Beyond the Ego: Shiva, Transpersonal Psychology, and Self-Realization
“Such complete enjoyment of the fourth state [1], the condition made of the wondrous savoring of it, is realized in the one who is concentrated in the great yoga”… “It is a continuous welling up of astonishment, within the self that is boundless, unfillable, ever more intense bliss.” “The stages of yoga are nothing other than this – that is, becoming one with the supreme reality”… “When the self is known by the self through the adepts, then the self sees wonder in itself.” “He who stands as if immersed in wonder, contemplating his own true nature as that which presides over all, how can he still be subject to this painful transmigration?” — Vasugupta [2]
As I have repeated many times in other writings, Transpersonal Psychology embraces and interprets in a modern key the essential aspects of mystical traditions aimed at self-knowledge and liberation.
In the West, as early as the first decades of the last century, C.G. Jung grasped the profound significance that the myths and symbols of religions held for the psyche, of which they were the most significant expression. For mental health, therefore, the understanding and integration of these unconscious instances was consequential. Since then, thousands of studies have validated the therapeutic importance of inner experiences induced by meditative states in transpersonal dimensions.
Following the publication of the Red Book (released by Jung’s will fifty years after his death), Hillman and Shamdasani in their book “The Lament of the Dead” (2014) ask what will become of psychology after the revolutionary revelations of this work. It demonstrates that what was authentically therapeutic and transformative for Jung was not the intellectual understanding and accurate study of religious symbology, but the experiential journey in which, in profound oneiric-meditative states, he confronted these archetypal figures directly.
All ancient wisdom traditions refer to states of consciousness that imply contact with the numinous, the transcendence of the ego, and therefore liberation from the narrow world of conditioned thought of which humanity is a prisoner [3].
The search for these states of awakened awareness, which reveal a “spiritual” reality behind the veil of “material” and “mental” appearances, has accompanied humanity since the most remote times: from shamanic traditions to techniques of ecstasy, to Egyptian initiations, to the cults of Apollo and Dionysus, from the Orphic Mysteries to the initiations of the Greco-Roman era, from alchemy aimed at the transformation of the individual up to Renaissance occultism. The greatest figures in history were very often initiates of these esoteric cults, drawing higher-order knowledge from them.
Regarding Western religions, it is recognized that they perform two radically different tasks:
-
One is aimed at supporting the ego.
-
The other, which only a minority accesses, is directed towards the transcendence and destruction of the ego, that is, experiential access to the Spirit that leads to a radical transformation of one’s lived experience.
The philosophies and religions of the East have for millennia been bearers of methods and practices that do not require faith or obedience to moral injunctions, but rather aim at the transformation of individuals’ consciousness. Such practices alter ordinary dualistic perception and are intended to lead to Unity with the Universal Self, liberating the spiritual essence of the seeker from the veils of the ego that obscure and divide reality into dualisms, hiding the true Self.
Scientific Confirmations and Therapeutic Applications
Stanislav Grof, in his recent work The Way of the Psychonaut, Encyclopedia for Inner Journeys (2022), summarizes 60 years of research (first with LSD and later with Holotropic Breathwork [4]) and defines experiences of transcendence and expansion of awareness in non-ordinary psychic dimensions as “holotropic states”—that is, states moving toward the experience of Wholeness. Grof describes a vast phenomenology that he verified through extensive clinical experience and rigorous research in medical-scientific contexts, confirming their astonishing therapeutic aspects.
Accurate scientific studies, in fact, have demonstrated that the results are not only much faster but often deeper and more stable compared to conventional therapeutic practices.
The realization of the Self leads the ego to dissolution in the undivided Unity of consciousness and is therefore the most powerful catalyst for states of psycho-spiritual well-being. The radical transformation of the perspective with which one relates to life in a more authentic and spontaneous way translates, in fact, into physical and mental health.
The Veil of the Ego and the Illusion of Normality
This inner awareness implies the recognition of a reality defined as “esoteric,” which, due to a misunderstanding of the term, is often discredited by those who have an essentially materialistic approach to reality.
The term “esoteric” refers to secret knowledge, which cannot be communicated to those who are not ready to receive it. For many, this seems to constitute proof of unreliability, even though the beneficial results of these experiences have now been proven after the scrutiny of the scientific approach in many recent studies. In reality, such knowledge has been openly transmitted for centuries but remains “secret” only because it is incomprehensible from the narrow perspective of what is considered the ordinary state of consciousness.
Indeed, this ordinary state in which humanity commonly lives is a state of obfuscation wherein one does not realize they are imprisoned by a web of thoughts and concepts. These prevent seeing Reality with an attentive and clear mind—that is, embodying the perspective one finds when, through inner freedom, they are in the spontaneous flow of living.
People usually live unaware of themselves and are victims of the ego-image that creates false problems, conflicts, contradictions, and frustrations: all creations of a confused mind that is not correctly directed. In this state of mental fragmentation, the individual is unable to savor the magic and beauty of living with spontaneous creativity.
The fact is that realizing the meaning of these teachings through thought and conventional mental processes is like trying to feed oneself by memorizing cooking recipes. The ability to perceive our own Self, in its immediate and non-conceptual reality, is the essential core of initiatory paths that involve practices to overcome mental conditioning.
Teachings, therefore, are merely directional pointers that can lead to the experience and revelation of Unity. Looking without the filter of thought into the emptiness of our Self, we discover the undivided reality of emptiness and form, I and Cosmos, the One that becomes the many, and the many that are One. The world appears to us as a representation on the ineffable mirror of Consciousness, the formless witness that resides beyond becoming, beyond space-time, and that transcends and contains space and time, dualism and non-dualism.
To Bhairava (Shiva), whose nature is a state of inner reaching forth essentialized by the emergence of supreme intuition, inheres a certain, indefinable power, the power of Freedom.
Shiva, the Ribhu Gita, and the Transcendence of the Self
For many years, within the framework of Transpersonal Psychology, I have studied the therapeutic value of Eastern traditions, particularly Hinduism with Tantrism and Kundalini Yoga, which I have integrated with breathing techniques that alter the state of consciousness (Transpersonal Rebirthing).
In non-dual Vedanta, I found wonderful definitions of the Self and its identity with Shiva (realizing the Self is the supreme “healing,” liberation, and awakening). Hundreds of volumes have been written about Shiva, and his 108 names define him in countless forms: Lord of Yoga, Supreme God, Pure Awareness, Invisible Light, Lord of Nature, destroyer of sorrow, Lord of the Gods. He is a perfect integration of opposite aspects: he is the erotic ascetic, the destroyer of worlds, but he is also their creator and sustainer.
To understand the essence of Shiva more directly, I found the clearest indications in the Ribhu Gita, which is the Gita of Shiva. The great mystic Ramana Maharshi often cited this book, in which he had found a description corresponding to his spontaneous awakening experience that, as a boy, had led him to the deepest states of Samadhi in Unity with the Absolute.
The Ribhu Gita leads the reader to understand that Shiva is Consciousness-Awareness that permeates everything and in which everything takes place. The reader comes to understand that identification with the mind and body is an illusion and, discarding external phenomena, can realize that undivided consciousness is their true Nature and thus recognize their identity with Shiva. The appearance of the conscious “I” is contemporary and inseparable from the appearance of the phenomenal world; one does not exist without the other.
The teaching leads to a subsequent, even deeper level in which even this realization proves to be only a transitional stage. Only great Masters like Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, or Sri Herakhan Baba lead to the transcendence of the Self, while most spiritual paths stop at the consciousness of the causal plane.
“You are this consciousness, and from this consciousness the entire universe is born. If consciousness is not known, it is not possible to realize the Paramatman. It is reached only through this understanding. After understanding the nature of consciousness, we will also understand that we are not consciousness. The sense of ‘I am’ is Presence. This Presence or sense of ‘I am’ must not be there. Only the absence of the sense ‘I am’ can know nothingness. In the absolute, there is no sense of knowing, nor is there the sense of ‘I am.’ The sense of knowing concerns only the past. You will quickly reach maturity by remaining rooted in your nothingness. I am only nothingness. I am no thing. This nothingness will make you mature.” — Nisargadatta Maharaj
Going forward in the search, when one reaches the realization of the Self and realizes that this Self is only consciousness, a nothingness, an ineffable emptiness, we also understand that if this substanceless vacuity is the basis of the phenomenal world, these infinite worlds also have no true substance except in relation to the Absolute, to the Parabrahman: the ultimate reality that transcends emptiness and form.
Once the consciousness of Brahman is reached and the cosmic play (the divine Lila) is understood, one is ready to access the absolute freedom of Parabrahman. The undivided presence beyond “I am” that transcends dualism and non-dualism. The person who grasps their indissoluble unity with the Absolute enters the flow and fully lives the role that life gives them, expressing themselves in everyday life with harmonious spontaneity.
Forty years of experience have shown me that the breath is the most powerful catalyst to reach this realization.
Two short extracts from the Ribhu Gita (loose translation):
-
From Chapter 1: “Therefore Ribhu said to Nidagha: I will tell you the definition of the Self which is not to be found in the triad of time of past, present, and future, ever the most secret of secrets, to summarize what has been said by Shiva. There is nothing that can be spoken of as non-Self, nor the mind as non-Self, nor the worlds as non-Self. Be certain that there is nothing that is non-Self. With the absence of all sankalpas, with the elimination of all forms, with the conviction that only Brahman exists, be certain that there is nothing that is non-Self.”
-
From Chapter 2: “Like air bubbles on the waters of the ocean, the gods, men, and beasts of the entire phenomenal world arise and will arise again and again, upon the waters of the solid mass of bliss of the consort of Uma (Shiva). There is no worldly misery for those who, through their experience, clearly perceive all this emerging from the waves of illusion as Myself (the Self). Because of illusion, people do not realize Hara (the Self) as the cause of every little thing, the cause of every being, and also as the boundless cause of a greater dissolution. When the presence of the Consort of Uma shines reflected in the waters in the recesses of the space of the heart, the destruction of the serpent of worldly miseries takes place.”
