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Psychic Development

The Caretaker Personality

Psychic Development - The Caretaker Personality

Today is the 5th of November. It's around 7:30 p.m. I'm sitting here in the middle of eternity, thinking about nirvana, thinking about reality, wondering how it all came to be this way.

Who are you? How do you think of yourself? Do you think of yourself as a particular person with a particular view on life-certain things you believe in, other things you aren't sure about, other things that you definitely don't believe in? How do you feel about sex, money, God, religion, politics, the president? In other words, are you you because of what you feel and believe? Is that what makes you you? In other words, how do you differentiate yourself from someone else? I mean, what is uniquely you? Let's say, for example, that you believe and feel exactly the same way about everything that someone else does. Are you them? Are they you? Well you would say, "Probably not. No, of course, we just believe the same things and think the same things, but I'm still me." Well, what is it that makes you you? "Well, uh, I have a different body." Well, how do you know that there isn't one being with two different bodies? Sound ridiculous? Well, isn't the whole cosmos, all of eternity, all of the planets and universes and the beings the body of God, the body of existence? What is it that is life in us?

You're just made up of light. When you go in there all the way you're nothing but light, and the thing that you think of as being yourself, that part of your being, is just like clothing. It just comes on and off.

In psychic development, there is an explanation, in a way of speaking, for this. Advanced perceivers have found that as they have dug deeper and deeper into that which we are, as you gradually take off the layers of clothing-you start with the overcoat which is the outer personality, and then you come down to the shirt and pants, or skirt and blouse, and then, which is just the way that you feel about things that are very deep and unspoken, then you get down to the underwear level, your deepest and most intimate feelings and intuitions, and then when we take even that off-there you are, naked as can be. Well, what are you?

Nothing in particular, advanced perceivers say. You're nothing in particular; that is to say, you are composed of, and part of, all things. You're just made up of light. When you go in there all the way you're nothing but light, and the thing that you think of as being yourself, that part of your being, is just like clothing. It just comes on and off. Most people wear their clothing for a whole lifetime and actually they add to their ensemble, and they start out, just like getting dressed. When you're very young you start out and you put on your first shell personalities, and then gradually they evolve and develop through experiences you have, through conditioning, all kinds of things gradually cause you to be or not be a certain way. You're molded by life and your experiences.

If you believe in reincarnation, of course, then you feel that your experiences are not necessarily limited to this lifetime, but that actually your personality, or something about you that's within you, has been with you for longer than that. You've been you, or formations of yourself, for a long time, and while no personality exactly repeats itself from one life into another, there are still certain carryovers that occur, certain parts of us that definitely remain the same-feelings, intuitions, emotional complexes that carry on from one lifetime to another, and sometimes those tendencies will come forward more in one lifetime than another. In one lifetime the shell personality, the personality that you pick up in that particular incarnation, may just dominate for the whole lifetime. In another lifetime that shell personality may be almost impossible to get through. The deeper tendencies, be they evolved or not, will just not assert themselves, or they will, they'll come through totally at a certain age. The shell personality will literally burn away, and then the deeper and more complex selves, the structures of those selves from other lifetimes, will reassert themselves.

Advanced seers believe that we are not just one type of being. Rather, they believe that we are composed of many different beings, we have many different selves within us. In other words, when you scrape the surface down, and see what we really are, we're nothing in particular, or you could say we all contain everything. There's a basic substance that is eternity. It's consciousness, knowledge, awareness. You could call it God or nirvana or nothing or anything you want to, and that basic substance is the universe. That substance takes on different forms and formations. That pure limitless awareness segments itself into particular frequencies of energy and light and attention, and those particular frequencies of energy and light and attention form self-awareness, that is to say, the part of you that says, "I am."

Psychic development is a process that an individual engages in, in which they gradually work their way through the shell or surface personality that they've developed in this life. The reason that you would do this is because you feel that it's a limited personality, as any personality is. There are deeper and more developed aspects of your being, which this surface personality structure that you've evolved in this lifetime is blocking. A surface personality structure is fine to start our life off with. It gives us a description of the world; we're able to function as normal human beings in a civilization, but gradually it has to fall away so that the more advanced and developed essence of our being can come forward. That's when we begin to become more knowledgeable, more aware and hopefully funnier.

Rama smiling with his arms crossed wearing a designer suit
Seeing is the ability to tell what really is.

The works of Rama – Dr. Frederick Lenz are reprinted or included here with permission from

The Frederick P. Lenz Foundation for American Buddhism.