Eric Berne, a Canadian psychiatrist, unveiled a sacred triad of ego states: Parent, Adult, and Child as portals to our scripted destinies. In the esoteric extensions of Transactional Analysis – which Berne created – these ego states crystallise into three archetypal concepts of life: the Taught, Felt, and Thought. This triune progression transcends mere psychology; it unfolds as a mystical pilgrimage from heavy chains of inherited karmic injunctions towards the union with the divine physis, that innate growth force pulsing through every seeking heart.
Behold the Taught concept of life, enshrined within the Parent ego state. This is a vast repository of external impositions etched into the tender neural mandala of childhood. Here dwells the dogmatic exoskeleton – rigid cultural scripts, authoritarian religious commandments, and familial ‘shoulds’ that masquerade as immutable divine law. This is the domain of projected authority where a soul absorbs the collective shadow. Berne identified these as life scripts: preconscious, deterministic narratives dictating trajectories of winning, losing, or hopeless futility.
When contamination reigns, the Parent intrudes upon the Adult, poisoning present awareness with prejudice. Spiritually,this manifests as profound alienation. A soul trapped in performative piety finds authentic communion with the divine supplanted by the terror of wrathful deities. The spirit languishes in duality, projecting omniscience onto external institutions while forsaking inner gnosis and perpetuating cycles of spiritual bypassing.
Yet, beneath this oppressive armature stirs the Felt concept of life, the visceral, untamed symphony of the Child ego state. This is the primal reservoir of internal events and emotions. Here erupts the soul’s innate longing: childlike wonder at the cosmos, visceral terror of abandonment, and ecstatic bliss. This is embodied, Anand, the intuitive divine spark yearning for nondual intimacy.
From this intense alchemical crucible emerges the Thought concept of life, a sovereign and luminous domain of the Adult ego state. This is discerning, here-and-now awareness that meticulously decontaminates intrusions from Parent and Child, weaving them into enlightened harmony. This is no sterile rationality but awakened gnosis; present-centred cognition testing inherited beliefs and emotional impulses against direct, unfiltered reality. In this visionary framework, the Thought heralds true transcendence: awareness as profound mindfulness, spontaneity as liberated response, and intimacy as communion with self, others, and the cosmos. Free from the shadows of contamination, this integrated state dissolves egoic barriers, allowing physis to flow unhindered towards wholeness.
In this exalted realm, the seeker gracefully enters ‘flow,’ that transcendent absorption where self-consciousness evaporates, temporal boundaries dissolve, and action merges with pure being. Flow embodies the experiential apotheosis of the Thought concept: effortless presence and egoic boundaries melting into cosmic rhythm. Here, autonomy begets profound surrender, the integrated Adult dances in harmonious attunement with the Tao and the eternal Now.
Thus, the sacred journey spirals from the Taught’s karmic bondage and contaminating alienation, through the Felt’s passionate yet turbulent awakening, to the Thought’s liberated enlightenment and Flow state transcendence. This is a holy triune path towards script-free existence where contamination yields to integration. In this profound synthesis lies the ultimate cure – not merely psychological, but deeply ontological: uncontaminated intimacy with the Self. Berne suggested that awareness requires living in the here and now, not in the elsewhere.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
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