by Ernest L. Norman
Let us, at this time, enter into a discussion on some of the elements of personal psychology. Sometime ago, while walking upon one of my garden paths, I inadvertently startled a mother bird who was nesting nearby in the bushes. The frightened bird flew out of the bush, where her nest was situated and tried, by the age-old ruse of dragging her wing and limping, to lead me away from this most treasured spot; she tried to impress me with the fact that perhaps she was crippled so that I would pursue her. This, of course, is a well-known and very obvious device which has been used by birds and animals as long as they have existed. However, as I walked away from the spot, I could not help but muse that the countless millions of people who had inhabited planet earth and who are living at the present time, are all to some extent, practicing this same old device of deception which had been used by animals and birds for so many countless ages.
Of course, these people for the most part, did not know they were using some sort of deception and no doubt would have been quite surprised and perhaps even angered had this most obvious fact been pointed out to them. It is a provable and foregone conclusion that all people in the world do, at some time or other — some more frequently than others — revert to forms of very obvious subconscious deception. In this manner they hope to detract attention from some deeply rooted subconscious insecurity complexes derived from unresolved past lifetime experiences and from the time they were born into the world up to the present moment, as a natural product of evolution. The sum and total of these insecurities would, of course, largely determine just how much deception and how obvious was the deceptive device being used by any particular person.
Typical of these various devices are such attitudes as can be called subtle or strong exhibitions wherein any person attempts, by bragging, by various other exploitations, or expressions, to try to succeed in impressing his fellow man with what he considers to be the most obvious virtues of his own ego. Proverbially, the small, short man is known to puff himself out, to strut, or to otherwise try to portray, ostentatiously, a much greater degree of physical and mental prowess, in lieu of the obvious difference in his stature. The same, in reverse, is true with the tall, thin individual who tries to make himself, subconsciously speaking, a little shorter by stooping, by drawing in his chest, and assuming some sort of an introverted attitude. In either case, where we consider the more ostentatious display — the extroverted form of ego, or the introverted form — these are devices in which the individual is attempting to divert attention from the sense of insecurity which, subconsciously, he knows he has — the sum and total of various unresolved insecurities from which he has suffered in his lifetime.
Sometimes, however, these insecurity complexes exert themselves much more strongly and in different forms and manners. A person may become an extrovert to the extent that he will be an actor or she will become an actress; and again people often enter the field of politics, or such professions as teaching, the clergy, or the priesthood; in fact, any and all walks and occupations of life have these, either introverted or extroverted persons who are attempting to conceal and to divert by the obvious aforementioned devices, the attention of their subconscious feelings of insecurity which arise from these insidious complexes. Then, too, we cannot fail to consider the more extreme cases where an individual can actually become a dangerous criminal, or even a person who assumes such strength and power that he becomes an emperor or a king. Hitler was one of these extroverted persons. It is, well known, biographically speaking, that Hitler suffered a tremendously introverted childhood.
Unfortunately, in almost all cases, people who are so introverted or extroverted fail to recognize the symptoms within themselves; they fail to analyze or take suitable action whereby they could hope to attain solvency from these various psychic differences which lie deep within the subconscious portion of the psychic anatomy. So long as these numerous inadvertent or malformed wave forms exist, and while they may not oscillate to the exterior surface of the conscious mind, they, nevertheless, do exert a strong and pernicious effect upon the varied oscillations which are currently expressed. This gives rise to the many deficiencies or otherwise plainly exhibited forms of this most familiar of all subconscious behavior, the insecurity complex. No individual can ever hope to achieve supreme control or dominance over these countless subversive forms of consciousness which thus exist. For, as rapidly as they are canceled out, the processes of life very often give rise to new forms, and subsequent developments of new inferiority or insecurity complexes.
So far as the present existing insecurity complexes are concerned, the individual who is attempting to attain a better way of life and to free himself from some of the mental and physical vicissitudes, which most necessarily accompany any person who is not primarily concerned with the innermost functioning or workings of his subconscious nature, must attempt, at all times, to keep close watch over his various emotional differences which may arise; he must display a plain and evident concern and awareness of the many propensities of subconscious workings which are going on within the deep recesses of the psychic anatomy.
In this respect we can refer to one of those classical bits of philosophy; “evil is in the eye of the beholder.” It is sufficient to say that anyone who feels more than the ordinary or temporal sense of distress or emotion, should such forms and expressions reassert themselves in a continuous fashion; or should there be a habitual train-like consequence of varied emotional differences or obvious habit conformities, which so clearly indicate that this subversive form of subconscious interplay is in constant or periodic activation, must realize that it is high time something constructive was being done to eliminate this condition. We cannot overlook the obvious facts of reality and assume or adopt a pollyanna attitude and decry that which some metaphysical concepts try to teach us to do; we cannot merely shrug off the reality of some particular annoying circumstance or some happening which may have an emotional value to us. Such things do exist and always present the immediate conformity of reality.
However, the point in question here is within ourselves, how much of this emotion remains and reconstitutes an activated resurgence of emotion within our own particular consciousness; these emotional vicissitudes so reinstate various other habit or mental conformities which are so classically distinguished by a psychological approach, or by an analyst who can learn to distinguish these various differences as they are displayed upon the surface of human consciousness. Self analysis, by any individual is indeed dangerous, unless it can be done completely honestly and objectively, without the taint of personal conformities entering into such judgments of jurisdictions or objectivisms, which any person may attain in his self-analysis. This honest approach of self-analysis is extremely difficult to attain, and more so because the immediate demands of any objective analysis centers upon one pertinent fact which is this: how well you can objectify, within your own mind, that it is you yourself as an individual, who is involved in this emotion; who is involved in this consequence, or this extrusion of consciousness which has so complicated your life. It does not, in a more abstract sense, exist outside the dimension of reality, as it presents itself in consciousness to you individually.
If one is hypnotized, he cannot consciously objectify any particular thing unless it is suggested by the hypnotist who is controlling the person who has been so hypnotized. In a sense too, we can say that such emotional differences which appear upon the surface of our minds are, in consequence, autosuggestively stimulated by the appearance of some reality which is just beyond the immediate confines of our more normal level of introspection, as we proceed in our various daily life activities; and, such as they are, should the appearances of these countless realities suggest or autosuggest to our consciousness some facsimile, as it so conforms in attunement with previous lifetime experiences which are so attuned into these numerous subversive elements of inferiority or insecurity, then we immediately have a chain reaction. We become antagonistic; we become fearful; we develop many other types of emotional duress, customarily exhibited by people who have these more firmly entrenched or advanced sensitivities, engendered from these insecurity complexes.
There is no excuse in saying, “well, everyone has them”; we cannot justify the emotional vicissitudes, existing in our own minds, or other consequences which may be incurred from these many emotionalisms, by resorting to this old subterfuge that everyone else has a sin, or everyone has his own weaknesses — we must have some too, etc. Such mental processes are not justified; they are not intelligent, and they will eventually lead to moral decay and the more complete destruction of the personal entity in the various integral values which have largely sustained him in his evolutionary process. We must reach in the hole, drag the lion out by the tail, and slay him before he consumes us. Sometimes this process is indeed difficult for we must remember, in all cases, that of whatever these insecurity complexes consist, they were impounded by ourselves in the active integration of various processes of life, not only in the immediate lifetime in which we are so living, but also, we can reconnect them into possibly hundreds of lifetimes, or even back into the reaches of our more primitive beginning.
As a matter of fact, the material world is largely constituted and motivated by sundry fear complexes, and it is to be expected, in this carnal law of the jungle, wherein fear exercises the more dominant libido or drive, that various insecurity complexes, can and do, very quickly and easily arise to the surface of everyone’s life. Individually speaking, these complexes make people very unhappy; they make them emotional; they give them the innumerable drives which we have described; such subterfuges which, like the little bird, are merely attempts to divert the attention away from the weaknesses we subconsciously feel from these diverse insecurity complexes.
In one of the previous chapters of this book, we entered into some discussions regarding recognition of the old self, and the old self as being the most dominant enemy any person ever has. The constant struggle with the old self, in its variant continuities into the present, always contains the adverse potential, as it is compared in the progressive cyclic movement of evolution; the old self, indeed, gives rise to the many inequalities of everyday life. The old self and the method of its recognition are similar and parallel, in all respects, to entering into the various psychological aspects of everyday life, (as we are discussing). Briefly then, the turmoil, strife, hatred, jealousy, lust, fear, and other emotional vicissitudes are poisonous in their content and in their intent; they are destructive and coercive in all the many interplays of harmonic attunement with any of the more progressive elements in our personality complex.
It is, therefore, most important that we immediately recognize these reactions and emotions as they exist in our consciousness; we should take the utmost recourse to analyze such appearances, to immediately discern from whence they sprang; and in this personal analysis — if we are honest and objective — we will eventually triumph; we will succeed in establishing a sort of automation within consciousness which takes over, so to speak, like an automatic pilot which will, immediately, divert consciousness from the extremes of the emotional complex, as it is exerting itself; it will also deflate or discharge the strength of this emotional complex.
Then, we will, consequently, in a few moments time, feel completely passive with whatever this situation was, or whatever gave rise to this emotional difference. When we have attained this position of automation, wherein the more philosophical, the sane, the logical, or the introspective qualities of our personalities can always be dominantly reflected, and we can manage to control these numerous situations, then it can be said, we are attaining mastery over ourselves; we are attaining mastery over the old self, and we are also attaining mastery over the physical world.
Needless to say, until such mastery is attained, we will be constantly victimized by the many emotional differences which constitute the way and life of this material world. Mastery over the material world is mastery over self. It is the instituting of a personal philosophy which immediately equates all abnormal differences, all emotional complexes, and various subversive introverted fear complexes into their proper perspectus. They can no longer survive in the atmosphere of logical and philosophical objectivism; and speaking in the scientific idiom, we can say, that in this superior mental atmosphere, we have generated out of phase wave forms, which, when so generated in the present tense in contrast to the time element in which they were incurred, cancel out these sundry, insidious, negative vortexes which remain, and have remained unobserved and undetected in our psychic anatomies.
This will result in a general purification of the psychic anatomy; it will also constitute and enable us to rehabilitate or rebuild the psychic anatomy into more suitable configurations of wave forms which result in an over-all intellectual superiority, a broadening of the mental horizon; and, in a true sense, we will gradually evolve into a higher state of consciousness, which actually means that we are oscillating more infinitely with the Infinite Intelligence.
Therefore, it should be immediately resolved by any and all people who are so interested in attaining immortality, a future and better life, to immediately start to reconstruct this future for themselves, to do so upon the sound psychological, scientific approach which demands the conquering of the old self and its many emotional vicissitudes; they must conquer the former way of life in which they have always lived, and begin to try to re-establish life in a continuity and form which is progressively superior in all respects, manners, and forms; so that it is not emotionally constituted, but instead, it resolves itself into the philosophical and scientific conformities which form the Infinite Intelligence.
Personal psychology is relatively simple if we are honest and objective; it does not need to entail the nomenclature used by the modern psychologist or psychiatrist. It is simply the more ultimate resolve that we, ourselves, are our own worst enemy; and so far as our past lives are concerned, these are the dominant elements which we must always strive to conquer. They will introduce and reintroduce the content of various emotional strifes and turmoils, until we would find the “proverbial snowballs in hell,” if we let them. Our problem is to dissolve them before they dissolve us!
The dynamic principle of evolution is predicated upon the progressive mental stance of each person who so wishes to live in a progressive future. This dynamic, progressive principle should always assume the predominant position in everyone’s life; he should always envision himself so biased that he will progress into the future. And so, as each life is lived, it presents the never-ending, the never-ceasing problem of a future conquest of this life in another time and in another dimension; for, such is the nature of Infinite progression; it is the constant contrast, within one’s self, of the emotional values of experience, until such time when a person can so resolve the more ultimate configurations of the Infinite Creator as an oscillating process which does not entail the emotional content.
Excerpt from Infinite Perspectus