When one thinks of Self (mySelf, thySelf, herSelf, himSelf, theirSelf and so on), it seems to point to an entity who is in control and calling shots in the region of influence of that Self. “Region of influence of Self” would include mind, body and perhaps some instrument that is at the moment an extension of the Self’s body (for eg. hammer the person is holing, or a car the person is driving). For exerting the influence in its region, the Self has at its disposal all the skills, memories, concepts, knowledge, attitudes accumulated in its kitty.
Simply put, conventional notion of Self refers to this whole infrastructure of mind, body, tools, skills, memories, concepts, knowledge, attitudes, name, position, social standing and so on which work together in some unique way to be in control of and have the ability to call shots in the region of influence of that Self.
Since we think of each Self to be unique, we are probably of the opinion that Self is permanent-and-separate from everything else, which includes the mind, body, tools, skills, memories, concepts, knowledge, attitudes, name, position, social standing and so on. We harbour the notion that while a Self has at its disposal all of these things, it is nevertheless separate and seemingly permanent. Because it is permanent, there seems to be this urge to keep pleasing it. And because it is separate, it lies at a distance. And it is from that distance the Self operates by picking and choosing to leverage moment -by-moment, a specific set of tools, skills, memories, concepts, knowledge, attitudes, body parts, social standing or position to exert influence in the region around it.
Why exactly does there need to be an exertion of influence? It’s because stuff keeps happening in the world and as a function of that there are action and reaction loops, some of which happens around people in which case the action and reaction loops involve them. It’s possible that as you read this blog post, you may be finding thoughts and reactions in your space.
The currently accepted theory is that people operate in the world from their separate-and-permanent or unique Selves.
In this post, I want to question whether there is a need for the notion-of-Self, as in permanent-and-separate-Self, for people to be in the action-reaction loops of the world. Is the Self that we are unique, distinct and choicefully put together? Or does it causally happen? To put this in another way, is the notion-of-Self (or the existence of unique-Self or permanent-and-separate-Self) the only way to explain the function of a human-being?
Over a period of time we may have come to the conclusion that each of us have a separate-and-permanent-Self, who is independent of the causal universe we inhabit. We may also believe that the Self that we are is unique and choicefully put together with a lot of carefully considered effort.
This kind of understanding leads us to believe that we are constantly weighing options and choosing our responses – ALL THE TIME! While it is true that we do weigh options and choose some of the time; if we reflect (even just a teeny tiny bit) we can easily notice that we do not do it all the time. Firstly, the options we weigh are those that show up automatically in our “head” whenever something happens. Are we sure that the options that show up are objective and dispassionate? Do we always pause and dig for more options or do we mostly conclude that whatever pat-options show up in the head are the only options we have at our disposal? And secondly; perhaps we actively weigh options and choose whenever we are presented with a fresh situation. By fresh, I mean the kind of situation we have never ever faced before OR the kind of situation which we may have faced before but the context or impact of our response in that situation has a brand new connotation than what it was when we first faced that situation. Nevertheless, for the most part we can say that we don’t really weigh options and choose all the time, and that we are mostly just acting out of our programming, isn’t it?
When I say “acting out of our programming”, I mean that the organism that we are seems to already know how to respond to a given situation. Let’s take some extreme examples to begin with, because they are easy to study.
- When our hand touches a hot plate, there is a reflex action to pull the hand back.
- When dust collects in the nose, sneeze automatically happens.
- When we eat, digestion automatically happens (we are in fact blissfully unaware of this process all together)
- While eating, if what’s eaten is too spicy or too hot, spitting out the food happens automatically.
- When we jog or run, heartbeat and breathing picks up pace automatically.
- When we stop running, heartbeat and breathing resumes normal pace automatically.
- When we jog/run/walk, left leg and then right leg moves in a cyclic way — automatically.
- A child figures out how to walk — automatically, even before it constructs itself as separate or unique!
- When we open a book to read, eyes track words and create experience of meaningful sentences in the mind — automatically! And every once in a while, distracting thoughts creep in — again automatically!
In each of the above cases, we are clearly not in control of the stimulus and response. In fact, in some cases we become aware of the stimulus and the split-second-response, only after the response has already been deployed. Clearly, we don’t need the notion-of-Self (as in permanent-and-separate-Self or unique-Self) to explain or understand action-reaction loops outlined above.
Everybody gets distracted while reading, we don’t need separate-and-permanent-Self for that distraction to occur. Every child learns to walk sooner or later, the child itself doesn’t care about being a permanent-and-separate-Self to accomplish that.
Now let’s take a few touchy examples:
- You are working on your laptop with total focus and attention, and your spouse walks into the room and starts a totally unrelated conversation without regard for your work …
- You happen to notice your favourite movie star at the Airport …
- You plan a date with your spouse, and they cancel at the last moment …
- You propose marriage to your lover but they don’t reciprocate …
- You win a lottery …
- You get robbed …
- You get that promotion …
- You are denied that promotion …
- A loved one in the family passes away …
- Your child was just born …
- You just found out that you are pregnant …
- Someone compliments you, publicly in front of many people including those who have been vocal critics of you …
- Someone harshly criticises you …
- You hear/read a point of view that is totally contradicting to your point of view …
- Your lover marries your best friend …
- Your child comes out top in the class …
- Your child is unable to find a job, while all her/his friends have multiple offers …
- Your spouse cheats on you …
- A movie you watched glorifies something you detest …
- A political leader you have no hots for keeps winning elections …
- An event occurs and it pushes you into contemplation or deep reflection …
- You manage to raise lot of money for your start-up …
- You lost a lot of money in your business …
In each of the above cases, some reaction gets generated from your side. But, whatever reaction happens, kind of automatically happens doesn’t it?
While we can make peace with the notion that a sense of permanent-and-separate-Self or unique-Self is not required for dealing with those extreme cases (sneezing, hot-plate etc); we tend to believe that a strong sense of permanent-and-separate-Self or unique-Self is absolutely necessary and is surely in operation while dealing with the touchy ones. But just for the sake of academic interest, take a step back and observe this whole thing from a distance and reevaluate theories of the existence of permanent-and-separate-Self or unique-Self. Do it now …. is a new perspective opening up for you?
During mediation, I have come to see how the fomenting of mental-images, mental-talk (aka thoughts and emotions) in response to body sensations seems to be on auto-pilot all the time. Things just arise and pass away all by themselves — I can’t seem to do squat about them. But interestingly, if I simply watch them arise and pass away, they seem to automagically moderate themselves. This whole arising and passing away and moderation, all seem to be on auto-pilot!
Do we need the concept of permanent-and-separate-Self or unique-Self to explain this auto-pilot? Is “permanent-and-separate or unique Self” the only way to explain this stimulus-response-pensive system? Especially in an era where we can see machines generating ideas (ChatGPT), do we really still need to stick to the notion that there is a Self that is holding all the threads and calling all the shots? Architecture of LLMs have clearly shown how behaviour of GPTs are a function of the data they are trained on. While GPTs do showcase behavior, we don’t need them to have a permanent-and-separate-Self for that function, do we? They why hold on to the idea that there is a permanent-and-separate-Self or even a transient-and-embedded-Self that is running the show? What if it’s all simply cause-and-effect influenced by the data (past) each person is “trained on” (or exposed to) and the human-organism that each person is causally participating in all of it using that data?
For sure, a sense of permanent-and-separate-Self is totally unnecessary for a lot of things we do in life. For example,
- While driving a vehicle
- While eating
- While cooking
- While working out at the gym
- While studying
- While meditating
- While listening to others
- While speaking
- While experiencing pain-in-the-body upon getting hurt
- While suffering from a headache
- While suffering from an illness or hospitalisation
These activities work/function just fine, by themselves, without any permanent-and-separate-Self driving it. They are simply a series of cascading-cause-effect phenomenon. One can totally be sick or suffer a headache or drive a car or cook without throwing the whole infrastructure of permanent-and-separate-Self into the mix, isn’t it?
Having seen what’s going on in “the mind” when I meditate, I am now inclined to consider, more than ever before, that a sense of permanent-and-separate-Self or unique-Self is totally unnecessary for experiencing and/or explaining anything about me (or whatever is happening around this sensation-space I seem to be calling as me for all this time).
There is likely no-Self. We are all just human-species capable of doing what we do — without permanent-and-separate-Selves driving us.
As insightful as this is, and even though I am writing this blog —- I am not fully onboard with this idea as yet, but I am increasingly drawn towards the perspective of no-permanent-or-separate-Self or no-unique-Self, or just no-Self.
From the perspective of no-Self, it seems to be far more easy to deal with bugs that show up. Bad behaviour, frustrations, stressful circumstances, body pains, emotional trauma, body illness, bruises, cuts and so on are simply impersonal bunch of sensations that causally arise and pass away on their own. I don’t have to be a permanent-and-separate or unique Self to experience them. Even without throwing the massive infrastructure of Self into the mix, I can acknowledge, observe and attend-to them, because the organism that I am (human-species) is perfectly capable of doing it. On the contrary, bringing Self into the picture leads me on a path that makes it an obligation to identify with the bugs as me. Throwing the full weight of permanent-and-separate-Self (as an infrastructure) into the mix makes it all the more complicated (and if I may add, painful) to acknowledge, observe and attend-to the bug in question.
As enticing and beneficial as this perspective is, I haven’t yet fully hopped on to that mode yet, because this knowledge of no-Self is still inferential for me and not yet experiential. Let me explain what I mean by that. There was a time when “transientness of sensations” was only known intellectually to me. But not anymore! During my meditation sittings, I have come to experience arising-and-passing-away (A&P) of body sensations directly, therefore I don’t need intellectual understanding of that anymore. However, the understanding of suffering and no-Self is not crystal clear like the way A&P is. The understanding is partly experiential, but mostly interpolated or inferential. As long as I am understanding no-Self with my head, I will not know it as truth and therefore not be locked into that mode. For that to happen, I suppose I will have to look under every rock there is to look under and know it by experience that there really is no Self.
Until then, I will have to make do with the idea of separate-and-permanent-Self and work on Self-improvement and other hip and hot stuff like that, especially since I have come to know and heavily invested in the idea of mySelf for so long — even if I have now come to see very closely just how much suffering this perspective of permanent-and-separate-Self creates.