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Does The Self Exist?

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Nathanial.Dread

Nathanial.Dread

Esteemed member
So, I've always been firmly of the belief that 'The Self' doesn't exist in any meaningful sense. Who 'I' am at any given moment is an emergent phenomena of the state of the Universe at that moment. When consciousness fades, with sleep, anesthesia, or death, The Self is lost.

I recently had an experience on mescaline that I haven't quite been able to integrate and has challenged my belief. I felt briefly like I was each and every person I've ever been. Not in a reincarnation/past life kind of sense, but as the person who I was as a child, a teen, and pretty much everyone else, all at once. I was complete.

I'm still trying to figure out how my feelings on the Self are evolving, and I'm curious how how Nexians feel about The Self. Do you believe it exists? Is there some kind of fundamental 'soul,' or is it an illusion?

Blessings
~ND

Disclaimer: I'm coming back from anesthesia administered for a surgery, which is where all this 'self' philosophy is coming from (how was my self erased by the propofol or what), so I don't know if any of that made any sense.
 
I feel like the Self exists, and I feel like there's only one Self. But it depends what you call Self. I was discussing this with someone earlier, they disagreed and said it was an illusion, but it seems as if what they call the self is what I call the ego. But to me there's seems to be one consciousness, with many aspects, which I would call the one self.
 
These days, I tend to think of the Self as a three-dimensional snapshot of a four-dimensional object.
 
As the previous user said, it depends what you call the self. The following are just my beliefs: I believe that the ego definitely "dies" upon death (or shortly thereafter), but the true self, continues to exist. Now, what is the true self? My guess is that it's an aspect of the All. That true self could have a "life" of its own, in what we call "higher dimensions". Those elves, might just be how true selves look like, before they decide to dip-in to a lower dimension. But even that higher self state is an illusion, as there's only one consciousness in reality (the All). And if you go even further, into the deepest mystical teachings of Buddhism (e.g. high jhana states), there's not even that (consciousness). There's only "nothingness with potential".

I think that the only person who can answer your original question is you, and the best way to do that is via meditation, not via psychedelics. Try a jhana meditation book that's more focused into things like we discuss here, rather than just "mindfulness". I own the two books by Catherine Shaila, and they're great for that. The book by Leigh Brasington is also great.
 
knowing your interest in Neuroscience you probably know about him already, but I suggest checking out Thomas Metzinger's work, for example his book "Being No One".

mitpress.mit.edu

Being No One

According to Thomas Metzinger, no such things as selves exist in the world: nobody ever had or was a self. All that exists are phenomenal selves, as they app...
mitpress.mit.edu mitpress.mit.edu


A video:




"The Self is not a thing, but a process"


Not sure it goes in the direction you are talking about, but worth checking out.
 
I think that the Self is intimately tied with our neurochem. Does this mean that the Self is generated from this? For some reason I don't think the Selfs primary residence is as some offshoot from the brain interaction. I think the Self is much farther reaching.

Thought id share the kena upanishad. This explains my thoughts pretty well.

The Kena Upanishad

The Self

The student inquires: “Who makes my mind think?
Who fills my body with vitality?
Who causes my tongue to speak? Who is that
Invisible One who sees through my eyes
And hears through my ears?”

The teacher replies: “The Self is the ear of the ear,
The eye of the eye, the mind of the mind,
The word of words, and the life of life.
Rising above the senses and the mind
And renouncing separate existence,
The wise realize the deathless Self.

“Him our eyes cannot see, nor words express;
He cannot be grasped even by our mind.
We do not know, we cannot understand,
Because he is different from the known
And he is different from the unknown.
Thus have we heard from the illumined ones.

“That which makes the tongue speak, but cannot be
Spoken by the tongue, know that as the Self.
This Self is not someone other than you.

“That which makes the mind think, but cannot be
Thought by the mind, that is the Self indeed.
This Self is not someone other than you.

“That which makes the eye see, but cannot be
Seen by the eye, that is the Self indeed.
This Self is not someone other than you.

“That which makes the ear hear, but cannot be
Heard by the ear, that is the Self indeed.
This Self is not someone other than you.

“That which makes you draw breath, but cannot be
Drawn by your breath, that is the Self indeed.
This Self is not someone other than you.”

THE TEACHER

1. If you think, "I know the Self," you know not.
All you can see is his external form.
Continue, therefore, your meditation.

THE STUDENT

2. I do not think I know the Self, nor can
I say I know him not.


There is only one way to know the Self,
And that is to realize him yourself.

3. The ignorant think the Self can be known
By the intellect, but the illumined
Know he is beyond the duality
Of the knower and the known.

4. The Self is realized in a higher state
Of consciousness when you have broken through
The wrong identification that you are
The body, subject to birth and death.
To be the Self is to go beyond death.

5. Realize the Self, the shining goal of life!
If you do not, there is only darkness.
See the Self in all, and go beyond death.
 
I am stuck with this mind that is visual and auditory and not verbal and it's so hard to describe the things I think because they are more akin to blueprints than ideas. they are these forms that arise as though in a hologram before me and they don't translate so well. or more accurately they translate in too many ways that it is difficult choosing how to describe them.

I don't know, but I feel like there is this great light somewhere, not the sun, this colossal beam that is pouring forth into a kind of sea, a labyrinthine abyss that is filled, packed so full with geometry / information that their is no whiteout or at least not here and we are far enough away that there is only a dim forgiving glow.

now, all symbols are compound forms. they are composites of other symbols and multiple meanings.. any linguist or anthropologist or cabalist would agree on that. behind the sense of the word "self" are many things and connotations. this is why the nature of things is so lastingly ambiguous to us as long as we rely on phonetics. language is not quite math is it? ... I think that the self is a combine, as much as the word itself is... the nature of the self is akin to the nature of a word, and by extension one word is part and parcel to every other word is it not? there is no context otherwise. and I guess what I am trying to say is that there is no context without the word, and vice versa and what you get is this ancient, ageless radiance streaming forth in so many colors it is blinding just the same as if we were right up on it, this monstrous covenant of all covenants passing through as through the many colored fluid like gelatinous single cells and nuclei and atoms in a petri dish, the bacteria the dna the properties, too. only this petri dish is deep and wide and the eye of sauron can only summon up one slice of the heavens at one time and maybe the heavens are truly endless. but I believe it is this light that is behind the presence that we all feel on such an integral level and attribute so many things to it and at the same time claim it for our own light.

in short, yes and no and yes.
 
In my eyes, the sense of self comes with sentience. Basically any organism that possesses theory of mind is sentient and self-aware. So we are all facets of the same being. That being is life itself. We are all atoms, and yet we can think when a stone cannot. This planet is just a collection of energy. The planet itself is a being.

I like to think of all living things as being the incarnation of fire. Fire is a living thing. It fulfills all the classifiers for life. It consumes, it excretes, it dies, it makes more of itself.

Fire is combustion. Which is basically a reaction between the fuel and oxygen after ignition. What about respiration? We have fuel, and oxygen is consumed. This process creates energy, just like combustion. Fire is warmth, fire is life.
 
Chan said:
These days, I tend to think of the Self as a three-dimensional snapshot of a four-dimensional object.
Click to expand...

JustATourist said:
The Self is not a thing, but a process
Click to expand...

I think of the self as an ever changing survival process, fueled in a huge part by sexuality.

I also think that your self = your reality, to a large extent. Instead of there being an objective "story" to reality, I think of existence as more like a song. You are just a character in a book or and movie star... Everyone is going to watch the movie and interpret you differently!

Basically, your ego exists only to help you survive and adapt in this plane and is developed accordingly, only to the extent that it is needed to.

I see my "soul" as the process, and my ego as the human clothes it consequentially wears.
 
I have been trying to work this out for quite a while & can`t seem to find any difinitive answer.

It seems to me that the "self" is a concept built on conditioned responses, essentially the ego.
I know "self" is not something physical, because it seems tied to the body rather than actually being the body, it seems when the ego is dissolved, there is still consciousness & even the external or "consensus reality" dissolves, so what exactly is this mechanism that is chained to the mind, spirit, & body that exists free of the reality we seem to always return to but continues to bring us back?
I am inclined to say consciousness but even then I am not sure.
The only thing I have come to know for sure is that there is something non-phsyical that animates the body, mind, & spirit which all seem to be tethered together in some type of multi-layered system.
 
some good perspectives.

..'the Self', in Vedic definition is completely unchanging, eternal, unbounded, and without any qualities or characteristics other than it's self luminous existence...it cannot be stepped outside of or observed externally or by any sensory means..

all forms, traits, appearances, qualities, changes, processes etc are not the Self, but rather subdivisions/striations of it, or transient illusions, depending on which school of vedanta is talking..
the self is 'Fullness' (as the Upanishads say)

this is of course completely opposite (on the surface) to the Buddhist angle...

i just wanted to note that, without disagreeing with anyone...
 
A seamless unspeakable something tripping the light fantastic in the mama matrix most mysterious

to mash other peoples descriptions together into a best guess

I also like the upanishads words it..."the Self in man and the Sun are one" etc.

It goes deeper than just the carbon-cooking connection, i think
 
Chan said:
These days, I tend to think of the Self as a three-dimensional snapshot of a four-dimensional object.
Click to expand...

Agreed, at least I hope so... in at least only for the sake of answers in a temporary higherdimensional afterlife.
 
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