the dual behavior and the dual feelings by a human on different occasions and for different fellow humans is like a game of snake and ladder. Life plays on and as suddenly a ladder appears it triggers the good hormones and one feels happy, jumps with joy and goes up the ladder fast and on the other hand appearance of a snake out of the blue, maroons the feelings and you go down in emotions and get depressed. It is not in ones hand for it is a game but what is in our hand is to control and channelize our mind in the positive direction, to relinquish temptations, greed, lust and worldly attractions. It’s in no way easy and calls for lots of efforts, discipline and meditation to build up and develop the will power. The better be the will power, the inner strength, the inner energy – the better the end result.
I did like your example of the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, “When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That’s the message he is sending.” So it’s for us to rise to the occasion and help fellow humans. Fighting it out, arguing or trying to be one man up doesn’t give a solution in turn it creates burns, literary burning our mind and body.
Another one from your cavalry was Rumi – “The angel is free because of his knowledge, the beast because of his ignorance. Between the two remains the son of man to struggle.” this duality of human beings is definitely the biggest challenge. Successful and happy is the person who has a total control of his inside and outside. Has no lower self and higher self. Says what his heart feels like, thinks, acts, reacts and persuades his positive and simple behavior. Successful and happy is the human who carries a single personality – though it’s easy said than done.
Blessed are those who realise and realise early in life the purposeless-ness (this word is used with scant regard to English language) of ‘I’. Similar thoughts have been brought out by Adi Sankara in Subhramanya Bhujangam. Yes, at least now at the end of the year, one should contemplate about the past and see that the ‘I’ness does not make its presence felt in the New Year onwards (not on the first day alone!).
Your writings have taken a new, very welcome hue- the subtlety and warm aura of the ethereal. Do Keep it up!
Dear Sir, Yes, it is one of your excellent blogs I have read. Somewhere, I came across ‘Mask Self’, its an another layer, I believe,
Unfortunately, not yet recognized sufficiently among human beings for its full significance, and that is what I might term the mask self. The mask self is created in the following way: When you recognize that you may get into conflict with your surroundings by giving in to your lower self, you may still not be ready to pay the price for eliminating the lower self. This would mean first of all that you would have to face it as it really is, with all its motives and drives, since you can conquer only that which you are fully aware of. This means taking the narrow path, the spiritual path.
Many people do not want to think that deeply; instead they react emotionally without thinking about facing the lower self. The subconscious feels it necessary to present a different picture of the self in order to avoid certain difficulties, unpleasantness, or disadvantages of all sorts. Thus people create another layer of the self which has nothing to do with reality, either with that of the higher self, or with the temporary reality of the lower self. It is what you might call phony or false; it is unreal.
Thank you for discussing a very important aspect of life that no one bothers to speak about anymore. I often think about why we, humans, do certain things. Why do some people skip school? Why do we keep getting late for work? Why do people cheat on their loved ones? People continue to smoke, drink, do other stupid things even though they know that it’s not good for our health and life in general?
We are proud to call ourselves the overlords of the planet Earth. Yet, at the same time, we spend most of our time staring at our phones and eating junk food. Why will someone troll other people online; Or why people will spend money which they don’t have on things they don’t really need and eventually go bankrupt… Why don’t we do what we have to do? You have provided a very clear answer in the lower self.
The different stages in one’s life from childhood through adulthood and old age are meant to prepare us towards the ultimate state of realisation. Our scriptures have described the two-fold path available to mankind – Preyas, the path of enjoyment and Shreyas, the path of spiritual growth. The lower self seeks material gains and pleasure. It must be disciplined and sublimated into the higher self. Thanks again for writing this most useful message.
Beautiful piece, Prof!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on self improvement, from the inside out. How so very true it is that all of us as individuals have this ongoing struggle within us – trying to be the better parts of ourselves over the evil beings we all are, whether in thought or action.
This piece greatly inspires me. God willing, I would like to write my memoirs one day … “Walking the Higher Road”. I would like to reflect on my earthly journey and the struggles I have lived. My choice has been to do my best to walk the higher road ….
Beautiful deep thoughts, well scripted. I am overwhelmed by the emotions you so rightly expressed in your blog by giving quotes from Buddha, Sri Aurobindo, and Tolstoy. On top of it, Gita and Lord Krishna to Arjuna in battlefield Kurukshetra digs deep in these of Life Karma and after Life. Shri Arun Tiwari ji, reading your blogs brings me close to reaching unreached spheres of life. Great Blog, 10/10 Shri Arun Tiwari ji.
Dear sir, Thank you much for an enlightening blog.. it is very interesting and matter of pride that BHAGVAD GITA has an answer for all these complex issues and let’s you decide your path. But the unfortunate part is that this knowledge is not imparted to all. If it is taught at the younger age , I am sure the approach to the life will definitely change in majority. Somewhere it has to start and I am sure the outlook will change and world will see a change for better.
Love has the power to conquer everything including the fear and once that is achieved and the I- ness will vanish. But it is easier said than done. But if the path is shown in the tender age it will be easier to decide your path.
I am an optimist , the world will change for better. Thank you once again for an excellent blog sir
Excellent message with respect to lower self and higher self. Lot clarity in your write up. I think it is also linked to pshycological state of human being. How one can make use of lowerself to attain higher self is the key. Thanks Prof.Tiwari ji for the inspiring words.