Roberto Assagioli’s famous egg diagram is a very useful picture of the human psyche, especially when it comes to extra-ordinary states of consciousness.
Here is one way of understanding it, using Christ’s famous assertion, “I am the way, the truth and the life”:
I AM (Higher Self) THE WAY (Field of Consciousness), THE TRUTH (Middle Unconscious) and THE LIFE (Lower Unconscious and Higher Unconscious).
I AM is pure subjectivity, pure consciousness. When we are in this state, we are “One without a Second”, that is, subject with no object. THE WAY is our immediate experience of the world without the filter or mediation of thoughts or feelings, that is, a state of no-mind (mu-shin) and flow (wei-wu-wei). We simply experience whatever comes to pass in our field of consciousness. THE TRUTH is the wisdom stored in the middle unconscious, which is not present to consciousness, and does not interfere with the pristine clarity of our field of awareness, but is available for conscious recall at any moment, just below the surface of consciousness. THE LIFE is the energy released through accessing the depths and heights of the lower and higher unconscious, on psychedelics for example (Amun, Ra, Atum, Ka in the lower and Gaia, Jah in the higher).
“Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.”
Ephesians 4: 9-10
N.B. This also maps onto the 1,3,7, 12 model (see the blog posts The Ark of the Holy Imaginal and Between the One and the Many):
AHAM is 1 – HODOS is 3 – ZOE is 7 – ALETHEIA is 12.
AHAM is 1 – KENOSIS is 3 – GNOSIS is 7 – PISTIS is 12.
bread of life 