The greatest thought the mind can conceive is the perception of God, our totality is known as the soul. God breathed his spirit into man, the essence strives towards its roots and man strives towards his creator. This striving is manifested as the will; it is only the will of humans that contains the capacity to generalise and conceive and so it is only humans that can attain a state of spiritual enlightenment, harmony with God. This is the state in which the self equates with the greatest being, soul, absolute perception of God to dissolve all boundaries of transcendence and annihilate form to pure singularity.
In my philosophy a duality of nature is apparent with singularity and form, however its illusory nature has been evident from inception with naming of 'singularity'. Forms subsist as part of singularity, truly only it exists. This may seem contradictory to my previous article in which I state that singularity must project form to exist, the illusion I speak of is in mistaking form for true reality. In attaining our highest possible state through realisation of an absolute and singular truth we ourselves subsist with God and our dual nature is dissolved. This is what Al-Ghazali meant we he stated that 'The joy of the drop is to die in the river'.
What prevents ourselves from attaining this highest state is the existence of an 'ego'. Our mind occupies a level of awareness inside the soul, a sphere of cognition - that is to say the singularity which we identify as ourselves. The lowest animal state is the world of forms, continuously seeking the part and not the whole. In this case the sphere of cognition is only material reality, and the abstract or transcendental ideal is forsaken - not due to a lack of knowledge; for all knowledge exists in the sea of being, but due to a lack of awareness of our true nature. The lack of awareness stems from a mismatch of form with singularity, recall our discourses on Skolem's Paradox and shadows as being illusions of singularity. When we identify our true self with the body, or even mind - anything other than the soul, an ego is produced.
The extent of the ego is proportional to the magnitude of ignorance. The ego of most humans predominantly lies in a repressed animal state, in works of psychology this is usually identified as the source of our actions, and that morality and meaning originates from social conditioning. My philosophy has vehemently argued against this point of view and taught that our true nature lies within, introspection and thought lead to totality of being and true fulfillment. The ego can also pervade into mental spirit, remind yourself that the mind is a manifestation of the will - each thought stems from the striving to singularity. The ego is the source of the 'I', truly there is no 'I' which represents a disunity from oneness; multiplicity is merely an illusion. The 'I' leads to selfish behaviour, manifested as pride in power and shame in humiliation. All these modes of thought lead to evil in one way or another, and must be abandoned if one is to attain the singular and transcendental truth grounded in the heart of being rather than subjective perception.
At any given moment our mental state is comprised of a frame of cognition of reality, that is a particular sphere of awareness within the vast superstructure of the mental spirit. This sphere of awareness is usually largely grounded in external material reality, even though one is not explicitly equating this with the self they are explicitly equating it with a singularity of being, and thus implicitly with the self. Mental thought structure obeys similar premises, the existence of various thoughts is equated with the mind at a particular instance.
The learned will understand that this is simply an actuation of potentiality, that all thought and all perception exist within the mind but that we become aware of it in any given moment. This knowledge allows one to transcend into a 'meta-state', where they live in reality but understand its illusory nature at the same time. They hold the transcendental ideal firmly as the seed of their consciousness and see each thought and action as being shaped by this will. The ego still exists but the higher self - the soul, has been realised as existing and deep contemplation may provide intense spiritual insight and truth from this source.
This touches on a deeper topic, that the ego is not inherent evil to be dispelled, but that the ego at a fundamental level manifests as the lenses of human perception of cognisant reality. The lenses of space and time, causality, duality, and all other modes of thought the mind is acquainted with in the process of cognition. The dissolution of the ego in spiritual transcendence is not permanent in the temporal realm, though it is true that in higher reality above time, awareness simply is in itself and not dependent upon the constrains of the universe. The ego is the body of perception in this life, though what is this life other than a leaf in the wind guided by winds of fate far greater than its limited perception. Our life as form of its singularity, the mother tree resting upon the ground of divine will.
With the dissolution of the ego one transcends to become their higher state, in which each thought and action can be observed as forms originating fundamentally from the material body and influencing the mind. This influence can be totally destroyed when the mind becomes soul, when meta-state becomes singularity, and death becomes life.
