Q. So the individual does not exist as an isolated entity. But does not the personality exist as a unique part of the whole?
A. The person is really only persona, mask, but it has come to be synonymous with the idea of an individual, separate and continuous entity. The personality is not the constant we imagine it to be.
In reality, it is only a temporary re-orchestration of all our senses, imagination, and intelligence, according to each situation. There is no repetition in life, and each re-orchestration is unique and original like the design in a kaleidoscope.
The mistake is to identify with the personality, to conceptualize it in memory and then take ourselves for this collection of crystallized images rather than letting all emotions, perceptions, and thoughts arise and die in us. We are in the theatre watching our own play on stage. The actor is always 'behind' his persona. He seems to be completely lost in suffering, in being a hero, a lover, a rascal, but all these appearances take place in global presence.
This presence is not a detached attitude, a witnessing position. It is not a feeling of separateness, of being 'outside'. It is the presence of wholeness and love, out of which all comes. When no situation calls for an activity, we remain in emptiness of activity, in this Presence.
- Jean Klein, Who Am I?
