The Ghost, the Organism, and Thou
One of the challenges in conversations about the nature of what we are is the confusion created by the lack of words to distinguish different dimensions of the phenomena “you” or “I.” I share here my first attempt at inventing some distinctions for speaking about these phenomena. I introduce the distinctions by considering the three types of ‘you’ I currently see.
There is the ‘you’ that arises from the belief in having control of your actions. Let us designate this ‘you’ the “Ghost.”
The second ‘you’ is what Ramesh Balsekar calls the body-mind mechanism. This ‘you’—let us designate it the “Organism”—is what life acts through. The Organism performs actions, in the sense of eating, walking, driving, and also, requesting, promising, assessing, etc.
The third ‘you’ is the pure subjectivity in which all experience shows up. Let us designate it, a little poetically perhaps, “Thou.” It is the most difficult to designate because it is not an object and therefore ultimately unnamable.
We at least now have three different designations to enable a level of shared rigor in the conversation, which opens the space for further exploration.
Chris