Self transformation is the aim of religious, spiritual, and existential practices and a general expression for other personal modifications. The term has no agreed meaning because it depends on how its component words are interpreted. It usually refers to practices derived from Eastern religions with a conception of self (see Self-Religion, the Self, and Self) very different from western understandings. Its various uses carry assumptions about the nature of human existence and the final purpose of human life.
All current uses of the term suggest a desire for self improvement. It can happen as a developmental process aided by social rites of passage (e.g. graduation, marriage, divorce); through fashion, body modification (e.g. bodybuilding, tattoos, body piercing, weight loss, cosmetic surgery) and artistic creativity including writing. It can be self-repair or liberation in the face of physical and emotional suffering: healing without cure is one of its forms. Several websites describe it as ‘inner alchemy’. It is the aim of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. It sometimes refers to the personal component in wider changes of social consciousness (e.g. towards care for the environment or action against consumerism). For followers of Nietzsche, it is an achievement of the will to power: the creation of the ideal self, or over-man. Like literary uses of the term metamorphosis, each of these aims can be seen as metaphors for other changes a person consciously or unconsciously desires, so that even its most mundane forms can be considered ‘pre-spiritual’.
The term is not synonymous with the related New Age (see New Age Movement) expressions self-help, self-actualization and self-empowerment, all of which imply individual responsibility for self-fulfilment. Even New Agers disagree about the place of the (socially conditioned) ego in their quest for Enlightenment. Most seek to transcend it (through meditative practices and/or work benefitting people and nature) but for those on the ‘prosperity wing’ of the movement, ego is unproblematic. Self-spirituality, a similar New Age term, is directed towards self-perfection (or salvation) through discovering a spiritual ‘essence’ within the self. It presupposes that the resulting transformation will cast off the effects of social conditioning. It does not recognize that even this view of the self is a social construction.
The expression is most often found in explicitly religious texts. It is always related to a growing awareness of truth, through study, meditation, or other disciplined practice. In Buddhism it is the path towards liberation from suffering and to personal and community peace. It is the underlying project of Taoism which encourages turning to others to learn about self. In Judaism it begins with the recognition that each person is guilty of sin. In
Christianity, this sinful and suffering self can be transformed through love; not to transcend self, but to become a new, truer self. Mahatma Gandhi used the expression to mean self-transcendence for the good of the larger community. In Hinduism, self-transformation comes about through increasing awareness of the transience of physical phenomena. It is effected at the levels of karma (action), jnana (wisdom) and bhakti (devotion), all of which require dedicated practice. In yoga, transformation (parinama) is a qualitative change towards one-pointed attention leading to an ultimate state of refinement in which the yogi reaches Self (atman): oneness, soul, Lord, truth. It is probably through the translation of this word (parinama) that these meanings of self transformation became known in the west (e.g. through Gurdjieff (see Gurdjief, George Ivanovitch)).
There is evidence of attempts to link the religious meaning of the term with secular ‘stress management’. For example, Sethi (1990-1) describes a wide variety of religious meditation practices as ‘techniques of self-transformation’ (which they are) but primarily as ‘strategies for coping with stress and burn-out’ (which was never their main intention). This illustrates the problems associated with the phrase ‘self-transformation’. Its meaning slides between antithetical world views: the western materialist understanding of the individual as having a real existence through time (and sometimes eternity) and the eastern conception of self as an illusion to be overcome by deeper awareness that there is only one reality, which is Self. When self-transformation is taken in its eastern sense, it is not usually connected with ideas of social transformation or transformation of consciousness beyond the individual. Yet in some New Age thinking self transformation is a part of a wider change of consciousness that is leading to a new era for humanity.
