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20 SPIRIT AND THE MIND
different and, usually, special and important. A uniquely and distinctly human attribute, it is an outgrowth of man’s higher- order level of awareness—characterized by his awareness of being aware, his higher intellect and abstract thinking ability, his expanded appreciation of himself as a mental being, and his insight into his mortality and finiteness. Partly fashioned by our lower animal desires and needs, the sense of ego-identity includes an awareness of our higher mental needs as well, such as social needs and the higher- order, more selfless needs (such as the need to be moral) described by Maslow.
Fear of mind-ego dissolution is more profound and of a different nature than the fear of body death. Suicide reveals that fear of mind— ego dissolution is more fundamental than the fear of physical death alone. It is the fear of no mind, of being lost in an overwhelming mystery without meaning—the possibility of non-being, of nothingness. We protect ego integration with every means available, including deluding ourselves about the nature of reality if it threatens ego safety.
This fear has been referred to by the existentialists as angst, or death-terror (see the quote by Ken Wilber in Chapter 4). I chose to call it mortal fear because that word meets all the various dictionary definitions for this quintessential fear: being uniquely human, a fear about death, a fear which even causes death in its devastating impact, and which keeps us mortal, bound to death, by frightening us from reaching for our immortality.
It has two aspects. First is the fear of our inherent separateness and aloneness in the face of ultimate physical extinction. More awesome still is the fear of losing even this brief hold on any sense of identity at all.
I’d like to emphasize from the start, you see, that this is no ordinary fear. And although we will talk about it in theoretical, philosophical and psychological terms, let’s not be mistaken into thinking that it is limited to these dimensions only. Mortal fear prevents us from achieving higher levels of consciousness and enslaves us to the bondage of duality. It stands like a grotesque mythological dragon guarding the entrance to a vast kingdom (Universal Consciousness), which holds treasures beyond imagination. If we have the courage to challenge this dragon and slay it, if we can face the force of this fear and remain unaffected by the possibility of non-being and egoless-ness, the rewards are greater than any psychological state so far described by the behavioral sciences.