Unique Self Theory
Contextual Quote
"The key insight that guides Unique Self Theory18 is that one of the central dimensions of evolutionary process is uniqueness. That is, one of the things evolution does is to produces the unique, and as evolution unfolds uniqueness increases. This means that the idea of evolution becoming conscious of itself can be reframed it in terms of uniqueness becoming consciousness of itself. The moral implications could not be more important."
- Marc Gafni and Zachary Stein [1]
Description
Marc Gafni and Zachary Stein:
"Unique Self is not another word for separate self or what is sometimes termed the ego self of western psychology. It is not the your particular talents or your personality type as it might appear on a Meyers Briggs test. Rather Unique Self appears most clearly “on the other side” of what is often referred to as True Self. True Self is the singular that has no plural. The total number of True Selves in the world is one. This True Self is only One; its realization effaces the various differences that accrue to the self commonly known and felt, the “skin encapsulated ego.” While overcoming the self and realizing the True Self is the great ambition of so much spirituality and religion, and the great offering of the axial-age religions, this alone is not enough. One the other side of True Self the personal re-emerges. This is not the personal before the impersonal True Self but the personal that transcends and includes the True Self. The non-dual tantric traditions (out of Asia and Egypt) have long maintained that on the other side of True Self is a non-dual return to the world, as the universal shines through the concrete and signal individual. But they did not yet have a sense of the irreducible dignity of the individual that was to enter world culture first through the Hebraic traditions and ultimately through the Renaissance and later the Western Enlightenment. Unique Self Theory integrates Western and Eastern Enlightenment in a higher integral embrace. We seek to valorize the metaphysical dignity of the individual, which emerged from the Western Enlightenment, but to source this dignity in the Unique Self, as opposed to the separate self. We also seek to incorporate the core realization of Eastern Enlightenment, which is that the individual at their core is indivisible from the larger seamless field of being, which we have been referring to as True Self.
Bringing these traditions of Enlightenment together (along with a host of related theories in psychology, sociology, evolution, etc.) opens up a rich landscape of distinctions, practices, and applications, which is the domain of Unique Self Theory.
Unique Self Theory entails the democratization of enlightenment because it points toward an enlightenment of individuation, beyond both ego and True Self, in which the realities of each person’s unique person, gifts, and obligations are re-vivified by their awakening. Enlightenment can no longer be seen as an elite achievement, precisely because each individual is noninterchangeable and irreplaceable and has a unique gift that only they can give. If only a lucky few get to be and act Enlightened, then rest of us—the masses—are by definition living and acting in ignorance and ego. This may have been a workable model before democratic government and before existential risks escalated to the point of placing massive responsibilities on the shoulders of everyday people. Today everyone must be awakened to give their fullest gifts and to do their needed good deeds, and these may not be the gifts and deeds traditionally associated with Enlightenment (i.e., you may not take to sitting on meditating on stage, holding discourse, and all the various trappings of those historically praised and treated as Enlightened). Every individual has the capacity to identify with their Unique Self, and thus to be and act Enlightened, although this capacity is too often occluded or inaccessible. When a group of individuals identify with their Unique Selves it lays the ground for the emergence of a Unique Self Symphony."
Characteristics
Zachary Stein and Marc Gafni:
"Here we lay out the basic ideas in schematic form as a series of related postulates:
1) Evolution is a process that moves from simplicity to complexity and from less consciousness to more consciousness (this is Teilhard’s (1955) “law of complexity and consciousness”).
2) This movement towards greater complexity and consciousness is also a movement towards increasingly unique forms of life.
3) Increases in complexity, consciousness, and uniqueness correlate with increases in creativity and Eros as organismic potentials.
4) Evolution is thus the move from unconscious uniqueness to conscious uniqueness.
5) The reflectively unique self—the organism aware of its own evolutionary uniqueness— becomes a possibility with the emergence of humanity, and can be thought of as a key strange attractor in the evolutionary process.
6) Thus your Unique Self is the personal face of a universal evolutionary process—in this way the qualities of personality participates in the evolution of the universe. "
History
"The notions of Unique Self and Unique Self Symphony emerged at the interface of religious scholarship, psychological meta-theory, and evolutionary meta-theory—expressed collaboratively in different forms by Gafni, Stein and Hubbard. This work naturally integrates with Hubbard’s seminal work expressing and exploring Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of Our Social Potential (Hubbard, 2015, revised edition). For a detailed look at the genesis of Unique Self Theory itself, see the special issue of the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice (6:1), which is dedicated to Unique Self Theory. The volume was edited by and largely penned by Gafni, with the lead article, The Evolutionary Emergent of Unique Self, A New Chapter in Integral Theory. See also major works by Gafni (2012; 2014) Unique Self; Two Views of Self, on the core articulation of Unique Self theory and the forthcoming work by Stein & Gafni, Towards a Politics of Evolutionary Love. For the first book length treatments of Unique Self Symphony, see: Gafni & Kincaid (2015); Gafni and Hubbard, Becoming the New Human and the New Society (Forthcoming); Gafni, Hubbard & Shmachtenberger, The Universe, A Love Story (Forthcoming)."
Discussion
The emergence of a Unique Self Symphony
Marc Gafni and Zachary Stein:
"To understand the true significance of Unique Self Symphonies a prefatory remark is in order. The sciences of complexity and emergence tell us evolution has a telos, a trajectory.
The trajectory of evolution appears to be towards ever-greater complexity, ever-greater consciousness, ever-greater uniqueness, ever-greater synergy, and ever greater intimacy. These qualities are inter-included and inextricable from each other all as a part of evolution’s arrow. The fifth quality—intimacy—is the one we will focus on briefly as a way to frame the nature of Unique Self Symphonies as an evolutionary emergent.
Beginning with attraction at the subatomic level, one might accurately say that reality is defined by allurement, all the way up and all the way down. From electromagnetic attraction and gravity in the physiosphere (physical reality), to the dynamics of symbiosis and mating in the biosphere (life), to the dynamics of mimetic evolution in the Noosphere (culture), reality self-organizes towards every greater levels of interconnectivity. The interior of interconnectivity is intimacy.
When Unique Selves are connected to each other in small groups new levels of intimacy are achieved. From this intimacy a kind of collective intelligence emerges which is greater then the sum of its parts. Likewise, when Unique Selves gather via the Internet and connect into larger synergistically integrated collectives then a new quality of intimacy is born. The quality of intimacy found in a Unique Self Symphony is a kind of collective intelligence or enlightenment, representing a local apex in the expression of the evolution of intimacy. A genuine Unique Self Symphony contains a complex motivational architecture that is richer and more potent than any known system of economic or social incentives. One is motivated to participate in evolution itself, to give one’s unique gift, and to experience the vital Eros and joy of evolutionary community. Even more motivating is the innovation and creativity that is seen to be unleashed from Unique Self Symphonies. This is a bottom up, self-organizing expression of human creativity, soon set to emerge at scale as a new evolutionary form or structure.
Unique Self Symphonies occur in a state of shared non-duality as individuals cooperate beyond ego. This means all members experience a certain quality of interaction and reflection. Terms like reciprocity, democracy, transparency, and natural hierarchy all come to mind. There is a sense that all individuals are profoundly important and that their unique contributions are essential.
There is no voice in the group that is marginal. There is no hidden discontent among those who feel used, undervalued, or coerced. Talk to anyone in the group and you will get the same kind of positive statements about their participation: they feel like they are a perfect fit in the group, they are empowered and autonomous while also deeply merged in collaboration and communion. Trust and honesty create an opening in which almost miraculous group phenomena begin to occur, sometimes referred to as “Collective Enlightenment.” Contrast this with groups that “succeed” precisely because certain members sacrifice their uniqueness for the sake of the whole. They become distorted into the shape needed by the group and find ways to silence their inner longings to express more of their uniqueness. Importantly, groups that require some members to distort their uniqueness are unsustainable and inefficient; they will not last. This is because of what it feels like to be a part of them. Resentment, fear, alienation, neuroses, and illness, these all follow from the day-to-day distortion of self to fit a social role. It becomes literally imposable for someone in this situation to give their all and try their best. Inefficiencies follow from this. Needs for surveillance and micromanaging arise, as disgruntled group members cannot be trusted to do what is required of them. So while the group my “succeed” for a time and even appear to be synergistic — “like a well oiled machine” — in the long run the group will implode in eruptions of violence, revolt, and self-destructive behavior.
It feels fundamentally different to be a part of a Unique Self Symphony. In this case the emergent collective intelligence and group success is a direct result of Unique Self optimization for all members. There is a felt sense of reciprocal respect and recognition of the unique value of each participant. Each person is aware of their own Unique Self of the Unique Selves of all others. By making use of the unique contours of their puzzle piece, each member of the group merges with and completes both themselves and the larger whole. The Unique Self experience is both the heart of the phenomenon of collective intelligence and the key to its emergence in any given situation. It is also a moral compass, signaling the justice and health of any give social synergy. Groups that function by suppressing uniqueness are almost always unethical. Groups that function by leveraging and respecting uniqueness are almost always just and healthy. For much of human civilization this kind of personal sacrifice and willingness to truncate the self for group needs was held up as an ethical ideal. The result has been societies in which most of the members are living lives of quite desperation. While there have been times when the shared demands of group survival seemingly demanded societies of this type, that time has passed. Now the survival of our species depends on our overcoming societies that distort and limit individuals and creating instead societies that leverage uniqueness and allow for the emergence of Unique Self Symphonies. The possibility of a Unique Self Symphony of indefinite planetary scope, sweeping through cultures and institutions, as the late the Roy Bhaskar predicted, via “a silent revolution of love” — a global awakening, totalized collective enlightenment. Such is the end game of the modern capitalist world-system. The eschaton appears immanent, although its catalyst is not the God of Abraham, but the God of the Market.
Those structures that have for centuries provided for the global hegemony of certain economic classes and interests are failing now to provide for any kind of viable future. The question of “what’s next?” —as asked by Wallerstein and other heterodox economists — is a question about the silent revolution of love, a question about the shape of a society that looks “collectively enlightened” by today’s standards."
The Personal vs the Impersonal Enlightenment
Zachary Stein, in a review of Marc Gaffni's book, Radical Kabbalah:
(Source: INTEGRAL REVIEW March 2014 Vol. 10, No. 1)
"The core theoretical innovation enabling the democratization of Enlightenment is what Gafni calls, the reclaiming of the personal. This idea is presented most clearly where he offers a comparison between two models of Self, his own model of Unique Self and Andrew Cohen’s Authentic Self or Evolutionary Self (a comparison undertaken in detail in Gafni’s forthcoming book Two Models of Self and Why They Matter). He notes that in classic Enlightenment teachings from the East the key move is from the personal to the impersonal. For example, Cohen’s community was for many years called the Impersonal Enlightenment Fellowship. This is the classic understanding of enlightenment, which finds expression in many Eastern schools of thought, including Buddhist and Advaita Vedanta. In Cohen’s book Evolutionary Enlightenment, for example, the word ‘personal’ is used dozens of times throughout the text, but always with a negative and pejorative connotation. The personal is not to be embraced; it is to be transcended.
“Leave your story behind” has become virtually the clarion call of Enlightenment teaching in the Western adaption of most Eastern models.
Gafni (2012a, Ch. 7) points out that the conflation of the personal with the conditioned personality is a confusion that needs to be corrected. In Gafni’s model an essential distinction is posited between the personal before realization (of non-dual radically impersonal Emptiness or God) and the personal that re-emerges after this realization. The former he terms separate self and the latter Unique Self. Unique Self is thus likened to a structure-stage of consciousness suggesting that to confuse the personal before realization with the personal that manifest postrealization is to fall into what Wilber terms a pre-trans fallacy. No less serious a mistake in Gafni’s reading is to denigrate the personal in favor of an impersonal process, such as cosmic evolution, without distinguishing which level of the personal is being addressed. True enough, cosmic evolution (conceived as a panentheistic unfolding) is hierarchically beyond the pre-realization conditioned personality, but it doesn’t efface the irreducible dignity of the post-realized personal, i.e. the Unique Self; in fact it find its expression in an infinite variety of uniquely personal forms. This is a lesson that cannot be stressed enough, especially in a context of discourse where an evolutionary ethic has emerged that turns a blind eye toward the tragedy of injustices that resulted from the enthusiasms of previous generations of evolutionary thinkers, from Dialectical Materialism to Eugenics. Gafni’s reclaiming of the personal is the ground of his non-dual humanism and sourced deep in the lineage upon which he draws. The following passage from the Introduction to Radical Kabbalah engages this point and is worth quoting at length:2 .....It is in this sense that we can begin to understand Lainer’s provocative idea that the Torah was given by a Moses who is merged with God—not in the voice of God, but in the voice of Moses…. Lainer uses the Zoharic phrase ‘The Shekhinah speaks through the voice of Moses’ as a foundation for his position. This Zoharic phrase, describing the authorship of Deuteronomy, was understood in two very different ways. The theocentric understanding, reflected in most Hasidic works, is that Moses was so completely effaced that he became a kind of channel for the divine voice. For Lainer this is only the first instrumental level of enlightenment. The second possible understanding of the phrase ‘the Shekhinah speaks through the voice of Moses’, corresponding to the higher level of enlightenment in Lainer, is almost the opposite: Moses is not effaced, but is rather so completely present that his voice and the voice of the Shekhinah become one. Moses’ unique persona, his voice and personality, incarnate the Shekhinah; through radical uniqueness, he participates in ontic unity with God….the Shekhinah speaking comes through the intensification of individuality, rather than through its effacement. Because the human is a part of God, the principle of acosmism does not negate but rather empowers the individual. The divine voice finds expression in the voice of the unique spirit, modeled by the prophet who manifests God’s voice through the clear prism of his unique individuality. This is the core of Lainer’s nondual humanism. Lainer argues, both explicitly and implicitly, that the unique individual is the portal through which comes the revelation of the unmediated divine will, the new Torah that can override the law of Sinai. In various writings I have called this pivot in Lainer’s thought ‘sacred autobiography’ or ‘unique self.’ (Gafni, 2012, p. liii-liv) Now what is especially critical is that this capacity to “incarnate the Shekhinah” is understood in Gafni’s writing, emergent from all of his sources, not as the domain of the elite but as an innate capacity available to every human being.
...
This notion of Unique Self changes the fundamental way we think about Enlightenment. Gafni’s overarching point is that what is commonly referred to as Enlightenment or Awakening is available to every human being. This move towards the democratization of enlightenment is a core structure not of Eastern but classic Judeo-Christian thought. Gafni points out that a failure to understand the true nature of Enlightenment has kept it from having its critically needed impact as a legitimate modern belief, which would serve as an evolutionary strange attractor for human motivation and aspiration. Gafni redefines Enlightenment in its most basic terms as sanity. Once you understand Enlightenment as sanity then the democratization of sanity (aka Enlightenment) becomes a self-evident requirement. What stands in the way is the incorrect conflation of uniqueness and separateness (or personal with personality) which moves Enlightenment teachers to reject uniqueness; this in tern moves the mainstream population, who intuit personal uniqueness to be a critical source of human dignity, to reject Enlightenment.
The importance of these contrasting views of Enlightenment was brought home most vividly for me in two passages from Rabbi Lainer. Gafni explains the context for the passage, which makes reference to a section of the Talmud in which Moses takes the first census of the tribe while it wonders in the wilderness: "The census of Israel in the desert is an affirmation of the radical uniqueness of every individual. Mispar [the Hebrew word for] 'number' is not a technical means of identification but rather a badge of each individual's metaphysical uniqueness. For Lainer, the census in the desert is not aimed at yielding population statistics, that is to say, the final number of the community; rather, it is focused on the act of numbering every individual as the revelation of their uniqueness."
(https://integral-review.org/issues/vol_10_no_1_stein_on_spiritual_books_and_their_readers.pdf)
More information
From the footnotes:
"On the term “Democratization of Enlightenment" see, Gafni, Radical Kabbalah. pp. 273-278. Integral Publishers, 2012. See also Gafni, Unique Self, pp. 21-22,176-177. Integral Publishers 2011.
Two more popular presentations can be found:
- Gafni, Watkins magazine June 2013, 15:46, http://www.watkinsmagazine.com/the-democratization-of-enlightenment-by-marc-gafni;
- Gafni, “Three Steps to Democratization of Enlightenment,” Integral Leadership Review,” Oct 2012 http://integralleadershipreview.com/7609-three-steps-to-the-democratization-of-enlightenment/. "
- “Concrete utopian theorizing” is not about religious visions of hope or science fiction movies. It is an aspect political praxis and an important method within ethics and philosophy. It consists of articulating preferable futures for society in a principled and realistic way, painting a picture of the practices and personalities that are attainable. It gives a glimpse of easily imaginable utopian options visible from the present. These then serve to guide praxis for individuals and groups, who act not in light of some ideal or abstract code but in light of an actual possible and preferable future. See: Rawls (1971); Bhaskar, (1993) Benhabib (1986).
Bibliography
Gafni, M. (2012). Radical Kabbalah: The Enlightenment teaching of Unique Self, Nondual Humanism and the Wisdom of Solomon—The Great teaching of Ethics and Eros from Mordechai Lainer of Izbica. (2 vols). Tucson, AZ: Integral publishing.
Gafni, M. (2012a). Your Unique Self: The radical path to personal Enlightenment. Tucson, AZ: Integral publishing.
Gafni, M. (2012b). Unique Self and the self-organizing universe. Public lecture delivered at Eslaen Institute.
Gafni, M. (forthcoming). Two models of the self and why they matter. Tucson, AZ: Integral publishing.