I enjoy this quote from Bergson for the way that he calibrates the concept of ego, here. There are implications for integral's identification/disidentification/reintegration fulcrums, as well as the formation of state-stages, all contained in this one neat paragraph, for my thinking:
'Pure duration is the form which the succession of our conscious states assumes when our ego lets itself live, and when it refrains from separating it's present state from its former states. For this purpose it need not be entirely absorbed in the passing sensation or idea; for then, on the contrary, it would no longer endure. Nor need it forget its former states: it is enough that, recalling these states, it does not set them alongside its actual state as one point alongside another, but forms both the past and the present states into an organic whole, as happens when we recall the notes of a tune, melting, so to speak, into one another'. (Bergson, 2001, p.100)
In this way, the past, present and future are blended into a unity, without denial, without subordination. The past, present and future can be apprehended perhaps as a movement, a deepening and ripening of quality and intensity. Non-spatialised, non-representational, distinctly felt. Bergson's concept of identity does not entail the concept of a separate entity - free from autopoiesis, all boundaries, all concepts of boundaries, are broken, and direct experience in-forms meaning. Fluid processes, affective responses, the body and the mind, all at once, present, is identity.
When I come across something like this there is this thrill that runs through my whole being - more subtle than an 'aha!' moment, I become more alive by virtue of what I am given to see.
Ref:
Bergson, H. (2001). Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. New York: Dover
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