Is there a you that is independent of your thoughts, emotions, and reactions? Or is the self just a symbol of ourselves?
We commonly feel that we are the thinker of our thoughts, the one who feels feelings. But is this self actually producing thoughts and feelings? Or are these feelings happening to nobody, just a movement without a center. The feeling of having a self could be just another feeling.
That’s not to say that this illusion is futile. Experiencing a self may have benefits for the way we think and act.
While out for a walk or not focused on anything in particular, we may notice our thinking moving in a certain way. Even though we are not preoccupied with something outside ourselves, there may be a certain inward preoccupation. It’s undeniable that a major focus of our thinking is in relation to ourselves. If we look at it, this thinking seems to be happening automatically without conscious intention, before there is awareness of it. Me simply seems to be a fact, it is the ground of our existence.
But have we ever stopped to actually look? Since this movement is so prevalent in our daily lives, we have to ask ourselves: is this movement not so much about us, but actually is us?
Could it be that there is no separate us apart from this movement of thinking? If there is not this movement of self-concern, is there a self at all? This seems to give a different meaning to the postulate from Rene Descartes “I think, therefore I am”. Habitual thinking about myself may create and reinforce the sense of me, not the other way around.
Here are 6 short videos which are a must-watch for anybody interested in this topic:
Thought and Consciousness
Jiddu Krishnamurti
First of all what is thinking, what is thought, and what is consciousness? Are the two different? When you say, what is the relationship between thought and consciousness, it implies, does it not, that there are two different entities, or two different movements. We are trying to find out, the questioner tries to find out, what is the relationship between thought and consciousness.
So first of all we have to consider together what is thought, what is this whole question of thinking upon which all our conduct, our activity, political, religious, economic, social and all other factors of life, are based on thought. Thought is part of emotions, sentiment, reactions, the recognition of those reactions and so on. And what is consciousness? When we use the word ‘consciousness’, to be conscious of something, to be aware of, to be able to recognise, to understand, to have a whole field in which the mind is operating. That is more or less what we mean by consciousness. And the questioner says: what is the relationship between the two?
I’m A Strange Loop
Douglas Hofstadter
Consider this: you’re the most real thing in your life. You’re at the center of every experience you’ve ever had. Every sight, smell, taste, feeling, and memory have been mediated by your senses. And yet, when we start to investigate what exactly is going on in the mind when we say “I”, something trippy happens. The concrete conviction of who you are, who “I” is, starts to crumble. Not only that, but the very reality of “I” comes into question. Follow this thread far enough, and you run smack into a paradox.
This is known as the paradox of self, and its conclusion is equal parts fascinating and unsettling. It argues that although we know intuitively that there is an “I,” we can’t empirically prove it without referring back to ourselves. Your self, your “I,” whatever you want to call it – confirms and reinforces its own realness. But if the reality of the self is founded upon a recursive logic, you have to wonder: How reasonable is it to believe in a self? How real are you?
Is There a Real You?
Julian Baggini
We have a common-sense idea that there is a core or essence of ourselves to be discovered. And that this is kind of a permanent truth about ourselves, something that’s the same throughout life. Well, that’s the idea I want to challenge.
It’s the shift between thinking of yourself as a thing which has all the experiences of life, and thinking of yourself as simply that collection of all experiences in life. You are the sum of your parts.
How is Personal Identity Maintained?
Susan Blackmore
The illusion of continuity is only created when you look for it, when you ask yourself: can I remember what I did this morning? or, can I remember when I was a kid? Because this brain can pull up memories, you make this story of “I have lived this life”, and you call that “me”.
The Self Is an Illusion
Sam Harris
The sense of being an ego, an “I”, a thinker of thoughts in addition to the thoughts. An experiencer in addition to the experience. The sense that we all have of riding around inside our heads as a kind of a passenger in the vehicle of the body… Now that sense of being a subject, a locus of consciousness inside the head is an illusion. It makes no neuro-anatomical sense. There’s no place in the brain for your ego to be hiding.
The Ego Tunnel
Thomas Metzinger
It has now become clear that we will never solve the philosophical puzzle of consciousness if we don’t come to terms with this simple proposition: that to the best of our current knowledge there is no-thing, no indivisible entity, that is us, neither in the brain nor in some metaphysical realm beyond this world. So when we speak of conscious experience as a subjective phenomenon, what is the entity having these experiences?
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What a great collection of video clips. Thank you. This helped me too get a better understanding of how “I” construct this false belief of being some entity with a body that is thinking things.
The body whose cells have a life cycle of a few years is quite literally a wave of substances moving through time; material pulled from the earth, incorporated – made corporeal – only to be later dropped back down. The body is a form and not a fixed object, effectively an idea or blueprint that incoming molecules learn and inherit as they in turn leave it to others.
Psychologically too the self is a process rather than an object: we are at the ocean’s edge, repetitively and compulsively inscribing in the sand a circle of self around us as the tide of being, the here and now, floods in to erase it time and time again.
We think of ourselves as some kind of bucket containing our thoughts and memories not realizing the bucket too is a mental creation with no objective reality. Essentially we are our thinking processes here and now, not the sum or history of them but their present moment activity. What we think about in our daily life we are.
Our thoughts are simply what we are; a shifting chaos of identity, gratification, fears and habit. What we think is fixed and solid changes every second we’re alive, usually in ways we’re completely unaware of.
Hi….may I suggest you read Suzanne Segal’s work (if you haven’t already) Cheers….. https://realization.org/p/suzanne-segal/segal.collision.html
Because of memory and causal analysis, we can reason, reflection and introspection.
But when we grow up, these gradually become far from the reality and they themselves become the fact and “truth”.
With the knowledge of the things around us, we believe and rely on our “intelligence”.
But the real intelligence of ourselves, is in slumber.
As an individual physically, we never end self-searching.
We grasp our thoughts, feelings, motivations, experiences and so on and think that that’re “me”.
Yes, thoughts, feelings, they are belong to me and they are changing. I’m not just the thinker.
I am more than that. I don’t think “You are the sum of your parts.” We are connected with each other and with the world.
I don’t call that “self”. We are the Tao.
About oneself, there are still things that are unsayable, non-perceptible.
We are blinded by “me” or “self”.
Is there a real you? Well the talk is pretty good. I found it really good. However when we say that we are there but changing….but there can we pin point any moment? To say we are there then we are dividing the the ‘you’ in to smaller aggregates & saying that smaller part is there. Is that the case or are we timelessly in movement? So a ‘me’ or a ‘you’ is a complete illusion? This is interesting because a fundamental truth in the Buddhist teaching is ‘annatta’. Krishnamurti said the same thing. So while living the smaller aggregates are there but the notion of ‘me’ is a collection. Always a collection. Therefore an illusion. So the consciousness can go on(after death) but there is no no such thing as ‘I’ continuing. because such a thing is there now even, never there at any moment unless as imagination. Thank you.
Indeed a revelation for me on how I interpret myself based on the stories that been narrated to me … the sum total of my desires, experiences, sensations and belief… Thanks nice collections
Great collection of clips! Thank you! Sam Harris is on one of my heroes, but I have found his “self is an illusion” abrasive and frustrating as if trying to make square semantic pegs fit into round semantic holes. While Same presents convincing arguments for his theory, I feel as though I have taken a trip down the rabbit hole:
” . . .When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen’s off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head
Feed your head ”
~ White Rabbit, Jefferson Airplane
After reading “Waking up,” I did a word search, and discovered to no unsurprisingly that the book contains no fewer than 1,500 instances of the pronouns “I, she, he, and we.” That is a whole lotta jibber-jabber pointing to something that supposedly dos not exist! And even if were to look in on Sam, deep in meditation, rising a few inches off his cushion, no doubt, the question fairly screams “Who the hell is that meditating?” Me thinks it could be Sam. And if we go a bit further and speculate that Sam may be so deep in meditation that he is having a “spiritual” experience where he has “transcended” his sense of self, exactly who is it that is having this experience? At the risk of putting words in his mouth, he might describe his experience something to the effect of “I lost my sense of self for a time.”
I doubt that Same and I are so very far apart, really. But I think is semantics set sucks, and makes a possibly valuable lesson confusing and unhelpful outside of an elite group of deep meditators. Maybe.
On the other hand, I found Mr. Baggini’s idea of self a process, (paraphrasing) as a unified whole, a total moving system to be refreshing and much more “user friendly.”
Oh, sorry. The last sentence in my earlier comment I meant to say- because such a thing is not there now even(not such a thing is there now even!!)
That is, this thing of a soul is never there at any moment either when we suffer or not suffer. Or even if there is existence in a higher dimension. A soul cannot be there. Simply because things change every moment. There can be life which is impersonal-so no soul!!
As somebody said here the self is only a process-a thought process. This thought process which has actual material reality in the brain causes the illusion that ‘I’ exist. So it is not there now also or at any point. Nowhere in the universe can there be such a thing. Not even if something of the consciousness goes on after death!!
So when some one raises here the question-
‘So when we speak of conscious experience as a subjective phenomenon, what is the entity having these experiences?’ –
This is actually not there!! This entity is not there!!
That is, when K says, Thinker is the thought, actually it means NOTION OF A THINKER IS CREATED BY THOUGHT OR THINKING BUT AN INDEPENDENT THINKER IS NON EXISTENT!! (THAT CREATED NOTION IS ALTOGETHER AN ILLUSION)
My view for your consideration…………..
Good site. Very thought provoking with very intelligent comments. Thank you.
Can the body be a vehicle to some outside thing? How do we look at this?
If we are driving an 800cc car & on the top gear(if not automatic) step on the accelerator to the floor board & then make the statement cars can go up to the speed of 100mph only then we don’t know the speed depends on the horse power etc.
Now what is our apparatus to investigate the question? The brain & the sensory organs. Now the sensitivity range of this apparatus is limited. Naturally. We can only see a limited range of light.
Now let me say something. I’ve been investigating all my life. 55now. At least on 3 occasions I’ve seen a light entering the chest area of human beings. Once a light went into a cat. In to where the rib case is.
Now from a purely a scientific stand point I have to see a doctor. My eyes or the brain can have some defect which caused the optical illusion, if it was that. I haven’t. However I argue that if it had been a defect then I should see lights entering physical objects also. This was to living creatures & always to the heart area.
Now watch the 5th public talk Krishnamurti gave in 1979 in Ojai, California from about 50mts afterwards. He addresses death & also talks about a stream in which mankind lives. Now there he says ‘Listen, we are not talking about any theory. We are talking about observable facts.’ So I would say he was seeing this stream he was talking about there.
I’ve seen this on very fleeting moments. A shaft of light hit against the chest. At least I hope that was the stream.
Now how to investigate the validity of these observations? Probably very difficult. I am actually extremely sorry to talk about personal experience. But I cannot see any other way of throwing some light on the question someone raised.
So How do we investigate this? I do not know really? What can be concluded is that we have to bear in my clearly that our range of sensitivity is limited & that what is perceivable to our organs may not be the complete truth……
Not much help I know. At least it provides material for speculation………..
Excuse-me I speak a poor English but I will try to engaje in the conversation about the self. I think we are a created existence so we have a soul who is a minor part of God who is by his own time another minor part of the Supreme God creator of the Universe.But my individual minor god´s part that we shall call Í AM´has his free will,skills and so enough reasons to change the world.So each one has a Self.
Can anything go the heart?
Well , Krishnamurti said somewhere that the brain & heart are psychosomatically inter-related.
That is still not proof. However if two people say somethings which indicates to the same, then it becomes a possibility & that being a fallacy diminishes by some degree.
Is it possible Krishnamurti could see this stream of consciousness he talked about with his optical eye?
He never said that. However in his notebook he said going for a walk in the morning he could see energy being absorbed to the earth. So he did say he could see some forms of energy at least.
Again that is not scientific evidence. However as this cannot be proved , if several experience the same , it would go as proof , I reckon……
Celmo,
I believe this is not a discussion forum. So if you email me I’ll say my point of view.(kapilakulasighe@yahoo.com) Or here, as you wish.
1) If you forget everything you read in the Bible & heard about God, then what do you know about God?
2) Is past a fact? (this is tough). Is it actually there? Past I mean? So is ‘created’ in past tense valid? Or is it an action going on now? In the active present?
3) I think we have sprung up due to very natural series of events. Therefore nothing mine or yours. It is impersonal. We are something that probably takes place given some conditions. Its just an occurrence in a planetary system as a planet cools down-probably because of opposites-I mean opposites quarks………..
4) I am faster than you. Or slower than you. Capacity is there. But that capacity you & I have is neither mine or yours. It is human capacity. Difference is due to the organism been exposed to different conditions…….No I don’t see what is called a soul here….that implies recognition , a past which is now, next moment non existent……
Sorry, my email address should read- kapilakulasinghe@yahoo.com
Celmo,
Was looking at your question further.
Now, to say universe was created, then there must be time & space. At a time when it was created & into what it was created-space.
Then we have to look at time & space. Because in space only something is created.
Now are these really there? I mean at a down the lane position this is there. In relation to something. In relation to the morning position of the sun evening is there. So time. Due to the position of one object another is there. So space. But this is in relation to something. Relative.
Now at the base what is the position? That is before manifestation? Then is there time? Base of everything. When we say ‘it’ that has already changed. So at the base can it ever have a position. Or is it timelessly changing without a resting place. So moment is not there. Fixed moment for a fraction of a moment is not there. That would be manifestation & thus not the base. So at the base must it not be timelessly moving? That means time is actually not there in all this!That means the base has no beginning!
Us mortals cannot see this I believe. We are in the time space dimension & for us everything must have a beginning. So we say God! Is that it?
what are the five properties of self?
the self is a kind of invisible immaterial immeasurable sublimity embedded in visible material “limited” bodies. the body is the visible fragment of an invisible entire wholeness unit. each visible body possesses an invisible entire wholeness, which would not fit on earth when it where visible. . invisible giants, we are. two worlds immaterial and material united in one embodiment the individual . the immaterial holds the matterial upright. the nature gave and gives us intelligence and nature is not less intelligent. nature saves us, and not otherwise. the nature which gave and give us intelligence does not need our help. we need the help of nature.
I’m very interested in deepening my understanding of personal and impersonal Self. I’ve just come to your side only now so hopefully I will find very useful teachings.
Dear Sir/Madam
In the post leading up to the videos above , which part is that which is actually stated by JK sir and which part is from you?
it was actually really good and serious/sincere. But shouldnt that differentiation be maintained in a demonstrative manner so that it can enable further serious study? That is all
Namaste