ABSTRACT
Self-awareness, from the point of view of traditional metaphysics, is not simply a biological fact of life common to all human beings. There is more than one level of meaning to ‘self’ and more than one degree of awareness. Man is aware of his self or ego, but one also speaks of self-control, and therefore implies even in daily life the presence of another self which controls the lower self, for as asserted by so many Christian authorities duo sunt in homine. Tradition, therefore, speaks clearly of the distinction between the self and the Self, or the self and the Spirit which is the first reflection of the Ultimate Self; hence the primary distinction between anima and spiritus or al-nafs and alrū? of Islamic thought and the emphasis upon the fact that there is within every man both an outer and an inner man, a lower self and a higher one. That is why also tradition speaks of the self as being totally distinct from the Ultimate Self, from Ātman or ousia, and yet as a reflection of it and as the solar gate through which man must pass to reach the Self. Traditional metaphysics is in fact primarily an autology, to quote A.K.Coomaraswamy,2 for to know is ultimately to know the Self. The adīth, “He who knoweth himself knoweth his Lord,” attests on the highest level to this basic truth.
