the swarming throng of "I"

 

 

 

 

 

 

The secret teachings lead the pupil further. 

They teach him to look, with the same serene indifference, 

at the incessant working of his mind and the physical activity 

displayed by the body. 

 

He ought to succeed in understanding, in noting that nothing

 of all that is from him, is him. 

He, physically and mentally,

 is a multitude of others.

This "multitude of others" includes the material elements—

the ground, one might say—which he owes to his heredity,

 his atavism, then those which he has ingested, which he has inhaled 

from before his birth, by the help of which his body was formed, 

and which, assimilated by him, have become, with the complex forces 

inherent in them, constituent parts of his being.

On the mental plane, this "multitude of others" includes many beings

 who are his contemporaries: people he consorts with, with whom he chats, 

whose actions he watches. 

 

Thus a continual inhibition is at work while the individual absorbs

 a part of the various energies given off by those with whom he is in contact, 

and these incongruous energies, installing themselves in that which

 he considers his "I", 

form there a swarming throng.

~ Alexandra David-Néel and Lama Yongten
frjom The Secret Oral Teachings

 in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

 

art from A detail from the Sea Journey: 

People Without Borders by Erub/Lifou 

Project, commissioned for APT9.

 

 with thanks to Love is a Place