We seldom think about what it must have been like to be a new-born.Perhaps there is something uncomfortable about the image of being so helpless?

And yet that first period of life – emerging from mother’s body in which we have been safely cocooned with all our needs met – is formative for the rest of the human being’s incarnation in matter.

The way we came to be who we are had its beginnings in our birth and the first few months of life. The mother’s womb provides literally everything the unborn child needs; both physically and psychologically. The child knows … but their is no ‘object’ to that knowing. It loves every ‘thing’, but there are no things! What it loves is the tapestry of warm, bright and loving patterns with which its wonderful new universe is made.

For the pre-born, this is blissful union with the mother. There is no other state known to the fresh brain that is rapidly gathering the sensory information that can only been seen as flavours and colours of oneness, without any separation into ‘me, you and it’.

It’s an easy and powerful exercise to ‘feel yourself’ back in this state; with perfect love directed at you, and experiencing in that love perfect contentment without desire. You might be surprised to discover how instantly refreshing this is.

You might even question why it feels so easy and natural…

At birth, the child is literally pushed away – out – by its mother’s body, in order to have its own life, but the closeness of her warmth and the senseing of her flesh are seen as a continuation of the womb’s perfection, even though the focus moves to the mouth and the urgent need for external nutrition. Air in the born-powerful lungs provides the infant with the ability to cry – and at a frequency tuned to the mother’s instincts.

There is no cognition, because there is no differentiation from the state of oneness. The infant is enjoying a consciousness made up of sensations from its body, emotions … and something else. That something is illustrated in the right hand diagram in Figure 1, above.

This figure shows the twin upper and lower worlds of the self available to the human consciousness. The lower half will come to be filled and dominated by the developing personality. The upper half represents the beautiful aspects of oneness known (but not by cognition) in the pre-birth state. These aspects are known as Essence, and always remain part of us, though we push them into our personal unconscious when their existence is not ‘reflected’ back at us by our parents, who, sadly and long ago, lost the active presence of their own Essences.

Our Essence belongs to us. It was there pre-birth and endures. It waits for us to find our way through the veneer of the personality and back to the more powerful presence of the true Self.

Though this is available to all, few take up one of the many paths that lead to inner realisation.

But the personality has a vital role – to protect our physical existence and allow us to work in the world and in the society in which we are born and have our developmental opportunities.

This paradox needs to be examined and considered before it offers up its jewels…

In Part Four, we will consider how the unfolding of the personality begins to gather pace and sophistication.

Parts of this series:

This is Part Three: The Fall

Part One: The Human Hologram

Part Two: The look of Love

©Stephen Tanham 2023

Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog