Over the past few weeks, I’ve been thumbing through old back issues of the magazine in an effort to touch up on my EnlightenNext history. Deepening my understanding of how the magazine’s inquiry has evolved over the past seventeen years always helps inform the projects and perspectives I’m actively working with today. While each and every one of the back issues I’ve read has been illuminating, one in particular has stopped me in my tracks. It’s issue 19–the Ego issue–which was published in the summer of 2000, years before I’d ever heard of the magazine. It’s a great issue and worth checking out on our online archive.

One of my favorite articles was an interview with psychologist, transpersonal theorist, longtime Zen practitioner, and professor at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology Kaisa Puhakka. It’s a revealing description of the paradoxical task of transpersonal psychology–to facilitate the strengthening of the ego while at the same time encouraging its transcendence. As is the case with many of our interviews, we weren’t able to include the entire interview in the print edition due to space constraints. But thanks to the evolution of media, this new blog forum has given us a way to publish a very interesting section of the interview that didn’t make the final cut. Check it out below:

EnlightenNext: How would you define the word “ego” from your perspective as a transpersonal psychologist?

Kaisa Puhakka: I’m so struck by the fact that there are different meanings of ego. I can think of at least two basic meanings of ego which are both very relevant but they refer to very different—I won’t say “things,” but let’s say—subtle kinds of activities. One is the ego as a function or competency or skill, or actually a whole bunch of functions and competencies and skills, for negotiating the world. And the other has to do with the sense of self which we become conscious of when we ask, “Who am I?” or “What am I?” Most of the time we are not conscious of it, but we nonetheless take ourselves to be this or that. In other words, this second sense of ego has to do with identifications.

EN: So the second one is the image that we have of ourselves, of who we are?

KP: Yes.

EN: Can you say more about the first sense, about the set of competencies?

KP: Competencies or I would even add capacities. This definition, when I think about it, interestingly, I end up going back to Freud, and I’m not really a Freudian. Freud defined many functions or capacities of the ego, which included a capacity to simply observe our experience without any reaction, without any judgment; a kind of neutral, even observation. He also spoke of the ego as “the reality principle,” which he defined as the capability of being in touch with reality, of making some kind of contact with reality that is not biased, is not distorted. As a matter of fact, of course, the way we make contact with reality is distorted by projections and all kinds of wishful thinking, etc. And Freud talked about the psychological defenses, the ego defenses that create in varying degrees these kinds of distortions. But when he talked about the ego, aside from the defenses, he said that the ego has the capacity to be in contact with reality, whether or not it would be somewhat compromised by defenses. Another important ego capacity is the capacity for negotiating the conflicts between the natural instincts and impulses—the id impulses—and the superego, which is the internalized injunctions and prohibitions of society. According to Freud, there is an unconscious conflict between the id impulses, “I want this now,” and the injunctions that say, “No, you can’t have it.” The ego negotiates this conflict in such a way that the id impulses don’t get out of control and wreak havoc in the world, but at the same that there will be some gratification of those impulses within reasonable limits as condoned by society. And yet another important aspect of healthy ego functioning is having a basically healthy sense of self, and there two aspects to this. One is having a sense of personal continuity through time—you know, that I’m the same me waking up this morning as when I went to bed last night. If I have a healthy functioning ego, I don’t question my continuity in that sense. And the other is having ego boundaries. Ego boundaries have to do with discernment, being able to discern what’s my private subjective fantasy as opposed to what’s the publicly shared and socially agreed upon reality. So that kind of discernment has to do with the ego boundary. The same kind of ego boundary issues also have to do with discernment at other levels. For instance, whether I can discern what are my thoughts and emotions as distinct from yours. Having the boundaries in place and having the sense of continuity are both important for a healthy, functioning ego.

EN: Psychology and enlightenment spirituality have traditionally been viewed as being at cross-purposes and as having irreconcilable aims. Psychology seeks to heal, support and console the fragile, wounded ego. But spiritual practice with the aim of enlightenment views the ego very differently—as the enemy of the spiritual path—and seeks to subvert, transcend and annihilate the ego. How do you, as a transpersonal psychologist attempting to bridge these two worlds, deal with this seeming contradiction?

KP: Well, I think that is really more of a cultural critique than a criticism of psychotherapy. We have such an emphasis on the self in our culture, and as a result we have all these problems of self-esteem. And psychotherapy, as an institution, by and large tends to be very much in the service of the mainstream culture, so it tends to reinforce the values that are being practiced by the mainstream culture. And that’s why there’s this kind of support of the individual self and self-esteem that tends to be the focus of therapy. When we live in a culture where those values are important, then a lot of human suffering in this culture manifests as poor self-esteem and comparing oneself unfavorably to others and so on.

But I think at a basic level, the function of psychotherapy is to help people who have difficulties just living in the world, having relationships successfully, being able to have a career successfully. These are deficiencies in the ego function, and so the purpose of therapy often is to strengthen or do a kind of a substitute developmental facilitation for a person who may not have had these things developed as they were growing up. And I don’t know how this could be in opposition to the aims of spirituality.

EN: Noted transpersonal psychologist Jack Engler made a statement that has come to be regarded as the first commandment of transpersonal theory, which is: “You have to be somebody before you can be nobody.” The thrust of this argument seems to be that self-development occurs in sequential stages, and that one must first develop a strong, healthy and mature ego before one can properly progress to the next step, which is transcending the ego. On the other hand, many approaches to enlightenment view this very ego or sense of somebody-ness as the obstacle on the spiritual path, and view any effort to strengthen or heal the ego as dangerously misguided. How do you understand Engler’s statement?

KP: Well, there is definitely something to what Engler is saying, but of course, it sounds very paradoxical. I actually found myself thinking, when I first ran into his article, “This sounds really weird—that we first spend so much time and effort building something that we then take apart!” But what I have come to think now about his statement is that it is referring to two different meanings of ego that I mentioned in the beginning. The paradox is resolved when we see that the self that we get rid of is not the same self or ego that we spend years in developing. What we are developing is the ego as a function, the ego capacities. Those capacities are what we develop, and what need to be in place before one can really do any serious work in spirituality. So then what is the self that we then are trying to get rid of? Well, it is all these identifications. Of course, then the difficult question is: In the course of development, do we really need to identify with the functions and skills and competencies that we acquire? The capacities and skills need to be there, available. But do we additionally need to identify with them? I am not so sure.

I can certainly see that the slogan that has been identified with Engler, “You have to become somebody before you can be nobody,” can seem to suggest that we are talking about just the identifications. But again, the paradox is resolved once we realize that the ego you “have to have first” is not really the same ego people are trying to get rid of. The two meanings of “ego” are sometimes confused.

EN: Enlightenment is often spoken about as a leap beyond the known and a final abidance in the unknown, and you yourself have written that “tolerance for not knowing is essential in the surrender of the self to a reality greater than itself and its own constructions.” On the other hand, transpersonal theory is one of the most all-embracing schemas for understanding and mapping human experience and evolution, including every dimension from the microcosmic to the macrocosmic that that could possibly entail. In fact, pioneering transpersonal theorist Ken Wilber has a book entitled, A Brief History of Everything! What do you think about the possibility that, from one point of view, being a transpersonal theorist could be the worst imaginable line of work for someone interested in spiritual transformation?

KP: (Laughs) That’s a very interesting viewpoint, very definitely! And it’s something that is kind of on the back of my mind every day because I find it very paradoxical. I think that there are two sides to it, so let me try to address both. Is there any merit to having this kind of a map? I think that there could be a very limited merit in this sense that, suppose you thought that the universe only consisted of Palo Alto here. And then somebody says, “No, there’s a lot more to the world.” And you say, “No, come on, Palo Alto is the universe.” And then they give you a map and say, “Okay, look, this is what I’m talking about. This is a map of it.” And then you say, “Oh wow, I have seen maps of Palo Alto and this looks like a map. Sure, this looks like something bigger. I’d like to go and investigate.” So, in that way, it could awaken and stir up an interest. The map may resonate with something that had up to this point been asleep. And of course, the people who make these maps, they keep telling you that reading the map is no substitute for walking the terrain.

The negative side of this you articulated very beautifully. You know, all the talking and theorizing and writing happens in the mental realm. And as you said, there can be an assimilation or incorporation of the whole spiritual domain into the mental domain where it becomes a subject of discussion and debate and thinking, and one can then get the impression that, “Okay, now I know all about this.” And perhaps one has one’s own experiences and then one compares them to the map and says, “This experience is at such-and-such a stage, so I have one more to go! I’m doing pretty well!” So what is happening is not only that there’s an ego boost that I’m at such a high level, but there’s also a kind of solidification of something that maybe once was alive, an opening that may have happened two years ago, but now I have solidified it. I have turned it into a museum piece. I’ve given it an interpretation and put it on the shelf, and there’s no further inquiry. So there could be an increase in the tendency to be deluded about being on a spiritual journey when one is not really. I think the overall danger is that one may clutter one’s head with all kinds of notions and preconceived ideas that make it then more difficult to carry on the actual inquiry. You know, if you get on a journey and you have a map in your hands, there might be a tendency to look at the map and then compare what you see with the map, and all the while you are missing all the other things that are not on the map. I would emphasize this: that the very nature of the spiritual journey is that it is an uncharted terrain. At some point you have to leave the maps behind totally. The map is not a substitute for the walking, and in fact, the walking is totally, totally different. And as I said, there’s an aspect to it where really, you can’t have a map at all. Actually Sasaki Roshi takes it as far as it goes. He sometimes says that people think that the great way is some kind of road ahead of you. But no, there’s no road. The road comes out of your walking. That’s how the road comes into being, when you walk.