We are completely confused about what constitutes our Self - and for many this is understandable, since their real Self (with a capital S) is so undeveloped it can be ignored.
I remember when I became aware of mine. It was at a meditation retreat, where I was meditating hard, working hard at calming down my mind. All of a sudden I became aware of something larger, and I was eager to tell the leader of the retreat about it. I didn't know what it was - only that it was big and it was important and it was some kind of bigger self.
The retreat leader nearly collapsed when I told him about it. He assumed I was thinking about some kind of vast idea - exactly what he don't want to happen to a student. He had been there a few times himself, and it had always a bum trip.
As I was meditating this morning, this came back to me - just a little. I remembered reading that consciousness is an illusion. It was Susan Blackmore's Consciousness: A very short introduction - one of the Oxford Very Short Introductions series. She surveys the literature thoroughly, as a scientist should, and came to this conclusion: that consciousness is an illusion. I haven't forgotten that.
And one of the things this consciousness is always doing is creating a sense of self: I am this, that, and the other - dramas of all kinds, most of them extremely simple-minded. The is the false self, the source of many of our problems - because we think it is real. And this individual false self can easily become part of a group false self - also the source of many of our problems. This group self becomes our identity, the most precious thing we have - and a total illusion.
It was only very recently, about five hundred years ago, that we began to become aware of this illusion - although the Buddhist concept of Enlightenment, and similar Hindu concepts, are much, much older - they were ways of ridding ourselves of this bondage to illusion - they still work, but few have the patience or discipline to use them.
The Age of Reason cut through all of that simply by thinking about it. We realized that the old authoritative answers and social structures were not necessary - and even harmful. The result was the modern world - a true miracle.
We are now in the post-modern world, where our naive belief in reason has been shown to be inadequate. And we are in the process of returning to another Dark Age where our social need for group identities is paramount. But I see I have digressed, I started to write about the difference between the big self (the Self) and the small self.
Perhaps this can be explained by considering the brain. The brain and consciousness are connected - but we do not know how. This is a big problem in science and philosophy. But we do know that the brain works at many levels. The lower levels are concerned with very basic things, such as regulating our blood chemistry and keeping us breathing - very basic functions of the Self. Higher levels involve our senses: seeing, hearing, smelling - and making some sense of them. If we become insane we say we have lost our senses - we become unaware of the world around us, and retreat into our own world.
The highest level involves thinking. Small children don't do this very much, and that is why they are so adorable (they are their Self). But as adults we live in our minds, thinking all the time - and we become less adorable. If we become successful, we can identify with that - with disastrous results. Even as nations (or empires) we can become obsessed with their success - a sure sign of an impending collapse. They have lost contact with reality (with their Self) - the worst thing that could happen to them.
Recent Comments