Terror

Terror usually has to do with survival, so it is not just a matter of unconscious material. When people have terror, they are afraid that they are going to die, or that they are going to disappear. The loss of the sense of self comes after that. The self in the beginning is an ego self, what is called the personality, with its identity. If you follow it, you realize that it can go, disappear, and there is a terror about letting go of that. That is when you shake in your boots. When that goes, there is peace. Then there is the discovery of the essential or true self. The real self is made out of pure Essence and consciousness. It is luminous and pure and the source of love, compassion and goodness, with a sense of timelessness and spacelessness. That identity can go to. When that goes, there is another experience of peace, which has to do with nonexistence. When that happens, there is the possibility of the arising of another identity, which we call the Supreme Identity, for this identity is the self of the whole universe. The true identity is a reflection of a more universal, boundless identity, which is the nature of all that there is. You see yourself as everything, as the source of everything not merely the source of your own body and thoughts. Then there is the possibility of losing even this cosmic self. This results in a new experience of peace, which is the experience of selflessness. Then there is no self to see you or anything: all that exists is ultimately empty and selfless. Then even that can go. The selflessness can go, which means going through fear and terror again. The selflessness goes because even selflessness is a concept. What is left then is absence, which is not anything left. (Diamond Heart Book 4, pg 130)